The Professor

The king of arcades here is called Ground Kontrol, which just expanded in size.  Ground Kontrol has a lot more games, but it's downtown and harder to get to and find parking.  In any case, you can't go wrong with either.  These are both REAL arcades without the kids gambling/ticket games. 

I miss Caldor. Though, I went to Sears for all my Atari needs but mom dragged us to Caldor ALL the time for a great many other things!!!

STRONG LANGUAGE!!!!
 

Strong Language
 

STRONG LANGUAGE
 
Sorry for posting video after video in less than a few days. Lot is going on as of late in the world of Atari!!!!!!!
 

STRONG LANGUAGE
 
A huge thanks to Mr. BTB for the shout out in his video on the same subject!!!!!!!!! 
 

Here is a vintage Caldor newspaper ad for Atari and ColecoVision games. This ran in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Friday, March 11, 1983. I think it's interesting that they're advertising Donkey Kong for Atari 2600 in the ColecoVision section. It was a Coleco product, but better suited in the Atari section, not mixed in with ColecoVision games. That seems like it would be confusing to some. My first thought was "Why would they be advertising Donkey Kong on its own if it came with every ColecoVision sold?" Then I saw it was for the 2600. Also notice that by March, 1983 E.T. was already marked down to $14.76. E.T. had retailed for around $40 during the 1982 Christmas shopping season only a few months earlier. That's quite a price drop!
 

 
Caldor was a discount retailer that was popular in the North East during the 1970s and 1980s. Caldor could best be explained as K-Mart dressed up to look like JCPenny. The interior of each Caldor store was designed to look more like a department store than a discounter, and many were even designed by the same firms used by more up-scale retail environments. They featured wide aisles, bright lighting, and large, colorful display treatment, and were typically remodeled every 6 years. They were best recognized for "The Caldor Rainbow" with a mix of brown, yellow, and orange. Caldor struggled to compete against Wal-Mart and filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection in 1999. Here are some vintage pictures of Caldor:
 

 

Guess what...it's time for episode 56!
 
That's right - episode 56, in which we talk about two Nintendo titles, is out! If we got any more specific, the theme would be too easy to guess! But we hope you enjoy this rollicking little kickoff to summer as your Pie Factory Podcast hosts are joined by a special guest to keep things a bit more under control.
 
http://fab4it.com/piefactory/audio/PFP_Episode056.mp3

BTW, sorry about the audio on this one. The way Jim and I usually do the podcast is we each record our own audio as we talk via Google Hangouts or Skype, and then the two resulting audio files are synched. Well, with Tim (our special guest) we had to do something different: Tim's computer didn't have enough power to record while Skyping, so what I did was record the Skype audio. Which meant that I was at the mercy of whatever was coming over the Internet. My audio was recording straight from my microphone, but Jim's and Tim's both came from the Skype feed.

You are quite welcome! I wondered if there was a way I could rotate them in place but if there is I have no idea, so I downloaded the sideways ones to my desktop, they appeared sideways even in the thumbnail, I just opened MSoffice Picture Manager, rotated to upright position and saved over original. After that the thumbnails also appeared upright. 
 
I know images can be weird, I have a program that allows me to right click on the thumbnail of an image and choose to rotate left or right, they always look fine according to the thumbnail after that but when actually opening to view they are not always corrected lol. Honestly, I get nervous editing the structure of anyone's post so I was totally prepared to hit CANCEL if I could not correct them lol. 

My son and I visited Quarterworld, an arcade here in Portland today.  Their web site:  http://quarterworldarcade.com/
 
Here's how it works.  You pay a cover to get in.  It's normally $3, but we lucked in to "Happy Hour", which made the admission $1 each.  All of the games operate on quarters.  No tokens.  Most games are $0.50.  Fancier ones are $0.75 or $1.  There are change machines and ATM's there.  Also, if you're over 21, they give you a bracelet so you can get an adult beverage. 
 
As far as games go, they have a LOT.  From classics to new stuff.  Pinball too.  The building used to be a theater, so there is a lot of space.  I played some classics (Tron, Donkey Kong, Punch Out, Tempest) and some newer games too.  Probably the coolest thing I played was a Star Wars game that involves sitting in a little sphere with the screen wrapping around you and encompassing your whole field of vision.  Very immersive.  That one was $1.  I also played several pinball games.  They also had a big screen Pac Man / Galaxian. 
 
Overall, we probably spent 90 minutes there, and about $20 for the two of us, which is a pretty good deal for so much fun. 
 
The only complaint we have is that the games are too quiet -- the volumes are set too low.  On Tron, you could barely hear any of the music or sounds, and that's really a shame. 
 
And finally, here are a few pics I took.  Sorry, I really suck at using a smart-phone camera. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

That would have been the equivalent of Zayre (or Woolco) where I grew up in the Chicago area.  I miss those old stores....

What The Professor said.  That was impressive!  In the words of Hagrid, "I shouldn't have told you that."  

its pretty cool programming no doubt about it. peter is a wizard
 
 
lance
www.atarisales.com

The video of the Earth is from the game running in VBXE mode. SInce the Player/Missile multiplexer program needs to load into RAM because of self modifying code, it can also be replaced with a VBXE routine that simply places sprites at the same screen positions. On start up Tempest Elite detects if VBXE is present, if not, it loads standard atari player/missile and related graphics driver routines into RAM. Lets say the player is intended to go at 40,60, and is single width and 14 pixels tall. The game VBI sets the positions and the index of that "sprite" in a prior frame. All a VBXE routine needs to do is multiply the horizontal position by two to convert the X coordinate. All the player (sprite) images are index. Lets say 1-16 are all the possible shapes for that Red X shape flipper. 1-16 will have the pointers inside the player source data that the multiplexer copies into the pm area at the start of the next VBI cycle. If on a VBXE area, it will have pointers inside a bitmap image source that the blitter will send to the VBXE screen. You can disable VBXE by holding down option when booting the cartridge. 

Sent payment

I would not hang out with any of these people ????

Here is a vintage Caldor newspaper ad for Atari and ColecoVision games. This ran in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Friday, March 11, 1983. I think it's interesting that they're advertising Donkey Kong for Atari 2600 in the ColecoVision section. It was a Coleco product, but better suited in the Atari section, not mixed in with ColecoVision games. That seems like it would be confusing to some. My first thought was "Why would they be advertising Donkey Kong on its own if it came with every ColecoVision sold?" Then I saw it was for the 2600. Also notice that by March, 1983 E.T. was already marked down to $14.76. E.T. had retailed for around $40 during the 1982 Christmas shopping season only a few months earlier. That's quite a price drop!
 

 
Caldor was a discount retailer that was popular in the North East during the 1970s and 1980s. Caldor could best be explained as K-Mart dressed up to look like JCPenny. The interior of each Caldor store was designed to look more like a department store than a discounter, and many were even designed by the same firms used by more up-scale retail environments. They featured wide aisles, bright lighting, and large, colorful display treatment, and were typically remodeled every 6 years. They were best recognized for "The Caldor Rainbow" with a mix of brown, yellow, and orange. Caldor struggled to compete against Wal-Mart and filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection in 1999. Here are some vintage pictures of Caldor:
 

 

Here is a vintage Caldor newspaper ad for Atari and ColecoVision games. This ran in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Friday, March 11, 1983. I think it's interesting that they're advertising Donkey Kong for Atari 2600 in the ColecoVision section. It was a Coleco product, but better suited in the Atari section, not mixed in with ColecoVision games. That seems like it would be confusing to some. My first thought was "Why would they be advertising Donkey Kong on its own if it came with every ColecoVision sold?" Then I saw it was for the 2600. Also notice that by March, 1983 E.T. was already marked down to $14.76. E.T. had retailed for around $40 during the 1982 Christmas shopping season only a few months earlier. That's quite a price drop!
 

 
Caldor was a discount retailer that was popular in the North East during the 1970s and 1980s. Caldor could best be explained as K-Mart dressed up to look like JCPenny. The interior of each Caldor store was designed to look more like a department store than a discounter, and many were even designed by the same firms used by more up-scale retail environments. They featured wide aisles, bright lighting, and large, colorful display treatment, and were typically remodeled every 6 years. They were best recognized for "The Caldor Rainbow" with a mix of brown, yellow, and orange. Caldor struggled to compete against Wal-Mart and filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection in 1999. Here are some vintage pictures of Caldor:
 

 

How on earth are you making that earth? Are you throwing the system into an alternate mode? Your earth looks like it's being generated by a 16-bit graphics engine. I've never seen anything like that on an Atari 8-Bit. Is this on a cartridge? Can you explain a bit about what is going on here (with the earth during end credits) and how this is possible on an Atari 8-Bit?

Here is a vintage Caldor newspaper ad for Atari and ColecoVision games. This ran in the Poughkeepsie Journal on Friday, March 11, 1983. I think it's interesting that they're advertising Donkey Kong for Atari 2600 in the ColecoVision section. It was a Coleco product, but better suited in the Atari section, not mixed in with ColecoVision games. That seems like it would be confusing to some. My first thought was "Why would they be advertising Donkey Kong on its own if it came with every ColecoVision sold?" Then I saw it was for the 2600. Also notice that by March, 1983 E.T. was already marked down to $14.76. E.T. had retailed for around $40 during the 1982 Christmas shopping season only a few months earlier. That's quite a price drop!
 

 
Caldor was a discount retailer that was popular in the North East during the 1970s and 1980s. Caldor could best be explained as K-Mart dressed up to look like JCPenny. The interior of each Caldor store was designed to look more like a department store than a discounter, and many were even designed by the same firms used by more up-scale retail environments. They featured wide aisles, bright lighting, and large, colorful display treatment, and were typically remodeled every 6 years. They were best recognized for "The Caldor Rainbow" with a mix of brown, yellow, and orange. Caldor struggled to compete against Wal-Mart and filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection in 1999. Here are some vintage pictures of Caldor:
 

 

Got both of my NES Zelda games and the Nelsonic watch at Caldor. We didn't have one in the Atari days.

Caldor was my go-to store here in CT for all things Atari & Star Wars. Lots & lots of memories shopping there.