Bloodcat

I will maybe take a run down to Radio Shack (You have questions? They are bloody CLUELESS!) next week and get myself a new soldering iron and some proper toxic solder and give sdamon's idea a try first. Then Ataribrian's as a second, and Apollo with the AWESOME Area 88/UN Squadron avatar's as a third. I haven't soldered since 92-93 so I may as well buy a new iron. And thanks to the retro thread on Something Awful I found a GREAT comic book styled tutorial on soldering to bring me back up to speed. ( http://mightyohm.com/blog/2011/04/soldering-is-easy-comic-book/ ) I can always try AB's option by just swapping out the P3 or 4 port with 1 if I need to. I put the gold SPR button in the trackball which will be good for it anyhow. Worst comes to worst I can always just buy a parts 5200 on the bay or get some bits from Best or maybe 4Jays or one of the other Atari sellers and try the various options out. Might end up getting extra games cheap that way too! (I think I need a new PSU for my 7800 as well because it doesn't even turn on and someone on Facebook said the PSUs are very fragile on that machine. Might as well take care of it all at once!) Heh. I really want to get my Color Computer collection going and I am eyeing a TI 99 too so its kind of pushing me back here to get older stuff going better first. Retrogaming is a HELL of a drug...

Yes. I have had a 5200 for years but as many have had, I could never get the S/P/R buttons to work. And laziness plus Best Electronics being very oldschool always made it a backburner thingie. Well was looking about on Gamegavel and won a boxed Wico Command Controller for a solid price. Got it in, hooked it up. No luck. However.. GORF starts with the Fire button and I was then able to play! This lead me to do the usual controller cleanup. Eraser, isopropyl alcohol. One of my controllers was a REV 9 with the gold contact S/P/R buttons. No workie. I have a trackball. Made sure it was all clean and even put the SPR in it. Still, no workie. (But can sort of play GORF with it.) Could something in the 4 port A5200's first port be broken so it doesn't read any of the buttons but still recognizes analog stick and fire button inputs? If so is there a fix I can do instead of buying another 4 port machine? I need to make use of my Wico stick that looks like it wouldn't be out of place in a 50 Shades of Grey chapter. And all these games I have owned since the early 00s when X Entertainment had an article on Gremlins: [timg]https://sphotos-b.xx...616329288_o.jpg[/timg] Think of my games Atari Age! Help me play legit Berzerk and Gremlins!

Well Apshai showed up. And the 1010 promptly ate it. So there is one less 1980 Temple of Apshai cassette in the world. I tried out a normal music tape I had about and it played fine so I don't know what happened... ARGH. I even got out early from work so I could play it.

Today Starquest: Rescue at Rigel showed up. Disk edition. Under 10 bucks with shipping. I almost forgot I ordered it!

I just won Solo Flight. Just came in the mail: 1010 Tape Drive, River Raid Cart with manual. On its way: Temple of Apshai original version Cassette.

Thanks for the comments! I'm using the default font in Comic Life Deluxe. There is a decent PC port of it but its Mac only. And for some reason Windows 7 REALLY likes to make screenshots of games look like they were smeared in Vaseline. I sometimes use other fonts in the humor comics which I didn't link here since toys behaving badly isn't really Atari centric. Though if an installment is like the most recent one it will get posted. (Some of the folks from the secret santa site really enjoy the funny ones so I may modify my Atari project to have some of the toys playing the games and making snarky comments as opposed to it being me. Making fun of how ugly Bounty Bob's sprite is seems mean from me. From a Megatron figure who is acting like a tiny plastic Tourette's murderbot? COMEDY GOLD. Or at least bronze.) Any of you with modern OSX Leopard and later Macs should probably get Comic Life in one of its forms. Its SUCH a great little program. I still keep my aging 2005 Power PC Mac around just to run it.

Well, here is the next installment which is also part of a multipart comic strip I am doing for another site's Secret Santa thing. The first part is mostly comic book shenanigans and silliness I doubt anyone here cares about so this is just the Atari bit. WITH A VERY HANDY SUPER AWESOME MEGA STICKY TIP EVERY ATARI 8 BIT USER SHOULD KNOW. Oh yeah click pictures for larger if you need to. Part 2 of my comic! This one is 95% informative as opposed to comic book silly toy fun. Its more a part of the Let's Experience Atari bit than it is Toyniverse. If you wanted to see toys behaving badly wait till part 3.

37, Southeastern Connecticut USA. Never owned the Atari 8 bit computer line as a kid/teen but did have a 2600 I got for Christmas 84. First 8 bit Atari computer I have seen IRL was the one I bought this year.

This is something I have actually been working on for a bit. Originally I was gonna do a "Let's Play the 80s" using emulators and doing old C64 games. Then I started watching Steve Benway videos and had the urge to maybe get this computer I never had and cover it as I won't be covering something I had much knowledge of or fondness for so it can be covered far better without the tint of nostalgia and the sheer fun of something new to me. My initial Youtube videos were.. not liked very much so I deleted them and started over, ending up with these current installments: Part 1: http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2011/11/lets-play-party-like-its-1987-lets.html Part 2: http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2011/11/lets-play-party-like-its-1987-lets_19.html Part 3: http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2011/11/lets-play-party-like-its-1987-lets_30.html Part 4: http://wargamedork.blogspot.com/2011/12/lets-play-party-like-its-1987-lets.html I'm just linking to it to save on Cut and Paste. I thought it might be something folks here might enjoy seeing. A new user learning about the system and its games, and sharing that knowledge with the Internet. (Though so far I have mostly had one hardcore Amiga loving UKer insist I should be covering the ST, not caring I am a US user and want to use US systems. I wouldn't mind a 1040 STFM but the price for a good NTSC one is even higher than a Vectrex which I REALLY REALLY WANT EVEN THOUGH THEY COST SO MUCH. Common in the UK is not common in the US. Plus real users use disks.) Hopefully folks enjoy reading it! And if I was really wrong on things or you can provide help for the various issues that will come up (like my already posted issue with Combat Leader) feel free to chime in! I mostly want to stick to playing on original hardware with original legit games but I will use Altirra from time to time, mainly as the place where my original hour of video got slagged to the point I deleted it all insisted on really high quality. (So Steve Benway, whose videos that got me into the Atari 8 bits would have been flamed to hell for DARING to be a camera at a screen.) So I have had to change my plans and manner of doing all of this. (Run a capture card 15-20 feet? Yeah that's not happening either. Screenshots, FRAPS footage out of Altirra, and the odd camera shot from the Commodore monitor is how its got to be for now. Buy fancy lighting and cables and capture devices or get a copy of H.E.R.O.? I'll choose the latter!)

Project seems really cool! Its always nice to see classic games done better without any real cheating involved. Did folks just get better at programming, were tricks learned, or did THE MAN just rush things giving us more 2600 ET/Pac Man type things? Makes a good system look better.

Another thing I thought of is wondering why the XL and XEs didn't use upgraded tech from the 7800 project. If that failure to launch had been used to make the next generation of 8 bits some things might have been different. Its something that happened to the 8 bit computers in general. They never evolved while keeping compatibility. Something only PCs seem to pay any attention to whatsoever. The XEGS came out in 87. Now what other system came out in 87? The PC Engine (Turbografx 16). A system that favorably compares to even the Amiga in spite of using an 8 bit CPU. (Again custom chips make ALL the difference.) Only the Apple 2 tried this with the GS but Apple basically let it die promoting the Macintosh in spite of it being ridiculously expensive and being the start of the era where Apple thought they were just too good for games even though they ARE the killer app for a computing device. (Ok its more entertainment than games specifically. But this was pre Internet so entertainment basically meant games.) Consoles were cheap, easy to use, and way more powerful than comparably priced computers and popularity just surged with them. (Seriously. Look at what the 1983 vintage NES and the 85 vintage Sega Master System could do compared to the 8 bit computers. Multiple game buttons on controllers, excellent scrolling, fast action, animated multicolored sprites. Hell, Castlevania and Contra on the NES blow away many Amiga games of the late 80s!) There was no meaningful upgrades or evolution. You buy a box, hope its popular enough for you to use, inevitably get hosed when the next big thing shows up, give up and go buy a console that sold more than 10 times what your Atari sold, or 4-5 the C64. The 8 bit computer era started off as such a crazy disaster of multiple confusing format hell its a wonder ANY system did well anywhere! The Aquarius had a 4 month window. The Vic was what? 2 years? 3 maybe? The TI got burned hard by Commodore's selling power. Atari had the crash to deal with. The Adam was a mess out the gate and got hit like Atari did by the 83 crash. And add in the Timex Sinclairs and the Radio Shack machines. Really unless you bought a 64, Apple 2, or Atari 800 you were SOL. You wasted money on an expensive paperweight. Only the CoCo kind of weathered the storm since Radio Shack itself had some small support for it. And IBM even nearly mangled home PC ownership with the PC Jr debacle. (Even if it was the first real attempt to make PCs a HOME COMPUTER. Tandy would actually succeed with the 1000 line to some degree.)

I'm looking into some of the computer solutions as well. Ill probably end up going with a flash drive type that acts like a virtual floppy drive. The Atari and the PC are in entirely different rooms. (Been working on doing a kind of sort of Let's Play around the Atari XE. Ive gotten some flack on my video doing the record with a video camera pointed at the screen. Can't do capture device since a 15'+ long cable snaking through 2 rooms just isn't doable! I'm trying to clean up my house not reclutter it with all new stuff! ) My goal is to only use programs that are either freeware (His Dark Majesty, Yoomp!), been released as such by the creators (Miner 2049er, Bounty Bob), or ones I have legimitately purchased in a legal format. Even when emulating them. Heck, I even have a Commodore 1084 composite monitor I am playing the 130 on! (Bought it years ago for some other reason. Still works in spite of hanging out in the basement since 96.) Combat Leader itself might be one of the first RTS games, even predating the Ancient Art of War series. (And as usua; people basically attribute the genre to Herzog Zwei, since anything not well known simply can't be acknowledged. Its a shock Alone in the Dark even gets credit for what it did for the Survival Horror genre, and that's still discounting games like Project Firestart!)

This is an interesting topic. And one I personally have no biases towards. I grew up with Commodore for computers. For my family's income and the time frame it was the only really clear choice. (Christmas 87 when I got the C64.) Here in New England nobody owned Atari computers. Or Apples. It was 80% C64 for home users. Cheap and powerful overall. PCs were still stupidly expensive and gameswise inferior to a 64 (CGA anyone? Analog joysticks in a still digital stick gameplay era?), and Apple 2s were just ridiculously expensive school machines. (Apple is still ridiculously expensive for what you get. Nothing has changed outside of OSX being pretty awesome till they removed Rosetta. Hardware on the other hand not so much.) I knew ONE person who claimed to own an ST. And that was just a claim. Nobody at all with 8bits. A few people had cheapo/garage sale discovery Adams, Aquariuses, CoCos, Vic20s, and TI/99s, but the only computer most people had and stores actually supported was the 64. Now that we have my history out of the way what do I think? I just got my first Atari computer like 2 weeks ago. I kind of like it. Its cute and fun. With lots of cartridge games I don't have to much worry about disks (RIP most of my Amiga 3.5s and about a third of my DOS 3.5s) dying just being in a box like I would buying a C64 now. And its a machine I didn't have experience with so its fun to experience something I never did for a fair price. And as a collector places like Myatari and Best Electronics have gobs of games MISB so I can be happy in my collectingness. (One reason I have no real passion or effort collecting NES/SNES even though there were some awesome games. Boxes and manuals barely exist.) Plus it was primarily an NTSC system for the older stuff so no hassles there. (Not disrespecting some of the AMAZING things the Polish folks are doing with the machines these days.) I am enjoying it to the point I want an ST too just to play more advanced games as at heart I am an RPG and turn based strategy guy. Ever since Ultima 1 was purchased in early 88. From my standpoint both systems are like the "third wheel" computer of their day. The 8 bits were in third after the C64 and Apple 2, though if I had to rank them in quality it would be C64 then A8 then A2. The ST was in third in the 68000 wars but again, it should have been second. Being a somewhat niche system is no bad thing. I love the Turbografx 16 which was a VERY distant 3rd in the 16 bit console wars. I adore the Sega Saturn which was the same. Anyone tries to take my Neo Geo Pocket Color from me is going to have problems. In some cases not being the king is more FUN. Just look at modern retro discussion online. In the US its mostly worshipping Nintendo outside of the 40something set which can't let go of the 2600 in spite of it being mostly terrible. (Activision and Imagic being that machine's saviors.) UK scene is mostly Spectrum worship for reasons that still make no sense given how it was akin to the original Game Boy in being a system with almost no redeeming factors whatsoever outside of cheapness. Places like Atari Age, or a Sega forum (one that hasn't devolved into Sonic ... stuff..), or a Turbografx forum have more heart and soul to them. More passion, more enthusiasm. Less 21 year olds wearing Contra Code or "Classically Trained" shirts with an NES console on it. Honestly? I like both the Atari computer lines as someone with no nostalgia for either.

Don't have that yet. It's one of the things I am looking at getting in the future.

I just recently got into the 8 bit line and saw the game up for cheap on ebay so I grabbed it. The problem? It doesn't work, but in a weird manner. My system: 130XE with 1050 drive. The game loads and plays the intro music, but the picture of the tank is a garbled mess. Can get into mission select, but once it gets to the mission its all garbled and most of the time you can't even move the joystick. Last night I tested it out in Altirra and got the same garbled mess. Today for laughs I set up Altirra to be an A 800 and it worked fine. But the confusion remains since when rebooting the program and having it go back to XE emulation it worked fine. I would rather not hassle the ebay seller over a whopping 10 total dollars including shipping game not working if its really just not XE compatible but its not listed in any FAQs. Anyone able to confirm/deny Combat Leader being unworkable on XEs?

I didn't get my Atari 2600 till Christmas 84. It was a choice between that and a Colecovision (Im not honestly sure you could even BUY Colecos at stores by then, but this makes sense given the short tale I shall tell..), both of which I had played before. Hell, I had spent a good week/2 weeks borrowing my cousin's Coleco during the summer playing Zaxxon, Donkey Kong Jr, and Donkey Kong for HOURS! But more people had 2600s. They were popular. I didn't know there even WAS a videogame crash till around 1988-89 when I started reading VG&CE! Not to mention it was cheaper and tons of games could be had for a dollar. I wasn't as hardcore of a gamer as I would become (and kinda still am, though stuff like work, or just being depressed some days keeps me from having 3-12 hour mega gaming sessions anymore..), so I didn't even really know too much about other systems. I knew OF the Intellivision, 5200, and Vectrex, but that was the limit of my knowledge. I mean, I showed massive interest in videogames from the age of 5, but didn't get one till I was 10. My parents knew NOTHING about technology, and my father still doesn't! They also tended to ignore the obvious with me anyhow. (While understandable that they wouldn't take a 3 year old to see Star Wars, its all but CRIMINAL that they did not take me to see Empire or Jedi given how Star Wars was all but my reason for existing from 3-9 years old. ) It was easier to drop 50 bucks and another 20-40 on a bunch of random games in 84 plus buy me some He Man, GI Joe, and these newfangled Transformers I was going gaga over than it would have been earlier to buy me a 100+ dollar system. And I was an only child! So I never even knew about the crash or any of that techhie stuff back then. And it shows that Atari really didn't market it well. They should have dropped off on the 2600 by 82. And giving both systems nearly the exact same silver covers with only color to differentiate systems? BAD IDEA. When I got my Genesis for Christmas 89 a few months later the video store started renting carts for it alongside Nintendo. Now, we know how different the Nintendo NES boxes are compared to the early Genesis Videotape styled boxes. The clerks at the store kept having to make sure people understood the Genesis games did NOT work on an NES. As if the large text saying what system it was for, totally different cart style, and the entirely impossible for NES graphics weren't obvious enough. Too many products equals idiot or innocently ignorant customer confusion. (Which is probably why games these days are all so distinct on what system is what, with the system name being larger than the game title name in many cases!) Atari and quick buck game developers almost killed an industry, with a little help from the same morons who try to do the same today. MARKETING.

Howabout the early Wizardry or Ultima titles? Would require save rom, if the 5200 can do it, but it would rock out if doable. Or heck, bring over some of Chris Crawford or Dan(i) Bunten's Atari 800 games to the system. Dare I dream, but maybe other stuff like say.. ARCHON?

My 5200 will be cool once I get working controllers for it. Its been sitting in its cardboard box in the living room, mocking me for taking so long to get it all up and running. Then I remind it how its taken me nearly EIGHT YEARS to get a (possibly) working Amiga 500 system and it can wait another few weeks. Its quiet then, especially when it knows we shall play lots and lots of Gremlins, oh yes.. so much Gremliney goodness.. (Id better not mention I might go for a Vectrex though.. the 5200 may be an unthinking inanimate object, but it will still kill me should I add any further delays to getting it up and running..)

Im on the OTHER end of the state, work weekends at our lovely casinos, and this is a holiday peak period (even though I have class monday at school.. yay cold and no sleep!), which means I couldn't go even if I wanted to. Why is there no love for southeastern CT I ask you? We are where the tourists ignore all our traffic rules and next to Rhode Island (speaking of people who ignore motor vehicle laws...) yet anything geeky ignores us completely. Sigh.

I picked up a 4 port 5200 back in the winter, but didn't have much time to mess with it. The thing didn't work controller wise. Now before I spend some big bucks to buy rebuilt controllers and maybe one of those Redemption 5200 bits, I have some questions, that if answered could allow me to play lots and lots of Gremlins. Ok.. The system hooks up and cartridges go in fine and the game comes up. The trackball and the joysticks don't work. However, with the Trackball, the action buttons cause the numbers on the bottom of the Breakout screen to go purple, and on Gorf I can start a game by pushing the firebutton and the ship will even move around a little (though with almost zero control) vial the trackball. Does this mean my ports are ok, and I can begin looking into controller replacements? If so.. is it easier to get the contact ports components for the Trackball, or should I just go for a completely rebuilt one? Would I just need the pads, or should I grab the circuit bit too? For Joysticks.. I popped open one of the 2 it came with.. fixing them up seem to be a bit of a pain, and the eraser trick didnt do diddly. Am I better off buying completely refurbished sticks or spending 20 bucks for a kit and hoping I can fix it using what little electronics knowledge I haven't forgotten in the last 10-12 years? Purchasing stuff: Comments on 4Jays? Atari2600.com? Best Electronics? This is key considering its gonna cost me a pretty penny, and only Atari2600 has online ordering and not some clunky and extremely complicated way of buying the stuff. Should I get it all up and running: Outside of Gremlins, what are the must have games for the thing? I have a handful of games already, and even a copy of Berzerk still sealed. The Redemption: It seems fuzzy as to which controllers will actually allow 2 button play, which is pretty important IMHO. I have controllers for all 3 options in working order, so this is the big one. Even when I get the real sticks working, I would rather save wear & tear by using this bad boy. Thanks for the info and the time to read this. Ive been lurking on this site for a while now, but ive tended to stick to more recent classic gaming than the infamous 5200. Its just been a bit easier to get a hold of Sega Master System stuff and Ultima games.. But I started with Atari, and getting the 5200 up to snuff is an important part of my gaming archives. Besides.. The 7200 is tired of being alone next to the complete Genesis setup and a Sears branded Intellivision ( BEHOLD THE POWER OF BEIGE!) and is lonely. It needs its older brother around for moral support!