Chris++

Cool. Thanks for the links!
 

Wow; my priorities certainly differ vastly from that guy's. I don't care about anything so tedious as marketing observations or the appearance of a controller. Such a superficiality doesn't concern me; I dig the Jaguar controller. I've never found it difficult to use, so its reputation (among some) has always puzzled me.
 
My criteria: "Is the game-play fun for me? Does the game feel good to play?" Anything beyond that is an irrelevant sociological imposition, and has nothing to do with the game itself.
 
I meant all of the above in a less grumpy manner than it came off.
 
Do you conduct interviews with game programmers? Do you have a link to prior ones? I love reading stuff like that.
 

I've always thought that a sit-down model of Battle Zone would have been awesome. I guess it would be called a "turret cabinet" instead of a "cockpit cabinet"!
 
The periscope wouldn't even be necessary. Being surrounded by the cabinet and speakers would have made it even cooler than the cockpit version of Red Baron. That and Star Wars are great games as well, but they're both wallpaper games (as I call games with forced scrolling, whether in the first person or not). I prefer to have control over the direction of my vehicle, rather than being subjected to a mere shooting gallery.
 
Still, I won't pretend that the trench phase in the Star Wars game isn't awesome.
 

Cybermorph and Iron Soldier are solid Jaguar titles.  I thought that Hover Strike was fun, too.  I spent hours with Power Drive Rally.  I never could find the pinball games.

In 1997 or '98, I was visiting family in Buffalo. I saw a Jaguar on sale for a very low price -- $40, maybe -- at Kay-Bee Toys. The only reason I'd walked to the mall (a place in which I won't even set foot these days) was to look at records. One of their stores still had 33s. Well, also, I was antsy and wanted a walk!
 
I saw the Kay-Bee and stopped in to see if they were selling any cheap 2600 games, as they had a few years prior. I saw the Jaguar and realized that I didn't know a thing about it. The most recent platforms I owned were an Atari 2600, a Commodore 64 and a C128. I was still gratefully fixated on those old pals, I programmed quite a bit, and I even wrote essays / articles about "old" games. I did the latter for my own amusement. I thought that nobody else on Earth would understand why I could find pleasure in playing '70s and '80s games, much less writing about them. I didn't know that any classic-game newsletters existed, and I hadn't been online yet, at least beyond CompuServe.
 
I didn't think "modern" games would be much fun. These were the days of Myst and mere interactive movies (in essence), sold on that latest over-hyped fad, the multimedia CD-ROM. But seeing the Atari logo, and feeling glad that there still was an Atari, I was drawn to the table full of Jaguars and cartridges near the entrance. "Wow, that's cheap," I said to myself. "But I wouldn't be able to fit it into my suitcase."
 
Then I saw the Tempest 2000 box.
 
Like anyone else in his right mind who had played the arcade game in the early '80s, I had wanted a home version of Tempest for years. I examined the back of the box and saw that the graphics had grown advanced enough to make the potential vector-to-raster problems practically moot. I then noticed that the cartridge included a conversion of the original Tempest, which was being called Classic Tempest.
 
At that point, I had to force myself to put down the cartridge box and walk away very quickly. (I'm pretty good about not spending cash unnecessarily.) However, as you can imagine, I couldn't stop thinking about it afterward.
 
I got back to my grandmother's place, went down to the bedroom-like basement where I was staying, and tried to read. But of course, I kept thinking, I would be able to play Tempest at home...I would never run out of quarters...it's a very inexpensive console...the games are only ten bucks apiece...isn't it high time I treated myself to my first new system since the C128? Tempest at home...Tempest at home...
 
Then I glanced over at my suitcase. I've always liked to bring just one, so it's usually huge. This one certainly was.
 
Hmm...the console box could fit easily!
 
There was no use in fighting it anymore. I walked back to the mall and bought the Jaguar, along with Tempest 2000 and Iron Soldier. Back in the basement, I opened everything up, read the manuals and basically drooled for three or four days. When I got back to Albuquerque, hooked up the console and started playing, I realized that I had made the right decision. I had no regrets about shelling out most of the spending cash I'd brought on vacation. Playing Jaguar games for the first time was a mind-blowing experience.
 
Consider: I had never played anything more modern than Super Mario Bros. 3 on my bass player's NES. I had never even seen a first-person shoot-'em-up being played. And all in one day, I played Tempest 2000, Iron Soldier and the awesome, highly underrated Cybermorph. (You can mute Skylar's voice, people.)
 
Around that time, I started hanging out again with a buddy from high school named Adam. I hadn't seen him in ten years. When we ran into each other, I learned that he, too, was into old games. It surprised me that anybody was. Over the next few months, in between alerting me to the presence of a few classic-game newsletters (including his own, to which I would eventually contribute quite a lot) and building me an Amiga 2500, he lent me the Jaguar version of Doom.
 
I had never played the game before. The Jag version was my first. I plugged in the cartridge, turned on the console, started the game and...I've never recovered.
 
Every modern game that I've bought since then (I've gotten as recent as the PS2! Movin' on up!) has directly resulted from my obsession with Doom, which led to a love for solo first-person exploration / killing-everything games. These days, I run the source port ZDoom on my PC, choosing from hundreds of maps made by fellow players, and designing some of my own. But every few months, I still play Cybermorph and Iron Soldier all the way through. The buildings in the latter look just as astonishingly cool when they fall to flaming pieces as they did back in the late '90s, when I had reached the grizzly old age of 25 and Atari had captivated me all over again. I will love the Jaguar forever.

In 1997 or '98, I was visiting family in Buffalo. I saw a Jaguar on sale for a very low price -- $40, maybe -- at Kay-Bee Toys. The only reason I'd walked to the mall (a place in which I won't even set foot these days) was to look at records. One of their stores still had 33s. Well, also, I was antsy and wanted a walk!
 
I saw the Kay-Bee and stopped in to see if they were selling any cheap 2600 games, as they had a few years prior. I saw the Jaguar and realized that I didn't know a thing about it. The most recent platforms I owned were an Atari 2600, a Commodore 64 and a C128. I was still gratefully fixated on those old pals, I programmed quite a bit, and I even wrote essays / articles about "old" games. I did the latter for my own amusement. I thought that nobody else on Earth would understand why I could find pleasure in playing '70s and '80s games, much less writing about them. I didn't know that any classic-game newsletters existed, and I hadn't been online yet, at least beyond CompuServe.
 
I didn't think "modern" games would be much fun. These were the days of Myst and mere interactive movies (in essence), sold on that latest over-hyped fad, the multimedia CD-ROM. But seeing the Atari logo, and feeling glad that there still was an Atari, I was drawn to the table full of Jaguars and cartridges near the entrance. "Wow, that's cheap," I said to myself. "But I wouldn't be able to fit it into my suitcase."
 
Then I saw the Tempest 2000 box.
 
Like anyone else in his right mind who had played the arcade game in the early '80s, I had wanted a home version of Tempest for years. I examined the back of the box and saw that the graphics had grown advanced enough to make the potential vector-to-raster problems practically moot. I then noticed that the cartridge included a conversion of the original Tempest, which was being called Classic Tempest.
 
At that point, I had to force myself to put down the cartridge box and walk away very quickly. (I'm pretty good about not spending cash unnecessarily.) However, as you can imagine, I couldn't stop thinking about it afterward.
 
I got back to my grandmother's place, went down to the bedroom-like basement where I was staying, and tried to read. But of course, I kept thinking, I would be able to play Tempest at home...I would never run out of quarters...it's a very inexpensive console...the games are only ten bucks apiece...isn't it high time I treated myself to my first new system since the C128? Tempest at home...Tempest at home...
 
Then I glanced over at my suitcase. I've always liked to bring just one, so it's usually huge. This one certainly was.
 
Hmm...the console box could fit easily!
 
There was no use in fighting it anymore. I walked back to the mall and bought the Jaguar, along with Tempest 2000 and Iron Soldier. Back in the basement, I opened everything up, read the manuals and basically drooled for three or four days. When I got back to Albuquerque, hooked up the console and started playing, I realized that I had made the right decision. I had no regrets about shelling out most of the spending cash I'd brought on vacation. Playing Jaguar games for the first time was a mind-blowing experience.
 
Consider: I had never played anything more modern than Super Mario Bros. 3 on my bass player's NES. I had never even seen a first-person shoot-'em-up being played. And all in one day, I played Tempest 2000, Iron Soldier and the awesome, highly underrated Cybermorph. (You can mute Skylar's voice, people.)
 
Around that time, I started hanging out again with a buddy from high school named Adam. I hadn't seen him in ten years. When we ran into each other, I learned that he, too, was into old games. It surprised me that anybody was. Over the next few months, in between alerting me to the presence of a few classic-game newsletters (including his own, to which I would eventually contribute quite a lot) and building me an Amiga 2500, he lent me the Jaguar version of Doom.
 
I had never played the game before. The Jag version was my first. I plugged in the cartridge, turned on the console, started the game and...I've never recovered.
 
Every modern game that I've bought since then (I've gotten as recent as the PS2! Movin' on up!) has directly resulted from my obsession with Doom, which led to a love for solo first-person exploration / killing-everything games. These days, I run the source port ZDoom on my PC, choosing from hundreds of maps made by fellow players, and designing some of my own. But every few months, I still play Cybermorph and Iron Soldier all the way through. The buildings in the latter look just as astonishingly cool when they fall to flaming pieces as they did back in the late '90s, when I had reached the grizzly old age of 25 and Atari had captivated me all over again. I will love the Jaguar forever.

In 1997 or '98, I was visiting family in Buffalo. I saw a Jaguar on sale for a very low price -- $40, maybe -- at Kay-Bee Toys. The only reason I'd walked to the mall (a place in which I won't even set foot these days) was to look at records. One of their stores still had 33s. Well, also, I was antsy and wanted a walk!
 
I saw the Kay-Bee and stopped in to see if they were selling any cheap 2600 games, as they had a few years prior. I saw the Jaguar and realized that I didn't know a thing about it. The most recent platforms I owned were an Atari 2600, a Commodore 64 and a C128. I was still gratefully fixated on those old pals, I programmed quite a bit, and I even wrote essays / articles about "old" games. I did the latter for my own amusement. I thought that nobody else on Earth would understand why I could find pleasure in playing '70s and '80s games, much less writing about them. I didn't know that any classic-game newsletters existed, and I hadn't been online yet, at least beyond CompuServe.
 
I didn't think "modern" games would be much fun. These were the days of Myst and mere interactive movies (in essence), sold on that latest over-hyped fad, the multimedia CD-ROM. But seeing the Atari logo, and feeling glad that there still was an Atari, I was drawn to the table full of Jaguars and cartridges near the entrance. "Wow, that's cheap," I said to myself. "But I wouldn't be able to fit it into my suitcase."
 
Then I saw the Tempest 2000 box.
 
Like anyone else in his right mind who had played the arcade game in the early '80s, I had wanted a home version of Tempest for years. I examined the back of the box and saw that the graphics had grown advanced enough to make the potential vector-to-raster problems practically moot. I then noticed that the cartridge included a conversion of the original Tempest, which was being called Classic Tempest.
 
At that point, I had to force myself to put down the cartridge box and walk away very quickly. (I'm pretty good about not spending cash unnecessarily.) However, as you can imagine, I couldn't stop thinking about it afterward.
 
I got back to my grandmother's place, went down to the bedroom-like basement where I was staying, and tried to read. But of course, I kept thinking, I would be able to play Tempest at home...I would never run out of quarters...it's a very inexpensive console...the games are only ten bucks apiece...isn't it high time I treated myself to my first new system since the C128? Tempest at home...Tempest at home...
 
Then I glanced over at my suitcase. I've always liked to bring just one, so it's usually huge. This one certainly was.
 
Hmm...the console box could fit easily!
 
There was no use in fighting it anymore. I walked back to the mall and bought the Jaguar, along with Tempest 2000 and Iron Soldier. Back in the basement, I opened everything up, read the manuals and basically drooled for three or four days. When I got back to Albuquerque, hooked up the console and started playing, I realized that I had made the right decision. I had no regrets about shelling out most of the spending cash I'd brought on vacation. Playing Jaguar games for the first time was a mind-blowing experience.
 
Consider: I had never played anything more modern than Super Mario Bros. 3 on my bass player's NES. I had never even seen a first-person shoot-'em-up being played. And all in one day, I played Tempest 2000, Iron Soldier and the awesome, highly underrated Cybermorph. (You can mute Skylar's voice, people.)
 
Around that time, I started hanging out again with a buddy from high school named Adam. I hadn't seen him in ten years. When we ran into each other, I learned that he, too, was into old games. It surprised me that anybody was. Over the next few months, in between alerting me to the presence of a few classic-game newsletters (including his own, to which I would eventually contribute quite a lot) and building me an Amiga 2500, he lent me the Jaguar version of Doom.
 
I had never played the game before. The Jag version was my first. I plugged in the cartridge, turned on the console, started the game and...I've never recovered.
 
Every modern game that I've bought since then (I've gotten as recent as the PS2! Movin' on up!) has directly resulted from my obsession with Doom, which led to a love for solo first-person exploration / killing-everything games. These days, I run the source port ZDoom on my PC, choosing from hundreds of maps made by fellow players, and designing some of my own. But every few months, I still play Cybermorph and Iron Soldier all the way through. The buildings in the latter look just as astonishingly cool when they fall to flaming pieces as they did back in the late '90s, when I had reached the grizzly old age of 25 and Atari had captivated me all over again. I will love the Jaguar forever.

In 1997 or '98, I was visiting family in Buffalo. I saw a Jaguar on sale for a very low price -- $40, maybe -- at Kay-Bee Toys. The only reason I'd walked to the mall (a place in which I won't even set foot these days) was to look at records. One of their stores still had 33s. Well, also, I was antsy and wanted a walk!
 
I saw the Kay-Bee and stopped in to see if they were selling any cheap 2600 games, as they had a few years prior. I saw the Jaguar and realized that I didn't know a thing about it. The most recent platforms I owned were an Atari 2600, a Commodore 64 and a C128. I was still gratefully fixated on those old pals, I programmed quite a bit, and I even wrote essays / articles about "old" games. I did the latter for my own amusement. I thought that nobody else on Earth would understand why I could find pleasure in playing '70s and '80s games, much less writing about them. I didn't know that any classic-game newsletters existed, and I hadn't been online yet, at least beyond CompuServe.
 
I didn't think "modern" games would be much fun. These were the days of Myst and mere interactive movies (in essence), sold on that latest over-hyped fad, the multimedia CD-ROM. But seeing the Atari logo, and feeling glad that there still was an Atari, I was drawn to the table full of Jaguars and cartridges near the entrance. "Wow, that's cheap," I said to myself. "But I wouldn't be able to fit it into my suitcase."
 
Then I saw the Tempest 2000 box.
 
Like anyone else in his right mind who had played the arcade game in the early '80s, I had wanted a home version of Tempest for years. I examined the back of the box and saw that the graphics had grown advanced enough to make the potential vector-to-raster problems practically moot. I then noticed that the cartridge included a conversion of the original Tempest, which was being called Classic Tempest.
 
At that point, I had to force myself to put down the cartridge box and walk away very quickly. (I'm pretty good about not spending cash unnecessarily.) However, as you can imagine, I couldn't stop thinking about it afterward.
 
I got back to my grandmother's place, went down to the bedroom-like basement where I was staying, and tried to read. But of course, I kept thinking, I would be able to play Tempest at home...I would never run out of quarters...it's a very inexpensive console...the games are only ten bucks apiece...isn't it high time I treated myself to my first new system since the C128? Tempest at home...Tempest at home...
 
Then I glanced over at my suitcase. I've always liked to bring just one, so it's usually huge. This one certainly was.
 
Hmm...the console box could fit easily!
 
There was no use in fighting it anymore. I walked back to the mall and bought the Jaguar, along with Tempest 2000 and Iron Soldier. Back in the basement, I opened everything up, read the manuals and basically drooled for three or four days. When I got back to Albuquerque, hooked up the console and started playing, I realized that I had made the right decision. I had no regrets about shelling out most of the spending cash I'd brought on vacation. Playing Jaguar games for the first time was a mind-blowing experience.
 
Consider: I had never played anything more modern than Super Mario Bros. 3 on my bass player's NES. I had never even seen a first-person shoot-'em-up being played. And all in one day, I played Tempest 2000, Iron Soldier and the awesome, highly underrated Cybermorph. (You can mute Skylar's voice, people.)
 
Around that time, I started hanging out again with a buddy from high school named Adam. I hadn't seen him in ten years. When we ran into each other, I learned that he, too, was into old games. It surprised me that anybody was. Over the next few months, in between alerting me to the presence of a few classic-game newsletters (including his own, to which I would eventually contribute quite a lot) and building me an Amiga 2500, he lent me the Jaguar version of Doom.
 
I had never played the game before. The Jag version was my first. I plugged in the cartridge, turned on the console, started the game and...I've never recovered.
 
Every modern game that I've bought since then (I've gotten as recent as the PS2! Movin' on up!) has directly resulted from my obsession with Doom, which led to a love for solo first-person exploration / killing-everything games. These days, I run the source port ZDoom on my PC, choosing from hundreds of maps made by fellow players, and designing some of my own. But every few months, I still play Cybermorph and Iron Soldier all the way through. The buildings in the latter look just as astonishingly cool when they fall to flaming pieces as they did back in the late '90s, when I had reached the grizzly old age of 25 and Atari had captivated me all over again. I will love the Jaguar forever.

In 1997 or '98, I was visiting family in Buffalo. I saw a Jaguar on sale for a very low price -- $40, maybe -- at Kay-Bee Toys. The only reason I'd walked to the mall (a place in which I won't even set foot these days) was to look at records. One of their stores still had 33s. Well, also, I was antsy and wanted a walk!
 
I saw the Kay-Bee and stopped in to see if they were selling any cheap 2600 games, as they had a few years prior. I saw the Jaguar and realized that I didn't know a thing about it. The most recent platforms I owned were an Atari 2600, a Commodore 64 and a C128. I was still gratefully fixated on those old pals, I programmed quite a bit, and I even wrote essays / articles about "old" games. I did the latter for my own amusement. I thought that nobody else on Earth would understand why I could find pleasure in playing '70s and '80s games, much less writing about them. I didn't know that any classic-game newsletters existed, and I hadn't been online yet, at least beyond CompuServe.
 
I didn't think "modern" games would be much fun. These were the days of Myst and mere interactive movies (in essence), sold on that latest over-hyped fad, the multimedia CD-ROM. But seeing the Atari logo, and feeling glad that there still was an Atari, I was drawn to the table full of Jaguars and cartridges near the entrance. "Wow, that's cheap," I said to myself. "But I wouldn't be able to fit it into my suitcase."
 
Then I saw the Tempest 2000 box.
 
Like anyone else in his right mind who had played the arcade game in the early '80s, I had wanted a home version of Tempest for years. I examined the back of the box and saw that the graphics had grown advanced enough to make the potential vector-to-raster problems practically moot. I then noticed that the cartridge included a conversion of the original Tempest, which was being called Classic Tempest.
 
At that point, I had to force myself to put down the cartridge box and walk away very quickly. (I'm pretty good about not spending cash unnecessarily.) However, as you can imagine, I couldn't stop thinking about it afterward.
 
I got back to my grandmother's place, went down to the bedroom-like basement where I was staying, and tried to read. But of course, I kept thinking, I would be able to play Tempest at home...I would never run out of quarters...it's a very inexpensive console...the games are only ten bucks apiece...isn't it high time I treated myself to my first new system since the C128? Tempest at home...Tempest at home...
 
Then I glanced over at my suitcase. I've always liked to bring just one, so it's usually huge. This one certainly was.
 
Hmm...the console box could fit easily!
 
There was no use in fighting it anymore. I walked back to the mall and bought the Jaguar, along with Tempest 2000 and Iron Soldier. Back in the basement, I opened everything up, read the manuals and basically drooled for three or four days. When I got back to Albuquerque, hooked up the console and started playing, I realized that I had made the right decision. I had no regrets about shelling out most of the spending cash I'd brought on vacation. Playing Jaguar games for the first time was a mind-blowing experience.
 
Consider: I had never played anything more modern than Super Mario Bros. 3 on my bass player's NES. I had never even seen a first-person shoot-'em-up being played. And all in one day, I played Tempest 2000, Iron Soldier and the awesome, highly underrated Cybermorph. (You can mute Skylar's voice, people.)
 
Around that time, I started hanging out again with a buddy from high school named Adam. I hadn't seen him in ten years. When we ran into each other, I learned that he, too, was into old games. It surprised me that anybody was. Over the next few months, in between alerting me to the presence of a few classic-game newsletters (including his own, to which I would eventually contribute quite a lot) and building me an Amiga 2500, he lent me the Jaguar version of Doom.
 
I had never played the game before. The Jag version was my first. I plugged in the cartridge, turned on the console, started the game and...I've never recovered.
 
Every modern game that I've bought since then (I've gotten as recent as the PS2! Movin' on up!) has directly resulted from my obsession with Doom, which led to a love for solo first-person exploration / killing-everything games. These days, I run the source port ZDoom on my PC, choosing from hundreds of maps made by fellow players, and designing some of my own. But every few months, I still play Cybermorph and Iron Soldier all the way through. The buildings in the latter look just as astonishingly cool when they fall to flaming pieces as they did back in the late '90s, when I had reached the grizzly old age of 25 and Atari had captivated me all over again. I will love the Jaguar forever.

New episode featuring Greg Troutman's Dark Mage and This Planet Sucks is out now. Thank you for listening!
 
http://traffic.libsyn.com/2600gamebygamepodcast/115_-_Dark_Mage_and_This_Planet_Sucks_by_Greg_Troutman.mp3

Finally a new episode is up that deals with games, in particular Spider Fighter and Seaquest by Activision. Both are excellent. Thanks for listening everyone.
 
http://traffic.libsyn.com/2600gamebygamepodcast/114_-_Spider_Fighter_and_Seaquest_by_Activision.mp3

LOOK AT ME AND MY TIMELY UPDATING.
 
I have put out 3 shows since the last time I posted. The aforementioned Name This Game and Towering Inferno:
 
http://traffic.libsyn.com/2600gamebygamepodcast/112_-_Name_This_Game__Towering_Inferno_by_U.S._Games.mp3
 
I also did a special episode where I talked about ME ME ME and my video game collecting history:
 
http://traffic.libsyn.com/2600gamebygamepodcast/My_Video_Game_Collecting_History.mp3
 
Just this morning I posted my extra long show about Centipede and Ms. Pac-Man:
 
http://traffic.libsyn.com/2600gamebygamepodcast/113_-_Ms._Pac-Man__Centipede_by_Atari.mp3
 
Next week is my annual (?) Christmas Memories episode, I ran out of time to do research on any games. If you have any Atari-related Christmas memories you can send them to me by December 19th at 2600gamebygame@comcast.net.
 
On January 13th I'll be discussing Spider Fighter and Seaquest by Activision, so if you like those games, please let me know about it!
 
Thank you so much for your support!

I have Name This Game and Towering Inferno coming up, and again, I am having a lot of fun with these two. It's amazing to me that just putting a little bit of time into these games yields such positive results. It's not true for all of them of course (I'm looking at you Fireworld), but I'm finding that games that have been dismissed for years deserve another look. Phil already has great videos for these up on his No Swear Gamer show, so please check those out! Then you can send me some feedback at 2600gamebygame@comcast.net if you'd like. If I ask for feedback here, I will forget to read it. If you listen to my show you know how I am.

Since the last episode, I put out a pinball special and episode 111 is out today, featuring Turmoil and Fantastic Voyage.
 
http://traffic.libsyn.com/2600gamebygamepodcast/111_-_Turmoil__Fantastic_Voyage_by_20th_Century_Fox.mp3
 
Happy_Halloween_Haunted_House_by_Gottlieb.mp3
 
In two weeks I'll be discussing Name This Game and Towering Inferno by US Games. If you have any thoughts or memories of these games, please send them to 2600gamebygame@comcast.net. Thanks for listening!

The E.T. episode is now available, I hope very much that you enjoy it.
 
http://traffic.libsyn.com/2600gamebygamepodcast/110_-_E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial.mp3

Love the podcast!    Thanks for joining us.

I love the 2600 Game by Game Podcast, keep up the good work!

FERG!!!!

Just in case you aren't a regular listener, this is a bi-weekly joyride that has rekindled my love for Atari & retro gaming in general. Ferg does a fantastic job and the listener feedback is so, so good. 

***Warning*** The Atari 2600 Game by Game podcast is a dangerous gateway podcast. You may soon find yourself discovering many other fine podcasts and never have any time to listen to anything else.

Hi all, my name is Ferg and I started this now bi-weekly podcast in 2013. My goal is to cover EVERY game made for the Atari 2600. Because I'm dumb. In each episode, I cover one to three games (usually by one company) and I talk about the gameplay, history (of the game AND the programmer if I can), packaging, and YOUR memories of the games. I always give a heads up for what's coming up and I get such wonderful feedback for almost every game. You can check out all of the episodes here: http://2600gamebygamepodcast.libsyn.com/webpage
 
I am also on iTunes and Stitcher, but iTunes has started to remove some of the shows, so the Libsyn page is your best bet right now for the early episodes, if you want to hear me learn how to podcast over a long period of time (still learning).
 
This week I cover two Spectravision games which I like very much, China Syndrome and the Challenge of Nexar. You can find the episode here:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/2600gamebygamepodcast/109_-_China_Syndrome__Challenge_of_Nexar_by_Spectravision.mp3
 
The next episode will be about E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which you may have heard of. If you would like to contribute your memories of E.T., you can send them to me at 2600gamebygame@comcast.net
 
Thank you for reading all this and especially for listening!

One of the last Atari consoles I would obtain by miracle, if not by accident.  It was Christmas 1994.  I was living with my Grandmother to help take care of her and taking Computer Science classes at the local community college.  My Mother lived with her new husband in a town 2 hours away.  I would visit her on weekends.
 
On one cold November day my Grandmother asked me what I would like to have for Christmas.  I really didn't know because I had not thought of anything.  Was there anything I needed for my car?  Nope...couldn't think of anything (I had a '79 Monte Carlo with T-Tops at the time).  I didn't need anything for college.  So, I walked down the hill, three blocks away, from where we lived and paid the old Radio Shack that was once there a visit.  https://www.google.com/maps/dir/1239+N+Main+St,+Harrison,+AR+72601/1122+N+Pine+St,+Harrison,+AR+72601/data=!4m8!4m7!1m2!1m1!1s0x87cef5432296c701:0xb532cb5183553096!1m2!1m1!1s0x87cef543bb562403:0x474f80cf465ad78e!3e0
 
(I'm providing a map so the distance can be seen.)
 
I looked in the store for anything.  Nothing of particular interest.  I asked about any video games and they pointed to the large catalog they had bolted to the counter.  I flipped through it.  Nintendo, Sega, Atari...Atari?!?  I flipped to the Atari section.  I seen the 2600 stuff and some 7800 stuff.  They still had 5200 items as well but no 5200 consoles so I passed on those.  On the next page, in bold lettering, was "Atari Jaguar".  That ad I got in the mail during the summer immediately came to mind.  "Raw 64-bit Power!"..."Do The Math!"  For $225 you could get a console with A/V cables, two controllers, and two games called "Cybermorph" and "Iron Soldier".  I wrote it down and ran, back up the hill (seriously, this hill is murder at any age if you have to even walk up it).  
 
Huffing and puffing I went into the bedroom, shuffled through one of the nightstand drawers beside the bed, and pulled out the ad we held on to.  I immediately showed Granny the ad.  "What's this dear?"  Sometimes I forgot that my Grandmother was legally blind even if after surgery she could see colors and outlines...but was still blind.  I told about the Atari console in the ad.  She goes, "Is that what you want?"  I gave an excited yes and said I wrote it down if you would like to get it when I'm not here.  She handed me her Radio Shack credit card and sent me back down the hill.  She didn't want others to know what she was doing (bless her heart).  She never did.  They would know after I unwrapped it but by then why bother.  Granny spoiled me every chance she got and the rest of family never understood it.  Heck...I never understood it but I didn't complain.
 
So, I placed the order.  Radio Shack called my Grandmother for her approval for me to use the card.  They were family friends but still needed authorization for using cards by people other than whose name was on the card.  Order placed, I went back home and looked through the ad.  "Did they have more games?"  I told her I didn't look and I didn't want her to get any more until we knew for certain just how good the "Atari Jaguar" was going to be.
 
After a while we both sort of forgot about the order.  Her Radio Shack bill didn't come in before the holidays because it was one of those no payments for a few days sales pitch.  We got a call one Saturday.  "We have your order", they said to my Grandmother.  She sent me to retrieve it.  I almost forgot what it was.  When I got home she told me to open it and make sure everything was there.  The system, extra controller, A/V cable, and one game, Iron Soldier, was in the box.  Where was the other game?  The system box didn't say anything about a game inside.  So we opened it.  Cybermorph was there so both games present.
 
"Well, since it's opened you might as well try it out.  Just make sure you can make it look like it wasn't opened later."  Granny said.  I laughed.  Hooked up to her RCA Hi-Fi 27" console TV that swiveled the Jaguar showed its stuff.  Cybermorph came first.  I played around and explored the game a bit.  Eh...not too bad.  That was my first impression.  Then I popped in Iron Soldier.  I wasn't suppose to open that one...opps.  I sat for two or three hours with that game.  Then I had to pack it all back up and place it in the bedroom closet to be wrapped up before Christmas.  You know how hard it was to know that a game machine was in that closet and I couldn't play it until Christmas Eve?  I tried playing the Genesis and SuperNES I had and they just didn't cut it anymore.  There were a few times at night after she went to sleep with her TV on and blaring (an every night thing) where I would drag it out and play for a little bit then put it up.  I know...I was bad.
 
Christmas Eve came and it was time to unwrap the Jaguar.  Finally!  But...I had to save it for last.  First gifts were the usual:  a new sweatsuit, some new pants, socks, and shirts, and a few new movies of Disney favors.  Then came the Jaguar.  I couldn't be happier!  Or so I thought.  Another surprise package came from my Aunt.  In a box usually for clothes was some more games for the system.  They had found a few in Springfield's Battlefield Mall on clearance and grabbed a few.  While there was no Tempest 2000 there was I*War, Syndicate, and Wolfenstein 3D.  I was set for one helluva winter!  
 
The Jaguar left an impression that year in such a way that I was glad to have taken a chance on it.  The family members involved to this point in Christmas gifts to me I no longer have.  I don't think they ever knew just how much I appreciated all those Christmases I had with them...and all the other times I spent with them as well and not just around the holidays.  They knew what I enjoyed the most and went out of their way to fill that hobby.  I didn't have to ask and in some ways it felt like that was their way of rewarding me for what I was doing from my Grandmother, who I had been helping take care of since I was 10 years old.  Granny enjoyed the games as much as she could with the colors and sounds...and it would often times place her mind at ease so much that she would go to sleep on me (haha).  
 
They don't make family members like that much any more, and it seems like the holidays are nothing like what they use to be.  Just like my family members the Jaguar will forever hold a place in my memories that will not be forgotten.  I was fortunate enough to have another Jaguar, after decades of being without one, land in my living room and when I seen it I sat there and held the machine for what seemed like a long time admiring the design and immediately shed a few tears when memories of that Christmas Eve started playing back in my mind.  
 
It took me a long time to understand why I have such a heart for these game machines.  They are nothing more than plastic and computer electronics.  They entertain...that's all they do.  But I realized that every machine, mostly Atari machines, I ever had gave a connection to the love of family that loved me more than anything else in the world.  And that's why all my game machines, including the Jaguar, continue to play an important role in my life.
 

I've really enjoyed your retrospectives, Kamakazi! This is at the very heart of what the forums are all about. It's a pleasure to have you join us, thanks for sharing your memories 

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