Messages

Thank you @zapiy!

I’ve heard good things about Thrust, and it’s on my wishlist.

Yes, I’m sure a game like Medieval Mayhem is best experienced in multiplayer. I have the gave but haven’t played it yet It’s a SpiceWare game so I should really play it.

I ordered an all-button custom controller to play Space Rocks and the game did not disappoint. I like to describe it as a better Asteroids than Asteroids. I haven’t played 5200 Asteroids but Asteroids on the 7800 is very good.

Publish one? That sounds very interesting. Can you share how far you are in development and what kind of game it is?

Ah, the Lynx and Jag -- the only Atari consoles that I don't have although they are enticing What homebrews do you have for them @zapiy?

Holy moly! 😮 That is quite the collection! 😍👏👍 I did a quick peruse as I didn't have time to look through that 14 page post, but I saw a lot of homebrew history there. I've been buying homebrews for less than a year so missed out on a lot of classics.

By the way, how do you embed images in your post? I tried the img tag with imgur shortened URLs and it didn't work.

[Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion]

I just got the 4th volume of the Atari 2600 Homebrew Companion by Brian Matherne. I had Amazon ship it to him directly so he could sign it and send it back to me. I won signed copies of the first three volumes last year during the Stella-thon fundraiser organized by ZeroPage Homebrew, back when I knew very little about homebrews.

The original Atari 2600 library has amazing games, but truly, it's the homebrew community and developers that have taken a venerable platform we love to another level and have kept it relevant in the 21st century. Many amazing games have been released -- games that'd be difficult to believe are 2600 games -- and many more are in the pipeline.

Do you play homebrews? What are some of your favorites?

Some of my favorites include:

• Amoeba Jump
• Conquest of Mars
• Draconian
• Juno First
• Jump VCS
• Space Rocks
• Star Castle Arcade
• Tower of Rubble

I have more than 30 physical homebrew releases from AtariAge alone and I haven't played them all yet.

Thanks, doc. Your advice (the dark Transformers series on Netflix 👍 just finished and I got the Mazinger Z blu-ray) have been good so far so I took you up on it 😆

Hello, RVG world! I met TrekMD on another forum, and he told me about RVG. I'm really digging the landing page and the decor -- love the Space Invaders graphics. From what I've gathered, RVG seems to be a gathering of folks from all over the globe 👍

I live in the northwest corner of the United States in the suburb of Seattle with my two sons and wife. I've worked my entire career in the tech industry as a program manager for most of those years. I spent the majority of my career involved in software localization. If you used the non-US English version of Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, or 8, then my team's fingerprints are there somewhere 😀 I left Microsoft just before launching Win8, but even Win10 -- all the legacy parts of the OS anyway -- should still contain localization inherited from previous releases.

As far as retro gaming is concerned, my primary love is Atari. The 4-switch VCS (as it was known then) was my first console back in the early 80s. I think I was in 4th or 5th grade when I got it. At the time, my weekly allowance was $3 and the price of the VCS was $120. I made a proposal to my dad that if he bought me the console, I would forego a year's worth of allowance. "You'd save $36," I said to my dad. A few days later, we went to the store (Toys R Us) and bought the VCS, but he kept giving me my weekly allowance 🙂 Thank goodness that he did. Otherwise, I'd have been playing Combat by myself for a year, and that's not much fun for a kid with no brothers or sisters.

In middle school, I fell in love with computers. I hung around the computer lab for a year as a sixth grader since programming class and access to computers (Commodore PET) were only open to seventh and eighth graders. I got an Atari 800 with the cassette drive in seventh grade and for several years until I got the 520ST, the Atari 8-bit (800, 800XL, 130XE) was my BFF. I can't remember what ever happened to my VCS.

Fast forward almost 40 years to 2020, and I've been re-united with the 2600. Last year, out of nostalgia, I bought a Retron77, but I never opened the box. I discovered AtariAge forum earlier this year and got a 7800 five months ago. I recently found out that it has compatibility issues with some homebrews and that prompted me to get a light 6-switch 2600 in July. Two weeks after that, I jumped on a nice deal for a fixed up and upgraded 5200. The past couple of months have been a blast reconnecting with the Atari consoles from my childhood and discovering for the first time so many console games that I passed up because I was busy with my Atari 800. I even picked up a CRT TV recently to complete the full retro setup.

In case you're wondering, last year I picked up an Atari 800 and 800XL. I also got the devices to load programs from SD card but I haven't set them up yet. After storing them in boxes for many years, I threw away all my Atari computers, peripherals, and software when we moved nearly 20 years ago. Let's not talk about it. 😭

Outside of my love for Atari, I discovered retro gaming relatively recently -- 3 or 4 years ago -- by stumbling across videos by Metal Jesus Rocks (a Seattle-based YouTuber). That prompted me to get into all the PlayStation and Xbox consoles. I previously owned PS1, Xbox 360, and PS3 but only had a handful of games. I now have a sizable library of physical games (too many if you ask my wife). I also have a GameCube, Wii, WiiU, and most recently added SNES.

I will admit that I don't know much about games and consoles -- I don't know the details that many folks seem to know, but I'm a gamer at heart (although I suck at most games) and a life long Atari fanboy. I'm glad to be here and look forward to getting to know the RVG community better. Thanks for reading.