Fellow Atari Man

Thanks for doing that, make sure and bump this (or let me know by e-mail) when the homebrew section is available, I know those games way better than the original GCE ones (all I know is that they're hard to find in general, and that's about it!). Good luck with the site!

Yes, especially since you're talking about a 25 year old controller, more or less. I never had a problem with the joystick or any of the buttons EVER. They're a bit different when you have all the age applied to them. Glad you got one though

...and there were quite a few on the west side of Houston too Lordy...all the ones in Memorial City Mall. Games Games Games, I remember all the people crowding around Asteroids when it first came out (it had room for many others, of course, but that was one scene I remember pretty well). Right next door was the Celebrity Cafe, which I credit myself for the old man getting the idea to turn it into a huge arcade place Think the dollar changer was out of order and the attendant was nowhere to be found, so I went next door to see if he could break a five or something. "For the game room next door?" he asked. Then one day I went there it had suddenly changed into a much bigger arcade than Games Games Games was! Big surprise, to say the least. I remember when Stargate came out and there was a handwritten sign on it saying that it was the only one in Houston. I remember seeing Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and maybe even Tempest for the first time in my life, one day a couple of kids had tokens across THE ENTIRE CABINET...and that was a wide one too! Quiptars (sp?) had the best deal with like 10 tokens for a buck or something. Too much to get into really, just remember Dragon's Lair being there (friend of mine with the big bucks with his paper route could not only afford the fifty cents to play it regularly, he would end up learning the whole game through and beating it), Gravitar, the curiosity of Reactor, the laser disc Interstellar, Bega's Battle (think it was called) and Astron Belt. They opened up a much smaller Quiptars 2 but it only last 15 minutes, don't know what the point of that one was. The Sears there had a small room with a few games in it like Route 16, then one day a game room opened at that corner...had to have been Sears', since all the games in that one little room were in that much bigger space. I remember they had Black Widow, Jr. Pac-Man, Armor...Attack, Space Panic, others. There was also another game room elsewhere in the mall that I don't recall the name of, it got a Stargate too, so so much for the guy at Celebrity Cafe proclaiming it to be the only one in town! It wasn't a big one though and was only ok. Lotta memories, just barely skimming them too!

Lets see if I can do this from memory, since I don't have mine hooked up right now: First, turn it on without having a cd in it's tray. Press a button on your controller and it'll take you to the cd menu screen. I think you select Option from there and it'll have a list of game saves on it. If that isn't it, let me know and I'll hook it up and I'll make sure to get the steps correct the next time

Ever play a game just to hear the music? Not exactly, but some of my faves: Sub-Terrania (Genesis) Flashback (Sega CD, they really improved it on the really bad Genesis version. I've played this in my car quite a few times, only skipping one track) Gauntlet 4 (Genesis) title screen of Dark Chambers (7800)

Do you have a digital camera that takes movies? Because you can take several seconds of footage, then export a frame as a photo, that's what I always do. Although Tim probably already knows about this, you can just leave the Vectrex off/unplugged for two days and it'll discharge itself, plus there's ways to manually do that if you do Vectrex searches around the internet (I'm not technically adept with the 'trex myself or else I would explain it ).

Wow, list of games is already up too! Oh wait a sec...says 2006 expo...think they screwed up Oh well.

Nov. 30/Dec. 1 will host pinball and video games on free play all weekend long. Prices are $15.00 a day or $25 for a weekend pass, which there will also be door prizes, contests and more! An official list of games will be posted later. Check http://www.arcadecenter.com for those, along with expo location and more.

The moving prize in Pac-Man, which they don't move in that? This was featured on YouTube several months ago.

Due to it being pondered near the end of an Arabian arcade review that went up on The Atari Times, it made me wonder if it was ever planned for any of the Atari systems. Does anyone know if it was?

I've heard that the total's supposedly closer to 100,000. Who knows...

Stage Select has over 20 reviews (plus pics) of arcade games. So does Digital Press, although it looks like they've got well over 50 (I quit counting ). And The Atari Times has over 30 Atari arcade reviews. All have pics. Have fun!

Ha, yeah. It was pretty cool. I remember seeing a shot of it on a promo mailout for Pitfall 2, where they (Activision) said they couldn't make it fast enough, that it was #1 at some point (I think).

Quite a bit of Atari reviews over at Stage Select, with 2600, 7800, and one Jaguar review.

I thought it was GREAT that they were mentioned though. And ironically funny as hell that Data Age was right next door. I must say, Imagic really blew the pants off of them! Thanks for posting these, I've only just seen the first one

It wasn't a big hit, I only saw it at one or two locations ever myself. Fast and difficult, you flew through a tunnel at one point. Pretty neat. Different game. Reviews were pretty brutal. Heard it had a two player deathmatch version, but it's not like you flew through the space platforms or anything, it was just you and the other player on a blank playfield; whee! I liked the original a lot, it was pretty cool. I remember seeing the first person get to the second platform not long after it came out yelling "how do you get past those things?" when he kept on dying on the forcefields, since no one knew (at the time) that you had to fire and then change altitude to go through the gaps in the forcefields

Kind of more along the lines of a platformer than a shooter, I think. Space Invaders '91, which was mentioned earlier, is pretty limited though, it's ridiculous that Taito didn't include a two player version. Too bad, since you can't get more classic than that gameplay though!

Hi guys. Upon checking out this post last week, I had PMed Ghost Soldier about my having scanned (luckily!) the second/shortbook edition of the Game Genie for Genesis codes several months ago. So after he got it I figured I should share You can download it here, just be warned for any dialup users it's 19 megs. In case no one's used this service before, you just have to scroll down and you'll find the download links at the bottom of the page (they've got all kinds of crap everywhere on the screen, you have to kind of hunt for it!), plus unless you have a premium account, you'll usually have to wait a minute for a download ticket before downloading starts. This download is good for a month, before the file gets deleted... The file also might look a bit strange, since the printing paper that was used is pretty thin, and all the stuff bled through to the other side when it was scanned (I don't think even putting a piece of paper behind the pages would have helped, but I just didn't think of that anyway until I started working on it, and I'm not about to rescan over 200 pages again!), which I didn't have PhotoShop or anything at the time to "white out" the pages, I just made do with copying and pasting to get rid of as much as the bled through crap I could. But at least everything's easy to read. I also have some other games from the first version of the Game Genie that I had photocopied, along with a couple of update booklets, so let me know if anyone wants a list of the games that I have and I'll see about getting those available too (Genesis only).

Actually it was just Star Control, 2 didn't come out for the Genesis, but the 3D0. Funny how you mentioned that and Starflight, though, as that one was one of the first games I ever got for mine Yes, I'm looking forward to getting back to Genesis collecting as well, it's a good time to be an owner, most games for it and the system are pretty cheap in general. And, oh yes, Gauntlet 4: awesome!

I thought the arcade was a thing of the past, I know in my area ther is ZERO.......or is there? Try this page; anything near? Loved S. T. U. N. Runner too, never played any of the home versions, just the arcade classic.

I'm on the Houston arcade list and it looks like the show is going to be December 1st. I've been to the show before and it's a lot of fun. Doesn't look like there will be another Texas Pinball Festival until the spring of next year. I was at last year's show and had a great time, too bad they weren't able to hold a show this year. December 1st is a Friday. So this will be Friday and Saturday both? Yes. Last year they had, more or less, 90 something machines (some they couldn't fit in there and/or were no-shows). It's not *real* huge, but there's plenty to keep you busy, epsecially with several Multicades (last year was the regular one [i guess you could call it] with Major Havoc, Phoenix, Legendary Wings, Berzerk, Frenzy, Lady Bug, etc., etc., a Williams one [Moon Patrol, Joust, etc.], and one with a lot of Namco games [the Donkey Kongs, Galaga, etc.]). It's all coin op only (on free play though), no home consoles.

There's H. A. A. G. in Houston, looks like it's coming in October or November...

Sega DIDN'T make the X-eye, that was JVC, wasn't it? Pretty sure both systems featured it as a major feature of the memory manager. I know the SCD does. Yeah it did, you can even read a review of it here.

Dunno about any other ones being worked on, but in regards to the latter, I think it'd be interesting if the first ever RPG were to come out for the Vectrex (not sure if Dark Tower counts). After all, there were quite a few decent RPG's that came out for various personal computers and all that were only 64K in the early 80s, which has been the biggest Vectrex homebrew to date, and could be doable, I'd think. mojo, thanks for the link, I'll be sure and check that out