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Night Driver (Atari VCS, 1980)

First, a look at the arcade game that inspired the home version.

YouTube...

Company: Kemco
Release Date: June 2001 (launch title)
Size: 32 Megabits
NP's rating: 2.5/5 (vol. 145 p. 119)
ESRB rating: E

Finally, a game I can agree with the rating NP gave! After playing this for a half-hour, it's kind of an interesting game, but I noticed a few flaws, one of them being the helpful turn warnings stay on longer than needed, making the car go into the grass (or beyond the side of the track). Another one is that the cars seem like they speed up after the first lap. I know this because I made a simple oval track in the track editor (yes Virginia, there is a track editor) and sure enough, the cars did speed up after the first lap. Why? Even with these few major flaws, it's better than GT Advance Championship Racing. While most of these launch titles I most definitely will not play ever again, I can see myself maybe wanting to play this again, which is a huge compliment coming from me. After this one, I only have one more launch title: Army Men Advance....

Scrolling Game is Rolling Along (Part 3)


At the risk of killing it, I forced a name to the surface:

Gyvolver
(the gy is pronounced the same as the gy in gyroscope)

Here's the story for the game so far:

Before Gyvolver can advance to a higher level of existence, a test must be passed. Gyvolver needs to get through a course filled with energy-draining barriers to qualify. The Prodvocate follows and if Gyvolver slows down for too long, the Prodvocate moves up and extracts a little energy from Gyvolver as motivation to speed up.

The story might change over time, but that's what I'm going with for now so I'll have something to work with. Now I have to figure out what the Prodvocate looks like.



Random Terrain
_

Hi

When I'm playing the sims 3. I made a house but I didn't finnish it. I was expecting to work on this house the next day.

Guess what?

[attachment=155731:Screenshot-209.jpg]

A new family was installed in the house.

Unless I play this family or evinct them, this house will stay unfinished.

Good bye


Robin Gravel

Hello all,

a new Firmware is available for download.

1.11:

- fix write and read bug with 93C46 from manufacturer CSI (S/N: 18 / 54-58 / 64 / 74-xx)
- improve erase count routine for 93C46
- bug fix sometimes red status LED do not switch off after verify failt
- bug fix using green LEDs while verify
- optimize erase and time out routine for erasing Flash Memory

All FlashCards shipped out after 14th March 2010 will be delivered with this Firmware.

Attached you can find the Firmware file and the manual in english and german.

That´s all for today.

Kind Regards

Lynxman

So, remember this?

No?

Well, I didn't expect you to.

Anyway, so here's the entry.

And sorry Dave... it's not about "Top Gear".

However, it is about cars driving really fast. Just without the wacky British humor.

It's about rallying.

Oops... okay, before you leave - those of you in the United States - stick with me a minute. Yes, rallying is pretty-much a non-entity in the U.S., but unlike say... soccer... rallying is actually interesting.

(And before soccer...

I had an excellent Saturday drive out to the country to meet up with a guy who had a ton of Atari goodies. A friend pointed me to this guy's craigslist ad because he knew the seller (who had earlier tried to sell him the stuff), but when I called earlier this week the seller explained that he had already sold most of the goodies through another ad. Bummer. But then he emailed me later and said he had found a box of books and other Atari stuff and I could have it for $20. Just a couple of grainy pictures, but I went for it.

Showed up at about 10 this morning and WOW. First of all, he had a box full of old 400s and a bunch of other nice stuff waiting for the other guy, so I drooled over that and had the evil thought of offering him some cash for some of it but a deal is a deal and I respect other people's hauls. Plus, mine was a pretty good deal too: a bunch of books, a 410 recorder with manual, a few ST programs, 8-bit EPROMS and boards, four 400 replacement keyboards,...

One thing I sold had a deficiency that I didn't know about. The other thing had a deficiency that didn't show up in my testing but showed up when the purchaser tested it. I packed it very well and yet there still must have been shipping damage.

It's discouraging. Not trying to make money off the stuff, just get it into the hands of people who will use it. This ended up costing me money. I'm thinking the stuff I have left that I need to get rid of before I move is going to end up either at Goodwill, in my dumpster, or in Goodwill's dumpster.

Catchy tune. I was surprised to see Bruce Willis in the video.

YouTube

Hi there!

I know you've heard Tainted Love a thousand times before, but I guess some are still in for a surprise with this version (beginning around 2:50). Incredible transmogrification, pure musical genious ahead!

YouTube

Greetings,
Manuel

Okay, so I haven't updated the blog in a couple weeks. The problem is, making it a nightly thing was a poor idea. First, I have a wife, a thesis, a full time job, and a new baby. My ability to make time to both play this game every night, and then to write about it does not exist. I was having to choose to not play anything else at any point, and really, 7800 Donkey Kong is a tough game to try to make into your only gaming experience for an entire year. Add to this the fact that since I started the blog I have been in hotels about 15 nights for work, and you can see exactly how much events decided to conspire against the old schedule. Thus, I have decided to pursue a different schedule, that I think will work better for the blog anyway. I will still be sticking to the same "beat the score in one year" time table, but I will only be posting as I feel it is warranted by milestones being reached or if I find I encounter some idea I feel warrants posting. I'm...

Hi,
just to announce the release of Quick Extract v 0.3. This is a small program that will allow you to easily extract files with just a double click from your desktop. Just
install it as an application to open those zip, rar and other archive files. Everything else is explained in the docs. Have fun!

I was listening to the 60 Minutes podcast and they were doing a segment on the Bloombox, which is based on a fuel cell. The thing which annoys me is they call this "green energy". Umm, folks . . . you're generating electricity by consuming gaseous hydrocarbons (typically natural gas), which isn't green IMHO unless you are capturing bio-methane. And even then you're replacing the power grid with some sort of hydrocarbon delivery system. They also talk about avoiding grid losses, but half of my gas bill is "delivery charges"! Pushing gas down a pipeline ain't free folks!

This is not to say a fuel cell can't be used to generate power, or that it won't have value in some situations. But listening to the segment I couldn't believe the hype and spin which were being presented as fact. (OTOH, it's a good thing it wasn't broadcast with last week's segment on con artists and Ponzi schemes. Bloombox has taken a lot...

Hi people.Tetris was never my favorite stile of game but bombliss variation rules and I enjoyed it alot as a kid.If you never played bombliss, all pieces contain 1 bomb wich explodes if the row is filled.You need 2 or more bombs to explode the row, if the row haven't bombs, nothing happen but it count as "combo". With more lines filed the explosion is bigger. If the explosion touch another bombs, they explodes too. If you put 4 little bombs together, they turns into a big bomb.Well watch the video if you never played it :super bombliss...

From time to time I like to step back and take a look at how my collection is shaping up. It may be that I find holes in my collection where I need to spend more time finding one or more great games for a system. Or it may be that, like earlier this year, I find that there are several games that I just do not play, and I sell those games off.

At any rate, here's the number of CIB games I have for each of the systems for which I collect:

Atari 2600: 87
Atari 5200: 39
Atari 7800: 7
Atari 8-Bit Computer: 124
Atari Jaguar: 11
Atari Lynx: 24
Colecovision: 20
Intellivision: 63
Turbografx-16: 13
NES: 11
SNES: 8
Genesis: 18
PS: 3
PS2: 16

Obviously my A8 games collection is still the largest portion of my overall collection. That's because I've been collecting those the longest. I have previously collected and sold off most of the other systems in the 90s. But not the A8. That software has been with me a long time.

I also have a lot of 2600 carts, but that's probably...

Having the program code underneath the extended banking window is proving such a headache that I've turned my attention - for now - to updating the "Shadow RAM" version of LW with some of the new features intended for the "Pro" version. Such are the changes being made to the standard version, that the Sparta 3.x compatible version will probably have to be started again from scratch (since it's built on the codebase of the current development version). In any case, I'd rather make progress with something that works for now, and the testbed version is working well.Before applying the more ambitious features, I'd already implemented (for the 3.11 update):

• New, Windows-compatible shortcuts for some commands
• "International Lock" mode: a new state for the keyboard which allows single-keystroke entry of alpha control characters
• A couple of cosmetic bug fixes
• ...

Donkey Kong was one of Nintendo's biggest hits in the Arcade, and was equally as successful on home systems. Coleco's versions for the 2600, Intellivision, and most importantly Colecovision, were runaway hits. Though no version managed to have all 4 levels until Atari released a version for their 8-bit computer line, and blew everyone away with it's awesomeness. Granted, the pie factory level wasn't the best, but it was still pretty cool to have here.Gameplay 9.5The gameplay is perfectly executed here, and is much smoother than the 2600 version. In the first level, you must jump over barrels and climb ladders to reach your girlfriend, Pauline. The second level has you dodge fireballs while getting rid of the rivets holding the platforms up, which, when gone, will collapse the whole level and give Kong a nasty fall. The third level forces you to jump across moving platforms to reach Pauline, and is definitely the best stage. The fourth and final level has you dodging...

So Perfect Dark is finally being re-released in March. The game will have all the features of the original N64 release plus updated, HD graphics; online capabilities; GoldenEye weapons available in multi-player; possible DLC in the future; and it now runs at a nice 60fps. I can live with this. Especially with a price of $10.

Trailer

The Ultimate Hardware Emulator or the Ultimate Hardware platformI bring this up because of the interest in both software based emulation (i.e stella, Atari++, WinUAE etc) and hardware based emulation (i.e Dingoo/gp2x, Flashback series and also the tv game joytick players)Additionally the reason for this blog stemmed from an Idea i discussed with fellow AA member NathanA some time ago on another chat room, initially concerning commodore computers that could run atari software etc and Atari computers that could run commodore software etcThe initial idea being centred/centered around a 1090 xl expander box scenario, one for the commodore computers and one for the atari computers, the idea being that the 1090 xl alike expander box would have the controller or personality board to interface the expander box with any systems cards and also the host system (be it a commodore or atari system) the system card that i referred to would contain the neccessary hardware to make the host machine act...

Just so you know where the subject is coming from, it's from here.


You know, the whole attack on the secondhand game market makes me sick.

The rabid fanbase that defends the attack as something nobel and justified also makes me sick.

It makes me violently ill whenever I see those dicks trying to rationalize it, especially when they compare buyers of secondhand games to the likes of copyright infringers. "Pirates" for those who like incorrect terminology.

Needless to say, I get sick reading Kotaku comments on any article that touches on this.

Here's my take on the situation. Individuals and companies that produce some sort of new content, regardless of type of goods, have the right of first sale. This is because they are the only ones allowed to actually create new copies. However once a particular copy is sold, and to do so this means the producing company has earned their money on the sale of that particular copy, their rights to future $$ brought...