I just wanted to drop in and let you all know that I love Dolphin on the 2600. That is all, thank you for your time.

Yeah, Dolphin is a pretty fun game. I should play it some more.

Dolphin is great. Activision is great.

I posted in another thread that Dolphin reminded me of the Volkmire's inferno and Clinger Winger levels of Battletoads with seahorses instead of laser gates and a squid instead of the hypno orb.

Never thought of it before, but I can see that comparison.

Pac-Man is a good game! It has gotten a bum rap over the years. I will be the first to admit that Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man are technically superior and more accurate to the arcade. But for some reason, the original Pac-Man is the one I keep feeling myself drawn back to. I think its because it feels the most Atariest of all the Pac-Man games. To me it embodies the 2600. It was also one of the dozen Atari games I had as a kid, so there's also the nostalgia factor.
I love the sounds: bah-dee-dah-dee... bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk
I love how the manual retconned the line shaped dots and rectangular bonus items to be "video wafers" and "Vitamins", and how it paints a picture of you showing up at your arcade like a rockstar blowing everyone away with your skills, thanks to your newfound secret ability to practice at home.
I love how Todd Frye did his own thing with remaking colors and layout of the maze. If people want to play the arcade version, there are a million different ports nowadays and none of them really do much to distinguish themselves from one another. But the Atari version is very memorable and interesting because of its uniqueness. He was not overly concerned with making it identical since he knew he was going to have make some concessions to accommodate the system constraints. I think he was very successful in capturing the "feel" of the gameplay, and created a game that was iconic in its own way, based on an already iconic game.
The game offers a lot of challenge. The ghosts are very sneaky. I understand what their AI is doing, but there is just enough randomness that I still find myself getting trapped by them when I try to get too greedy.
A lot of people think the goal of pac-man is to clear the board. Its not... its to eat all 4 ghosts on one power pellet. You get 4 tries per board, and clearing the maze is just a way to reset the board.
Eating all 4 ghosts will net you 300 points, versus the paltry 128 you get from eating all dots... er... wafers

I didn't know that about the eating ghosts. I was never a big fan of Pac-Man. Since going back to Atari I've tried it, Jr, and Ms Pac Man. I liked the latter 2 more than the original port but they're still not something I go to often. My daughter might enjoy it so maybe we'll give it a go the next time we sit down and play games. She really likes Sir Lancelot.

Guys... I bought a new tablet a few weeks ago. This weekend I put RetroArch on it along with the 2600 library. It's so much fun breaking that out on breaks at work to help with the monotony. I've been playing more and more Atari again. I'm beginning to think I may like the 2600 more than I like NES.

Oh! And now that I've got that emulator on my tablet I can finally start playing 5200 games.  

https://kotaku.com/at-long-last-t...

I think I need to get a Jaguar now

M Network is now also complete.  Pretty easy publisher to get complete, no games really that expensive.

M Network released some pretty cool games. Can't say I'm a fan of the carts they used, though.

River Raid II is really cool. Such an ambitious game. Its got a take off and landing sequence like in top gun, altitude and fuel bars, torpedoes for ground/sea attacks and missiles for air attacks. So much going on! (almost too much!) You definitely need to read the manual before you attempt or you will probably crash immediately on take off.

That's one I definitely need to add to my collection. River Raid was a lot of fun. I think I'm going to focus on finishing 7800 first, though. Unless I run across cheap 2600 lots. After that, I'm probably buying up all the 5200 games so Bert can't have them.

Also reminds me... My jacket isn't SFW (burning churches and nudity and all that) so I picked up a decently warm hoodie that could be worn in warmer weather. Started throwing patches on it... And the majority are Atari related. I'll have to post a pic of it once I get a decent amount.

Picked up a copy of Piece O' Cake recently to finish off my Vidtec/US Games collection.  First off the Vidtec games and then the US Games.  The US Games picture does not have all of my cartidge variations, but I still need the beveled/handle versions of Eggomania and M.A.D. and the standard version of Raft Rider if it exists.

I definitely agree.  It's a very ambitious game, and one of the greatest Atari games, in my opinion.
 

I picked up one of those portable Flashbacks on clearance today at Wal-Mart. A lot smaller than I was expecting... tiny thing in such a big box. It's pretty cool, though. I'm going to have to load up the entire library on an sd card.

I've asked this before somewhere but it's 2600 capable only right? And certain games don't work? I was thinking paddle games were what didn't work but it's got Kaboom so that's not it.

It's emulation, so it's limited to whatever emulators are on it, though I imagine some enterprising dude could get others on there somehow.

Most of the incompatibilities are from games that use unusual peripherals like the Star Raiders keypad, or oddball games that use joystick 2 for player one, like Basketball. The paddle games should work with the D-pad, as should Indy 500 which normally uses the driving controller.

There are some hacked roms that can work:
http://atariage.com/forums/topic/...

 

Sweet, thanks. Awesome that someone fixed Enduro to work. It's one of my absolute favorites.

I finished off the Sega/Bally Midway collection awhile ago, but never got around to posting some pictures.  The Sega collection is complete except for the boxes of course and the sticker sheets and stickers that came with Sub Scan and Tac-Scan.  The Star Trek overlay that is shown is unpunched, but I have a punched one that I use. 

The Bally Midway set is missing the boxes and I do not have the Sega style cart for Spy Hunter.  The pièce de résistance is the dual control module for Spy Hunter and the unused velcro stickers that came with the game.  Finding a dual control module is an absolute pain and the velcro stickers are even rarer.

Sega did an excellent job with their games in my opinion.  Some really good games and no real bad ones.  Spy Hunter is a masterpiece on the VCS and Tac-Scan, Star Trek, Tapper, and the somewhat unloved Congo Bongo are all great.
 

I just lost an auction today on a lot that included spy hunter and Montezumas revenge. And I also passed up a cib Tac-Scan at my 2nd&Charles last year. Kind of cool shooter, controlling a squadron with your paddle controller.

Case 3 in Private Eye is the one you need to earn the patch. Its a tough one.
I've mapped out what I think is the shortest path through the maze, but you still have to do it with making hardly any mistakes. (if you get stuck trying to jump over the roadblock your run is toast) I've gotten close, but I haven't quite managed to beat it yet. If anyone else wants to take a stab, here's my map:

I don't think I managed to beat any cases. Just put a little bit of time into it when I got it. Fun little game and I meant to go back to it. Maybe I'll revisit it tonight.

Case 3 really is rough. Even with that map, it's going to be tight... will try and give that a go in a day or so

I made a mistake on #12 on the map... there is one more turn after you get to the forest section. Go up and to the left to grab LeFiend, before you backtrack. Also, I made a crucial discovery. Make sure your right difficulty switch on 'A' (expert mode).. this gives you control over how high you jump, otherwise it defaults to the max height every time, which is not ideal for the screens where you have to thread the needle between a bird and a ground obstacles.