intellicolecovisonary

BBSB is my go to test game as well for checking accuracy of CX52 controllers. I have 7 out of which only 2 play BBSB flawlessly. Those two I painstakingly cleaned and calibrated. For me calibrating those pots was tedious and time consuming.

The primary reason I have Flash carts at all, and I have them for the 2600, 5200, 7800, SNES, NES, Genesis,TG-16 and Colecovision (I'm still trying to find an LTO! or any flash cart for my Intellivision and a Vecmulti cart is on my radar) is so I can play those holy grail, unobtainium type games like Tank Command or Bounty Bob Strikes Back!. The ROMs of Tank Command and BBSB play flawlessly and look great on my flash carts. In the case of insanely expensive chunks of plastic aka game cartridges, my practicality overides my collector OCD.

My Star Trek shrine

Here's the actual eBay auction, $570 for the cartridge and poster, no box. https://www.ebay.com/itm/144265269141?hash=item2196e14f95:g:b98AAOSw73phecv5

Fortunately for me space is not an issue. I currently have 19 game systems permanently hooked up, a Vectrex, Intellivision II, Colecovision, 5200, 7800, NES, SNES, Genesis, Master System, TurboGrafx-16, Saturn, N64, Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii. My 2nd story man tower is 740 sq ft with 4 CRT TVs, a CRT VGA monitor for my Dreamcast and a modern LED flat sceen for my PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii.

Well I've been to that bridge many times and I always seem to find something else to kick start 'acquisition mode'. I've also aquired all my (wanted) accessories, upgrades & doodads for the 5200 as well as the 7800 and now I'm off and running on a new TurboGrafx-16 adventure. The force of the nostalgia factor with the TG-16 is powerful with this one. In the early 90s, I zigged when everybody zagged and bought a TG-16 instead of the two status quo systems.

I have 3 Wico 5200 joysticks and 2 y cables but no Wico keypad...yet. I did recently score this Competion Pro 5200 for $59.99 shipping included though. The seller erroneously had it listed for the Amiga.

The RetroGameBoyz stick is very nice right out of the box indeed, but mine is even better after I modded it with a rubber coated ball top, an authentic Sanwa JLF joystick and more real estate.

Finding a Wico 5200 keypad is near impossible in the wild and a rare thing even on eBay.

I also just bought all this Atari 5200 stuff from the Salvation Army for $67 shipping included. The description says that the 5200 powers on but they have no game to test it with. I have a feeling it is working. Included are 2 CX52s, a Wico 5200 controller plus a powersupply!

I bought my first TG-16 from Toys-R-Us when it was closing out in 1993 for $20 brand new. I always regretted that I sold it at a garage sale I had when I moved to Oregon in 1998. Finally after 23 years I have replaced it along with a TurboTap and 2 Turbosticks! I have an Everdrive Flash cart on it's way as well.

The Concerto is very basic but it does what I want it to do, which is play Atari 7800 ROM files well, and it does. On cartridge, I already have every NTSC game except Tank Command, an NTSC hack of Sentinel and many homebrews, but now I can play Tank Command and all the other wonderful homebrews and hacks the Atari 7800 community keeps creating. I'm a late adapter by nature and from the posts I've read, most of the early developement issues are fixed now. The plug & play nature of the Concerto is perfect for my needs. I suspect that the Dragonfly can do much more technically but I'll never need the extra bells and whistles the Dragonfly provides.

After what seems like forever, I finally procured a Concerto cart!

I've been playing Possible Mission NTSC hack on my Concerto as well as Tank Command and they play flawlessly. I've played the original Impossible Mission for many many hours but I have never been skilled enough to ever get far enough into the game to get to the breaking glitch.

Of the 57 games in the Atari 7800 NTSC library I have 56. I even have an NTSC V61 hack of the PAL only light gun game Sentinel, but 3 games I will never own unless there's an act of God deeming it so are Tank Command and the Atari 5200 games Bounty Bob Strikes Back and Meteorites.

While your picking up Tank Command, it would be hard to pass up this great deal on Meteorites CIB For the incredibly low price of $514.63? https://www.ebay.com/itm/175018463716?hash=item28bfe9d1e4:g:jr8AAOSwP~phjX5M

For the paltry sum of $753.50 you too can be a proud owner of an authentic copy of Tank Command! https://www.ebay.com/itm/275029431370?hash=item400908144a:g:WHIAAOSwDy5hkxU4

iL joysticks and buttons are much higher quality built than Suzo/Happ. I improved my Happ Competition by replacing the Actuator, Pivot & Z-Stop with iL parts that are made of nylon instead of the cheap PVC now used in the Suzo/Happ . It is now as silky smooth as my iL Eurosticks. Atari5200Guy, building joysticks with real arcade parts for your Atari 2600/7800 and A8s is easy as long as you can solder and have moderate mechanical skills. I've built many. The 8 ball stick has a OEM SMS controller board with a Seimitsu LS-32 joystick and Crown SDB 202MX buttons. I use it on my A5200 with Edladdin's Seagull adapter. The twin stick is for my A7800 and Genesis. It has 2 Sanwa JLW joysticks and Crown SDB-202MX buttons using Edladdin's Easy 7800 PCB kit and a Genesis MK-1470 controller PCB with the Seagull 78 adapter. The 8 Ball stick matches my CX53 which I've modified with 2 Seimitsu P-14 buttons to replace the original crappy dome switch buttons. I've been collecting arcade/fightsticks since 1982 and currently have 97, 41 of them which are modified with authentic arcade parts.

I've built joysticks using Gamerfinger https://shop.gamerfinger.com/, Seimitsu, Sanwa, Crown, Hori, Suzo-Happ and iL (Industries Lorenzo) and I've experimented with different grams of force micro switches with the Suzo/Happ and iL buttons. Personally I like Crown SDB-202MX and Seimitsu PS-14 and PS-15 buttons the best.

The most common job in the future, and the future is now.

Update 6 hours later: My Retrogameboyz joystick clips securely into this oak enclosure I built. I now have space to comfortably rest my palm and wrist. What an incredible improvement!

Since I improved my RetroBoys 5200 joystick by replacing the exsisting Blee joystick with an authentic Sanwa JLF it has become my everyday driver for digital control games. I have gotten further on every game I've tried and I am getting much higher scores now. IMO it would be wise for Mike at Retrogameboys to charge an additional $10-20 and install a Sanwa JLF like Edladdin does on all his builds. Quote from Ed Kelly himself: "I agree... the knockoffs have not been impressive compared with the real Sanwa. We turned our back on the cheapo replacements very early in the game". Ed is getting close to releasing his Super 52 analog joystick. As of 11/2/2021: "We're making progress again on that unit after a very long pause due to COVID. My engineer is 82 years old and refused to meet with me until vaccines were invented and we all had them, and in the meantime he sold his house and moved into an RV full time. I was finally able to sit down with him last month and look at the final tweaks we need to go into production. Fingers crossed"! The one thing that I would like improved on the RetroGameBoys joystick is a little more area for your palm to rest so it isn't sitting right on the outside edge. I'm considering adding an oak frame around it to enlarge the surface for my hand to rest.

Tank Command is a 65KB ROM and when I asked AtariAge back in July about having a repro cartridge made they told me that because of it's size they couldn't make one until a batch of new boards they were testing were ready and as of now they still aren't ready. I wonder what board the creators of this reproduction used in their repro that isn't available to Albert at AtariAge?

Someone just now paid $157.00 USD for this reproduction? cartridge. https://www.ebay.com/itm/194492544175?hash=item2d48a8b4af:g:~PsAAOSwECFhhre8