dauber

Just FTR...my Klax is 100% fake. The cart is a repro of the prototype (if I recall correctly, got it from AtariAge when they were selling them) and the box was done by Marc Oberhäuser.

She did protest that the older Atari games aren't arranged like a rainbow. Thing is, my scheme is mainly alphabetical by category and publisher: Atari first...gatefolds in part number order, then Atari "color" games in alphabetical, then Atari silver label, etc. My shelves were overflowing so literally seconds before I snapped the picture I stacked the middle row instead of standing the games up just to see if it'd work. I kinda like it.

I have a buncha stuff for sale. I don't know the best way to price this stuff, so make me an offer. I'd prefer to sell this all in one batch but I don't have to. Atari 2600 adapter -- I'm sorry, but this is untested. I don't have an Atari 2600 -- I play all my 2600 stuff on a 7800. Everything comes from a clean, nonsmoking environment. All of the following games, however, have been tested and do work. Pictures are at http://fab4it.com/ogiwip/index.php?/category/1: The Activision Decathlon - end label has a bit of wear; includes manual Bermuda Triangle - end label has a tiny bit of wear on corner; includes manual Bowling - box lid is ripped in one place. Includes box. Graphics label variation. Combat - CIB - cart has standard text label Combat - cart only (text label) - slight label damage but otherwise OK Dodge ‘Em - Cart (gfx label) and box. Bottom of box is slightly caved. Donkey Kong - Cart and box. Box bottom is caved; side faded; lid ripped in two places; some water damage on the box. Miraculously, the cartridge itself is in immaculate condition. Dragster - includes manual Freeway - cart only Golf - cart (text label) and box. Box bottom is ever so slightly caved. Haunted House - CIB Indy 500 - includes driving controller, inner box, manual, and outer box. Outer box is in bad shape. Cart is the text plus number variety for some reason. Journey Escape - cart and manual. End label is a bit detached; manual slightly warped Joust - Cart and box. Bottom of box is caved. Jungle Hunt - CIB. Box bottom is ever so slightly caved. Jungle Hunt - cart only Kaboom! - CIB, blue label. Bottom flap on the box is bulging, but otherwise good condition. Lost Luggage - CIB (cart, manual, Apollo catalog, box). Cartridge in great condition but missing end label. Box has some water damage and is a bit caved in a couple of places. Green variation. M*A*S*H - cart and manual Maze Craze - CIB, text label. Box and cart say there are 256 games, manual says 16. Mouse Trap - cart and box. Box bottom is caved; side faded; slight wear on end label Omega Race - cart only. end label has a bit of wear Pac-Man - CIB. Must have been pack-in for Vader because the box has “Sold with Atari 2600 - Not For Resale” sticker Pole Position - Cart only. Missing end label. Version *without* the "POLE POSITN" spelling. "Wait, you fool, there's no end label! How would you know?" Well, it's not the version of the cart that has the title on a red stripe, so even the end label were present, it would say "POLE POSITION." Q*Bert - cart and manual. Label has seen better days; manual is a bit warped. Raiders of the Lost Ark - cart only. Label has seen better days. RealSports Baseball - cart and manual Star Raiders - Includes outer box, cart, cart box, manual, touchpad, touchpad overlay, and AtariForce Vol. 3. (Sorry, no touchpad box.) Outer box has writing on it from when it was used to hold a Christmas present. Street Racer - Cart and manual. End label is missing and replaced w/custom label. Graphics label. Super Breakout - CIB. Bottom of box is slightly caved. Wouldn’t recommend this particular cart for use in a 7800, as it’s a very tight fit. Best used in a real 2600. 1987 Multi-language version. Swordquest Earthworld - cart only Venture - CIB - Atari red box version Video Olympics - CIB. Box top is not in great shape; cart is missing end label; otherwise good condition. Video Pinball - CIB. Box lid has a rip.

My wife and I live in a three-bedroom apartment. We have our master bedroom, a guest bedroom, and the third bedroom is kind of a combination office/recording studio/place to store extra crap/etc. We call it "The Lounge." That's where I keep my Atari stuff. I was running out of space when I started upgrading my loosies to CIB, and my wife suggested putting some shelving up on the walls. That works for now. Overflow (that is, my 7800 stuff) is in a CD tower.

In a very special Pie Factory Podcast, Sean and Jim speak openly and frankly about the games they both rated 5 Continues, with the help of longtime featherless biped Ferg. 'Swonderful. 'Smarvelous. 'Sthe final episode of 2016. What will 2017 have in store? http://fab4it.com/piefactory/audio/PFP_Episode045.mp3

Just wanted to share this story... In the summer of 2012 I had gotten laid off when the company I was working for decided to shut down our office. No big loss, as I hated that job with every fiber of my being. (True story: when we got the word from headquarters that they decided they no longer wanted to make money in Chicago, first thing I did was call my wife -- she's a teacher and is off during the summer -- and say, "Honey, would you like to take a road trip?" She knew that that meant that I had lost my job and ergo we had time to take a trip. Her response: "Well, the thing is...we just got back from a road trip! Where would we go this time? We need time to plan it out!") Anyhoo...I was in grad school and working on a master's in software engineering. My wife had told me that at the point I'm at in my life with all the know-how and skills I've acquired, there was no reason I should not be able to land some kind of good-paying IT job. So I basically tried like hell to get some kind of IT job, focusing mainly on development. Six months into my unemployment, I get a call from a recruiter who stumbled onto my LinkedIn account. I had some pretty wacky stuff on it, saying things like, "Look, people, I've been programming freelance for ten years. TEN YEARS. Yet none of you will interview me. WTF, people?" The recruiter told me that she had a lot of clients who would love someone with that kind of style. She asked me to send her an updated résumé. So I worked on it, and just for laughs added Amiga to my technical skills. I figured worst case scenario, hiring managers would get a good laugh; best case scenario, hiring managers would take it as an indication that I have the aptitude to learn new and/or unusual skills. So I send my résumé to the recruiter. She calls me back a while later and told me of a few clients she wanted to send it to, including one company that "really prefers people who are super-super-senior" (which I most definitely was NOT; I was really kind of a noob), but she said it's worth at least trying. Well...she landed me a phone interview with that company. The next day, she calls me back and says they want to see me in person. Why? Because the dev manager was "intrigued" by my Amiga experience! So I go to the interview and meet with the dev manager, and then he has me meet with the development team and do a whiteboarding exercise. (That is, they give me a scenario, and they want me to write some code for it on a whiteboard so they can give me some feedback.) As the dev manager was escorting me out after the interview, I asked him why he was "intrigued" by my Amiga experience. He laughed and said, "Quite simply, because I'm a child of the '80s!" And he told me he had fond memories of his Amiga 500. So I meet with my niece and have lunch. While we're eating, I get a call from the recruiter, who tells me the company wanted me to start the next Monday. My exact words to her were, and I quote, "Holy s**t." heh. My first dev job. And the salary quoted was more money than I'd ever seen. So....yeah...this, folks, is why the Amiga is important! (And people laughed at me for being a die-hard Amigan for thirteen years.)

My first exposure to it was, I think, at a homecoming week activity in 1991 at my school. A friend of mine brought his Amiga 500 and arranged to borrow a large-screen projection TV and had his Amiga set up with that Pinball Dreams demo that was going around at the time. Now...my friend had been talking for a long time about getting an Amiga, and in fact he sold me a buttload of his Commodore 64 stuff for $10 when he got the Amiga. (Most of it was boxes of floppies that had...well....games with a "cracked by" message ) Started when the aforementioned friend was going on about how amazing Amiga is, what with multitasking, more reliable than Windows, etc. That friend (whose C64 stash included a modem) turned me on to the BBS scene, and there were a lot of Amiga users on the boards. I went to a couple of BBS parties and saw Amigas in action and was just blown away. I NEEDED to get an Amiga! For everything, really. My first Amiga was an Amiga 600 -- just the basic $299 package...1 meg RAM, no hard drive, and packaged with Robocopy 3, Shadow of the Beast III, Myth, Graphics Workshop (a paint program that I never did use, and you really needed a hard drive or at least a second floppy drive to run), and Microtext (a word processor). My main dealer at the time was Tenex, based in Mishawaka, Indiana. I got my A600 from them, and later on I ordered a 40-megabyte hard drive for a nice price. They called me back and said they were out, so I got an 85-meg hard drive. For $250. (wow.) But yeah, I used that Amiga for everything: games, word processing, BBSing, homework, you name it. It was my computer, so I HAD to use it for everything computing related. Used it to do music a lot. In fact...when I was a senior in college, I had to take a TV production class for my major. (I was shy four credits and had a choice of either that or photography -- and you had to buy your own camera for that class, and as such was the *only* class in the whole course catalog that required you to buy your own equipment, so I chose TV.) There were three main projects in that course: a 5-minute project, a 15-minute project, and a 30-minute project. The 5-minute project was for groups of 2 and 3, while the other two were for the entire class as a single group, so for both the 15- and 30-minute projects we came up with a really cheesy soap opera. My contribution: music! I loaded up OctaMED and sequenced a theme song and some background music. Everybody thought it was a hoot! In fact...at the annual radio and TV awards banquet that night, I won a plaque for music composition -- the first time they ever had to award it. Anyhoo....I really souped up that Amiga 600. I added another meg of RAM via the PCMCIA slot. Hard drive got upgraded multiple times. Eventually added an Apollo 030 accelerator and 8 megs of fast RAM. Upgraded from OS 2.05 to 2.1 and then to 3.1. After I graduated college, I had a friend who was still a student where I went (I went to a local college), so I'd hang out with him over there sometimes. One of the instructors form the journalism department saw me and told me she was getting rid of the Amigas (a 3000 and several 500s) and getting Macs, and if I could help her out with something (I think catalogging software, if I remember correctly) I could take whatever I wanted. I brought another friend I knew from the Amiga community to help out. He claimed the 3000, and I grabbed a 500 and decided that the 500 would be my "upgrade project." After I realized that my 600 was already technically an upgrade project, I just kind of put the A500 to the side. Same friend who got the A3000 said he wanted to buy the 500 from me for his nephew, so I said sure... In 1998 I upgraded to an Amiga 4000. Used that thing for even more stuff that I won't get into now, just too much to talk about! 2003 -- AmigaOne G3 boards were out, with a new operating system (AmigaOS 4). Bought a complete MicroAmiga1-C, which was literally the size of a shoebox. I loved that thing. I had been considering buying a PC just so I could keep up with the rest of the world in terms of learning programming and stuff, but after I got that PC, my wife and I were at a financial hardship that was aggravated by my wife getting screwed out of a paycheck, so to guarantee that we could make rent I sold off the MicroAmiga1. Broke my heart to do that, but I actually got $300 more than what I paid for it originally because OS4-compatible boards were harder to find than Jimmy Hoffa at the time, so they were in huge demand. (There is a company that's making Amiga OS4-compatible boards again, btw.) So my official Amiga life came to an end in 2006, after thirteen steadfast years of dedication. When my wife and I got back on our feet the following year I couldn't find another Amiga OS4 board, so I decided to try the Mac world, and within minutes of using my brand new MacBook (which still works like a charm to this day, just a few days shy of nine years later!), I was like..."Wait, what's Amiga again??" heh. (Truth be told, I really am missing Directory Opus...)

Say, just curious...any of you ever used AmigaOS4? I remember it came out around 2003, 2004, and there were new machines for it, powered by G3 processors. There were a line of "AmigaOne" computers for a while, and those things sold out, and for years there were no systems available for OS4 until a few years ago when there was the "Sam" line of motherboards... I had a MicroAmiga1-C for a couple of years...that thing was a dream...Amiga brought up to speed with current technology (although there still wasn't a good up-to-date web browser or Java yet).....I could actually encode MP3s quickly, apps opened in a second or two, etc.

Yaaaaay! Just scored a "POLE POSIT'N*" for a good price.

If they don't, hopefully they will before long. (Uhhmmm....I do. )

Not really; I'm not 100% sure what my recording schedule will be like (typically I record in the mornings before I leave for work -- I already have episode 1 done except for feedback ), but what doesn't make it in time will roll over into the next show. If episodes 0 and 1 are any indications, I'll be recording this podcast in sections, kinda like what Brian Wilson did with Smile in 1967, so what can possibly go wrong?

Thanks, Justin!

I'm looking for feedback for the next episode of the Atari 7800 Homebrew Podcast (you can find it on iTunes, Stitcher, or use this feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/homebrew78 ) What are your memories of BurgerTime and/or thoughts on Beef Drop on the 7800? This game will be covered on Episode 1. You can also e-mail text or audio to homebrew78 -at- fab4it -dot- com Thanks!

I guess it's time to make this announcement. Many -- including myself -- have asked Phil if he planned to cover homebrews in his podcast. Unfortunately, he said no, just the official releases. Well, this is where The Atari 7800 Homebrew Podcast steps in. Episode zero is out now and attached to this post. I welcome all feedback. Here are the details: - E-mail for feedback (text or audio!): homebrew78 -at- fab4it -dot- com - Twitter: @homebrew78 - Home page/show notes page: homebrew78.fab4it.com - Available on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and maybe a couple of other providers I'm forgetting about. - And, uhhh....already have a give-away going on...listen for details. Just as Phil would do, I'll post game-related feedback requests on the Atari 7800 forum. Wish me luck. http://homebrew78.fab4it.com/media/hbh_episode000.mp3

Pretty sure it's allowed. FWIW, I first was playing with the Seagull 78 and a Sega Sports Pad, but the trackball is having some issues I need to address. So I continued with the Edladdin Supreme 78 on my submitted attempt.

Part of my perpetual apartment-emptying project: Super Mario Kart for SNES - cart only, works well RetroDuo Portable 2.0 - handheld SNES clone. CIB, hardly used. Comes with AV cable, charging cable, controller adapter so you can use your SNES controllers, and NES adapter so you can play NES games on it (especially great if you or someone on your shopping list can't get an NES Mini. ). I've also used it with the RetroGen adapter (sorry, not included) for Sega Genesis games, so with this one handheld you can play SNES, NES, and Sega Genesis games; all work with their respective EverDrive carts, too. Demo of me using both together:

I've done transactions with NSG before. I guess he's....okay.

I think the one with the name actually spelled out is the more common one by far. The "big 3" arcades in my area have Q*Bert, but two of them actually have the original sweary marquee.

The guy in this video -- Duc Dang -- is a friend of mine and he's been tutoring me on all things Centipede for the past couple of years. Strategies he's shared with me that I use (including on the 7800): - "Tunnel down the middle" -- that is, fire from the home position repeatedly so that when you hit the centipede, mushrooms form on either side, eventually building a tunnel that will guide the centipede straight down (useful mainly on levels when the centipede is fully or mostly intact), making it easy to blast the centipede away. Shoot away mushrooms that form in the middle. (On the arcade version, shoot toward the thousands digit of the high score; hundreds digit of the high score on the 7800 version.) It might help you to leave one piece of the centipede alone while you clear away some mushrooms on the bottom of the screen, then clear away the final piece of centipede. - Focus on the bottom third of the screen. (Easier said than done. ) - Be careful with mushrooms on the sides on the lower portion, especially if there's a single-space gap between a mushroom and the left or right border. Blast away those stray mushrooms. - Use mushrooms as aiming devices, especially ones that are only a small handful of rows above you. When a centipede piece passes under the mushroom, shoot that piece of centipede. - Break the habit of constantly holding down the fire button, as you can have only one arrow (remember, your player is an elf shooting arrows ) on the screen at a time. If you're constantly holding down the fire button and suddenly a spider comes straight for you, it's impossible to shoot most of the time because there's already an arrow on the screen. (BTW, the video is out of date; Duc recently broke 800k. Heh...he doesn't consider it a good game unless he gets at least 500k!)

Heh...13k BETTER than the "Standard" score I accidentally posted. 107,167

Here's my first car...1992 Chevy Corsica LT. No-frills car, just pretty basic...although I did upgrade the AM/FM radio to AM/FM/cassette, like, the day after I got it in 1997. Picture must have been taken in 1998. I had just bought a Kodak DC-25, featuring a high resolution of...640 x 480. I got that camera because it was Amiga-compatible. I carried that camera everywhere. This picture was taken in the parking lot of Sharp Electronics in Romeoville, Illinois, where I worked at the time. I took a picture because in that huge parking lot, it was a rare day you'd get a parking space so close to the entrance; I needed to capture the moment for posterity! The bumper stickers are from The Kat 105.5, the radio station where I was a weekend disc jockey. Had the car until I traded it in for a brand new 2002 Saturn SL2.

ATARI 2600: Basic Math (gatefold box version) Demon Attack (CIB, or just the box) Thunderground (CIB, or just the box and manual) ATARI 7800: Dark Chambers (CIB or just the box and manual) Motor Psycho (just cart, NTSC) OTHER STUFF: Atari CX-22 trackball -- the one with the NOT-black bottom! Working Commodore 64 or 128 with power supply...64C preferred but will take what I can get! Vectrex overlays (except Star Trek)

Get thyself to the AtariAge store post-haste and get that Atari 7800 homebrew called Pac-Man Collection!, which contains the Pac-Man Plus you're looking for. Plus, it's an awesome cart all around. Has an improved version of Ms. Pac-Man as well as Pac-Man, Hangly Man (an old bootleg), Ms. Pac-Attack, and one or two others, and a "Plus" variation of every game. (meaning you can play "Hangly Man Plus," which never actually existed before!)

It's an Activision prototype. I think it was supposed to just be a demo of some kind of graphical feature. More info: http://atariage.com/software_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=2701

Two great arcade moments, both at Underground Retrocade: 1) December 2014...I and a bunch of frequent Retrocade customers pooled some money together (started really early in the year) to see if we could get the Retrocade something nice for Christmas. My first thought was maybe a ColecoVision, because the proprietor had talked about getting one (he has a bunch of vintage consoles and computers to use upon request), but one of the guys in the group said that's small potatoes, let's think big. (Besides, people weren't going to pay a $15 arcade admission fee to play a home console!) We got enough people together to donate enough that we were able to pay for not only a Donkey Kong 3 cab, but also a paint job (it was scuffed up) and a rental truck to deliver the game. It was great not only to be there to present it to him but also to see a bunch of friends at the same time that I don't get to see at the same time usually. 2) This Jr. Pac-Man Turbo score: This was two weeks to the day I set my TG world record of 450k. Unfortunately, I didn't have a video recording of the game, so I couldn't submit it officially!