socrates63

Since I never used BB outside of renting video tapes, I had no idea how much of a player Blockbusters was in video game retail. It’s very impressive that EA built a retailer exclusive release.

Answer in the form of a ❓Alex Trebek would be proud 👍

14,750

That's amazing stuff, Rocky! While I do not plan to re-acquire a 520ST although I had one back in the day, I wouldn't mind putting this paper model together for the shelf. I don't suppose you have any intentions of selling prints?

My retro resolution for 2021: Retro gaming --> acquire a Vectrex, GameBoy Advance, and a Lynx II. I already accomplished, rather unexpectedly and suddenly, the first two. Retro living --> watch in order Star Trek original series and Star Trek TNG. I'm currently watching S1E10 of ST OS.

Here's one of the few things I kept from childhood -- the candy tin that housed my D&D dice with a firm warning. These four dice are from my very first dice set bought in 1980 or 81 😮 I think I lost the D6 and D10, and actually, I don't remember what they looked like.

For this game, you only need two D10 and one D6.

I skipped right to v3. The PDF is like $8, and v3 is supposed to be clearer and fixes some stuff from v2 but it's the same game mechanics. Take a look at this playlist where the game is played with v2 instructions (v3 PDF can't be printed but v2 can be printed). I watched them before getting into the game myself. Comparing it to my experience with v3, it looks 99% identical. The great thing about this game is that because it's not narrative driven, it's really easy to play for 10 or 15 minutes and stop and then pick it up again later. It fits very well with our busy lifestyles. There a few other well regarded solo RPG rulesets (Four Against Darkness comes to mind). If you stick to PDF format, they all seem to be priced under $10 or $15. I just happen to start with D100 Dungeon because it seemed to be the more popular choice among solo dice rolling RPGs.

I did not know that the hum was linked to the IPS screen replacement 😮 The guy I got it from is going to look into mitigating the hum. I will pass your comments to him. Thanks, Jesse. I often use headphones with handhelds and the hum is annoying me to the point that I’m not using the GBA.

During the past year while we all physically distanced ourselves socially, did you do anything new? I had been looking into solo board gaming since 2019 and even bought several games but had not played any until now. I was introduced to Dungeon & Dragons in fifth grade and immediately fell in love. Our teacher, Mrs. Sanders, gave us time during on Fridays to play in class, and we played couple times of month. But after, fifth grade, D&D sessions were few and far between as none of my friends in the neighborhood played. A few months ago, I found out about D&D type games that you can play by yourself. How fascinating! There are several highly recommended ones, and for my first solo RPG experience, I chose D100 Dungeon. The current rules iteration is v3. It is available for purchase in both PDF and printed forms (I bought both). The previous iteration v2.2 is available as a free PDF download. I always preferred Dungeons & Dragons over Advanced Dungeons & Dragons because of the simplicity of rules. D100 Dungeon rules favor simplicity as well. As the name suggests, the game involves mostly rolling percentages with some D10 and D6 dice rolls mixed in and looking up results in appropriate tables. D100 Dungeon is a paper-and-pencil Rogue-like in that dungeons are not pre-generated but randomly created as part of the game play, and your character can die. While I bought printed D100 Dungeon tiles that made manually drawing my own dungeon unnecessary, I wanted to do it by hand anyway. Having graph paper, pencil, dice, and soda and plopping down on the floor of the room really brought me back to the 80s. I even bought a dice tower from a local seller on Etsy. This past weekend, I ventured forth with Vikzam the Human Sorcerer. His career started with a bang -- two areas explored and successive encounters with giant rats gave Vikzam no trouble and ended with some nice loot. Confidence was high after searching the third area that netted two spells for the spell book. But reality crashed down hard on Vikzam in the fourth area where he encountered a pack of Tricksters. In desperation, Vikzam casted the Clumsy spell to reduce the Attack Value of the foes, but they countered with a spell of their own, Dark Strike, boosting their AV by 20. Vikzam went down hard, but he fought to the end. At least his demise came at the hands of a worthy foe and not something like giant rats. The following day, I crafted my second hero, Grookhatin Earthbrow (Groo to his friends) the Dwarf Warrior. Groo's first D100 Dungeon training quest was a success! A pack of rats initially gave some trouble but were vanquished with aplomb soon enough. Groo even blocked the escape of a cowardly bear and slew it with a single Mighty Blow of his long sword. The map below is from Groo's first quest. The objective of the quest was to gather three body parts from slain monsters. It did not take long to complete. Now, time to rest up and restock for the next quest.

27,300 Fun 2600 game! I’ve only played the arcade game, and this one took a couple of minutes to get used to the control. Very well done IMO. It’s going to be a fun couple of weeks.

Kkk-razy top scores!! Well played! Yes, it was fun experiencing one of the early releases for the console. It's always fun to take in and appreciate the design and aesthetics from 40(?!) years ago. Looking forward to Q*Bert!

I finally had a listen to the Atari 2600 Game By Game podcast today. I know @HDN is a big fan. I listened to the latest episode 194, and it contained emails from I/O’s very own Harry. Thanks for raising our collective attention to this podcast. It was produced almost like an old school radio show and felt very different than the typical podcast with a panel of hosts.

Well, you did better than I did my first time out 🙂 I seem to have maxxed out in the 50k range. I couldn't even get past 20k yesterday.

Use the Robotron controller? That's a great idea. I'll have to try that with Defender Arcade.

Eee-lek-trah~~~~-nik 🎵🎵🎵 🙂 fun intro Initially, I was wondering why you needed 10 minutes to name three games for E-E-P 😆 I've heard good things about Taz. I actually discovered today MB's Survival Run as I was looking up the unreleased Survival Run by Data Age.

I posted photos of the Data Age subset from my Atari 2600 collection in response to Rob's thread. I collected Data Age games for two reasons -- I liked the box designs and because I wanted the Journey game. I know almost all Data Age games are usually panned for being bad, but I haven't played any yet myself.

Thanks for sharing your video, Rob. Woah, that is trippy and even a little creepy. It certainly has a strong 60s/70s sci-fi vibe going on. I actually came across this promo record on ebay last year. At the time, I didn't know that it was a vinyl recording and thought it was a poster. I see it's currently available on ebay. I may have to add it to my Data Age collection 🙂 While collecting boxed 2600 games, I became a fan of Data Age box designs. I even bought a repro box of a game that was never released (Secret Agent) as well as the repro cartridge of the prototype. I've yet to play any of the games to confirm how bad they may be though 🙂

56,236 A 500% improvement from my last score! 💪

😮 talk about making an entrance with some serious hold my beer scores 😮 🍺 @ZilchSr and @Papa Pete 👍👍

If playing GB/C games on the GBA gets annoying, I can always plays them on my GBC. I have Super Game Boy on my wish list, and it's a neat accessory to have. I also have a Game Boy Player for the GameCube, and I bought a few cartridges a couple of years ago to try that out. However, the GC currently sits disconnected.

That's a good way to go, Harry. Collecting CIB games is a sickness. I started out with wanting just one CIB game -- the 2600 Pac-Man, the game that left a scar in my childhood video gaming memory. And then I got bit by the bug, so being content without boxes is 👍👍