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No Mr Wimpy!  A great Burger Time clone I played loads on my Oric. Do they not have Wimpy in the US?

I've backed quite a lot of books. Depends on subject, but if it's 8 bit computer games it's a fair bet - though I prefer a good bit of text to go with the pictures. The US Gold and Ocean books are good examples. Some of the more screenshotty ones are losing out now simply because they're covering old ground for me a bit, I already have books that cover much of their content in more detail. Still, something focused like the recent Mastertronic book had me forking out for the extended edition.

Games, I've only backed a couple. This is more down to me buying less games in general these days than anything against Kickstarters, my pile of shame is big enough as it is what with regular GoG sales.

I did back some hardware (USB joypad/stick adapters), but that didn't reach target. I don't tend to go for hardware as it's pricey.

Are they not all listed at The Bird Sanctuary: http://birdsanctuary.co.uk/

In the mid 90s, many computer gamers finally made the jump to consoles. I'd already picked up Mega Drive and SNES in the early part of the decade, as well as Gameboy and Game Gear, but those ran alongside my old Atari ST as games were expensive and blank discs were not.

With a half decent PC still costing a thousand quid, I had a Playstation a couple of years before my first PC in 1998.

It all came down to cost.

I can't see prices rising, its an ugly grey slab. I think prices are at peak just now with people wanting their exclusive current gen systems. Sell it now, before christmas and the hype has passed.

$40 is only £25. This will fill the gaps in my USB adapter connectivity, since I've already got Atari, MD, PS1, Saturn and Dreamcast adapters. I'm in. It's much cheaper than buying adapters individually.

Did you mean to say it looks awful?

Either do the full keyboard, or do it in a C64 dtv style. Gamepads and Spectrums just isn't right, the games are meant to be played on keyboard or joystick.

Not for me, certainly at that price. Maybe at sub 20 quid I'd take a punt. Really I'd want the full keyboard though.

King of the vector games must be Atari's Star Wars. I've played both stand up and sit down variants, but prefer the stand up as it's what I played most. Thanks as always to Colin for dragging his to every event I've been to.

I was lucky enough to get a whirl on The Empire Strikes Back for a bit too.

Let us not forget Battlezone, another great from my local arcade. If possible, best played on the upright with the litle viewing box you peer into for full effect.

A personal favourite has always been Space Duel, like a more advanced Asteroids game. Sadly, I've not seen a cab in 25 years, but I do hit it in MAME from time to time. Those coloured vectors give it a whole new look when compared to its predecessor. Well worth checking out, I can't help but wonder if Thrust took some of its ideas from here.

That is correct, although the GameShark also works.  A free boot disc can be downloaded here: http://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/utopia.php

Ben linked to the downloadable Utopia boot disc on the previous page. Everything you need to download and burn the disc is at that link.

Utopia will boot most games. There's a few that it won't cope with, but you can always just download a copy of the Gameshark disc for those.

Personally, I rarely use bootdiscs. I find it easier to just download a rip of the few imports games I wanted, those usually boot on any region of system. Added bonus is it keeps my original discs minty fresh.

That does sound good, well except for Billy Mitchell :21:

For anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about, you need to see the movie The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.

That movie is heavily skewed to show Billy as a villain for dramatic purposes. He really isn't like that.

The whole Billy Mitchell, Videogame Champ thing is just a persona, akin to wrestling. He feigns superiority. In reality he acknowledges he has a certain skill but is more than willing to do the same for others. He's quite amusing too, has quite a sense of humour.

He's been interviewed on Retrogaming Radio several times, and I feel those interviews are more representative of the man behind the name than anything else I've seen or heard which tends to be superficial. Track down those old shows if you can. They have some other incredible interviews too. Shane really broke ground with those shows, a podcast pioneer from before podcasting existed.

On a related note, gutted I'll miss this event.

In 2010, I missed Star Wars Celebration in Orlando by 2 weeks, having booked a holiday before itwas announced. Star Tours was there for 20 odd years and I missed my chance to ride it by a fortnight,not to mention missing the convention.

I was in Orlando again last month for a wedding. Finally got to ride the new Star Tours, but now I find I'm missing another great con. It wouldn't be so bad, but I missed Replay home in the UK because we had to book the holiday to fit the wedding.

Oh well, good luck with the event, I look forward to coverage from it. I hope you get some interviews recorded with some of it's stars.

Am I the only one who thinks they're not buying a game here, they're buying a slice of history.

Much like buying a fossil won't get you anything useable, one of these carts is just an interesting ornament with an unusual tale behind it.

Sure, it seems pricey to us, but to some collectors, that isn't expensive for something that may not turn up again for years once the initial sales pass.

Weirdly, there isn't a great SID player on Android, that one is about the best of the bunch. Its ok, and I've not had problems with searching, but the interface and presentation is clunky.

HVSC has been on the go for years, its one of my early 'retro scene' finds. Still gets updated and is so standardised that some player apps directly support its file structure, so you just point the player at HVSC and it picks up all the tracks. I've even got SID Player Pro on my iPhone wiith it, takes up much less space than MP3s so I've more room for apps and podcasts.

I might actually own this CD physically anyway, I've a few discs I bought for the novelty.

While we're on SIDs, the Immortal 64 podcast is worth a punt since the C64 takeaway is no more. A neat way to discover interesting tracks new and old.

Downloaded it, but its quite big. Not sure I really need it since I have the High Voltage SID Collection on all my devices already. From the couple of tracks I played, its just recordings of the SIDs.

I reckon Xevious 3DG doesn't get enough coverage, it tries to do something new with the presentation of the shmup format and pulls it off well imo. More fun than the original at leastand I have fond memories of that.