RickR

Here we go...2'17"71 on the King League/Standard.

This is absolutely ridiculous and I'm a little ashamed....but I play "Spider Solitaire" once per day. Usually right after lunch. It takes about 5 minutes and it gets my mind moving a bit. Please don't ban me.

And they fit on the side buttons too?

And finally, here are the gifts that Willie got for me. Willie, I am so grateful. THANK YOU. A beautiful boxed copy of Pete Rose Baseball for 2600. Lock n Chase for the Colecovision! I'll bet this is the copy you used in your review! I'm going to keep it forever. I love the ArcadeUSA channel so much. A hilarious door hanger. Oh my! THANK YOU, @Willie!. And thank you Atari.io, @Justin, and this great community.

Before I post the nice gifts that Willie got for me, I want to share that I also made a charity donation as part of this year's Secret Santa program. Whether you participated or not, won't you please join me in this? We can do some good in this world together. I normally donate to Oregon Food Bank. But this year, I decided to help out with all the devastation caused by tornadoes in the central USA. As an added bonus, my employer DOUBLE-matched donations to that cause. Red Cross of America was my choice.

OK, I jumped the gun and opened mine today. My Secret Santa was @Willie!, and his package arrived a week ago. He did a wonderful job! Here is the packaging and the contents were in a beautiful festive box.

Making a sh@tty controller better is worth any such risk. Thank you @Kid A. I'm totally onboard with this idea.

I would guess that it was too costly to manufacture something like that. For example, you'd have to install the start/reset/pause domes AFTER installing the mylar on the controller or redesign the top to have a larger slot.

Do they have self-sealing stem bolts?

Thank you! I signed up to be notified when they are back in stock. I'm going to buy a bunch and give this a try.

Where do you buy the dome things? I've always wanted to try this, but I wasn't able to find a source (ebay or other) for those). Thank you -- what a great idea.

This image reminded me of this oldie but goodie...

I'm adding this to my "watch later" list. I love that board game too. Setting up the whole thing took time, and then the whole anticipation and suspense of playing the game and seeing it work. So awesome.

This is perfect and an excellent reason to stick with the 5200. One more suggestion for your consideration: How about getting a project box to contain the rats nest of wires from your old PC joystick conversion cable? I'm sure that thing works really well with analog control games. Make it so the only things sticking out of the box are the wire that connects to the 5200, the wire to the joystick, and the wire to the orig controller. Everything else is inside the box, hidden from view. I'm totally with you on those side buttons. It really is an awful design that hurts after just a little use. Intellivision, Colecovision, and 7800 all had this same issue. As AVGN would say...what where they THINKING????

Bummer, but hopefully you'll get a working item in exchange.

Clearly, I'm no expert. But I think I have a few tips to share. Customize the controls! You need to feel comfortable with the movement of your ship, and they let you change the controls to whatever suits you best. Do it! Speed control - It's important to get used to those two buttons. Use them! No time limit - there's no penalty for taking your time, so do it. Explore! Missed a shot? Come back around and try it again.

That's a good point, Justin. My love of the 800XL and C64 led me to try the TI-99/4A and a few of the other 8 bit computers (like the CoCo and Aquarius). It's always so exciting to try something new or different.

Thank you for the details. That's a very neat feature. Whoever owned the game before me wasn't that great at it 🙂

Getting better - 42,150 And lookie at this...it remembered my score from last time! How does that work? Does the cart have a battery in it?

Well color me surprised. I guess I haven't used mine in too long. I honestly don't recall this.

No, you are correct. You have to hold down option for disk images....but find yourself the XEX/cartridge format for your games and you won't.

And to add more: The multicart solutions for 8-bit are cheaper Everything about the system is smaller. All you need for composite output is a simple $10 cable. On the minus side: Cartridges for the 8-bit are hard to find and costly. A multi-cart is a must. Quality is hit and miss. The 800XL is the sweet spot of the line. The XE's are all cost reduced. There are quirks you have to know, such as how to boot without basic (hold down option) or how to auto-load a cassette (hold down select). Again, multicarts solve all this nonsense. The 5200 is great. But the issues it has (the controllers, the small library, the gigantic-ness of everything) do not exist on the 8-bit line.