Keatah
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Posts posted by Keatah
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Thing is most folks don't realize right away is that as time goes on it isn't hard or costly to update to the next model Pi for better performance. And that performance will certainly be needed as emulation accuracy continues to improve.
Man I tell ya, if they had this stuff back in the 80's..!
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It's nice to see it coming together, my only beef is the aesthetically unbalanced front/rear distribution of the controls. If I were designing it I would have made all the controls visible, up-front. And the only two things on the back would be power & hdmi connectors.
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Some say this is like a quick health check. Something smells wrong, there's something wrong!
Anyways, they tried to make (or are working on) a toilet that does gas analysis to rate digestive efficiency.
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I had a new VCS when I was a kid in 1977-1978. And today I still enjoy playing the original games, maybe not for as long, but enjoying them all the same. I eventually acquired many many other cartridge based systems and the same holds true for them as well.
In the 90's I got into PC gaming and that continues to be my platform of choice. Today currently I enjoy complex simulations, but haven't really moved away from the simplistic games of the 80's either. Combat, VideoPinball, Phoenix.. Love'em all the same.
The passing of time has added MORE richness and variety to the hobby. But the desire to simplify is stronger than ever. Modern hardware and emulation allows one to do just that. Most people dislike emulation, that much is clear. But it's just a vehicle and a means to an end. As nostalgia gestates we become more interested in the software. It's the essence of the game.
If anything i've grown totally and utterly impatient in dealing with physical hardware. So it's going to be emulation all the way. Not to mention the easy portability factor. I clearly recall having and hating to lug consoles and carts to sleepovers and " game conferences". Today it's different it all fits on a microSD card, and yet its still a novelty for me to bring an entire library of VCS and Apple II games with me to the north cabin. Still amazing.
As we age I think people will start to value convenience and reliability. Those two points are really invaluable. And without such "features" I doubt I'd be in the hobby or play as much as I do.
- Atarileaf, RickR and Sabertooth
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Console-wise I started with dedicated pong unit, and moved into the VCS on release day. Since then I owned practically every cartridge based system of the day. But I had always wanted an all-in-one system that'd play every game ever made. Today that is possible through a standard emulation box. And that means yes, despite it being virtual consoles.
This enables me to sample and enjoy NeoGeo. Something I didn't like bitd, but do now.
- Atarileaf and Starbuck66
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Don't recall exactly, specifically the very first moment. But close enough.
It was a rather pedestrian experience, some nondescript winter evening or Saturday afternoon in 1977. I remember exploring the "worlds" of combat. All the different terrain. That and playing Surround. The full aweseomness of the VCS would be revealed to several decades later, when I could appreciate how much was done with so little.
I don't think I ever had a first "wow" moment with videogames because I grew up with them. It's as if they always existed and the exploration of the electronic gaming field was a given. Even back in like 1976 and 1975.
The "wow" moment was with the discovery of red LED handhelds. Those were amazing, and I always thought there was a special sort of intelligence inside the chips. I didn't know how they all worked. And it would have been totally plausible (to me) that they were like mechanical mazes inside, with control levers and chutes and valves. Like a big-ass Hot-Wheels track setup going everywhere.
Of course each console from the dedicated pong units to my latest emulation PC, each one, had their impressive moment. I was rarely disappointed.
- Justin, RickR and socrates63
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Gosh I never thought to go through the "hundreds" of cassettes I still have of the old days. We used to leave a recorder running a lot of the times when playing video games. Not unlike the rambling youtube commentaries of today. There's gotta be some classic moments in there!
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Love the first version I played, the VCS version. Honorable mentions go to the Atari 800 and Vic-20 for coming real close to my fav. Abot the other versions.. While I don't mind the boss stages, I dislike backgrounds. Too much ground clutter for my tastes.
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Yup, especially considering it has no graphics or sound chips.
The sound circuit is simply a gate that flips high or low. And the same thing with the video circuit, it blips the video timing and creates a b/w dot. False-color is achieved through artifacting in the NTSC signal, so to speak.
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I'm a little hesitant to call anything "DOS" or "ProDOS" an operating system. More technically this (and DOS 3.3) are simply a set of instructions and routines to allow access to the disk hardware and nothing else. It doesn't handle sound, it doesn't handle graphics, nor anything keyboard or text-screen related. All that stuff is in the firmware.
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2 of the malls of my childhood are still around and flourishing. The arcade/mall where I met the wife has long been abandoned. The Toys'R'Us I grew up with was still there as of last year, and while the Venture is long gone, another department store took its place. So it isn't all that bad in my area.
What I do miss are the hobby shops with model rockets and remote control cars - those were loads of fun!
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Loved all those project kits RS had, the ones with the spring terminals.
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They boast that they carried EVERY cartridge!
I clearly remember the woodfield one, while they didn't actually have EVERY cart, they did have a huge selection. They were good at stocking multiple systems. Whatever was current. Everything except the Apple II it seemed. I even got my Epson MX-80 printer there.
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This is a standard PC packaged in a slim style case. 100% off-the-shelf bog standard PC parts. It's a standard BIOSTAR M7NBA motherboard too. The OS was a customized version of XP. Probably the embedded version - which is in reality XP professional. The reseller or OEM (infinitum labs) could then strip away everything except what is needed to run games and download from their service.
For owners of this box, you've got a PC in an interesting case.
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Assault
Star Wars env
Blasteroids
Tempest
The choice changes depending on my mood and what I hadn't played in a while.
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Back in the day, the 1990's I paid for a couple of emulator packages, mainly for the Atari 400/800 and VCS. Didn't really know a whole hella lot about them then. They tended to be better set-up and more inclusive with friendly documentation.
Thing is with payware emulators, every one of them I "supported" back then is now defunct. Their authors tend not to pass down the code and it either stagnates from lack of interest or some other outside uncontrollable circumstance. Whereas with freeware emulators the code is likely to change hands and development continues.
Once you decide to stick with emulation as your main choice, then it makes sense to get all the freeware packages. They're more versatile and more complex. And the rewards greater.
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The first row alone makes one almost believe displaying the games is cooler than playing them.
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I feel the modern gaming industry has lost its way with so many flavors of screwups and vain attempts at capturing the real spirit retrogaming.
I'm also pleased to report that I've observed this situation time and again at neighbor's houses as well.
- MaximumRD, Atari 5200 Guy, greenween and 1 other
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They're not that rare. And there's always something available on ebay and craigslist. Some are ratbaggy, some are clean and ready to roll.
I think they've held up over the years much better than the cheap C64 or Vic20. TRS-80, Apple II, and Atari 400/800 seem to be the best built 8-bit micros around.
As far as finding them in the wild..? That's going to be more difficult. People are fixated on "Because Apple" and "Steve Jobs". And when they see Apple they see dollar signs. And the way to get those dollar signs is by selling on ebay or Christies.
Does anyone collect gaming magazines?
in Comics & Books
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I already mentioned Electronic Games Magazine (EGM) ..but I also excitedly read JoyStik and Video Games. On the computing side I did the Apple II publication called HardCore Computing, A+, and Apple Orchard. And for general computing it was Creative Computing along with the occasional Byte issue.
I did get into those strategy guides, too. Those colorful paperbacks that were typically 30-50 pages of patterns, tips and rules. Some focused on 1 game, others a set of 5 or 10 games. Most all I recall are available on pdf at internet archive.
This is a tiny sample representing the style:
https://archive.org/details/How_To_Beat_The_Video_Games
https://archive.org/details/How_To_Win_At_Home_Video_Games
https://archive.org/details/book_video_games
And my favorite:
https://archive.org/details/Winners_Book_of_Video_Games
https://archive.org/details/book_how_to_win_video_games
None of them helped me much. I wasn't the best player till I got into my early 20's, by which time the whole craze died down. But, today, I think of the books as manuals for the arcade games.
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In the 90's I got the Duke Nuke'em and Doom strategy guides. And they are very nostalgic. I read them like I was studying for a college exam or a check flight.