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About Jstick

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  1. Which of the 2 trackball variants is recommended for the 2600?
  2. From the article, it would seem that this is more of a general algorithm problem then one of programming or VCS peculiarities. Basically trying to extract a logical mathematical pattern from a fixed data table.
  3. Oh absolutely. I must have spent several years now heavily curating a personal ROM collection, and I’m close to being done. Problem is, even just taking the cream of the crop across all the systems I’m interested in, it still ends up being multiple lifetimes worth of games. It’s really just too much, and starts to feel like a buffet vs a nice, intimate restaurant in terms of experience. These days, spending time with my 2600 is just about the only thing that gives me those true gaming vibes I miss (which would sound insane to my 10 year old self, considering the 40 years worth of gaming history available at my fingertips.). An arcade cabinet or pinball table will do it too of course, but those are unfortunately not very practical for me right now 🙂
  4. This I cannot argue with! 😀
  5. Emulation is definitely convenient; not sure I would say the shift towards it is absolutely thrilling though. More of a sad inevitability, I would say. Around ‘98 at its genesis emulation was very exciting, being able to play Neo Geo and then CPS-1 and 2 games (and N64 with a voodoo card was awesome). These days having thousands of ROMs from every system ever made is just kind of... tiring. In the same way that having unlimited music streaming and access to pretty much all commercial music just makes everything feel blah. I see it most in the younger generation now, they treat games and other media as disposable, very transitory experiences, always moving on to the next thing. I don’t have time left to enjoy all the media available at my fingertips, it’s a dream to think that anyone could. All I need are a few good experiences that I can sit with and digest slowly; that have some impact; that become “events” in my life rather than just forgettable background noise. There is something to be said for having a small curated library of physical books or games or albums or movies on a shelf. Things that you love and cherish, that you revisit, that you put the effort into exploring simply because they are the few things that you own, that you picked. That vinyl album that you bought when you had you had your first girlfriend, the game cart your dad gave you and stayed up to play with you, that favourite book you have read so many times the pages are worn from your fingers. The artwork, the lyrics sheet, the shape, form, smell and feel of it... older game hardware and electronics have some interesting and beautiful design. Digital media has no history, no tactile quality, no emotion imbued into it. Just cold bits on a storage device, infinitely copyable and deletable. Amazing from a preservation and access point of view (would have been mind-blowing to my younger self). But in reality, the amount of choice and lack of tangibility are a bit of a curse. Ultimately, attachment to physical objects may simply be a side-effect of the particular brand of commercialism instilled into us Gen-X folks, but I can’t deny having genuine emotions towards to the relics of my youth. They will forever be tied to people and places and feelings that marked my life, and I like being able to hold those things in my hand. My children will know nothing of this, as they will be plugged into a 24/7 stream of endless digital content emanating from uniform featureless devices. In the end the title of this post is actually apt: “RetroPie Killed It For Me”. For me what emulation killed was the special feeling of getting a new game and the excitement of playing it for weeks or months; when you have access to everything, nothing is special any longer. (Horrible first-world problem, isn’t it?)
  6. Somebody has to create all the of content that these people are now consuming in ever-increasing amounts; and if you are any kind of content creator (Software developer, 3D Modeler, Web Designer, Video Editor, Music Composer, Digital Artist, etc. etc.) you will definitely want at LEAST 2 monitors.
  7. Thanks, I had just assumed the differences in brightness between pictures was due to lighting conditions. My box is light gray in fact (though not as light as the bottom picture), so I'm guessing it is NTSC after all. Really, the thing that initially confused me was the addition of Italian, Chinese and German.
  8. On the 2600 side, Ladybug Super Cobra Mappy Draconian Space Rocks Chetiry would be a good start.
  9. I wonder if changing the home run frequency might be as simple as changing a byte value in the code.
  10. I imagine Out Run should probably be inserted in there somewhere
  11. I wonder if it would help to make a page where you list all your currently missing items. Then it would be easier to see what remains for people who are interested in contributing. Although I’m not sure if that’s more work than just finding the stuff yourself.
  12. A very commendable goal! At this point in time I think we have game ROMs pretty well covered from a preservation point of view; it’s the related paper-based ephemera that still remains an issue (boxes, manuals, inserts, etc.). My long-term fantasy pet project is to create a searchable game database with every cart, box and manual viewable as 3D models. Good source material would be essential to this endeavour.
  13. I’ve had a MicroSD card die that way before: couldn’t be formatted or written to by any OS, device or software; but could be read no issue. Frozen in time forever.
  14. This is the PAL box: And this is the NTSC:
  15. I have a sealed copy of Kangaroo (1988) which I always assumed was PAL as it has 6 languages on the back. However I just noticed on AtariMania that the North American release from that year appears to use the same international box for some reason. Game was purchased from someone in the US. Any way to discern the region without opening?
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