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Someone's been playing Mario is Missing lately. I did once long ago, but never got through much of it. Some geography stuff (like where the Transamerica building is and the like), mixed in with walking around a city and the occasional Koopa, from the little I played. Not exactly a disease-prevention game, but I think I learned a thing or three.

Considering that EA wasn't really that big a deal back in 1991, how much effect did this man really have.

Considering that EA wasn't really that big a deal back in 1991, how much effect did this man really have.

Yea it's a bit OT but with all the talk of the various controllers here's a nice page listing a lot of the sticks we used back in the day. http://www.classicgaming.com/gamingmuseum/2600p.ht ml Speaking of innovation check out the Joyboard on that page. Built for the Amiga it was a surf board type controller. The weirdest idea conceived for a video game might be the Zen meditation game. You had to stand on the Joyboard and remain as motionless as possible. If you moved you would lose. Can't imagine why that one never caught on with the kids.

It's obvious that they are going with a theme here (comics based on video games that already have a story, characters, etc, established) so I'm curious as to how good these comics actually are. I mean, it sure seems like the easy way out. Wouldn't it be much more creative to design your own characters from scratch...or is this just easy money?

Just a small note: The Silent Hill and Castlevania comics both contain (mostly) original characters and storylines. The Silent Hill comic, as far as I know, is all new, with the exception of possible cameos. The Castlevania comic covers a Belmont that was in the original Game Boy games, and thus was basically Generic Randomly Named Belmont with hardly any storyline. The Castlevania Dungeon even says:

"There's not really a whole lot to say about this Belmont, except for the fact that he's yet another one of the family that killed Dracula when he arose again."

Anybody know if there is a Pal Version of this unit..,?
Or can the US version be hacked to play PAL games..?

Still think this unit is much cooler and Nerd-y
http://www.classicgaming.com/nestable/actual_proto type.shtml/
http://www.classicgaming.com/nestable/insideout.sh tml/


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"Clutch my testes, bloody squirrel humpers!!" -Happy Noodle Boy

Anybody know if there is a Pal Version of this unit..,?
Or can the US version be hacked to play PAL games..?

Still think this unit is much cooler and Nerd-y
http://www.classicgaming.com/nestable/actual_proto type.shtml/
http://www.classicgaming.com/nestable/insideout.sh tml/


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"Clutch my testes, bloody squirrel humpers!!" -Happy Noodle Boy

I would use a Turion processor but I don't like all of those damn Metroids. Why couldn't they call it a Brinstar or a Norfair?

Simply, the game was a huge embarrassment. For example: when you fart, do you want to give someone the opportunity to bottle it up?

I played the game as a child and struggled to believe that it was fun, but only because my limited life experience told me "video game = fun." This game provided me with a harsh lesson early in life: there exist people who are willing to defile an activity that many enjoy. It was the only time I remember being relieved when my character would die, since it meant I didn't have to suffer any more.

The game designer (Warshaw) says some pretty funny stuff on the matter in this article: "What you did was design a game you could do in five weeks... and, you know... well, they didn't return all of 'em."

I'd honestly still like to play ET once more, to experience it from the perspective of an adult.

Try looking for it under the name "Quest for Glory". They had to change the name due to legal issues related to the "Hero Quest" board game. The other good thing about Sarien, is that there's a lot of fan-made games that are compatible with the same interpreter. There's a bunch of them at The Ultimate AGI & SCI Website. FYI :)

http://www.benheck.com/
-or-
http://www.classicgaming.com/vcsp/

It's not just the PSOne, though: he also has handcrafted hand-held NES, SNES, a brand new PS2, and (the source of the URL and the beginning of all of this madness) a plethora of hand-held VCS units (AKA the Atari 2600.)

This man is amazing! And if I had a few extra hundred dollars just lying around, I'd probably try and buy one of them from him.

• Archon (1983)
• M.U.L.E. (1983)
• The Seven Cities Of Gold (1984)
• Pinball Construction Set (1985)

To make the American version of Super Mario Brothers 2, Nintendo basically took a preexisting Japan-only game called Doki Doki Panic and switched some sprites around.

The Japanese Super Mario Brothers 2 was eventually released on Super Mario All-Stars for the SNES as "The Lost Levels".

The main processor is an arm60, which IS a 32bit chip. The first link I provided shows this. The second link's references to 16bit refers to the sound dsp and video coprocessors... sorry that second link wasn't more clear, this one is much more detailed.

Another Visitor! Stay a while, Stay forever!! http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/visitor.au

This wonderful mod is also covered at Classic Gaming. They have links to several consoles that have been turned into portables, including the famouse Playstation and SNES conversions.

Eh? I'm pretty sure it's not a British term. Certainly not one I've ever heard.

http://www.classicgaming.com/mailbag/mail094.shtml

..Australian maybe?

How I miss the EA of old, before EA Sports, before the dark times.

Back in the days of home computers, EA proudly called themselves a group of "electronic artists," and produced innovative titles like Hard Hat Mack, M.U.L.E., Realm of Impossibility, Archon, Battle Chess, The Bard's Tale, Modem Wars, Neuromancer, Wasteland, Project Firestart, etc. Now they're crank out sequel after sequel, and treat their talent like oxen. EA needs a wake up call.

Classic EA games
C64 EA games

Agreed, for the reasons you mention. Also, he's freakin' DARTH VADER! "Alert my star destroyer for my arrival"? Yeah right. His entire staff would be like terrified meerkats passing the alarm, constantly alerting each and every station sector whenever Vader was about to even pass by, much less arrive at his destination.

You think Patton ever said, "Alert my carrier for my arrival"? You think Genghis Khan ever said "Alert my Horde for my arrival"?

Lucas has the dialog skills of the Zero Wing translation team.

I certainly can't be the only one like this - but my home box is one I slapped together about three years ago. I bought an unopened copy of Win98SE that was floating around surplus. Likewise for Office 95, Photoshop 4, and CorelSuite (for Quattro Pro). Bought Partition Magic 7 when I wanted to put a Slackware install on there, too. All my games are legit - hell, I even registered Snood.

I'll grant that this is no more proof than any other anecdotal evidence - but here's a non-corporate-owned PC sitting in front of me with the majority of its software legit. (I say majority because, if I look, I've probably got a few old DOS abandonware pieces on here, like Sopwith.) I'd like to think that this situation is, at least among geeks, more common than not. Wishful thinking, perhaps...

The Super Metroid comics are available on the Metroid Database, and I Googled to find the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past series over at Zelda Central.

I have read articles about how the new Sony PSP is supposed to incorporate new features, support PS2-quality gameplay, watch movies, and be really cool to use. However, I look at projects like this one and wonder why Sony didn't decide to make a portable PlayStation long ago. Ben Heckendorn certainly proved the concept, and I had this thought at the time:

There's already a huge library of PS1 games. I loved playing them. Developers know how to write for them. Wouldn't it have been a great idea to create a portable game system that played PS1 games? You could have changed a few minor things to help battery life, and to keep it simple: the controller doesn't support vibration, there is no P2, the memory card is (possibly) internal, and the 640MB CD is replaced by smaller-radius media (Sony is moving to UMD for the PSP - but at the time maybe the 150MB CD would have been a good choice.) Use a screen similar to the GB, and now the low-res graphics of the PS1 look pretty good.

I'm sure Sony could have made lots of sales on this one. Developers basically get to re-release a lot of cool PlayStation games for the portable PS1. I would have gladly shelled out $30 for a re-release of many of the PS1 games I own (imagine Tomb Raider 1 & 2 using the TRC engine.)

But of course, I'm no systems designer (and it probably shows.) Maybe the 150MB limit in the smaller-radius CD would have made games impossible. Though, it seems a design like this might have made serious inroads against the GBA.

This guy has converted several different consoles into handheld units, including a PS1. My favorite is the wooden VCSp "Special edition" portable atari 2600. Very cool!

Ah, yes, old content dense games. I, perhaps would not kill, but am partial to commiting lesser atrocities for getting my hands on the MMO version of old gems like Star Control (2 of course). Which is much older, but also quite content dense single player game. One of the best games of all time ever made too. :) Hopefully the Ur-Quan Masters project will take that direction somewhere after the 1.0 release. It could grow into something as fabulous as this MMO remake of the Pirates! While there is in currently made games, and games of old that can be improved in terms of appeal for both casual and hard core gamers, there are also a lot of good ideas, that can be taken from them.

Is the first thing that comes to anyone else's mind when they see MIRV Scorched Earth? Man that was a fun game... now I'm going to have to dig it out & get it running again.

The legal status of Jumpman is somewhat different than the other Epyx titles. The rights to the game are now in the hands of its creator, Randy Glover. I'm guessing he'd make a deal with these people if one was offered.

If you'd like to play Jumpman again, check out the Jumpman Lounge at ClassicGaming. You can play faithful remakes, expanded games with editors (like Jumpman: Under Construction), or you can get my own game "Jumpman Zero" (a prequel available for Windows or Palm).

Jumpman is just as fun as you remember it...

I completely agree with the earlier comment that gameplay is most important - not the graphics.

Also, perhaps it's my age - I'm now 30 and honestly have less time to play games. I can afford the fifteen minutes needed to play Qix - but something like Final Fantasy X needs to be played in hour sittings!

The NYT article just brushes the surface. For more info on the on-line classic gaming community, check out some of these sites:
AtariAge
Retrogaming Radio
Classic gaming

Magazines:
Armchair Arcade
Classic Gamer
Manci Games
Retrogamer

Also, there are quite a few gaming conventions, most notably Philly Classic and Classic Gaming Expo.

--
jason

Many hours spent playing Oregon Trail. And there was another, Saipan? Where you sail around trading silk and opium and fighting pirates. Taught me everything I know.

Another great game in that style was 'Marble Drop' . It might not appeal to your typical video gamer (Gamespot gave it a mediocre score), but I loved it...

I'm guessing it could have a comeback, if Maxis would release it with a level-maker, and a way to share levels online.

These days, software seems to be 'games' or 'educational', without that middle ground that we used to have. (When's the last time you saw a Broderbund product on the shelf that wasn't something like 'math for 4th graders' or similar.)

And that's not to say that you have to be non-violent for educational games -- the little hunting bit from Oregon Trail had more action than most games out in its day.

The coolest thing was the credit-card sized games.

The worst things were the 2 button controllers and unimpressive power of the "8-bit" console.

It wasn't fully 16-bit! The sound and graphics chips were 16-bit, and the CPU was 8-bit. I remember getting in to the biggest argument with a kid over this at Toys R Us. Sad, in a way.

Here's another article

Now, what is a joystick, really? It's two potentiometers: one for horizontal (x-axis), and one for vertical (y-axis.) Atari 2600 joysticks aren't built like this, instead having on/off contacts only. But joysticks aren't the only controllers available for the 2600: there are also the paddles (and the keypads and the driving controller, but I digress.) And what is a Paddle? It's a potentiometer. And the Atari paddles are only available in PAIRS, which share a common connector to the 2600. This makes it possible to have four-player games like "Warlords" or "Video Olympics" by using two sets of paddles. Why did no one ever build the two potentiometers from the paddles into a single joystick? All of the necessary functionality is present on the 2600 side for analog 2D controls, so why not? (I'll grant that writing analog-control software on such a limited platform would be taxing, to say the least, but surely it's POSSIBLE.)

Heck, I've even soldered together a pair of capacitors into an adaptor-plug that lets you use PC joysticks on an Atari 5200 (using plans from the online Atari 5200 FAQ and an old Texas-Instruments calculator with the clicky keys for my keypad), surely such a project for the 2600 wouldn't be any harder?

So THERE's a challenge for the modern 2600 hacker: build a game that uses an analog joystick! (for a REAL challenge, make it two-player!) Heck, I'd even be willing to build a joystick adapter for the programmer who did it! (and gave me a ROM cart of it.) (OK, that's setting myself up, I know.)

Any takers?

It's right here

I've heard that not blinking is a sign of brain death. The game you are referring to is Radiant Silvergun. Maybe it was all the "engrish" in the game that now causes you to now mix up the title. "Be attitude for gains" my eye.

I didn't find RS too hard though. It was a great game, sure, but not that difficult. Ikaruga with it's black/white thing just frustrated me. It was an interesting concept but I just couldn't play it.

I always wanted a thing called tuna sashimi.

I don't want to be carrying a fat portable playstation if it uses disks

Yes, it's a homebrew. Yes, it's nifty. Yes, the server may fall over.

"that nifty gorilla-banana-chunking program?"

Real men play Scorched Earth: The Mother of All (Artillery) Games!

Let's go way back now, and be honest: what's the first videogame that you remember that had a plot worth remembering? I mean something that wasn't just throw-away. My answer (big surprise here) would be Final Fantasy VI.

Yeah, it's pretty hard to forget that big collapse in storytelling about halfway through.

As for me, the first videogame with a real plot that I can remember was Ninja Gaiden. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a PC game that I'm forgetting earlier than that. I guess it depends on your definition of "throw-away."

Rob

Probably get flamed as being full of shit for posting this, but oh well. In all honesty, I don't buy any games that I don't download first. I know it's illegal, I understand that. But right now I don't have enough cash to throw at every game I find interesting. I know companies always release demos of their games, but demos these days are typically so limited that they are almost worthless. Great, I've seen the best level of the 30 that you have in your game.

The end result for me will be me spending less money on games because I can't risk throwing $50 on some game that I'm going to find out really sucks. Oh well... I've been finding Scorched Earth really damn amusing lately anyways. My Death's Head will 0wn you.
The Mother of All Games

Scorched Earth 2000 (released under the GPL)

Hmmm...that could have been a followup game, I found a Miner 2049er page of the one I was talking bout. pretty fun as I recall.

CB

I think it's about time there was a re-write of StarCon2 with modern graphics, sound, and a true 3D galaxy.

Not 3D, but high resolution and open source: Star Control: TimeWarp. Looks like it's melee-only at the moment, but it seems to be pretty active.

Alternatively there's The Ur-Quan Masters, which is a more straightforward remake based on the original source code (to the 3DO version), if you just want to play the original on a modern PC.

In a new report issued this week, eight-track and Atari 2600 game sales are down. Industry leaders blame rampant piracy and MAME.

You mean Stella, Z26 and PCAE. MAME's an arcade emulator.

And while sales of actual carts are virtually nonexistant (new 2600 games typically have production runs in the dozens), companies still sell PC/PS2/GBA versions of these classics through the magic of emulation - just as music companies sell music through iTunes (but of course iTunes sales do not factor into the 7.6 percent figure - they want to show how much their business is declining).

I...seriously doubt that. I can't remember the interview itself, but the setting for Metroid was based entirely off of Aliens, and it's really hard to miss the similarities. How would you make a Metroid movie "kiddie" anyway? Give Metroids giant cartoon eyes or something?

it will generate random names like "LightningCow" or "PowerBadger".

PowerBadger? What about MushroomMushroom?

While that is somewhat true, remember: we're not necessarily talking about Half-Life 2 or anything here. I'm thinking of games more along the line of, say, Scorched Earth or something like that. After all, if you could play a spiffy-fun game written in assembler or C back in the days of the 486, then *surely* we can run a spiffy-fun game written in Java on your 2Ghz+ system, even if you burn a few cycles in the process. And there were some fun games. The one which immediately comes to mind for me is Inner Space- that game ROCKED, and it was incredibly smooth: even on my 486SX (33Mhz).

And some games, like Angband, never needed zippy-fast rendering performance.

I prefer this case mod

You point out that the patent applies only to emulation of a handheld system. Do you claim that the PSone isn't a handheld?

The greatest classic arcade in the country is in Weirs Beach, NH, known as Funspot. It contains over 170 different classic games and has been site to Twin Galaxies tournaments over the years. For a place near you, check out the classic arcade locations site.

My grandparents have a ColecoVision that they play all the time. But being a 30 year old - and generation X - it seems like a lot of us have gaming addictions.

As always - it comes down to doing things in moderation (coffee, sex, cigars, games) just don't be like the gamer in China who died after 20 straight hours online.

PC Atari (last updated 2000?) allows joysticks *and* paddles connected via the parallel port using a special circuit. The schematics are in their documentation. I've never tried it. http://www.classicgaming.com/pcae/

According to the manual: "A perfect score is 114,000 points (reached by collecting all treasures. without losing any points by falling down holes or tripping on logs)." Getting over 100k would mean very close to a perfect score - which is a tough challenge for any/all games, not just Pitfall.

One of the problems with Pitfall was that it was single player and wasn't as entertaining for spectators. Perhaps Pitfall was interesting to watch wrt the relatively decent graphics, but Tetris (in the right hands) is an example of a simple single player being somewhat spectator-friendly. One of my friends is an expert at it and scares the hell out of everyone watching. The difficulty level will plateau at some point (I think level 20) so he can continue forever. Seeing level 60 isn't as disturbing as witnessing the constant flawless placements. He also manages to blink his eyes!

I recently told him that he's "faster than the Matrix". Funny thing about that - we also called him "Neo" years before the movie was a concept. Whatever, I seemed to be rambling now - a bit sleep deprived today.