5200 and the arcade experience

[zzip]

17 hours ago, christo930 said:

I've often wondered this too.  I have a boxed 5200 and the box is comically large.  It probably doubled shipping costs.  And of course, the plastic and the molds are probably significantly more expensive to make. It was probably more than twice as expensive as building a system 1/2 the size. IOW, the cost might not go up linearly.

It's probably not linear, but I'm sure it's significant.   Maybe they could have at least gotten the retail cost under $200 and sold a lot more?  

Plus retailers care very much about their shelf space, they aren't going to want to carry something in a box that large if it isn't selling well.

 

17 hours ago, christo930 said:

There were limitations they probably could not have gotten around.  I don't think Donkey Kong and Zaxxon are suffering as much from the hardware as they were rushed ports. Just look at the Donkey Kong release for Intellivision.  Though, interestingly enough, there really isn't anything all that much better even in modern homebrews, of which there are 2 I believe.

Everyone thought Donkey Kong 2600 was a rush job, but Garry Kitchen swears this wasn't the case.   If you look closely there are signs of effort-  Mario does look like Mario, even if it looks like he's wearing pajamas.   I think little things like making the colors more arcade like, as well as some of the sound effects could have improved the perception of the port.

 

Yeah, this is one game the where the homebrewers haven't really outdone the original,  the best effort resorts to annoying screen flicker and flattened platforms.   It's probably just a tough game to do justice on the 2600.

 

I don't know what the excuse for Intellivision Donkey Kong was-  I think that port is even worse.

 

For Zaxxon-   back then nobody could do isometric games justice on the 2600.   Congo Bongo looks terrible,   Crystal Castles also looks way different from the arcade.    From what I understand, it was much easier to work with a symmetric playfield, which is why the viewing angles of Zaxxon and Crystal Castles got changed.

 

18 hours ago, christo930 said:

I know Pitfall II came out later, but there is no reason Atari couldn't have thought up a version themselves. Had Atari been innovative, they probably would have.   Had they not frustrated Crane and others, they might have retained that talent.  On the one hand they were worried about poaching, but on the other they were treating them as bad as they could.  When you have employees printing money for you, you do everything you can to keep them happy.  All they wanted was recognition and a percentage of the money they were printing for Atari. Giving them a cut of the money is a major motivator to put out the best games they possibly can.  Putting their name on the box or in the manual would also be motivational.

There was definitely a brain drain at Atari.    They lost Jay Miner,  David Crane and the Activision guys.   I think Imagic was also formed by ex-Atari employees.

I think the GCC situation shows how bad things got internally.   Atari started out suing them for producing an unauthorized hack,  but they were so desperate for developers they told GCC "we'll drop the suit if you develop games for us",  which they did-  they produced arcade titles, 5200 and 2600 carts, and of course created the 7800 and brought it to Atari.   GCC was kind of Atari's unofficial R&D department and seemed to be doing more competent work that whatever was left of the real R&D department.

 

by the mid-80s you started seeing Atari give recognition to the developers.   I remember the Marble Madness ads featuring Mark Cerny front and center, for instance.

 

18 hours ago, christo930 said:

But could the hardware inside the Atari support such a thing?  I don't know enough about how the genesis one works. It can't be working the same way because there are more buttons than pins.  4 for each direction, 6 more for the 6 buttons, 1 more for the start plus ground.

The one button really hampered these sticks.  Even the Amiga and ST got stuck with 1 button.

I don't really know a whole lot about how the joystick port protocol works.   In the 70s it seems like the easiest thing to do would be 1 pin = 1 button,    but since two pins are for power,  that leaves 7 pins.    So that should be enough for a joystick with 3 buttons.     Of course you could bitmap the buttons, and support 7 buttons with 3 pins as long as you don't expect to register more than one button push simultaneously,  or use some kind of event system "Button One Down event",  "Button One Up event"-  (events were probably beyond 70s consumer tech).    But the joystick ports did support 12-button keypads, mice, dual paddles with buttons

 

I suspect the reason the 1-button joystick never got more buttons is it had become legacy with so many of them out there, used by so many systems (and not just Atari systems), that even if you produced a joystick with more buttons, developers would stick with the one-button design to ensure greater audience.

 

[christo930]

16 hours ago, Keatah said:

And today there's youtuberz bragging and boasting about having hundreds of systems and tens of thousands of cartridges in a dedicated house extension

Back when I was still on Twitter I noticed how sick the retrogaming scene was.  People dedicating a whole room, in an apartment no less, dedicated to reproducing a 90s Walmart electronics dept complete with store displays.  This is not collecting, it's a sickness. It is ill adjusted people putting their antisocial dysfunction on display for everyone to see.   Nobody ever pushed back on it either. Lots of positive feedback and thumbs up for it..  Nobody ever said "really?"   I like retrogames as much as the next person and have been doing it a long time and I would not dream of doing such a thing.  There are constant articles in the mainstream press about the rise of mental illness in the last 20-30 years and this is a perfect example. It might not be schizophrenia, but it is definitely a sign of a damaged man.  The displays always struck me as a shrine to consumerism.  It's bugman central.

 

16 hours ago, Keatah said:

And when I came across a game that didn't work I was done and done with it. Somehow it left a bad taste with me and I simply didn't bother anymore.

Were there incompatible games?  AFAIK, the Colecovision Atari Module is basically a circuit for circuit copy of the 2600  that gets power off of the Colecovision MB and dumps the video signal onto the MB.

 

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

There was a time that marketing departments and shitbox startups believed that the word "videogame" could sell anything. Hence the crap spinoffs. Hence the garbage games that diluted the industry. I kinda got flustered that this was happening. In combination with my completist mindset, these meaningless fluff games were a drag on my psyche. And soon I was just going through the motions.

This has haunted the industry since the early days and has never let up.  The "no returns" policy just makes it even worse.  They shoverware creators know once the sale is made, it can't be unwound.  I did tech support to the general public after graduating college and the software I supported had big bold "features" listed on the box that were not implemented or were so buggy that they couldn't be used.  When people called to find out what was up, we just told them to take it back to the retailer who refused to accept it because we would never have honored it.

[zzip]

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

I paid $24.95 + tax for my first CD from Precision Video. A cool store dug into this embankment off of Roselle Road, which later became Myoda Computers. A time when they were packaged in those lengthy plastic anti-theft plastic cage things.

That seems a bit on the extreme side.   I remember paying $17-19.99 for CDs for the most part.   And it was always the decision of "do I want CD for the sound, or Cassette to save money and listen in the car?"   Cassette usually won out until I put an in-dash CD player in my car and I don't think I bought any cassettes after that.    CD prices stayed high until around 2000 I think, when the pressure from Napster forced their hand.

 

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

You can't really put a time schedule on creativity. Well you can, but then you end up with shit like 2600 Pac-Man and E.T. Marketing departments aren't the brightest brains in the barrel, then or now.

It's a balancing act-  too aggressive a time schedule and you get rush jobs.    Not enough time pressure and you get fiascos like "Duke Nukem Forever" and "Star Citizen" that stay in development hell for over a decade.

 

17 hours ago, Keatah said:

I confidently believe that the ridiculous size of the 5200 and its box were the result of marketing. They likely wanted to overshadow and outsize everything else. After all, it was the SuperSystem!

The video interviews of Atari insiders in the "Atari 50" release say that's exactly what happened.   Hubris

[zzip]

58 minutes ago, christo930 said:

This has haunted the industry since the early days and has never let up.  The "no returns" policy just makes it even worse.  They shoverware creators know once the sale is made, it can't be unwound.  I did tech support to the general public after graduating college and the software I supported had big bold "features" listed on the box that were not implemented or were so buggy that they couldn't be used.  When people called to find out what was up, we just told them to take it back to the retailer who refused to accept it because we would never have honored it.

We figured out the loophole for that, at least with Electronics Boutique.    Their policy was "no returns for open items, only exchange for same title"

 

My friend bought a PC game for his Tandy 1000.  Didn't work.   Exchanged for another copy, still didn't work,   He was pretty angry.  I suggested "why don't you exchange for a new copy, then go back and exchange the unopened copy for a different game".      It worked!  

[Keatah]

25 minutes ago, christo930 said:

Back when I was still on Twitter I noticed how sick the retrogaming scene was.  People dedicating a whole room, in an apartment no less, dedicated to reproducing a 90s Walmart electronics dept complete with store displays.  This is not collecting, it's a sickness. It is ill adjusted people putting their antisocial dysfunction on display for everyone to see.   Nobody ever pushed back on it either. Lots of positive feedback and thumbs up for it..  Nobody ever said "really?"   I like retrogames as much as the next person and have been doing it a long time and I would not dream of doing such a thing.  There are constant articles in the mainstream press about the rise of mental illness in the last 20-30 years and this is a perfect example. It might not be schizophrenia, but it is definitely a sign of a damaged man.  The displays always struck me as a shrine to consumerism.  It's bugman central.

A sickness indeed. I like retrogames as much as the next, but I don't go recreating a 90's electronic's department - nothing could be more shallow. And once the camera is turned off it's pretty much a burden. Does nothing but consumes space.

 

Over the years I've always struggled with what denotes a collection vs a hoard. At present my A2 stuff is a hoard. And feeble attempts at downsizing haven't helped all that much. But at least I don't have any kiosks or 70's computer displays going!

 

It's why I tend to preach about just having 1-4 systems at most. Control the sprawl and mess. Allow for time to enjoy a system in-depth. Keep it all manageable. And so on.

25 minutes ago, christo930 said:

Were there incompatible games?  AFAIK, the Colecovision Atari Module is basically a circuit for circuit copy of the 2600  that gets power off of the Colecovision MB and dumps the video signal onto the MB.

I remember a few cartridges not fitting in the module's slot correctly. And I seem to recall a few that did fit but didn't work. It's been so long ago of course. The few that didn't work were not original Atari-made carts.

 

Possible the carts could have been faulty or marginal in some way too. So long ago.

[Keatah]

43 minutes ago, zzip said:

My friend bought a PC game for his Tandy 1000.  Didn't work.   Exchanged for another copy, still didn't work,   He was pretty angry.  I suggested "why don't you exchange for a new copy, then go back and exchange the unopened copy for a different game".      It worked! 

We discovered the same method. And it worked for a long time - til they started opening the new item given us.

[zzip]

13 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Over the years I've always struggled with what denotes a collection vs a hoard. At present my A2 stuff is a hoard. And feeble attempts at downsizing haven't helped all that much. But at least I don't have any kiosks or 70's computer displays going!

It's not that hard, if you can't walk into a room without stepping on a cartridge, it's a hoard.   If everything is nice and organized it's a collection.

If you have to get rid of things like your fridge, toilet or your wife to make room for your collection, then it's a hoarde.   If you can no longer park your car in the garage, it's a hoarde.

 

17 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I remember a few cartridges not fitting in the module's slot correctly. And I seem to recall a few that did fit but didn't work. It's been so long ago of course. The few that didn't work were not original Atari-made carts.

 

Possible the carts could have been faulty or marginal in some way too. So long ago.

Since every publisher had their own cart design, this was bound to happen.   I believe even the 7800 has a problem with certain 2600 carts.

 

13 minutes ago, Keatah said:

We discovered the same method. And it worked for a long time - til they started opening the new item given us.

I never encountered that at EB.   Since in those days PC clones were not always 100% compatible we felt completely justified returning an open box.   But I'm sure enough people abused the loophole that they closed it.

 

Gamestop on the other hand--    selling brand new games in open boxes and pulling a disc from under the counter when you bought it and slapping it in the case--   at that point what exactly distinguishes a new game from a used one?

[Keatah]

  

19 hours ago, Keatah said:

I paid $24.95 + tax for my first CD from Precision Video.

1 hour ago, zzip said:

That seems a bit on the extreme side.   I remember paying $17-19.99 for CDs for the most part.

Well I don't know. I didn't think so because this was when the discs were so new the market had only like 2
CD players going. One from Philips, the other from Sony. So new that I would frequent the store weekly asking if the discs came in yet. New enough they had banners and fanfare touting the newfangled technology. Music by the light fantastic.

 

1 hour ago, zzip said:

   And it was always the decision of "do I want CD for the sound, or Cassette to save money and listen in the car?"   Cassette usually won out until I put an in-dash CD player in my car and I don't think I bought any cassettes after that.    CD prices stayed high until around 2000 I think, when the pressure from Napster forced their hand.

I had the same conundrum till I got a CD player in the car. It was aftermarket. And just like I went overboard in the dotcom era with overclocking and chasing graphics card, I spent tons of time learning about the supposed superiority of aftermarket stereo systems. All the terminology. All the amps, the head units, equalizers, crossovers, filter surge capacitors, speakers, amplifiers, wiring. Spent days "designing and integrating" it into my new ride. All on a budget of less than $1,000. It turned out pretty good and worked really really well for the time I had it. It was no rap or dub setup, but I wasn't going for that. Those are dumb anyways. Eventually the laser burned out (they all do I guess). Had to slap the side of the center console to get it to read at first, then graduated to having to wait for it to warm up, then it stopped working entirely. Spent hours partly taking it apart and playing with all those little pots at 1am in the parking lot of my low-rent apartment, on a work night no less. I had a complete electronic's lab of tools and test equipment going in the back seat. It was all-consuming and nothing else in the world existed. I gave up. Eventually I replaced the head unit with another used one of the same make. It worked a little longer but died same way too. I was getting rid of the car soon anyway. Thankfully this was a one-off thing. I never got caught up in that hobby ever again. But it was fun at the time. I was living in the future! I was THE FUTURE!

 

But back to the price of CD's. I rarely paid more than the "standard" $17.99 for most discs. Nowadays I won't spend more than $10-$12. And yes I still buy them. I DO NOT do streaming or XM or any paid-for services. Thay claim convenience and instant availability all the time. But I found otherwise.

 

You get the most convenience and availability by having the source right at your home! Rip to whatever devices you want to playback on. Simple.

[zzip]

13 minutes ago, Keatah said:

But back to the price of CD's. I rarely paid more than the "standard" $17.99 for most discs. Nowadays I won't spend more than $10-$12. And yes I still buy them. I DO NOT do streaming or XM or any paid-for services. Thay claim convenience and instant availability all the time. But I found otherwise.

Streaming doesn't work for me.   I've been collecting music since the 80s,  I own hundreds of albums by now.  I'm supposed to pay you $10 a month to listen to my music collection in a lower quality?  And waste mobile data on the road doing so??     I think not!   

[Goochman]

I ripped all my CDs from the 80's/90's/2000's onto my PC and eventually into iTunes.  Ive got my whole Library on my iPhone so can listen when/wherever I want.

 

No need to pay for streaming services.

[zzip]

21 hours ago, Keatah said:

I had the same conundrum till I got a CD player in the car. It was aftermarket. And just like I went overboard in the dotcom era with overclocking and chasing graphics card, I spent tons of time learning about the supposed superiority of aftermarket stereo systems. All the terminology. All the amps, the head units, equalizers, crossovers, filter surge capacitors, speakers, amplifiers, wiring. Spent days "designing and integrating" it into my new ride. All on a budget of less than $1,000. It turned out pretty good and worked really really well for the time I had it.

I've always opted for aftermarket simply because the default options in cars usually didn't sound good and lacked features.    (unless you opt for the overpriced "premium sound" package).

 

But I've never really got into the scene of installing amps, bass kicker boxes or any of that.   I just need it to sound good to my ears,  I don't care about impressing anyone else.    I might replace the speakers in the car.  (the default speakers are often paper thin, it's ridiculous!), but that's about it

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

I've always opted for aftermarket simply because the default options in cars usually didn't sound good and lacked features.    (unless you opt for the overpriced "premium sound" package).

 

But I've never really got into the scene of installing amps, bass kicker boxes or any of that.   I just need it to sound good to my ears,  I don't care about impressing anyone else.    I might replace the speakers in the car.  (the default speakers are often paper thin, it's ridiculous!), but that's about it

I wasn't going for loudness, though I was impressed with the 20x20 and 50x50 watt setup I ended up with. I quickly learned that power could be spread across the spectrum wherever and whenever resulting in great separation and clarity. I didn't care about special features. It was all about getting CD audio into the car. And partly being instructed by a pulp publication that said that's how things are supposed to be and everyone is to do that exercise. If you don't you're a nobody. Or like blindly following a scene looking for identity.

 

But yes the stock speakers just sucked with their honest-to-gods wimpy magnets. A voicecoil diameter of 1/2 inch. Those simply had to go. Bass had no definition, no shape. Well, the shape was all warbled and changed with every beat.

 

I would later pay BestBuy $1200 for them to do a similar setup in my next car. I had outgrown the sport of twisting and contorting to get wires going where they needed to go. It was fine and the results were similar. But I'll clearly tell you all this. The ergonomics of new later model head units were horrible. Menus within menus, way way too much scrolling, drilling down. Everything over nested. 1 button doing 6 functions depending on how long you held it down or where in the maze of menu options you were. 1" blue OLED display, because blue was popular then. The styling was childish cheap Kraco shit like you'd buy in a department store. Most definitely done by a new design-school grad. Freshly infected with 90's pre-touchscreen SiliconValley bling that would be at home in the movie Soul Plane. And both (new and old) headunits were made by Pioneer. Gasp!

 

The new unit was full of pointless tedious features that seemed put there to appease the advertisers, to allow them to make a long list of features. The marketers seemed to wreck the end product by making it rather busy-busy for sake of that paper feature list. Contrast it against my first head unit where every function had its own discrete individual button that clearly did its job. Some may have been doubled-up, but those were lesser used features, like programming a station or setting a volume limit. By and large it was easy to operate compared to the shit they started selling post-dotcom.

 

Well at least that's one "hobby" I never got involved with for the long term.. Now when we buy cars we'll just say gimme the premium setup and it usually sounds fine. Certainly a far cry from my first 1975 ride that had a two speaker (front/back) AM-only radio!

[Keatah]

5 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I don't care about impressing anyone else.

I kinda wanted to impress others. Or maybe not entirely. Not sure. But it was just like youtuberz flaunting a wall of 10,000 videogames. How many of those 10,000 games do they enjoy on a daily basis.

[christo930]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

I've always opted for aftermarket simply because the default options in cars usually didn't sound good and lacked features.    (unless you opt for the overpriced "premium sound" package).

That really started to change in the early 90s.  When I first started driving I drove late 70s to early 80s cars and the stock stereos were never any good.  This was in the late 80s.  But by the time I was out of college and earning the money to buy newer cars, the stereos they came with were usually good enough, or, if anything, just changing the head unit was good enough for me at least.

 

32 minutes ago, Keatah said:

wasn't going for loudness, though I was impressed with the 20x20 and 50x50 watt setup I ended up with. I quickly learned that power could be spread across the spectrum wherever and whenever resulting in great separation and clarity.

I learned a long time ago to take manufacturers "specifications," especially with power, with a VERY large grain of salt, probably an entire salt shaker.   They all lie about it, even home stereos.  There is really no relationship between the claims on the box and what it can actually do.  The numbers are just made up whole cloth.

Really, how much power do you need for a car unless you want to look like a degenerate banging through the neighborhood with your 2000 dollar stereo in your 1000 dollar jalopy.

 

39 minutes ago, Keatah said:

I would later pay BestBuy $1200 for them to do a similar setup in my next car. I had outgrown the sport of twisting and contorting to get wires going where they needed to go

 

I would never under any circumstances allow a best buy tech to touch my car's wiring.  Their hiring standards are unreal as is their pay.  None of them have electronics training or any training at all.  If they burn your car to the ground, good luck trying to get their "insurance" to pay your claim.  They'll blame the equipment and the equipment manufacturer will state their warranty is for their product only and will not cover "incidental" damage.

[zzip]

35 minutes ago, Keatah said:

But I'll clearly tell you all this. The ergonomics of new later model head units were horrible. Menus within menus, way way too much scrolling, drilling down. Everything over nested. 1 button doing 6 functions depending on how long you held it down or where in the maze of menu options you were. 1" blue OLED display, because blue was popular then. The styling was childish cheap Kraco shit like you'd buy in a department store. Most definitely done by a new design-school grad. Freshly infected with 90's pre-touchscreen SiliconValley bling that would be at home in the movie Soul Plane. And both (new and old) headunits were made by Pioneer. Gasp!

 

Yeah it's one reason I upgraded to a touchscreen unit: navigation.   I have large flashdrives full of music, and navigating them on non-touchscreen units wasn't fun.   But the tech on these things seems to be 5 years or more behind where they should be.  The touchscreen isn't as responsive as you'd expect so scrolling through folders of music isn't always smooth, and yeah there's useless features they make a big deal about but are useless (DJ mode???)  and other features are half-baked.   Like it's great that I can set wallpapers and color-schemes,  but why must the wallpaper not only be in JPEG format but be so sensitive that only certain apps can create the right kind of JPEG for its liking?     Why are there only 4 color schemes to choose from?

 

56 minutes ago, Keatah said:

The new unit was full of pointless tedious features that seemed put there to appease the advertisers, to allow them to make a long list of features. The marketers seemed to wreck the end product by making it rather busy-busy for sake of that paper feature list. Contrast it against my first head unit where every function had its own discrete individual button that clearly did its job. Some may have been doubled-up, but those were lesser used features, like programming a station or setting a volume limit. By and large it was easy to operate compared to the shit they started selling post-dotcom.

Yeah lots of pointless features,  but some of the important features I care about aren't mentioned, maybe buried in Appendix A of the manual if mentioned at all. 

[zzip]

12 minutes ago, christo930 said:

That really started to change in the early 90s.  When I first started driving I drove late 70s to early 80s cars and the stock stereos were never any good.  This was in the late 80s.  But by the time I was out of college and earning the money to buy newer cars, the stereos they came with were usually good enough, or, if anything, just changing the head unit was good enough for me at least.

 

I suppose..    At least my last car came with CD player!   But many cars still have a "premium sound package" option,  I'd rather not spend an extra thousand dollars financed over serveral years when I can just dump a few hundred into an aftermarket instead.   I'm too cheap frugal for that!

[Keatah]

I definitely positively absolutely let pulp magazines influence me way too much in 90's and dotcom era. They created worlds (which didn't exist in real life) in my head. And trying to act them out was a big money and time sink to no one's benefit except to the advertisers and publication houses. Stupidly gullible I was I guess.

 

It's funny, and confusing to me at the same time - because I didn't have that problem early on with reading EGM and VideoGames and Joystick, or even CiderPress or A+ or PC MAgazine. I read those with intent of learning about new products, or garnering tips & tricks, or learning a game strategy or evaluating a product review kinda thing. Not to mention getting insight on a new technology.

 

Somehow shit in the 90's was different - letting pulp publications guide your lifestyle is not a Pro-Tip.

 

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

That really started to change in the early 90s.  When I first started driving I drove late 70s to early 80s cars and the stock stereos were never any good.  This was in the late 80s.  But by the time I was out of college and earning the money to buy newer cars, the stereos they came with were usually good enough, or, if anything, just changing the head unit was good enough for me at least.

Thankfully I only "mutilated" two cars.

 

This day and age I would never ever ever modify a car's electronics. Not out of fear of blowing something up, but just because, DUMB and timewasting. Most I'll do is use things plug into USB connectors and use a bit of tape or rubberband to secure something temporarily till I get bored of it - like in a week.

 

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

I learned a long time ago to take manufacturers "specifications," especially with power, with a VERY large grain of salt, probably an entire salt shaker.   They all lie about it, even home stereos.  There is really no relationship between the claims on the box and what it can actually do.  The numbers are just made up whole cloth.

I made out pretty good by following the true-RMS spec. That and the looks and heft of the amplifier. How much aluminum was it made out of. How were the parts arranged inside - artfully? Or just crammed in? Were they quality parts of a sizeable size? Were the stages in modules or sections?

 

And, really, anything over a certain power amount, arbitrarily guessing 50w or 100w is more than enough for good reproduction. As long as it isn't an underdash Spark-O-Matic Golden Prizm SuperPOWER 500W amplifier equalizer crossover tri-combo. The ones with a faux gold faceplate and sized like a 5200 cartridge. The stuff Wal-Mart and autoparts stores sell.

 

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

Really, how much power do you need for a car unless you want to look like a degenerate banging through the neighborhood with your 2000 dollar stereo in your 1000 dollar jalopy.

You probably need a LOT of power, thousands of watts be my guess. To overcome that leaky exhaust system noise. To overcome the grinding of the suspension scraping it's sagging ass along a pothole 1cm deep.

 

It's hilarious sometimes however. About 20 or so miles down the turnpike there's this apartment complex from which the most ridiculous automotive mutations leak out. Ricers everywhere with wood spoilers on all 4 sides. Stanced cars with tires scraping the bodywork till rust happens. Like with those stretched tires. Another one was a lifted 86' Cutlass or something. Hydraulics everywhere. The front can easily be 3 meters higher than the back. And canted at an angle so extreme the driver had to put in an underscope. This gaudy pink and blue penis-like protrusion that popped out of the undercarriage. The opposite of a periscope. To see where he was going. And they all just parade up and down their own little boulevard day in and day out it seems.

 

For a while I thought that that "lifestyle" was the epitome of being a young man. An aspirational yuppie moving up in the great big world.

 

1 hour ago, christo930 said:

I would never under any circumstances allow a best buy tech to touch my car's wiring.  Their hiring standards are unreal as is their pay.  None of them have electronics training or any training at all.  If they burn your car to the ground, good luck trying to get their "insurance" to pay your claim.  They'll blame the equipment and the equipment manufacturer will state their warranty is for their product only and will not cover "incidental" damage.

Nowadays, yes. Back then I seemed to have lucked out as I didn't have any issue. And I didn't know any better. The install I had them do was simple however. I was getting too fat to roll my ass around and contort into the small spaces anyways. So I didn't have much choice. Besides, it was all beneath me, growing up now! Not playing with immature stuff. Feeling like a million bucks dropping off my "almost-jalopy" at the shop while the world milled around in it's own mediocrity.

Edited April 5, 2023 by Keatah

[+x=usr(1536)]

3 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Another one was a lifted 86' Cutlass or something. Hydraulics everywhere. The front can easily be 3 meters higher than the back. And canted at an angle so extreme the driver had to put in an underscope. This gaudy pink and blue penis-like protrusion that popped out of the undercarriage. The opposite of a periscope. To see where he was going.

Please share photographs of this abomination if at all possible.  From your description alone, it needs to be publically-aired.

[Keatah]

5 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Please share photographs of this abomination if at all possible.  From your description alone, it needs to be publically-aired.

Sure next time I pass by there maybe can get something. It's like one of those jumping cars with the tiny 300 PSI tires. Whatever they call them these days.

[zzip]

18 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

18 hours ago, Keatah said:

Another one was a lifted 86' Cutlass or something. Hydraulics everywhere. The front can easily be 3 meters higher than the back. And canted at an angle so extreme the driver had to put in an underscope. This gaudy pink and blue penis-like protrusion that popped out of the undercarriage. The opposite of a periscope. To see where he was going.

Please share photographs of this abomination if at all possible.  From your description alone, it needs to be publically-aired.

The description sounds like something you'd see characters driving in a Dr. Seuss book 

 

 

[ledzep]

On 4/5/2023 at 1:29 PM, zzip said:

I suppose..    At least my last car came with CD player!   But many cars still have a "premium sound package" option,  I'd rather not spend an extra thousand dollars financed over serveral years when I can just dump a few hundred into an aftermarket instead.   I'm too cheap frugal for that!

 

Well, do what I did.  I found at the local Pick-Your-Part the bezel for the center section of my dash (holds the stereo & climate controls) from a Thunderbird that had the rarer "Premium Sound".  So now my car has that little label on it (my bezel was cracked and simply said "Stereo" instead).  Of course my Kenwood set-up with Pioneer 6x8 3-ways + trunk subwoofer is far better than whatever Ford offered in '97 (the year of the donor car).  But now it's "official" because it says so on the dash!  Sounds premium, I can tell you that.

[phuzaxeman]

On 4/3/2023 at 2:33 PM, christo930 said:

[sorry about breaking up my reply into 2 posts. It was an accident]

 

We're talking about a different timeline where Atari is not a shell of its former self, is a well known brand name associated with games and is a successful arcade game maker,  

 

 

Is not a shell of its former self? In some cities, the 7800 released in 1984.  The 7800 was stopped in 92.  That's 8 years in existence with only 59 official titles released, a poor sound chip, and about only 3 million units sold. 

 

Atari was already a different company in the late 80s. 

[phuzaxeman]

On 4/3/2023 at 10:10 AM, christo930 said:

This is why I said "in some ways" and not "is a better machine"  Overall, it's inferior.

I take issue with you saying there isn't a game on bally that is near arcade quality. The Incredible Wizard is an example.

Like what I mentioned before, I grew up on the Astrocade.  And I had fun playing games IW, Astro Battle, and Galactic Invasion.  But if you want to talk about a limited console, Astrocade in 82 was very limited not to mention there was hardly enough games. IW was definitely one of the best games on the console. 

[BIGHMW]

Although my Flashback 9 has been getting the brunt of attention of my gaming, in which has been greatly reduced due to lack of motivation, I'd still prefer the 5200 over even it or the 2600. And as for any controller issues, those have already been settled long ago, with both Redemption 5200 and also with Retro Game Boyz with their amazing work, and of course, the legendary CX53 trak-ball. And for paddle usage, well my ProPaddle 2 controllers settle that problem, now, all we need are some more games, although we have almost 500 options when it comes to that, but there are about 6-8 more titles I'd love to see converted over from the A8, but even if they don't I'm still fine. Between that and my ColecoVision I'm all good, the other consoles (7800 and XEGS) I have are only merely for reviewing games for bringing back The Atari Report.  

[christo930]

On 4/7/2023 at 5:54 PM, phuzaxeman said:

Is not a shell of its former self? In some cities, the 7800 released in 1984.  The 7800 was stopped in 92.  That's 8 years in existence with only 59 official titles released, a poor sound chip, and about only 3 million units sold. 

 

Atari was already a different company in the late 80s. 

Yes, in the real timeline, Atari is a shell of what it was in 1981 or 1982.  By the time of the 1984 test release, Atari was already a shell of its former self.  In an entirely different timeline when Atari didn't collapse, things would probably be a lot different.