StormSurge

Mine finally shipped! Arriving Monday.

It finally shipped!!! I should have it Monday. I paid $23.99

Geez, LD, that's nuts. I haven't reached out to them yet. It says delivery is scheduled between October 31 & November 2. I'm okay with that, I'm just wondering why it's taking them so long to ship them out when it has hit the streets long before those dates.

I pre-ordered the standard version on April 9. It still hasn't shipped. I've never had an issue like this with Amazon.

Welcome LoneWolf! I've pre-ordered the XBO versions of both from Amazon, but my luck being what it is, the XBO versions were delayed while the PS4 versions shipped two weeks ago. Once I have them, I'd happily give my impressions. And if anyone else happens to get the XBO versions & wants some easy victories online, I'm happy to be cannon fodder.

Have a great vacation!

And I still think that whoever has the licensing rights to these images needs to sell some posters!

Fantastic! I pre-ordered this on April 9 & I cannot wait!!! Thanks for the interview! Great stuff!

I had no idea Mega-Drive was even a thing for years. Genesis for me.

My apologies in advance for this post. You may think this is a strange place for this but I can't think of another outlet for it and I can make an Atari connection. My stepfather is dying. Quickly. I'm not even sure if he's technically my stepfather, but he might as well be. Growing up, I hated him. I realize hate is a strong word but I HATED him. Now, I'm pretty devastated by this. My parents divorced in 1979, when I was six. My mother remarried a true a-hole a year or two later. I'm not certain of the exact date but it was in my 2600 heyday. Those were not good times for me but that's not even worth sharing. They would be divorced by 1983. That's when she met the subject of this post. She was working for the local newspaper in the classified department and he was the local dog warden. He would place ads for dogs they rounded up and they hit it off. The summer before I started sixth grade (1984), they moved in together. (This would be my fifth different elementary school since kindergarten.) My disdain for him was immediate. He had a son and daughter from a previous marriage. The daughter lived with her mom & would visit every other weekend. The son was a year older than me but we didn't get along that great. He was ridiculously strict. It honestly felt like I was in prison. No candy, no soda, being sent to bed super-early, etc. There was one TV in the house & we had to watch whatever he wanted. (A vivid memory is me coming home from school, finding a cartoon to watch or even an afternoon playoff baseball game (Cubs/Padres), him driving in the driveway, eventually sitting down in his chair in front of the TV & snapping his fingers, demanding the cable box. He would promptly change the channel & eventually settle on some horrible kung fu movie.) My Atari, which I used to shuttle back & forth between my father's house & my mother's was no longer to be connected to the TV. I remember him arguing with my Mom about my father. Things like the child support check, or him calling to talk to me, etc. Stuff that made me super uncomfortable. The best times would come from when he would go play cards with his friends. I'd have a few hours with him not in the house but he would come home drunk. If everything would work out, I would be asleep before he came home. My mom never married him but I'm not sure how the common-law marriage thing works in my state. Regardless, they never split up. He was present in my life until I graduated high school. I learned quickly to keep my mouth shut & do whatever he ordered me to do. Chores, eating every last bite of foods I despised (I haven't eaten a pea in 25 years and I never will again.) He never hit me, although there were times I wish he did so I could find a way to leave. I used to fantasize about walking the 85 miles to my father's house, while not being exactly sure how to get there. I do remember blowing up during my senior year of high school. I had a girlfriend (SHOCKING!) and he would limit my time on the phone with her. I don't remember exactly what happened but I remember being in my bedroom with the door shut and hearing him outside complaining about something. I threw a Trapper Keeper (or something similar, it was a notebook/folder) at my dresser, which left a mark. The details are hazy now, but I remember just finally yelling back at him. I knew my days of being under his thumb were almost over. My escape from him was visiting my Dad every other weekend, vacations & summer. I can't even begin to describe how amazing it felt to be picked up on a Friday after school or Saturday morning. And the feeling of dread I had when I had to return... Once I graduated high school, I went to a college close to where my Dad lived and I never looked back. To this day, I hate visiting the town where my Mom lives and I'm pretty certain it all stems from these experiences. Since I left, I would visit my Mom & him on holidays, etc. He would always give me $100 for Christmas and our relationship became amicable. He seemed to love my daughter and she had no problems with him. Things were fine. This past February, my Mom called me during the middle of the day, which was bizarre. I assumed it was bad news about her Mom, my amazing grandmother, who has Alzheimers and isn't in good shape. It wasn't that. Howard has cancer, it's aggressive and the doctors give him six months to live. I was shocked & saddened but I wasn't sure how to respond to that news. As much as I hated him, I certainly didn't want this to happen. And I was heartbroken for my poor Mom, as now she has to deal with this. Since the diagnosis, I've only seen them one time, around my birthday in May. I kept saying that we'd do some things during the summer but it never worked out. Just this past weekend, the pain of chemotherapy and everything else became too much for him. He decided to stop fighting and is now in hospice care. I'm going to visit him tomorrow. I'm not sure if my daughter or wife (not my daughter's mom, that will be a WHOLE other series of blogs ) will join me but I'm going. Again, the feelings I have are so conflicted. How can I be so upset about someone who caused me so much pain? Yet, here I am, extremely upset. Part of it is pain for my Mom, imagining how she must be feeling. When the calendar turned to 2016, everything was fine in her world. Now, before Thanksgiving, completely turned upside down. As I spend time thinking and reflecting, I'm continuing to remember things that weren't so bad. How he attended my Student of the Month ceremony in seventh grade when no one else could. How he coached my Babe Ruth teams. How he took me fishing & camping. It's so strange, so bizarre and so painful. I apologize if this isn't the proper use of the blog but I consider myself amongst friends here and I don't feel like going back to a therapist. I have no interest sharing something like this on Facebook, so here I am. Thanks for listening to me ramble.

There is no rush. It's going to take me a few weeks to get it back in my possession. THANKS!

So does anyone want to try & fix mine? It's hard modded but I can't figure out how to install emulators/roms to it. I'm happy to pay to ship it to & fro and provide compensation for invested time.

After Week 5:

I've finally caught Chapter One!! One of these days I'll finish all 8 & be able to enjoy all the threads.

Again, not a candy bar, but candy. I have some vivid recollections of eating these at the movies.

Not a candy bar, but extinct nonetheless:

As a life-ling Dolphins fan, I should have known better than to pick them. Thankfully, the Browns out-Browned the Dolphins. Survive & advance!

Nice!!

THANKS!

Does he have a website?

I'd love to get some. Any recommendations on where to pick some up, aside from eBay?

After ArenaFoot's victory last year, we're back again! And big thanks to RickR for donating a sweet prize to the champ! (http://forums.atari.io/index.php/topic/731-survivor-football-yahoo/?p=10526) Behold the Atari.IO Survivor Football pool. For those of you not familiar with how a survivor pool works, all you need to do is pick one team to win each week. If that team wins, you survive and pick again the next week. If they lose, you're down. The catch is that you can only pick each team once. Another twist is that I set it up where you have two strikes, so you won't be eliminated until you choose incorrectly twice. I did that because I'm afraid we won't have that many participants, so this will make the contest last a little longer. Here's where to sign up: https://football.fan...oo.com/survival Click "Join a Private Group" Group ID: #5465 Password: stella

I'm pretty sure my original one is floating around somewhere, although I doubt I'll find it. I will be on the lookout for another one.

I didn't mind Crystal Pepsi during it's original run, although I'm sure I liked it more for the novelty factor. I was lucky enough to find Ecto Cooler, but it didn't seem as good to me as it was when I first became addicted to it, when it was known as Citrus Cooler. It would come in the big aluminum (tin?) can that had to have two holes popped in the top in order to pour it out.