RickR

Get one they are awesome, I only have a few tapes (never tried them) I load everything off of cd, works great.  The best part is showing your friends the tapes!

Here we go.  From Rowsdower.  Three handheld games (have I mentioned I'm a sucker for these?)  And the cool hat.  And a game I haven't opened yet. 
 
Armor Battle needed a clean.  Works great!  Did I mention the Mattel handhelds are my favorites?  Missing the battery cover, but RickR does not care.  A working game = smiling RickR. 
 
Pac Man 2 - needed some cleaning, and the controls didn't quite work.  Repaired that with some soapy water and electrical contact cleaner.  It's actually a lot of fun with an elaborate maze.  For the two game, player 2 controls the ghosts!  How cool is that?  I'll tell you what, playing the 2 player game with only 1 player == the easiest time clearing the maze I've ever had!  Take that "Blinky" -- if that's even your real name. 
 
Dracula - needed the power switch cleaned up, but works great now.  It was hard to take apart because it needed a special screwdriver.  Found the right one if my magical toolbox.  Once you take it apart...there were springs and even a ball bearing to carefully keep track of inside.  This game is totally cool. It has multi-color graphics and some really nice sound.  Rowsdower says it has more than one screen...but it's so dang difficult, I can't get by the first screen!  And check out the "magnified" screen.  It must have the evil power of Dracula...because my camera can't focus on it.  It's really just a piece of clear film kind of bent into a parabola shape.  But cool.  Very cool.  The battery cover is cracked.  Rowsdower temporarily repaired that with a sticker.  I think I'll leave that as-is.  Otherwise, my fingers will end up glued to something. 
 
THANK YOU!

Thanks MBergeron for a beautiful copy of MLB Baseball!  It's complete, its purty, and its Canarctican!  

http://www.retrocollect.com/News/new-atari-jaguar-controller-in-development.html?utm_content=buffer52ea0&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
 
And WOAH NELLIE, it also says "5200 compatible!" 

Ep 194: Bugs

Another great trade with the NoSwearGamer!  

Lots of extra goodies this time, so I must have done something right.

Thanks again NSG!

We go to the next game by selecting the middle pig from the menu. But this is not just any pig. This is the pig, the one and only Miss Piggy, or First Mate Piggy as she is cast. Hogthrob may have been the captain, but it's Miss Piggy who was the real star of the show. Indeed, the cartridge art not only depicts her the most prominently, but the title even reads "PIGS in SPACE starring MISS PIGGY". One could say she was the Seven of Nine of porcine science fiction.
 

 
This game is "Pastaroids". In case you are wondering, the only resemblance to Atari's "Asteroids" is in the title. The gameplay here is more original than for the previous one. It reminds me most of Activision's Freeway. Piggy is caught in the midst of a pasta storm and must spacewalk to the Swinetrek, which is slowly traversing the top of the screen. 
 
Starting at the bottom, she must avoid spaghetti (which travel left) and meatballs (which travel right) to reach the ship before her shipmates abandon her. Well, OK, according to the manual the crew come back for another pass, but either way is entirely within character for these swine. Accomplishing this causes the screen to be filled with more spaghetti and meatballs the next time the game is played. These obstacles knock Piggy down to the lane below, often right into another obstacle, and so on.
 

 
Pressing the joystick button compels Piggy to use her trademark karate chop, which can be employed to destroy oncoming meatballs. Noodles are impervious to all attack, naturally. At the beginning, I was unaware of the karate chop ability, and so, while the first few rounds were easy enough, they quickly became very challenging, and success seemed as much based on chance as anything. Even so, I was once able to complete this mini-game 15 times before expending all my lives. As soon as I discovered the karate chop, the game became much, much easier. If you have extra lives enabled, this is the game you'll go to to restore any lives lost. You don't get as many points as you do with the others, but it is easier and faster to complete than both.
 
Graphically, Pastaroids is not quite up there with the others, but it's not bad. The depiction of Miss Piggy here is a bit crude (and, arguably, without the spacesuit seen on the cartridge she has bigger problems than pasta), but the motion of the Swinetrek tilting side to side like a ship tossed at sea is nicely implemented with five frames of animation. It's the gameplay that is lacking. Depending how it is played, it either feels tedious or frustrating, but never really achieves "fun".
 
However, there is one game left. Selecting Dr. Strangepork gives us "Escape from the Planet of the Gonzoids", or as I like to call it, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boomeray". The Swinetrek is moving up through a passage, and the player must make sure the ship does not come in contact with any walls or projectiles until it reaches the exit. If the corridor seems to pass by too slowly at times (and it will, especially at first), at your own peril you can speed things up by moving to the top of the screen. I won't try to describe what occurs when the ship collides with an object, but it is an unsettling combination of sight and sound indeed.
 

 
The tunnel is always symmetrical, but sometimes divides into two passages. Continuing the game's food obsession, the manual explains that this is a pizza mine and that the Gonzoid robots placed along the walls are throwing deadly pizzas (which once again look like lines... but horizontal ones!).
 
There are places where destroying the Gonzoids is essential for passing safely, but the way to do so is not straightforward. Literally. The ship is equipped with the bizarre "Boomeray" which fires a dot which moves upward, then curves to the left or right (whichever you moved last), and then downwards. The shot cannot pass through walls. The placement of the enemies above the walls is such that the player must take advantage of the curving path of the boomeray to clear the way.This comes with risk: the returning dot can destroy the ship. Offhand, the only other classic game I can think of where you can be damaged by your own fire is Fortress of Narzod for Vectrex (no doubt there are others).
 

 
The progression of difficulty in this game is odd. Each time the game is successfully completed the mine passes a little faster, but also the Gonzoids alternate between firing quickly and slowly. The result is that the second round of this game is easier than the first. After roughly half a dozen rounds, the alternating pattern settles on a moderate firing rate.
 
There is one significant problem with this part of the game: the layout of mine and the placement of the enemies is the same every single time. Had the developers been able implement a bit of variety here, I'm sure the entire package would have a better reputation, but as it is they may have been pushing their eight kilobytes of ROM to the limit. I can't help but think, though, that with a bit of time they could've implemented something akin to River Raid's procedurally generated level design.
 

(I would like to add that Dr. Strangepork gets the short end of the stick through all of this. Being the hidden pilot of Swinetrek here and being omitted from the cartridge art entirely, his only real appearance is on the menu screen. Anyways, we still love you, Dr. Strangepork.)
 


 
So, looking at the whole, we have three games in one cartridge which aren't too terribly challenging and tend towards repetition quickly. That said, I love that Pigs in Space for Atari 2600 exists. That someone looked at one small piece of a favorite show, and figured, "We can make a game out of this!". And I sincerely enjoy the quirky humor and the small graphical touches. Had I been the person who originally purchased it, I might well have been disappointed, but as a collector, I find it's great.

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

Oh wow, was that your autograph?!?!?!
Sorry! I am terrible at reading those!
BTW, here's the video they were talking about:

Lots of cool label variations.  :thumbsup:

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

Would you like the smoking or non-smoking section? 

I enjoyed the unboxing vid today too.  Love seeing those labels in such good shape.

nosweargamer, I sure love playing Space Invaders on my KitchenAid blender!

My first car was a 1985 Audi Quattro. They were great cars. BBC's Ashes to Ashes made the Quattro look extra cool
 

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

This picture is a fair representation of what my collection looks like...except this one is all in one place.

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

A view of my attic, where most of my stuff is kept.  This is shelf #1 of 2.  Someday, I'd like to be able to keep this stuff out for use, but no room at the present time. 
 
 

Would you like the smoking or non-smoking section? 

Would you like the smoking or non-smoking section?