RickR

In case you're wondering, I said "yes."

December has been a crazy month--so much going on both professionally and personally, and it's just been a blur. I've been doing the bare minimum when it comes to social media (which means mostly checking Facebook with very limited time in the I/O).
As far as the hobby is concerned, it's also been a busy month.
Traded away a bottle of wine for an Odyssey 2 in the box with a bunch of games. This is the same person that I traded my heavy sixer with for the Lego 2600 set. Bought a Vectrex light pen. Bought couple of short controller extensions cords to use with the Vectrex. Bought A8PicoCart multicart for the Atari 8bit. I don't need it as I have other means to store and load games, but bought it on a whim. Bought games for the Atari 8bit, 5200, and 2600. Got an empty Atari 1040ST box for free from a member of the local gaming group. I'm pretty sure I'm missing some other stuff, but as far as adding to the collection goes, it's been fruitful.
I hope 2024 will be slower going, and I can finally finish cleaning up and reorganizing my hobby spaces in the house. That's been put on hold the past two years because of my health issues (which should be a thing of the past now).
For 2024 and beyond, I am making a big shift. Instead of dabbling in most things, I intend to focus retro gaming heavily to all things Atari with a smattering of modern gaming on the Switch and Steam Deck. This year has taught me that my heart belongs to Atari and other platforms from the 80s and early 90s.
I will be selling off the PS1, 2, and 4 collection to a local gaming store in the next week or two, so that should help with reclaiming some shelf space. For now, I intend to keep my Xbox collection as well as the PS3 collection. While I will keep all my consoles and a few physical games, I will not be expanding my PlayStation and Xbox physical library.
It's been a very enjoyable six years exploring the popular retro gaming platforms, but as I contemplate life and the need the downsize in 5-7 years, I think the time is right to start that process. Hopefully, narrowing my focus will translate into more game time and lot less shopping.
Happy New Year!

I know these Blaze Atari mini arcades are not the best as far as game play goes. I love the look of them, and some of the games are decent enough to play. The paddles on the Pong unit are too tight and not easy to use, there is a mod to fix this but it requires tearing the unit down and too much tedious work for me to want to do so I play it sparingly. The Purple Asteroids one has one of the worst ports of Asteroids you will ever find, lol. 

PSA: If you haven't checked out the VCS holiday sale, do yourself a favor. 50% off of many titles, including Atari 50, the excellent Recharged series and many awesome indie games.

Some will win, some will lose: Journey Escape.
 

Just a PSA for TG16 owners: posting this from elsewhere but this is not the first I have heard of this lately. Take your chip games out of their plastic sleeves. The sleeves are starting to melt/rot, ruining the games they are supposed to protect. I recently got two sealed nos games for my brother, only to discover the carts were ruined due to the rotting sleeves. The same likely applies for Sega Card games for the SG-1000 & SMS.

Love playing Atari on the Evercade 

PSA: Great deal on a VCS speaker hat bundle. First 50 only.
https://twitter.com/atari/status/1739736694369161678?t=r-8eTDvtj667VeDs-_mJgQ&s=19

Christmas meal time.

Merry Christmas everyone.

As we head into the Christmas week, things might become a little quieter around here than usual so I'll just say now to every member and all those behind the scenes, hope you all have A Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Nice dinner of shrimp and mushrooms.

Bought this lot for a great deal! All of the games worked first try out of the box! Most with instructions. Love the Atari Advantage insert poster! All these also worked on the 2600+, had a tough time figuring out baseball. 

Surprise!
 

My wife just got back from Harmony Honda, finally getting those snow tires put on. 😜

Yum. Salmon with basil butter and mushrooms with spices and coconut milk.
 

Got my copy of Club VCS! That was not only fast shipping, but well packed too. 

UPDATE: Vimeo finished optimizing the video! Please give it a quick view as it's only 20 seconds long.
 

PSA: It looks like the long rumored update to the VCS OS has finally hit!  It took me about 10 minutes to get through the update cycle.
No release notes yet, but there are some obvious changes to the font and brightness and volume control on exit & in the system menu.
 
 

A huge welcome to all of the new forum members! I know that many folks have come for the Print Edition of ClubVCS Issue 01, and that is AMAZING! (seriously, thanks!)
I also want to encourage you to explore and participate in the rest of the forum and ClubVCS!  We have a great community and a lot of cool stuff going on. So start a conversation, join in a high score challenge, or share your content!
 
 

😎😁Melissa brought me home this Bamboo Laptop tray from Costco for when I am using the laptop sitting on the couch, no more hot laptop directly on me PLUS space for drinks and it has accommodations for mobile devices etc.

Walk and ramble, still kicking, HI! 🙃😝