RickR

1:14.45. Clearly I'm hitting more birds than the chas-man

1:14.62

Updates! This was a lot of fun. Thanks, everyone.

I hope I didn't give the wrong impression. I think the Darth Vader is really cool. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to accidentally throw out the helmet. You know, even if it had a helmet, I'd probably leave it off to see the incredible detail on his head. And I probably should have said "regional food". The chips are truly awesome. They definitely do not sell those here. My boys will be home this Thursday, so we'll bust those things open then.

Really great stuff. I think my favorite thing from the NSG/Creep box is the cool Macabre Mini with the Johnny Five base.

They sure are. The Doc Hibbert one says "The Doctor is In", then when you push the lever...the other side says "sane". Insane! And I think I may add Count Grandpa to our Nativity Set.

Before I show the gifts, I want to give a very hearty THANK YOU to jmjustin6. Buddy, you did a great job. I can't thank you enough. First up is some "Rap Snacks" chips. These things are AWESOME. I can't wait to give them a try. Although I may wait for my kids to come home for the holiday before I break these open. Package #1 contained some really cool Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" figures, and Playstation 1 *AND* 2 keychains. Very very cool. Thank you. Package #2 contained two deluxe Star Wars figures. I think that's Snow Speeder Luke, and Near-Death Darth Vader. Please tell me if there's a helmet in there...I don't want to toss it accidentally if so. Both are SWEET. And also a Galaxian mini-arcade. And finally, something I didn't know even existed but I am so excited to try -- Star Trek TNG "Advanced Holodeck Tutorial" for GameGear. Too kind! And then, last but not least....the big one. And it did not disappoint. A big Bart Simpson figure with pull-string sayings. Cowabunga indeed! Once again, thank you so much Justin for these really nice and thoughtful gifts. Home run, my friend. Happy Holidays everyone.

Honestly, I think we tend to forget that the VCS/2600 was almost the first of it's kind. Atari in those days nailed almost every decision (by luck or skill or maybe both). But things like these controllers are all kind of hit and miss. Inventing a product that turned out to be the birth of an industry -- it's amazing how much they got right.

And here's what's inside... Very tasteful wrapping if I do say so. PS -- all of this is from jmjustin6, in case I haven't mentioned that yet.

Yes it did! It was to me. Thank you! Funny story: I left for work this morning, arrived at the train station, and for the first time ever, I had forgotten my lanyard (with work badge and bus card)! So I drove back home, and this giant box was on the porch. I'm very glad this happened, as that box sitting there all day would have been a tempting target for the porch pirates. Bad luck turned into good! Anyways, here is the box. It's a biggun. And tastefully decorated. The "Hey Arnold" and "Doug" stickers are especially nice.

Technically speaking...the driving controller was the better design. Ideally, Atari could have used the driving controller instead of the paddles, with the only downside being only 2 player games instead of 4. Indy 500 wouldn't control as well as it did with a stop in the rotation. None of Atari's arcade driving games had a stop in the wheel either. And finally...what were they think in not making other driving games (Sprint, Pole Position, even Enduro) compatible with the driving controller?

I don't know why I never noticed this before. I was adding a manual to my Atari Bowling box and noticed something kind of cool. Whoever had this box before me wrote down their high scores on the top flap! The box is pretty beat up, but I think these scores make it pretty neat.

1:15.34. This composite mod works pretty nicely.

1:34.42. Playing in my garage.

To get the right ROM sets, you may end up going into the shadowy "torrent" zone of the internet. As mentioned in my comment above, MAME is probably the trickiest thing to get set up properly. Once you do....back it up! I can't stress that enough. Because it will get goofed up. Someone will push the wrong combination of buttons to goof it. Trust me. Uncle Joe, cousin Philomena....someone you least expect. As for Stella vs. IR-Stella, I think they both come built-in. I think there is a way to tell the Retropie system which one to use. I'll have to see if I can find docs for that.

I'm going to use this opportunity to test out a composite-modded 2600 that I will sell. Several play sessions should verify that it works fine, right?

You are correct, it is Linux based. And it is awesome. But it can be very tricky to set up -- especially any time you try to do something unique or different. I've been thinking about putting together a "Tron" arcade machine using Retro-Pie, and what I'm finding is that in a special case like that, you set it up for that one game only. My setup sits in a shoebox in my garage in the projects queue. I have it working very well for home consoles, but MAME (arcade games) are giving me fits. It's almost like you have to work on each one you want to make special tweaks to make it work or sound right. Brian, I'm glad you got yours working. My suggestion to you is to make a backup of your drive once you have it working, and then make a backup of that backup. If anything ever goes wrong, you can then restore to that working copy. The other suggestion I have is to maybe add a joystick to your cabinet. Just to make it easier to work with everything. Maybe the joystick can be used to select the system, games, etc.

Wow, incredible scores. I don't feel very bad at all coming in last. It was a lot of fun to try this game out and get better over time.

That poster is awesome, and I like your list atarifan95. One of my favorites that's not really a Christmas movie -- Dumb and Dumber. Why? It's set in winter mostly. And for me, it really lightens the mood since it's so dang funny. I also will get hooked by almost every version of "A Christmas Carol". I just love the comeuppance of it. Patrick Stewart, Alistair Simm, Bill Murray, heck even Mickey Mouse. Any version.

Bummer on the exhaust, dude. But there is no need to be sorry....there is still plenty of time on the clock to get packages out. Your secret santa should have got you some duct tape for that exhaust maybe 😋

You are most welcome, my friend. As I mentioned in the note, my kids helped me pick a PS4 game because I know nothing about it. I really felt like getting you a game for your new console was critical. Enjoy and happy holidays!!!! I tried to carefully study your pictures and find boxed Atari games you did not have. It was a tough job, but happy to do it.

Forget the cursing...you should apologize for the music! I"M KIDDING! Ha ha ha. That video was awesome, and nice job Santa NSG! Love it!

We've made through 3 episodes of "The Expanse", and it's good so far. Picking up steam. I just want to mention the obvious....we (my wife and I) are terrible at "binge-watching". It's just so hard to find time. So season one of The Expanse will probably take us a month to get through.

Here is my typical path....

Same deal here. The tracking for my package says "Out for Delivery", so check those mailboxes!