Mad Scientist

I identified and resolved the problem with my Starwander pro-controller. There were issue with the ribbon cable. It is installed with a severe amount of bend, with long leads extending through the keypad's circuit board. On mine, the wire for one button had broken at the ribbon. In messing around with alignment, wiring for the directional pad was similarly affected. I stripped, fluxed, and re-soldered the impacted lines, and I now have a fully functioning controller.

No luck. The A button (and X, probably) don't align properly with the carbon footprint on the brown board. There is a slight amount of play in the positioning of that board, but not enough to help. The D-pad elements are perfect, but they prevent any slide towards the button-side. The pad on the board does work if the plunger is positioned perfectly; under those conditions, the boot is fully on the board, unlike the normal hanging off status for my A & X. I used an options menu of Super Burnout for testing, as A takes you out of the control setup screen. I wish I had tested this thoroughly long ago.

With more hours at home (I'm essential to my lab, but I'm splitting hours with others to allow several projects to continue), I've actually had a little time for gaming. I've been trying out the controller I bought last year. It is pretty great, with one exception: my A button doesn't work. I haven't removed the pads and cracked it open yet, but I will soon. I'm expecting to find a bad solder point or something simple. I haven't waded through all 39 pages of the thread yet to see if this has been reported by others. -Eric

No info on http://www.trublu.com.au/newsite/index.php Did this game see any distribution (in Australia or anywhere else)?

Great googly moogly, is Arkham City ever excellent! I'm also making progress on Hamster Ball (trial mode is nearly done) and Pac-Man CE. We're also tackling the bounty hunter missions in Lego SW ep III... apparently Robonino is a fish-man, not a small droid.

PS3 games played in the past week: Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (Co-op w/ my 6 yo) Hamsterball and Pac-Man CE (requested by 4 yo) Pixeljunk Shooter 1 & 2 (requested by kids... replaying levels for overlooked miners and diamonds) Jak & Daxter collection and Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time (kid requests) Orbit, Hungry Giraffe, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe (and other recent free PSN+ games) Back to the Future EA Sports Active 2 (w/ my 4 yo slave-driver) and a few others... See a theme in who selects the games? I haven't really found time for games that are just for me/ not as kid-friendly (Mass Effect 2, Castlevania Lords of Shadow, Ico/ Shadow of the Colossus etc.). Last week's $10 Arkham City and $5 Rage and Bulletstorm are also lodged in the backlog. The Kindle Fire, Wii, and Game Gear also saw use this week.

IIRC, the Sega CD's power supply is a good match for the Jaguar: I used it on mine for years afyer mine failed (changing the PS saved me form persistent red screen issues). Are its specs the same as the Master Sytem supply? If so, I'd use it.

I still need to post pics... I'll try to remember tonight. For now, I can say that the livestock are doing well.

Here's a page with a description of the game. The author states that the game reached a "pre-beta" stage. I'm not particularly encouraged by this statement: It's still fun to see betas unearthed, though. It looks like you've found quite a few of them, bitrate: Unreleased 3DO games known to exist I've seen some of them listed before, but I had never heard of C-Runner or Escape From Planet Klamtrop.

Santa (Reindeer?) package arrived yesterday! The kids and I opened it this morning. I'll put up pics after the weekend.

The full Back to the Future is what's nudging me to sign up for PSN+... it's a current freebie (as long as you are a paying member). ******* Also: Ax, your mailbox seems to be full.

Still waiting, both for the return of the items I shipped so that they can be readdressed and reshipped and for my package. I think Ax is checking into it; perhaps there'll be some update soon.

No SS gift for me, but I did get Mass Effect 2 from the kids and they received plenty of Wii, PS3, and DS games that will be seeing multiplayer use. There wasn't anything particularly "classic," but I'll correct that soon enough.

Nothing here yet. Ax, if my sender has sent something, I'm fine with waiting. Read below, and you'll see that I won't be alone in the waiting game. I'm still awaiting the return of the package that I sent. Here's part of its history, thanks to the USPS delivery confirmation on it. 12/8 Originally sent 12/10 USPS sorting facility (in a part of the country that makes little sense) 12/13 USPS sorting facility (in a more logical location) 12/14 At addressed ZIP, "Insufficient address" I contacted the recipient and found that there was a problem with the address; I'll reship when it gets back to me. I assumed it was on its way back to me at that point. I've been checking the number and saw no updates... until today. December 22, 2011, 11:39 am Return to Sender It's been sitting at that post office or sorting center for over a week! It will probably take another six days to get back to me, and then however many more for the corrected shipping. I'm just glad I included a return address, and that most of it is non-perishable.

I expect that it will be back to me on the 19th for reshipping. It may have been a physical address issue, as I just tried looking it up online and neither Google Maps nor Mapquest could get an exact match. I was more focused on the name over the address, but I suspect that raskar42 is correct about the issue. The return is coming from the correct community; a full name may or may not have overcome any physical address ambiguity, depending on the resourcefulness and interest of the postmaster. I assume the official policy is to simply return to sender.

Great. My package is being returned to me for "insufficient address." The postal clerk at my end had no qualms about taking $10 in postage and using the address, but it must have been insufficient for the destination post office. As I posted on 12/8, I was only provided with a last initial (not a last name). I checked the AA profile, the recipient's ebay profile, and even tried looking up property records for his community, but I could not get a full last name. I'll have to break SS rules and contact the recipient directly for a complete name and address verification so that I can reship whenever it finally gets back here.

My recipient should have received his today... I have a delivery confirmation receipt somewhere that I should look up. No package yet for me, but I was going to wait to open it anyway (closer to Christmas, but before the day that the guests start to arrive).

Epic Kirby: it was putting me to sleep. I gave it a second chance once my 6 y.o. got more adept with the Wiimote, and it has been a fun co-op game.

My family's been using the Energizer ones for about a month with no problems. We use them quite a bit, recharge only sporadically, and haven't run out of charge yet. We actually kept playing on one that was putting up an onscreen low-battery notice for at least two hours, and it kept working. I don't know haw much to trust the Wiimote's reporting of the charge level, but performance has been good.

I'm sending mine out now for arrival in the middle of next week. I don't have a complete last name for the recipient, so I hope the USPS is OK with what I used. I thread-stalked on AA first and saw that he had generously sprinkled recent posts with suggestions, several of which were filled by raiding my collection. I topped it off with a little shopping.

I'll try it this year. My wife will be happy to learn that some gaming stuff is leaving the house (until she realize that more is coming back, anyway). The nerdlings think it's all cool.

Apeiron? Very fun game on the PPC Macs (OS 7/8/9 I think, or classic mode on old versions of OSX); there's a newer version for OSX. Ambrosia Software always provided a good demo, too. http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/apeiron/

I just finished my first run-through of Pixeljunk Shooter last night. It will continue to get some play as I work on trophies and full completion. I'm into chapter three of Uncharted 2 I'm not an FPS fan, but it has been fun. I've also enjoyed the demos for Pac-Man CE DX and Space Invaders: Evolved. On deck: Katamari Forever, Toy Story 3, and the new Castlevania game. Despite my efforts to hook her on a game, my wife has been giving the PS3 a good Netflix workout. The kids have just been playing the Wii thus far... they seem to think that the PS3 is synonymous with Netflix. We won Coke's PS3 contest twice (first prize, not grand), so we're awaiting the arrival of the Move cameras and controllers along with Tron and EA Sports Active 2.

You mentioned backwards compatibility on both consoles. Which versions of each still have BC? The newer PS3s do not, correct? What about the 360? And how can you clearly tell if they have BC? I'm in a similar position of indecision. I just won a PS3 Move bundle (camera, two controllers, and a game; no PS3) from Coke and LBP2 and Pain from Subway, so a PS3 is probably in my future. I've never had a Sony console, though, and I'd like to play several PS2 (or even PS1) games... which it appears that the newer Ps3 cannot do. I also have lots of XBOX360 games that I'd like to be able to play on a second console, and I already have a spare controller (w/ PC dongle) acquired from Club Bing for the 360. I like the controller and like the idea of Live. I can't afford both, or arguably either, although the growing mound of PS3 stuff seems to be making the choice more obvious for me.