socrates63

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.

You joined the Evercade club! Nice! Many people I know have gotten one and love it. Those game packs are a great deal. I haven't joined the fun although the C64 collection is tempting.

😮 👏👏 Nice! Great job, Doctor Trek!

154,110 I was in the groove, and my dentist's office calls me 🤬 🦷 I didn't answer and they called again and I still didn't answer 😂 I knew what they were calling about--I need to schedule my implant procedure. Well, the calls broke my concentration, and I was no longer in the "zone" 😂 After the game ended, I called and scheduled it.

I saw today that Tom is selling patches on ebay. I think I'm probably missing a few like his StarMaster patches.

Mail call -- I'm sure many who grew up with the Atari 2600 will share my sentiment that Activision was an amazing company. Their games wowed me as a kid and showed off what was possible with the 2600 in the hands of creative and talented developers. When I started collecting for the 2600, my first goal was to collect all Activision games for the 2600. This weekend, that goal was accomplished with the addition of Cosmic Commuter. I was resigned to having CC as my lone cartridge only Activision game in my collection because a CIB copy is difficult to find and even more difficult to find for a reasonable price. A collector/reseller who I've bought from before reached out to tell me that he was downsizing his collection of rare items. This copy came from his collection. Over the past few years, I also bought Activision repro patches (the first Achievement/Platinum in gaming?). Some are for games that never had official patches. Activision mailed a patch if you achieved a certain score in the game and mailed in a photo of the TV. I believe I shared them here before. Also shown are a couple of repro Activision game cartridges (Kabobber, Hard Head). I believe these are prototypes and were never released. So celebrate with me this milestone in my collecting 🎉🥳🍻 I will add this one caveat. This collection is complete only for North America. Activision released Fighter Pilot in the EU, and I don't have that. However, I do have Tomcat: The F-14 Fighting Simluator by Absolute, and Fighter Pilot is a rebranding of that game.

Yeah, I hurt my wrist after the first day or two 😂 Fortunately, additional playtime didn't do damage.

125,960

I met up with a local gamer to buy the DS games. Since it was on the way back home, I took a slight detour to visit a store run by a local gamer/reseller turned brick-n-mortar business dude. I picked up a loose Raiders of the Lost Ark because in the near future, I plan to buy the cartridge display case for it. I didn't want to use the one in the box that's in my collection.

Yeah, I should have gotten the combo VHS/DVD when I bought the region free DVD player a few weeks ago. I briefly considered it but didn't imagine that I'd have video tapes in my collection.

And more movies added to the collection -- DVDs and a VHS set. I had the VHS set back in the day, but of course, when I upgraded to DVD, the tapes were tossed out 😞. I may have to add a VHS player at some point. As far as the Star Trek movies and episodes go, I'm sure I have them already in my collection in Blu-ray or 4K form, but I love the way these are collected on themes. I had never heard of the Fan Collective sets. They will also give me more content to watch on my Sony CRT. These were all offered up by a user on AA for the cost of shipping. These belonged to a family who passed away, and he offered them to members before donating them to Goodwill.

FWIW I use A/B. I press the button to fire and de-press when I want to move (faster). And I don't have be moving in order to fire forward. I think that might make it easier to deal with Gond.

I hear ya, Rick. The first few times I got to that level, I was too nervous and just pressed the fire button immediately. Once you get there a few times, you will probably be able to relax the nerves for a bit. It's kind of like Karate Kid -- wax in, wax out. Move up, wait, move down. That first missile from Gond comes pretty quickly once the level starts.

About the Gond, from the manual: As mentioned earlier, you can simply navigate the ship upward and fire and that's it and you're done with the level. Or, you can avoid the shots coming at you from the side of the screen for more points when you kill Gond. Move up/down and wait for the shot to pass and then move up/down and wait for the next shot to pass by and then repeat. When your nerves start to get too high on edge then press the fire button 🙂

89,260 If only my wife wasn't distracting me with her questions, I would have broke 90k.

I'm a fan of Korean cinema. These arrived last Saturday. A seller on ebay in Korea had discounted them by quite a bit.