waynel

October 16

Originals. I had Pong Sports and Golf sessions just yesterday.

September 7

3 hours ago, MegaManFan said:

Just dropped a video about this linked to the site and announcement.

FYI, for a thumbnail picture you accidentally chose to use an image of yourself having a stroke. Might want to change that to something more sensible. Hope you're doing better.

September 7

So, who is Atari now? Who runs the day-to-day stuff? How many people?

I checked Wikipedia, and it says Atari is a company run out of Paris that seems to mostly buy other video game companies.

Is Atari run out of France, or is it U.S.-based? If it's French, does this means more PAL ports, or is that unrealistic because the 2600+ is HDMI?

September 2

It took me a while, but I finally managed to buy each of the original cartridges released with the Atari 2600.

The sticking point was Star Ship, and the fact that my budget was $5.00 per cart.

To mark the occasion, I put them in a stack on the dining room table, and took photos which I then turned into i-device wallpapers. They look pretty good on my iPhone. I haven't tried them on an iPad yet, but I made them with plenty of space around so that they'll work in both portrait and landscape on an iPad.

Here's screenshots from an iPhone:

You may notice that the screenshot with the cartridges arranged in a helix has squiggles where the time should be. This is because on weekends, I don't want to know what time it is, and iOS doesn't allow one to remove the clock, so changing it to a language I can't read is almost as good.

It's also not possible to remove the date bar, but I can replace it with the weather, which is less awful than seeing the cold, bony hand of time scratching across the top of the screen.

The wallpaper files are probably too large to upload to Atari Age, so you can download them from these links:

Stack
Helix

August 4

On 7/23/2023 at 2:44 PM, Dave C said:

So important question:is it disappointing if I don’t plan to have keyboard support? the code currently is hard wired for joystick only - I thought it would be more accessible for users that are used to joystick / don’t have them (myself included). But not sure it’s feasible to evolve it to the point where you can just pick up and play without some reading, and maybe the keyboard would be just as easy to use?

It's not disappointing at all. It's your project, you do what you want. And while I believe you are correct in thinking that more people have joysticks than keypad controllers, I think that the people who would even know what LISP is would probably have some around somewhere.

I think you should continue on your current trajectory, and if in the future you feel like making a version with keypad support, that would be great. It would be a fun challenge for someone like me to design appropriate overlays.

July 23

I envision some awesome overlays for the BASIC Programming keypads.

June 23

1 hour ago, insertclevernamehere said:

This gave me a level of comfort you don't get with many homebrew releases that are often available for only a very short window and then gone forever

I'm with you.

T here are a couple of games love, but this sale post was only made yesterday afternoon, and the sale ends tomorrow. Seems like too short a window.

June 21

Cool, thanks for checking!

June 16

After 45 years, I finally got Indy 500. And after 45 years, I just realized that I need a driving controller to go with it.

Does anyone know of a reputable source for clean and working driving controllers?

I'm OK with fleaBay, but there's so many on offer there, it's hard to know which ones are going to work on receipt, and which ones will require me to monkey around with them. If you have someone you've bought from before, and are happy with, let me know.

(I'm not interested in going with Best. I tried to buy a power supply from him a while ago, and he wouldn't sell one to me saying it wasn't worth his time. I offered to also buy a set of paddles, and he still wasn't interested. Then I offered to just pay him whatever the difference was for the minimum order amount, and he still wouldn't sell. Go figure.)

June 1

I have a pair of those I keep my most-played cartridges in. Plus, I keep a Harmony cart in the machine for all the other carts, which I keep in storage.

May 31

On 5/25/2023 at 2:15 PM, x=usr(1536) said:

these days the chances of someone under the age of 30 knowing what FTP is are slim

I don't think they're that slim. My new Brother scanner, and the Epson printer I recently threw out both support FTP. Both of those companies see value in maintaining FTP as a feature for a reason.

Anyone using this device is likely a technology enthusiast, so they're probably heard of or used FTP, and if they haven't this can be a good learning opportunity for them. No need for ageism. I certainly don't think the world is overflowing with under-30's who clamor for Samba instead of FTP.

May 28

Very impressive, you should be proud.

i never realized there were so many Lynx games. Sure, there's plenty of lists online. But it's not the same as seeing them all laid out like that.

Good job!

March 30

On 3/24/2023 at 6:37 PM, alterdimension said:

hello. ive looked all over and i can't find much if at all, canyon bomber sears picture label, and dodger cars sears picture label, and air sea battle white label. are these rare, or just not much available. any thoughts on this? -alterdimension

I've seen Dodger Cars with a Sears picture label, but not the others.

Sears stuff is a lot harder to come by than regular Atari, and even early Atari stuff. Especially the ephemera.

Certain things you know logically existed at one time — like boxes and manuals for certain games. But they simply never turn up anywhere.

Unfortunately, there are people who know that certain Sears things are rare, and would rather they sit in a box in a basement, rather than sell them for a fair price on fleaBay or elsewhere.

I ran into a guy who wanted $500 for a Sears Adventure manual. He wouldn't go a penny lower, even though they occasionally appear online for $5-$15.

December 16, 2022

9 hours ago, Jetboot Jack said:

Hi,

Slightly odd question, but do any of the UK peeps know of a good 2600 PSU with a long cable?

I have a couple where the cable is 1/1.5m - ideally I want a 2m or 3m long lead from the wall wart.

Any one have any suggestions?

sTeVE

Same question for the U.S.!

I measured my original Sears Tele-Games power cords. One was ten feet long; the other 12. Good luck finding anything longer than six feet today that isn't going to eat itself in a puff of smoke.

December 16, 2022

I may be a mutant, but I really enjoyed E.T. I remember playing it for hours and hours and hours. I picked it up again a few weeks ago, and I think I would like it again, and it's on my list of games to explore more thoroughly once I have the time.

I think the notion that E.T. was too hard and not fun is revisionist history, like @Mockduck pointed out for the whole "E.T. crashed the video game market" internet echo chamber meme.

Most video games were harder then. Today, they lean on special effects, explosions, and pre-rendered cartoons rather than offering challenging gameplay. Challenge largely isn't delivered by the gameplay, but by requiring complicated controls.

A small group of modern-day bloggers and their wannabe posses can't handle E.T. and choose to rant about it on the internet, blaming the game instead of themselves, because anger = clicks = money. Lather, rinse, repeat.

November 6, 2022

On 11/3/2022 at 9:31 AM, retrosix said:

Not sure if you can "advertise" here so apologies if not and I can delete this post, but just wanted to let you guys know I've made replacement foam covers for the switches. Definitely needed. Atari 2600 Switch Foam Covers (retrosix.co.uk)

Any feedback is welcome and if you want to see it on any other consoles etc... just let me know

I looked at your web site and found that you print custom Atari cart labels. But it's really hard to find the templates you require.

There's a link to a Discord thing and then you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom on one side of the screen and that takes you to a Google Drive space where you have to navigate through folders and filenames that Google has shortened for display so that they all look alike, and then it tells you "You do not have permission to view sharing information for this item." So it looks like they can't be downloaded, but you can clear out one of the Google pop-ups and under the traffic light button there's a download control...

Frankly, it's a mess. If you don't get a lot of people ordering labels from your site, it's because it's hard.

These files aren't enormous. You should host them on your web site and allow people to access them with one click, like any other store.

October 18, 2022

On 9/29/2022 at 8:47 PM, x=usr(1536) said:

In fairness to Best, lots of people are no longer selling on eBay simply because eBay's fees and policies towards sellers are horrendous.

FWIW, I (and others) have been ordering from Best for years without problem.

I had nothing but problems the one time I tried to order from Best.

I just wanted to get an OEM power supply, because the wire is much longer than the modern ones. I was happy to pay for shipping. Then he said there was a minimum purchase amount. I don't need anything else, so I suggested he charge me whatever the minimum purchase amount is for the power supply. Nope. He insisted that he would only sell me the power supply if I also bought two sets of expensive refurbished paddles that raised the total price of the transaction to more than buying a whole new Atari from a real store like DK Electronics.

All this after it took him four days to answer the phone to talk to him because he doesn't check his voice mail every day. Or, apparently, every four days, so I he never returned any of my phone calls.

It's great that some people have good luck with him. But he's not the sort of "company" I would entrust my credit card to.

September 25, 2022

Today I decided it was time to start learning Affinity Photo. I've used Photoshop since ~1.0, so this is a new adventure for me, and very different from what I'm used to. (I switched because I don't believe in renting software.)

To teach myself this new thing, I decided to make a Sears Tele-Games label for my Harmony cartridge.

Thanks to the helpful people on this forum, I was able to locate a couple of fonts that almost work.

Seven-segment fonts are easy to find for the "Tele-Games" part, and the one I picked is almost correct, except that the middle part of the M (does this have a name?) isn't quite long enough.
I went with a Bauhaus font for the main text. I checked a couple of dozen web sites, but none of the fonts were right, and of the ones that were close, almost all of the fonts were poorly encoded, incompletely coded, or full of errors. I think the people who run amateur font sites just copy them from one another and don't bother to verify that they work.
For the ®, I just used Helvetica Neue, because it's the best Helvetica.

I think the result is pretty good.

On the left is an original Sears Speedway II cart. In the middle is the label printed on plain paper. On the right is the Harmony cart with the new label. I eventually went with glossy photo paper, because I just like the way it looks. Plain resume paper would be better, because it's matte, and be closer to the faded nature of the original Sears carts. But because I keep my Video Arcade in a dark place, the glossy paper looks better.

Since we're going all Sears with it, naturally it had to have a different name than the real name. I chose "Super Multi-Cart." Originally I was going to use "Super Cart IV," but changed my mind at the last minute for no good reason. In this comparison with a Speedway II cart, you can see how I never really found a Bauhaus font I liked. And the file for the bold version of the one I chose was invalid.

Here is the Super Mulit-Cart in action. You can see that the label bumps out a bit where the microSD card hangs out of the face of the Harmony cart. I'm OK with that, because while it's away in its cabinet, you can't see that. I thought about using an X-acto knife to cut a slot for the card to poke through, but my hands aren't that steady today. Maybe on another day when I've had less coffee. Or maybe on a day when I've had more coffee, I'll see if I can shave some of the plastic off the end of a microSD card without affecting its functionality.

I attached the top label with rubber cement, and the end label with rolled-up Scotch tape on the back. This is so I can easily lift the end label off if I want to add games to the cart. But I'm OK with it covering the microSD card long-term since I only put carts on the Harmony that I own, and I already own all of the carts that I want. (Though I might buy my wife that Space Cactus cart for Christmas.)

I've attached the .afphoto files to this message, if anyone wants to make their own, or improve upon what I've done.

Sears Cart Top Label.afphoto Sears Cart End Label.afphoto

September 23, 2022

I'd buy one or two of these, but the ones I'm interested in are all $100-$600. If they were $20 each + shipping, I'd bite. That's a pretty good premium for some carts that are generally $2-$4 at retail.

August 29, 2022

2 hours ago, Atari_Bill said:

Here are pix of all the pages. Please excuse my poor photography skills.

So... how much do you want for it?

August 29, 2022

On 8/24/2022 at 4:38 PM, Keatah said:

I've long ago eschewed purchasing physical copies of games. Roms only.

I won't download Atari games. I only buy physical copies. So I guess my anecdote cancels out your anecdote.

August 13, 2022

23 hours ago, teknohed said:

Hi gang.

i spent about 30 hours working on this. Hope you enjoy:

25 Most Expensive Atari 2600 Games (From 2002 to 2022)

Any chance that you can just post the list here, or on a web page? I'm not going to slog through a 20 minute video for a list.

August 7, 2022

32 minutes ago, Prizrak said:

The stripey lines you speak of are common in a lot of newer homebrews. New games like Pitkat and Bomberman have a distinctive look and do a similar thing. I have a composite mod on mine and use a tube TV and the results are the same as your modern TV. For games collection the best place to go would be:
http://www.atarimania.com/rom_collection_archive_atari_2600_roms.html

For new stuff that's not using an arm co-processor the PlusCart is a cart that connects your 2600 to the Internet and I along with a few others keep it updated and organized daily.

https://pluscart.firmaplus.de/pico/

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

I thought it might be a homebrew thing. It doesn't happen with any of the regular carts, only with homebrews, and then only with certain homebrews. I wondered if it was caused by the newer programmers were using some interesting code magic to produce an unusual resolution, or more colors than the old school games.

Thanks for the link to the ROM archive. I wonder if anyone has done a better treatment of Pong, Golf, or Miniature Golf. I know most people hate those games, but I really enjoy them. I find them very relaxing. Work is stressful enough. I like to spend my Atari time leaned back and with the ability to stop and have some coffee.

I thought about getting a Plus Cart, but went with the Harmony because I think that if I had a 2600 hooked up to the internet, it would suck up even more of my time. I already have to game in moderation!

August 7, 2022

I have been playing Atari for 44 years. A few years ago, I had a guy refurbish my Sears Tele-Games system, and install a composite output so that I can use it on my modern TV.

Until this week, I've only played with the carts I've owned. I bought a Harmony cart, and now I'm starting to explore the world of Atari 2600 homebrew, and hacked games downloaded from the internet. So I have a few questions.

I've noticed that a lot of the modern/homebrew games are very stripey. (Picture below.) Is this caused by the composite mod that was added to my machine, and wouldn't normally be noticed on a tube TV? The guy who did the composite mod removed the RF cable from the machine, so I can't hook it up to the TV to see if there's a difference. If I were to view these games on an emulator, would the emulator fill in the spaces automatically?
The Asteroids ROM I downloaded from archive.org starts with a "© 1981 Atari, Inc" splash screen. I have both original Sears and an Atari carts, but they don't have this screen. Was this added in at a later date?
Is there a central repository for homebrew Atari games? It seems that, even on this forum, the games are scattered all over the place.
Is there a Photoshop template for Atari 2600 labels? I'd like to make a proper end label for my Harmony cart, (I'll cut a little hole for the microSD card). Also, does anyone know if there's a font available online similar to the Sears cartridge font?

August 7, 2022

I know the poster above was dismissed for requesting Sears versions of these, but I second his request.

Responding to his request with "Sears is the same ROM" misses the point, and is unnecessarily dismissive. For example, someone above was nice enough to create a title screen for Outlaw. For those of us who use Tele-Games machines, it would be nice to have a Gunslinger title screen.

A great number of people on this forum are collectors. And for them, and a lot of other people, matching collars and cuffs matters.