Justin
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Posts posted by Justin
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On 7/22/2020 at 2:23 PM, kamakazi20012 said:
My pick...Astro Warrior.
I forgot that one. I loved Astro Warrior but it was quickly overshadowed in my game library by Blazing Lasers which I couldn't put down and became one of my favorite games of all time. Astro Warrior is fun little shooter, really good for the year it came out. I shared some great stories of playing Astro Warrior during the summers growing up and gave it a play in this livestream:
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3 hours ago, Video 61 said:
but one thing that really excites me is when i am able to collect every version of a game that was released on various atari platforms, like dark chamber, it came out on the 2600, 7800, and the XEGS.
It would've been nice to have a 16-Bit Dark Chambers released on the Atari Lynx! I wonder why they didn't go that route. They gave us Gauntlet: The Third Encounter but there's still plenty of room for a Dark Chambers, and maybe step things up a bit.
3 hours ago, Video 61 said:i recenetly was posting comparisons between 7800 games and the XEGS, showing the differences in the games. one thing that turned me off about collecting 5200 games was that many of them were simply a port of a 400/800 game. many you could not tell the difference between machines, except the shape of the cartridge.
That's the problem with the 5200 in a nutshell. It's a redundant system, to a great degree. Makes you wonder why Atari didn't just release a low-cost consolized revision of the Atari 400 with detachable keyboard and make it fully compatible with existing Atari 400/800/XL cartridges. Hellooo, anybody home? Think Atari, think.
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I've always been an Atari-centered collector, with small collections of Sega Master System, TurboGrafx-16 and a few others that I play to enjoy. I keep my Phantasy Star and my Out Run but I keep those collections limited to what I'll actually play and not try to "complete a collection" for the sake of completing it. I save my resources for A T A R I
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On 7/16/2020 at 5:52 PM, TrekMD said:
I never had an SMS but I have literally a handful of games for it that I play on my Genesis. So, for me, these are my favorite SMS games!
After Burner
Enduro Racer
Global Defense
Rampage
After Burner is a great one!! How did I forget After Burner?! I had a blast playing the full-size cockpit After Burner in the arcade. After Burner on Sega Master System was my go-to jet fighter game until I started playing Blue Lightning on Atari Lynx. Those games were a lot of fun!
Global Defense was a fun game too, very challenging! I remember thinking it was going to be like Missile Command and Liberator but that wasn't the case. Pretty cool. Always remembered the opening screen of the missile striking the twin towers.
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2 hours ago, RickR said:
And he also mentions a little trouble with the difficulty switches!
GOOD on @nosweargamer for catching that and explaining it!
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Keep it going! I need to get my score up on this. I've been too distracted getting some extra innings in on Alex Kidd in Miracle World. I want to get to the end of that game.
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6 hours ago, RickR said:
Awesome points, @Justin. What's so dang interesting is how all of the other players goofed it up too. Mattel got hosed by that bad court decision on the computer add-on for Intellivision. A daily penalty took their focus off what they did best. And why spend any time and effort on the Intellivision 2 without improving your one weakness (the controller)?
And Coleco had the very best machine out at the time, and they spent their wad on the failed Adam computer. D'OH! What could have been if they'd have just focused on the ColecoVision as a game console.Absolutely Rick! Video games were new and it was a learning curve for everyone.
I think the difference is, with Atari, they were the clear industry leader, and by 1983 they were filled with people who knew better. The "Blue Sky Rangers" the team at Intellivision, the team at Coleco, and the third party developers, these were all fairly small houses at the time, almost boutique developers compared to Warner's Atari, Inc. Atari's mistake was compounded ten fold on the industry. It hurts the industry when Mattel mucks up the first computer add-on, it hurts when Coleco does something similar with ADAM, but one mistake after the next from Atari compounded into them being frozen up, and Atari's absence from the video game market mid 1984-1986 was a catastrophic failure resulting in the power vacuum in the industry which Nintendo was happy to step in and fill, while all the "experts" proclaimed video games a dead fad.
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8 hours ago, kamakazi20012 said:
We have such a section?
Not just games, decisions. Atari potentially could've survived 1983 had games like Pitfall, River Raid, Cosmic Ark, Atlantis, etc. been Atari releases. Once the cat was out of the bag that anybody could release their own unlicensed games for the 2600, it resulted in 1.) only 2 of the top 10 selling 2600 games around that time being actual Atari releases (massive lost revenue), 2.) Atari lost their best in-house game design talent to new groups like Activision and Imagic, 3.) the glut of shovelware that resulted from this contributed greatly to the collapse of the video game industry, and 4.) Atari continued making weird, thoughtless choices about their games and products. The handling of the 5200 was a mess, the Nintendo relationship was lost due to incompetence, and for all the talk of Atari's 2600 games group having smoke outs, pizza parties and fun nights in the spa, it was a group of MIT dropouts on the other coast at GCC that were sending Atari their highest quality releases in 1983 and 1984, and delivered the 7800 to Atari's doorstep without a lot of those guys really knowing much about it.
Not just games, poor decisions that helped to kill the company.
- Sabertooth and RickR
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2
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Pretty memorable theme
- RickR and Control Issues
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2
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Another good runner up would be Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, often considered to be the "first computer" if not the first machine.
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I would consider the Water Wheel to be possibly the first machine
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Atari Inc. "Warner" era: TEMPEST
Atari Games era: ROADBLASTERS or S.T.U.N. RUNNER
Atari Corp. "Tramiel" era: TEMPEST 2000
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14 hours ago, RickR said:
I tell you, I've tried that A/B switch both ways, and I canna tell no difference. I put it on A.
12 hours ago, kamakazi20012 said:I tried it on my JR unit and it seems to be the same no matter which way I flip the switch. And, yes, my diff switches work perfectly. I even tried it on my 4-switch and same thing...no difference between A and B. I wonder if it is the carts themselves? Maybe there were "improvements" attempted?
I'm going to put this in the "WTF Was Atari Thinking in 1983?!" category. The manual discrepancy alone is confusing and should've been caught before it went out.
You guys are doing well, let's keep playing! Thank you everyone for being honest and open about your experiences with your scores, having an honest group of friends in here makes it much easier to do these Squad Challenges. All fun, no squabbling.
- Sabertooth and RickR
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7 hours ago, RickR said:
Can we talk real quick about this? For me, the left difficulty switch is reversed from the manual. A = music on, B = music off (mercifully, I choose option B). Does this imply the right switch is reversed from the manual as well? I tried it both ways, and I'm not sure I understand what the difference is. In both cases, pushing left slows the tank down, and right speeds it up. What am I missing?
3 hours ago, RadioPoultry said:Difficulty A appears to actually provide you with 3 speeds, with B providing 2. From what I can tell with only 2 speeds on B, you travel at the same fastest speed on the right and middle, and slow down to the left. Difficulty A retains these 2 speeds, but adds a third "in-between" speed for when you are in the middle.
Having 3 speeds might make the game easier in some circumstances, but probably also makes it harder to get bonus points since you are travelling a bit slower on average. Score-wise, I figure it evens out.
Yes I was thinking the same thing. It appears to be reversed from the manual. I didn't have my Atari systems hooked up yet from from my recent move when I posted this so I was unable to independently verify, but suspected the manual was wrong, hence the underlined instructions for the Difficulty Level "Please confirm that Difficulty B provides you with 3 Speeds as Difficulty settings may be reversed from the manual."
We want the difficulty level that provides you with 3 Speeds, so lets play on Difficulty A
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7 hours ago, GRay Defender said:
If you mean gaming, I would say the old Pong consoles you could hook up to TVs.
If you mean first mechanical machine, no idea, but throwing out a guess I would say something like a bow & arrow... Lol
First machine, generally speaking
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fun question:
What would you consider to be the first machine?
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I'm going to hook my 7800 up and pop open a brand new copy of Moon Patrol to play this
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4 hours ago, BlackCatz40 said:
Phantasy Star, definitely. One of the best JCRPG series ever made, IMHO. It took me a year to beat it, and I did. I also beat Phantasy Star II and one generation of Phantasy Star III. I have not played Phantasy Star IV long enough to beat it yet, and I played it only in emulation online. I got my duff served to me by Zio in PSIV. That is as far as I have gotten in that game for the time being. I quite agree on one thing. SMS Choplifter is very good and the best version of that game. I also like Space Harrier 2D and 3D. I had both at one time. Great games. Thanks for letting me share this information. :O)
I am particularly partial to the first Phantasy Star. The entire Phantasy Star franchise is sublime. Phantasy Star III on Sega Genesis was a work of art, my friends and I played that game for years through the mid-90s.
What Sega did with Phantasy Star on the Master System is nothing short of incredible. They created a competitor to The Legend of Zelda on the NES that rose above and beyond, and did so without being a "Zelda clone" in the sense that games like Neutopia on TurboGrafx-16 had been. Phantasy Star was possibly the #1 reason to check out the Sega Master System. It put the Sega console on the map. I remember at one point the entry-level Master System package (system, hookups, no game and one controller) being $89 at Toys R Us and Phantasy Star being $79.
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2 hours ago, Atari Creep said:
Well, lets find out.
Yeah let's keep this going in the scoreboard. I know I can go farther.
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Has anybody ever gotten to the end? Is the entire overworld shown on the map, or does the map scroll to another page to reveal more land? 🤔
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1 hour ago, atarilbc said:
@Justin Thanks for the update to the scoreboard but no apologies needed. I know that we all appreciate the site and the time it takes to put these things together.
Congrats on the move and thank you for creating, curating, and maintaining the amazing retro-culture-treehouse community that is atari.io!
Thanks @atarilbc! You guys are what make our community the special place that it is and a joy to develop. Having you back in the forums has been a real boost 💥
Atari Lynx Mylar Button Sticking Issue
in Atari Lynx
Posted
Mike,
I'm having the same problem! I'm going to give my original Lynx a complete tear-down and rebuilt. This is the same Lynx I have had since the Lynx was new. I sent it to @Video 61 a few years ago for a rebuild but Lance broke his arm right afterwards and wasn't in good shape to do the work. I'm going to take care of the mylar issue, rebuild/strengthen the power jack, and hopefully put on some new hand grips on the back. (This is a Lynx mark II unit). I was thinking of making a video of this, or at least sharing photos here in the forums.