I'm glad they mentioned the TI 99/4A sidecars. I had a couple of these before getting the P-box. With all the engineers working at Texas Instruments, had none of them heard of "cables"? With a memory expansion and a floppy drive (which still needed it's own sidecar for the controller) your TI was already taking up the entire desk. And god forbid you nudge anything accidentally, and cause the whole thing to crash.
Whoa, I just saw the Picassa images and that is the EXACT famiclone that I bought, though the light gun was different. Same software on the cart as well. If you're ever at Gaisano Mall in Davao City, Philippines, you can pick one up for yourself. (They're probably available at many more dodgy retailers across Asia though)
I actually have one of these...I bought a Famiclone when in the Philippines earlier this year. It was housed in what looked like a PC keyboard (which worked) and came with a Famicom game slot in the top, two game pads, a light gun and a mouse. The included game cartridge had a few ripped off NES games as well as a BASIC compiler and a word processing program (which seems useless considering the fact there is no way to print) and some educational stuff that used the mouse. It was called the "HUG New Educational Computer 2003" and comes in a box with an attractive Asian model holding it. The actual unit is made from the cheapest, most brittle plastic imaginable, but it works.
I paid the peso equivalent of $10. I left the lightgun in the Philippines though because it was cheap plastic it looked identical to an Uzi, and I didn't want anything like that in my luggage.
I'll always remember my frustrations using the joystick on the Amiga. Here I had an advanced system that played beautiful games with some decent amount of depth, and I only get ONE button on the joystick, like I was still using a Vic-20. Inevitably that meant that the button was "fire" and you had to press up to jump. So no control while jumping, and it was easy to jump when you didn't want to. Shadow of the Beast, Blues Brothers, Zool, all games that made me give up in frustration about about 20 minutes thanks to the archaic Amiga joystick.
Parsec was great...it was a clear indicator that the TI was a good game machine, at least compared to the Atari 2600. But man, remember how horrible those TI joysticks were? They felt broken the very first time you used them. And even though they had the exact same connector as an Atari joystick, they weren't compatible.
That may be true (no constant upgrade cycle with consoles), but deciding to go console only for gaming really depends on what kind of games you prefer. Strategy games are lousy on consoles, when they exist at all. I love FPS games on the PC, but I completely suck at them on consoles, since I can't migrate from a mouse/keyboard to dual analog sticks for movement.
I think you're exaggerating a little bit there...I play newer games with my Athlon XP 2500 with a GeForce 6800 and have no problems at all. Are you just upset that you can't turn every eye candy setting up all the way?
Slashdot Mirror
Your friend is adorable.
With Unschooling you can make the claim that you're self-smarted, just like this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB0u9crejUw
I'm glad they mentioned the TI 99/4A sidecars. I had a couple of these before getting the P-box. With all the engineers working at Texas Instruments, had none of them heard of "cables"? With a memory expansion and a floppy drive (which still needed it's own sidecar for the controller) your TI was already taking up the entire desk. And god forbid you nudge anything accidentally, and cause the whole thing to crash.
Whoa, I just saw the Picassa images and that is the EXACT famiclone that I bought, though the light gun was different. Same software on the cart as well. If you're ever at Gaisano Mall in Davao City, Philippines, you can pick one up for yourself. (They're probably available at many more dodgy retailers across Asia though)
I actually have one of these...I bought a Famiclone when in the Philippines earlier this year. It was housed in what looked like a PC keyboard (which worked) and came with a Famicom game slot in the top, two game pads, a light gun and a mouse. The included game cartridge had a few ripped off NES games as well as a BASIC compiler and a word processing program (which seems useless considering the fact there is no way to print) and some educational stuff that used the mouse. It was called the "HUG New Educational Computer 2003" and comes in a box with an attractive Asian model holding it. The actual unit is made from the cheapest, most brittle plastic imaginable, but it works. I paid the peso equivalent of $10. I left the lightgun in the Philippines though because it was cheap plastic it looked identical to an Uzi, and I didn't want anything like that in my luggage.
I'll always remember my frustrations using the joystick on the Amiga. Here I had an advanced system that played beautiful games with some decent amount of depth, and I only get ONE button on the joystick, like I was still using a Vic-20. Inevitably that meant that the button was "fire" and you had to press up to jump. So no control while jumping, and it was easy to jump when you didn't want to. Shadow of the Beast, Blues Brothers, Zool, all games that made me give up in frustration about about 20 minutes thanks to the archaic Amiga joystick.
Parsec was great...it was a clear indicator that the TI was a good game machine, at least compared to the Atari 2600. But man, remember how horrible those TI joysticks were? They felt broken the very first time you used them. And even though they had the exact same connector as an Atari joystick, they weren't compatible.
Fair enough. Then I'll propose a different one: Bell Labs. Bell Labs gave us Unix and C among others. And they're based in New Jersey.
"Here's a challenge for you. Name a tech company that's based on the East Coast." IBM is based in Armonk, New York. What do I win?
That may be true (no constant upgrade cycle with consoles), but deciding to go console only for gaming really depends on what kind of games you prefer. Strategy games are lousy on consoles, when they exist at all. I love FPS games on the PC, but I completely suck at them on consoles, since I can't migrate from a mouse/keyboard to dual analog sticks for movement. I think you're exaggerating a little bit there...I play newer games with my Athlon XP 2500 with a GeForce 6800 and have no problems at all. Are you just upset that you can't turn every eye candy setting up all the way?
I am watching the internet happen, in real time!!! Thank you Screen Savers!