socrates63

Great prices, Brian! More than 50% off on the B/W books. I think I have all or most of your books. For people interested in Atari 2600 homebrews and hacks, these books are a great reference for discovering what's out there (there is a lot). I first got acquainted with Brian's books because I won signed copies of volumes 1 and 2 during the auction run by ZPH a few years ago as a fundraiser for Stella development.

My recent pick-up -- all imports except for one. I got pretty excited finding MLB 07 The Show for the PS2 at the local game store for $3. I don't think I ever got this excited for a $3 game. I am now only missing MLB 16 The Show. Maybe I should go back and get the MLB series released on the original PlayStation--collector goals 😂 As for the PS2 imports, I got most of them out of curiosity. I have a modded PS2 that can play games for all regions and found that there are quite a few PAL or JP exclusives.

First my apologies to the Commodore fans... Being a loyal Atari user, I moved up from all the Atari 8-bit computers and bought the ST and use it a ton before switching to the PC. However, I never felt good about it because it was a Tramiel product. I know--it's dumb and irrational, but that's what being a fan(atic) is, right? 😂 Only a few years ago, I learned that the original Atari engineers designed the Amiga. Had I known that back in the day, I may have gotten the Amiga instead of the ST. Now in 2023, I decided to get an Amiga to see what I missed and bought Rick's Amiga 500 recently (need to figure out soon when I will pick it up from Rick before he changes his mind). It's too bad the ST and Amiga did not dominate the computer scene. They were so far ahead of the PC.

@Caleb Hick88 you may want to look into this sale post on AtariAge: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/352547-interest-check-for-sale-atari-jaguar-lynx-vcs-floppy-drive-modded-n64-and-other-items/ US$190 for the Atari VCS bundle that is currently on sale for US$225 is a great deal, and perhaps the seller is willing to ship it to the UK. I've been considering buying it myself for that price.

I didn't even know that the Polymega was still around. I first heard of it in one of the Metal Jesus Rocks videos. If this collaboration will extend the capabilities and content of the VCS, I'm on board. As for the Polymega hardware itself, I've given up on trying to play everything on my 4K TV. For older consoles, I prefer to play on the original hardware on a CRT. While in concept the Polymega looks pretty neat, I don't have a practical use for it, and given how much it costs, I don't see myself getting one just to check out what looks to be a cool machine. I only got the VCS because it came down in price and I loved its physical design and wanted one for that alone. Its utility was a distant second in deciding to get one considering pretty much all of the VCS content is multi platform. But I love the enthusiasm of the folks in the I/O for the Atari VCS. That's the reason why I broke the seal and hooked it up and played it. I had originally considered keeping it sealed in the box or for display only.

My pre-order arrived today. I haven't seen all the Ghibli films, but what I have seen, the music has been fantastic. Can't wait to hear the symphonic versions.

51,400 Switching my 4/8-way joystick to 4-way seems to help.

Sounds like you figured out it, Rick. I just tapped my joystick and that made the title screen show up with the score and difficulty.

31,430 I read the manual and realized that I played at normal difficulty or whatever the default is. I thought the difficulty was controlled by the Difficulty switch and had set it to A for my score reported earlier. This is my current true score.

38,340 Man, it's tough playing Asteroids without an all-button controller 😂 I think this is only the second time I played Asteroids on the 7800. I am determined to get used to playing it with a joystick. @RickR Is that a PlayStation Classic?

Thanks, Justin. I posted my Vanguard score on the high score board. Now on to 7800 Asteroids!

Thanks, Rick. This ol' brain is still working ok 🙂 Had I not gotten the cable from the UK, I would have reached out to the vendor to figure this out. But I didn't want to wait two weeks for a replacement from the UK, so the impatient me got the one on Amazon. For under $20, it was gamble I was willing to take to save me from the wait. I'm just super glad that it was not a problem with the scart switch.

Thanks for confirming that I did buy the right stuff, Jesse. The tech I got the TV from recommended retrogamingcables and insurrectionindustries.com (source of my console scart cables). Maybe I'll reach out to retrogamingcables and see if I can get store credit for the cable. Edit: @CrossBow here's another thing... I ordered on ebay this scart cable with audio breakout from Germany. It arrived a few days ago. This cable also produced no video like the one I got from retrogamingcables. Is that just extreme bad luck?? That would explain my success rate buying lotto tickets.

Couple of months ago, I acquired a 27" Sony TV from a local technician who refurbishes CRTs. The performance of this TV was described as PVM territory without the PVM price. That got me very interested, and the fact that it was a curved tube was the deciding factor. I had been using a flat tube JVC, and I'm not a fan of CRTs that are completely flat--it feels unnatural. The TV happened to have been modded to accept a SCART RGB signal. Having seen what RGB can do with my Intellivision that's RGB modded, I was totally intrigued when the tech told me that many consoles output RGB natively and you only need the right cable. RGB for the price of a cable? That was a no brainer for me, and I acquired the necessary cables for the NES, SNES, Genesis, and PS2. I still need to get cables for the Jaguar and Dreamcast. I knew when I started this path that I wanted a SCART switch. I'm a big fan of the convenience that a switch offers. So now, the travails of the retro gamer aka first world problems... 😂 A month ago, I bought a SCART switch that does not work with my setup (ordered a switch that is not intended to connect directly to a TV--my bad). I sold that to a local gamer and ordered this SCART switch from AliExpress. It arrived a few days ago (took a little less than two weeks from ordering to arrive from China). I got it based on comments I read in this article about the passive 6 input 1 output switch by Otaku Gamer. Well, things didn't work as expected when I hooked up my consoles to this switch. I had ordered this SCART cable to connect my TV with the switch (ordered together with the switch I previously got from retrogamingcables). All I got was an image that looked like there was a sync issue? I dunno. To troubleshoot the setup, I took the switch out of the chain and connected my SNES to this cable using a F/F SCART adapter. That produced a solid black image. Connecting the consoles directly to the TV produced the great image as expected. I was hoping to hope that my problem was isolated to the cable that I got from retrogamingcables and ordered a replacement cable from Amazon. And boom! My consoles and switch are working as expected using the cable from Amazon! I have no idea whether I got a bad cable from retrogamingcables or there is some technical difference between that one and the one from Amazon. Whatever the case, everything is working and I am satisfied. The room is still a big mess but it is taking shape. Playing games on the CRT has been a joy.

Vanguard Atari 2600 Difficulty: N/A High Score: 154,110 June 26, 2023

How is the 7800 emulation on the VCS? I saw that there were a bunch of 7800 games available.

So far, I've only played Tower of Rubble on the 2600, and it is a lot of fun. The character animation is incredible, and I remember Dion talking about the work he put into that. I bought the AtariAge physicals of both these Dionoid games and also got them on the VCS. I'm a little surprised that the two reviews on AA gave it a 4-star rating--tough crowd. It's a 5-star homebrew for me. I read that this is based on the C64 game. Anyone have experience with the C64 version?

Nice! What do you think about the quality of packaging and labels @TrekMD? I saw the game played on ZPH. The game played and looked awesome. I spent all my money on the last chance AA games, so it'll be a while before I can pick up Dragon Chalice.

8,386 I raised my score by a measly 121 points 😂 I need a joystick. D-pads are just not my thing. I connected my 8bitdo Arcade Stick to the VCS. While it works fine when navigating the system dashboard, Amoeba Jump doesn't register inputs from the 8bitdo controller. The only other game I tried was Yars Revenge in the VCS Vault. While I could navigate the menus of the Vault, when I started the game, it froze on a black screen with some numbers on it. That's a bummer. I read a post on reddit that said this specific controller worked great.

8,265 I tried all day to break 10k and this is the closes I got 😂

7,889

6,515

3,862 I'm on the board! Finally got my VCS set up today. The score is only 1/10 of what I put up on the 2600 😂 I have to get used to playing with the gamepad. Maybe I should just use the joystick? 🕹️

Here's my recent 2600 pick-up that caused a little drama on Facebook where I shared it the other day. First off, I love getting cartridges from Repentless Video Games. Pete makes very high quality cartridge labels--as good as the ones put out by AtariAge, in my opinion. I have nearly twenty cartridges from Repentless. They are almost all hacks of other games. My favorite are the Space Invader hacks. COVID-19 Invaders was a fun Space Invaders hack that I played during the pandemic 😂 About the drama, I follow Repentless on Facebook, and every once in a while, Pete posts a cartridge that is available in his Etsy store. He usually has one cartridge available whenever he puts up a listing (you can also reach out to him to create something for you that's not currently listed). I picked up Shield Shifter and Coke Wins through two separate orders that were placed about a week apart. Coke Wins arrived the other day, and Pete also sent me a (belated) birthday gift. In my excitement, I shared a photo of these in a FB homebrew group. Michael from GoodDealGames called out that the art on Shield Shifter was his and alleged that Pete removed his store's logo. To cut to the chase, to me, it seems to be a misunderstanding or different readings of the information available online with regards to the distribution of this game--let's agree to disagree and move on. I took down the post to eliminate any further confusion. Pete doesn't plan to make more and mine was a one-off sale. He did tell me that he has more that were included in a lot that he bought years ago (those also don't have the GDG store logo). I choose to take him at his word. Michael does still make them and offer them for sale in his store. His store makes the claim that he has exclusive distribution rights. Anyway, on to the games and enjoying this venerable gaming hardware. I really appreciate the attention to detail and the quality of the cartridges from Repentless. I've purchased from couple other stores and the quality of the cartridge label (not talking about the art) itself is also found wanting.