Sabertooth

This is another great write-up. Mouse Trap, along with Donkey Kong, came as a pack-in title with my Coleco Gemini. As such, it was one of my first video games and I absolutely cherished it. Coleco did a reasonable job bringing the most important elements of the arcade version to the 2600. That said, it just doesn't present the challenge it did today as when I was six.

Yeah, great job Justin!

This is a fun watch. Anyone ever try the Billy Mitchell hot sauce? I think it's called Rickey's.

For 2600, I don't have anything remarkable. I only physically own what I had when I was a kid plus additional Imagic games and home brew. Everything else is on a Harmony. Now if we want to talk about Jaguar....

@LostDragon - Had no idea about the game. Thanks for the video! It looks like they didn't do alot with the license, aside from the intro screen and some art (a shuttle). What a shame.

@RickR: The baby scene was epic when I was a kid. Even the forked tongue on the more human child is great. @NSG RE: The reboot. It was one of few shows that my daughter - then in middle school - watched together. I told her about the old series and she decided to sit in on the pilot and got hooked. ABC really messed up in its handling of the series. It was on for like five weeks in the fall of 2009 and then they brought it back in March 2010 and wonder why ratings fell. The second season started, not in fall of 2010, but in early 2011. I've never seen a high budget, relatively well reviewed show be handled so poorly. My daughter and I were shocked by the cancellation because the show ended very strongly and on a terrible cliffhanger. There was an online petition/email campaign to get a third season that we participated in. Later that year, my daughter got me the complete original series DVD set for my birthday. It was a total shock and probably one of only two or three times that she's ever gotten me anything geeky.

The BSG appreciation thread got me thinking about one of my favorite franchises from Sci-fi past: V! Aliens approach our planet to peaceably trade their advanced technology for needed resources that they lack. They are apparently just like us and most of them are exceedingly attractive and/or charismatic - except for Willie. Only the resource that they need is HUMANS for FOOD! AND they are LIZARD PEOPLE! Love the acting, props and that early 80s style of the original miniseries and The Final Battle. Plus the iconic red "V" logo, Marc Singer and Jane Badler. The reboot that ABC tried a few years back got really good in the second season. I really hoped that they would green light a short third season or movie of the week to tie up the loose ends. And because Morena Baccarin. C'est le vie. One day I will cosplay as a Visitor. And I don't cosplay. What did you guys think of V?

I like the campiness of the original series and enjoyed the reboot and related output: Razor, The Plan, Caprica and, to a lesser extent, Blood & Chrome. The metaphysical elements of the reboot were an interesting twist that could be off putting at times. At some point the Cylon motivation to chase BSG was lost on me. That said, they generally nailed individual character arcs, space combat and atmosphere. In my view, Caprica had a ton of promise and SyFy (really?) pulled the plug much too early. It was a transitional time for the network and I don't think the aliens in charge knew what they had. It's a trend that continues with shows like Defiance and Dominion.

A lot of these have been touched on already but I'll just throw in my 2 cents. Not to be missed: Xybots, Chips Challenge, California Games, Joust, Roadblasters, S.T.U.N Runner, Zaku, Toki, Rampart, Rampage, Crystal Mines, Xenophobe, Super Asteroids/Missile Command, Battlewheels, Battlezone 2000 (hidden game), and Kung Food (because, despite the hit detection issues it's $2 NIB and completely weird.) I also really like the Lynx versions of Klax, Ms. Pac-Man, Robotron 2084, Rygar and Pac-land, but there are better versions out there.

As I stated above, I admire their continued willingness to innovate in design to deliver a somewhat unique experience. The reason I pass on modern Nintendo consoles is that (1) while I enjoy their classic IP, I feel like I've played all of the Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc. that I really want to, and (2) because they don't produce consoles with comparable tech specs to PC, MS or Sony, third party support is lackluster. The original Wii was likely the last Nintendo console I'll purchase.

I'm not a huge Nintendo fan, but you have to appreciate that they try to innovate and take risks. This stands in contrast to MS and Sony, who seem to offer little more to the gameplay experience than graphical enhancements with each console iteration.

According to the post at AA, they are porting the ST version but replacing the ST music with that of the Amiga. I wouldn't expect further tweaking. While it is a 16 bit game, I'm happy to see a new publisher working on the platform. Maybe if this is successful, we'll see more ambitious titles.

Top photo from NSG! Bottom photo from RickR! Thanks both! Also, note to self: avoid duplicates by paying closer attention!

I too really enjoyed the interview segments. Was this a public access or college program? The gameplay demos were great too. I wonder if those were added later or recorded at the event.

Getting back to this after a hectic couple of weeks. Now reassembled with custom label. @RickR - Regarding the controllers, I reused the O2 cables in the CX-40 so the wires weren't an issue. I saw what you mean though... Not only are the pinouts different, the cables don't have the same wires. I'm wondering if a Genesis cable or extension would work since more wires are present?

And Super Burnout is a standout title. For me, the best bit here: "A common attitude that pervades the internet is that the Atari Jaguar is a broken down machine that lacks the technical capacity to produce games of any quality. This is untrue according to Nallet. “Even if we had to code everything in Assembly (code), the ‘Graphics Processing Unit’ and Digital Sound Processor were extremely fast. This was very similar to the PowerPC / SPUs combinations that you find in the PS3.” However; unlike the PS3; “(in regards to the) Jaguar DSP’s they could directly access the whole memory - albeit more slowly - so you could keep your code structure and Direct Memory Access optimized as needed.” “A lot of games were only using the 68K and a little of the "GPU" and used the DSP for sound” according to Nallet; lending credence to the notion that it was developer incompetence and not hardware concessions that made development for the Jaguar difficult. “I knew I had to push the GPU and DSP for Super BurnOut to stand out.”

I liked Star Raiders on the 2600 but you're right that the A8 version is best. The 5200 version is pretty good too.

Games that aren't on your list that make mine include: Moon Patrol, Centipede, Joust, Qbert, Frogger, Ms. PacMan, Dig Dug, Mouse Trap, MegaMania, Battlezone and Missile Command

I love Demon Attack for nostalgic reasons. Phoenix has more variety and is probably better overall. If you're getting into Imagic games, I highly recommend Dragonfire and Moonsweeper.

Great write-up. I couldn't agree more. Solaris is a great game and surprisingly deep for the 2600.

@RickR- I know that you didn't include homebrews, but if you have a Harmony cart or Stella, try PacMan 8K by Dintari on the 2600. Its become my favorite home version of the game. I even like it better than PacManPlus' 7800 collection (which is also excellent).

DOOM is an epic episode. Amazingly, its more info packed than the Wolf3D episode. Great job!

This is the last WIP pic until it's done. Ran out of double sided tape so the top decal is just resting. I'm going to add a custom vinyl decal and AV mod. It's already got the 9-pin ports but the controllers were dead so I'm just going to switch the clips in a pair of CX-40s to match the O2 pinouts. This has been fun and you don't see too many people paint the O2. And I still made it to the beach. Gotta love long weekends!

WIP- the O2 I picked up the othe day works but was in rough shape cosmetically. I decided to fully disassemble it and repaint the top case. Here's an in progress shot.