Messages

61

General / Re: The Top 10 Most Wanted Items on Your Wishlist

« on: July 04, 2016, 10:46:20 pm »

1. Dragon's Lair arcade cabinet
2. Space Ace arcade cabinet
3. Black Knight pinball
4. Modern display replacement and VGA out for Atari Lynx I
5. Build a dedicated seated cabinet for Steel Battalion
6. Build a custom piece of furniture to house my retro systems
7. Build custom game storage
8. Build a custom display/stand for my portable systems
9. Atari 5200
10. Atari 400 or XEGS

1-3 & 5 are not happening anytime soon, I already have 1 pinball machine and this house isn't really designed for such things, someday though.
4 is just a matter of saving the money and possibly doing a complete recap first.
6-8 is simply getting off my butt and doing it.
9 & 10 would pretty much give me one of each major line of Atari gaming system which would be fun to complete.

62

Classic Video Games / Re: What are the best offline co-op games?

« on: July 04, 2016, 10:10:32 pm »

* Bubble Bobble
* Contra
* Rampage (It can be co-op... until one of you "accidentally" eats the other and then it becomes a brawler forget the stinking buildings... meanwhile the third player knocks down the rest of the city taking the lead and the newspaper pops up reminding you what the whole point is and then it is co-op again until that damned monkey boy knocks you off a building....)
* Double Dragon (At least until the end)
* Gauntlet (Blue wizard needs food badly... ahh foo... ^%@^#!! the damn elf just shot the food... and thus begins a life long hatred of elves.)
* Golden Axe (All's fair in love and gnome punting)
* TMNT/Xmen/Simpsons etc... cooperative brawlers (Up to six people crowded around a single cabinet working together is awesome)
* Xenophobe (Triple Split Screen action)

Being a huge Atari fan I wanted to put more Atari games on this list but multiplayer games were almost exclusively competitive or turn based back then. Almost all of these became series for good reasons.

63

Classic Video Games / Re: First video game you ever played?

« on: July 04, 2016, 09:45:15 pm »

A 40 year nostalgia is something I can't even imagine.

It made that strong of an impression. For good or for ill, video games became a huge part of my life and this was the spark that started it all. Very few memories are as vivid. My first time seeing Dragon's Lair, the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded, the day I met the cute girl who later would become my wife, the day I married that amazing woman and maybe one or two other events. This was by far the earliest of them though (I was 3 maybe 4 years old)

64

General / Re: What is the Most Important Part of a Game to You?

« on: July 01, 2016, 12:54:09 am »

It simply has to have a yes for these two questions:
Is it fun?
Do I Enjoy it?

If I find it fun and enjoyable then it doesn't matter if it has mind blowing graphics or is text based. I have played games with horrible controls that were hilariously bad and were enjoyable.

Two sticks and a square ball? Awesome. Lifelike graphics and an amazing story? Awesome. Panned in every review yet it feels like it was made just for me? Awesome. Fabulous reviews, amazing graphics, world class controls, and a soundtrack to die for but for some reason I would rather get a root canal than play another minute of it? Not awesome.

If I had to pick one thing for modern games it would be:

A solid single player experience - Multiplayer is fun but give me somewhere to get the controls down and get invested in the game before you toss me out there with people who have been playing the game for a year. MMOs being the one exception but even those usually segregate the starting area and the main battlefield.

65

Classic Video Games / Re: First video game you ever played?

« on: July 01, 2016, 12:23:25 am »

Night Driver on Atari 2600. Friends of the family brought their Atari over one holiday and I remember being blown away by the concept of being able to control something on the television. It was like the best witchcraft ever!

My parents eventually bought that very Atari from them and their collection of games. Sadly Night Driver was not among the titles any longer, apparently it was traded for one of the newer games. I never saw it for sale and never played it again... Until a couple years ago when I started collecting for Atari again. It was the first cartridge I actively sought out. I probably overpaid... who cares? After nearly 40 years I finally got to play it again.