Justin

Agreed, those are very cool to focus on. Stumps from former trees, etc. 
I have access to a lot of old photos that I’d like to compare to the present day. 

I forgot to mention that the house on the far left in the top image was either demo’ed or burned down years ago. I’ve never laid eyes on it. 
I have a good story about the house on the left! When I was young staying next door, the woman who lived there made THE BEST vanilla milkshakes. She was an author & you may recall my story I shared with @VicSage about a woman who was an old-time radio personality.
http://fishersisland.net/memoriam-patricia-hosley-kibbe/
 

The trees here tell their own story.  Some grew, some are gone.  So much to see in these two pictures. 

Thanks!! I’ll attempt to keep updating this thing. 😀

Absolutely. More like this please! 🙌

@StormSurge this has turned into a VERY cool blog. I've really been enjoying reading about your life on the island, fighting fires and discovering a place I never really knew anything about. I've also enjoyed your Instagram too. Very awesome of you to share snippets of your life with us here. 👨‍🚒

I love this.  I agree with @Justin, this blog is one of the best I've seen in a long time. 
 

I can't believe I didn't respond to you both.
Thank you @RickR & @kamakazi20012 for your kinds words. I appreciate it!

And @RickR, I don't think I had a difficult childhood at all! Yeah, my parents divorced & my mother had poor choices in men going forward, but I had two Christmases, two birthdays & my father pretty much gave me anything I could have hoped for. Yes, I wish that the time was reversed (meaning I went to school with my Dad & weekends with my Mom), if only to have more time with all the cool stuff I had at my Dad's. But if that was the case, maybe I wouldn't have had all those cool things and my summers wouldn't have been as awesome as they were.  

FYI Dark Cavern "Black Edition" is a hack.  You have it listed as a homebrew.

Thanks! Edit done!

@RickR- I know that you didn't include homebrews, but if you have a Harmony cart or Stella, try PacMan 8K by Dintari on the 2600. Its become my favorite home version of the game. I even like it better than PacManPlus' 7800 collection (which is also excellent).

The 5200 version is great, and 4th place is nothing to sneeze at.  Give the top 3 a play if you get the chance...they are excellent!  The ColecoVision version will blow you away. 

Thanks, Rick! Zoop is fun. My understanding is that all of the console versions are pretty similar. It may be worth checking if you like this type of game.

I've never heard of Zoop.  It looks like fun to me.  Thanks for your excellent review. 

Great review atarilbc. I've always liked racing games on Atari systems and when I first saw the Jaguar in magazines before it was released I was so excited for games like Checkered Flag and Club Drive. I thought they'd be 10x better than Virtua Racing. Ultimately they were disappointments. Super Burnout I thought was quite good for what it is. To me it almost felt like a Neo-Geo game that you'd find in an arcade, and I always thought the Jaguar would've done quite well in that arena with some impressive 2D games.

The Jaguar was caught in the middle of a video game era when everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was hype on doing CD development containing digital videos on game consoles and within games.  Most of those games were not even worth the plastic they were printed on.  The only game I found worthy of the FMV sequences was Sonic CD on the Sega CD.  The animation was not much but opened and closed the story of the game successfully.  It left the true heart of the game for the game play aspects that Sonic was well known for.  That is the reason it was more successful than others.
 
If you were to take a look at other early CD games from the same time frame as the Jaguar you will discover piles of crap games.  Night Trap (while cool actors and actresses were involved the game play blew), Sewer Shark, Road Avenger (OK...this one was sort of cool), and even the Sherlock Holmes series, really went overkill on the CD video stuff and left very little for interactive game play.  Hell...I think the RCA CED players could have done a better game to be honest.  The only other games that even came close to Sonic CD, for me, were the Wing Commander 3 and Wing Commander 4 games on the PlayStation and computers.  I looked forward to the video sequences to move an interesting story line and plot along.  Final Fantasy 7 stepped this up a notch as did FF 8 and 9.  Only when the in-game graphics could be on par with the videos did the videos actually become important to the game play.  But that took years to overcome.  
 
So, sadly, while the Jaguar was a cool console in every aspect, it did not completely avoid the plague of FMV drenched CD based games, and this game was one of them.  I guess the developers had to learn the hard way.

@kamakazi20012 - I agree with you that there is fun to be had here. Bubsy is definitely better than the very worst Jaguar games like Checkered Flag. For me, its hard to say that its better than the other Jaguar platformers - Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, Zool 2, Soccer Kid and Rayman. I think it falls somewhere in the middle of the Jaguar library in terms of quality and fun factor.

Looking forward to what you write.  Been a Jaguar fan since it was released.  It is an awesome console with some of the most interesting games ever created.  Not all are the best but each game on the Jaguar were in that transition era in gaming.  Jaguar games were the first to attempt hardware-able 3-D graphics.  I have to admit that while I loved the Jaguar, and this includes other consoles as well, games being made at that time seemed mediocre sometimes.  There were good games but there were also the bad ones.
 
Bubsy on the Jaguar I found very entertaining and difficult.  A must-have for the Jaguar in my opinion so I look forward to read what you have to say about it.

I'm honestly excited that you've decided to create a blog. I know it'll be great and I'm excited to see where this goes.
 
Grunge.com posted this awful post on Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, they don't seem to think too highly of the Jaguar: http://www.grunge.com/14463/failed-attempts-to-make-video-game-mascots-as-iconic-as-mario/s/bubsy/

After my dad passed my mother tried to find another father-figure so to speak.  The first guy wasn't too bad.  He was always helping and the main reason I got into Atari and computers in the first place.  The guy she found after that, however, was a complete opposite.  He almost acted like he wanted nothing to do with me and rarely said anything to me or did anything with me.  If he did it was mostly to "correct" me.  He never laid a hand on me but he distanced himself from me and, at times, I felt like he was trying to separate Mom and me.  The only relief I got was the weekends I would visit either of my grandparents.  
 
I ran into him once at a firework stand not long before Mom passed away in '98.  It was strange when I ran into him because I didn't know how to react.  All the fears I had of him simply because he never gave me the time of day started to creep back.  He acted like I was his best friend in the world and we visited for a almost an hour.  It was strange and I still have never figured it out.  So I can somewhat relate to how you are feeling.
 
I would honestly take the time to visit the guy while you can.  Even if you say you hated him in your early years he was there so that might account to why you feel how you feel now.  There is nothing to be sorry for...allow your family the time to get the closure you are going miss if you don't visit him.  Give him a chance, as well, to go in peace if that is his wish.
 
Sharing something like this on Facebook can generate a lot of mixed feelings and responses.  At least here you know you have friends who will be there as much as they can for you.  You have my sympathy and prayers are being sent to your family in your time of need. 

Do not apologize, man.  Life and feelings are complicated things.  Sounds like you had a difficult childhood.  But your kindness and decency is fully intact. 

It's said that sometimes, it's good to have these type of people in our lives to learn how NOT to be. 

Atari.io forums had a Secret Quest challenge a few months back.  It was a great way to learn and discover this game. 
 
I like the game a lot.  It's very Nintendo-esque. 

This is a great story.  Never feel bad about giving stuff away.  Your heart was in the right place....giving toys to kids you thought would have fun with them.  Giving is good for your soul!  Yes, you miss those objects.  But the memories are yours FOREVER. 

Great idea for a blog, StormSurge. This website sits at the crossroads of classic gaming, culture, and fun. I'm very much looking forward to reading your next blog entries.

Great idea for a blog, StormSurge. This website sits at the crossroads of classic gaming, culture, and fun. I'm very much looking forward to reading your next blog entries.