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Emehr

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Posts posted by Emehr

  1. This (as well as Renegade) is one of those games I'll fire up for a quick playthrough if I can't decide what else to play so I couldn't say how many times I've beaten it. It's one of those ports that I prefer to the arcade original, much like Space Invaders on the 2600. As a teenager I would play it with my NES Max using the turbo buttons for kick and punch. Super fun to play I love the vocal effects of the main character and the bosses. Definitely one of my top "pick up and play" games for NES.

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  2. As an original owner of Boulder Dash 2600 (has it been 10 years?) and hopeful entrant of the cover art competition (which was a lot of fun, but again...10 years?), I am very excited about more people being able to play and enjoy this masterpiece of coding. I might snag a second copy for a poster of that cover art.

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  3. I remember going to a friends house in 1987 to play his NES and being amazed at SMB and Mike Tyson's Punch Out. I had never seen one in person. My only home video game experience was with my 2600 and nine games. The NES felt so advanced and futuristic. He also had a 7800 and a box of around sixty 2600 and 7800 games. I was intrigued with the 7800 because I had never even heard of it. Sadly, even though it was new to me it already seemed like a "dead" console at the time. Little did I know there were still games being made for it. I loved playing Asteroids and Xevious and just seeing an Atari console that could produce those kinds of graphics was refreshing. It pretty much re-invigorated my love for Atari because I probably hadn't really touched my 2600 in the 3 or 4 years prior to that. And that huge box of games was like a treasure trove of new adventures.

     

    He ended up selling his 7800 and that box of games to me and soon after I got an NES to get my SMB/Punch Out/Zelda fix. It was a perfect pairing of consoles to me.

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  4. 20 hours ago, Mockduck said:

    I wish I'd heard that thing about Warbirds prior to updating. I did try on behalf of someone in Discord to pop the cart in and play it before updating, and I can confirm that in general the collection seemed to play and play decently without being updated straight from the cart, although I don't know what the update exactly did. I wasn't looking for Warbirds, though. 

    So I'm not crazy. I have it for the Switch and swore I saw Warbirds in the games list (my update was running in the background). Then I heard Warbirds wasn't in the collection and was like "Whaaa?". Went back in, it was *poof* gone like Kaiser Soze. Thought I was having a false memory.

     

    I love Warbirds and if I didn't have it on my Lynx and MiSTer I guess I'd be more bothered by its absence. Still, would've loved to see some extra content for it.

    • Sad 1
  5. This is devastating to hear. I'm not on here as much as I have been in the past so this is the first I'm hearing of this. I had wondered about him last time I logged in. Hadn't seen his avatar in awhile. Nukey always felt like a cornerstone of this community. RIP Sheik Yerbouti :(

  6. Wow, this thread is an oldie! Since it's been 10+ years since I posted I should probably update my tally.

     

    2600 (x5) [1x Heavy Sixer, 1x Light Sixer, 2x 4-switch Woodies, and 1x Vader]

    7800

    Lynx (x3) [one is broken so not sure if the counts]

     

    Down to 9 from 11.

     

    Not sure if I should count my Plug'n'Plays. If so, off the top of my head...

     

    Flashback 2 (x3) [one is disassembled for tinkering]

    Jakks Joystick

    Jakks Dual Paddle

  7. 3 hours ago, JamesS said:

    IMac G3. Picked it up for around 50 dollars back in 2008, got OS9 and OSX Tiger for it. 

    ---

    Sorry to all the fans of these computers. I seriously wonder though if anyone uses them. Lots of videos on YouTube of people working on Macs and talking about how great they are. But honestly never see them actually use them for anything? Maybe I'm just watching the wrong videos.

    I acquired a Graphite G3 past its prime as well (probably around 2012 or so). Reinstalled to factory spec, played around with it a little, and haven't done much with it since. I always had thoughts of setting up basic word processing software, some era-specific games, or tossing some games on there for the kiddos to play with. It'd make a neat little DVD player if the speakers weren't so crackly. I even had thoughts of picking up where I left off on some old programming projects. Unfortunately, I have so many other devices that can already do all of these things so there it sits. It's basically a museum piece now.

  8. On 12/15/2021 at 5:26 AM, Turbo Laser Lynx said:

    Has anyone tried out the MiSTer Lynx core? It'd be interesting to know if it's any good / how good it is.

    Super late reply but from what I've played, the MiSTer Lynx core is impeccable.

     

    Sound-wise I can discern no difference. My "go to" game to try for that was Klax which I've played a lot of on my Lynx. It was spot-on. Not just the intro music but the sound effects of the Klax tiles "walking" down the screen. Each colored tile has its own sound and they were exactly like I remember. Another familiar game I tried was Xybots. Again, no difference between playing on the Lynx or MiSTer.

     

    Visually it was like plugging my McWill-modded Lynx to a VGA CRT. Looks fine, just big pixels (which can be mitigated with various filters).

     

    Input-wise there was no noticeable lag. If I was forced to sell my Lynx the MiSTer would be a perfectly fine replacement. It just lacks multiplayer ability, understandably.

     

    I can't attest to every game but MiSTer has totally won me over. I won't get rid of my Lynx but...if I had to...

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  9. I picked up Dread with my son on launch day. He'd been catching up on the Metroid titles he hadn't finished yet so he was primed (no pun intended). I've been playing Metroid games since the NES so I was more than ready for Metroid 5. We both love it. He beat it in 3 days then played and beat hard mode. It took me a little longer. I like to explore as much as I can. It was a good challenge and I had a blast the whole time. Samus' fluid movements felt spot-on and the background scenery was gorgeous.

     

    All of the bosses felt like fair fights and were pretty fun when you got to know their moves. The only issue I had was timing the 'X' button swipe move to finish off the boss with the spear. I would get to that point and just hand the controller to my son, who got it every time. Didn't have an issue anytime else, even the last boss. Just those spear bosses.

     

    Going back and finding all of the missed upgrades is a lot of fun as well. Especially the speed boost puzzles. Super rewarding once you pull it off. Overall a great time and a nice addition to the franchise.

     

  10. That scrolling looks amazing. Nice work! I really like your solution to the sparkling diamonds.

     

    It'd be cool to see this engine used for a game with similar "digging with falling items physics" mechanics. Crystal Mines would probably be too ambitious and this engine would be overkill for a Dig Dug-style game. It seems like there is a new game waiting to be designed that this engine would be ripe for. Even if it's like a simple Minecraft-inspired mechanic where you harvest blocks but have to place them elsewhere so you don't max out your inventory. Maybe you can turn the blocks into different types of other blocks based on what you "harvest" so you can modify the environment to thwart enemies or get to a treasure. I don't know. I'm just throwing ideas at the wall. ?

  11. I've been enjoying Parish's videos and was pleasantly surprised when he started covering Lynx games. All in all I feel like he gave them a fair shake and he seemed to appreciate them overall. He shared my sentiment with Ms. Pac-Man on why the heck didn't they make that port in portrait-mode. As a long-time Lynx fan I found his perspectives refreshing. His videos are always informative and laid back and I enjoy discovering games I'd not heard of before. I look forward to more Lynx coverage, although I do with he'd just title them "Lynx Works" or something.

  12. Original owner here. I have zero issues with a re-release. I hope it happens, actually! And if you decide to use a new label to differentiate it from the original run I would gladly offer my two entries that didn't make the cut during the label contest. Or we could have another label contest! :-D

    post-3314-0-40013300-1552756375.png

    • Like 5
  13. I had to look up "total station," and found this

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_station

    Is that what you're using?

    I would think serial adapters would have trouble with modern Windows systems, too.

     

    Theodolite on the iOS App Store is an interesting toy. There are things like it in Google Play, but I'll wager they aren't as polished. It might be fun for you to play with if you have a surveying background.

     

    I loved the Nexus 7 until I didn't. Did you have the first generation one (with a leathery, textured back panel), or the second-generation Asus model? Both were great at the time, at the price, but they didn't hold up well. The first gen one played N64 emulators very well. ;) It seems like Google is out of the business of Android tablets now. :?

     

     

    Yeah, sorry, I should've specified what a total station was. The Nexus was the Asus model and, thankfully, it wasn't too costly of an experiment. We have since purchased a newer total station with a sweet, sweet USB port where I can download to a thumb drive and all is well. The Nexus was probably fine for other purposes but for breathing new life into aging tech it was a disappointment. I do concede that maybe we were asking too much of it, though. :lol:

     

    Theodolite looks like fun! And it's on sale! Thanks for pointing me to that. :thumbsup:

    • Like 1
  14. Disappointment #1: Back in 2000 I bought a Castlewood Orb 2.2GB removable media drive to supercede my SyQuest EZ135. It was the UltraSCSI version. I was excited about it because each cartridge would've been larger than my meager 800MB hard disk. I could not get my Performa 6116 to see it and ended up returning it after a fruitless back and forth with Castlewood's tech support.

     

    Disappointment #2 (not really retro but maybe in a few years when someone reads this thread it will be): A few years ago I recommended that we get a Nexus 7 tablet for work. It seemed like a good option to interface with our aging early-90s total station, which has serial comms. I found serial adapters to connect to the Nexus. Great! I found an app that could talk to the total station. Excellent! Unfortunately, the app was buggy, had a terrible UI, and didn't like to retain the connection to the total station. Grr! After time went on, the Nexus became more and more unresponsive and the battery life turned to shit. Eventually, Google's own apps, namely Google Maps, wouldn't even run without hanging the system. Junk!

  15. I totally bought SF2:The World Warrior from the hype alone. EGM talked about how it was the biggest game since Pac-Man so I knew I should probably pick it up. The only fighting game I'd played at that point that came anywhere close to SF2 game mechanics was Karate Champ for the NES. I remember paying $70 for it at the mall, taking it home, and enjoying the hell out of it with my brother.

     

    I still prefer the original SF2 to Turbo. I do like the mid-air moves in Turbo as well as some of the reworked character portraits but that's about it. The visuals look flat to me, especially in the background activity and people. Playing as the bosses isn't all that fun and the turbo speed does nothing for me personally. It makes a good counterpart but the original is best.

  16. From what I've read, the refurbished Nintendo units are the real deal.

     

     

    Yep! I ordered a refurb from Nintendo last year after my house was robbed and my Wii U was stolen. One phone call to Nintendo and they transferred all of my digital content (it was the Super Smash Bros/Splatoon edition). The refurb even came with a physical copy of NintendoLand, which my old one didn't have. Only difference was it came in a white box and I don't think it came with the rubber feet to stand it on end.

  17. I've had the 2016 Atari Flashback Portable for about a year now and it's a neat little unit. Only about a dozen of the 60 built-in games are of any interest to me and I wouldn't have bought it if it didn't have the SD card slot. The emulation is really convincing but it does have its issues with certain games. I'm sure it's been optimized for the built-in games so I can't complain too much when it doesn't work with games I'm playing from the SD card.

     

    The tiny screen is okay but I get this weird effect and I think it's a viewing angle issue. When looking at the bottom status bar in Solaris, for example, my left eye sees the tan color but my right eye sees dark brown so when I have both eyes open I get this weird Magic Eye effect that bugs me out. I'm glad it has A/V out.

     

    The D-pad is okay but pretty terrible for Pac-Man games. The buttons have a strange layout but AtGames just reused the case molds from the portable Genesis so that explains that...although it's still a strange button layout for the Genesis even.

     

    Overall I'm happy with the purchase. It won't replace any of my 2600s but it's nice to be able to play a quick game of Cave1k or something on the go.

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