8/27/07
It never fails. It doesn't matter if I'm thirteen or thirty-three... in elementary school or in college. I can never get any sleep on the first day of class! Here I am, bleary eyed and sleep deprived, sitting in front of my laptop when I should be lying in bed. Yet I know that I'd just be staring blankly at the ceiling or the inside of my eyelids if I shut off the computer and tried to get some rest. So here I am, updating my increasingly neglected site while grinding my teeth down to the gums worrying about what's in store for me this semester.
I should be glad that summer is finally at an end, though. My college loan finally arrived last week, just in time to pay off most of my credit card bill, the rest of my income tax, and the textbooks I'll need to complete my classes. There's even enough money left over for a small army of classic game consoles, along with the parts I'll need to make them Y2K compliant.
Actually, make that Y2007 compliant. See, systems like the ColecoVision and Atari 5200 weren't designed for today's high-definition television standards. They weren't even designed for the low-definition standards of the 1990s! No, these consoles give you a single RF cable that supports both audio and video, and does neither particularly well. I love a good classic gaming experience, but this is one part of the early 80's I have no intention of reliving.
Fortunately, I don't have to, thanks to the hundreds of young gamers who grew up to be electronics engineers. Do a little hunting on eBay and you'll find A/V mods for every antique console under the sun, with the obvious exception of the Vectrex. Some of these modifications are ridiculously involved... frankly, you'd be better off building a fusion reactor than putting this one together. However, there are a few out there that can be handled by any schmo with at least a little soldering experience and enough bravery to take apart their old systems. This Atari 2600 Jr. mod by hacker par excellence Ben Heckendorn could be finished in the time it takes to watch an episode of Star Trek... maybe half of one if you're watching Voyager or Enterprise and the show's too boring to distract you from your work!
8/19/07
I'm way behind on my updating duties, on both this site and the blog. Honestly, I just haven't had that much to discuss lately. Maybe things will pick up when college starts next week... at least, I sure hope so!
So I'm hearing rave reviews about Bioshock, that game where the deep-sea diver rescues kids from men armed with wrist-mounted wasps. Frankly, I'm having a hard time believing that it even exists... that scenerio sounds more like a dream you'd have after a week of sleep deprevation. I suppose seeing is believing, so I'll have to rouse my Xbox 360 from its months of hibernation and download the free demo.
What else we got? Oh yeah, there's that Atari 5200 I just ordered from eBay. This is going to be the second one in as many weeks... the last system cost me five dollars, but I got what I paid for if you know what I mean. I should have more luck with this one, which the previous owner swears is in good working condition.
Of course, when it comes to the Atari 5200, procuring the system is only half the battle. The next step is to find a controller that doesn't completely suck, and anyone who owns the console knows how difficult THAT can be. Just ask that Angry Video Game Nerd guy! There are options available to me, though. The first is to buy the Wico Command Control joystick. It's a refreshing departure from other game controllers of the early 1980's, with clean, fluid movement and just the right amount of resistance... but its Achille's Heel is a stupid 9-pin plug that makes it useless without the Y-cable included with the stick. I do have the stick, but guess which part I'm missing?
The next option is to build an adapter. I could either settle for a simple Y-cable for that Wico stick, or go all out and make an adapter that accepts either old PC joysticks or the Sega Arcade Pad, that Rolls Royce of classic game controllers. Naturally, the most versatile adapter is also the most difficult one to build, requiring a handful of resistors and integrated circuits. The frustration mounts when you consider that the instructions available online are incomplete, listing only half the parts necessary for the modification.
The only option that's NOT available to me is buying an adapter. It's not that I don't have the money for it... it's just that nobody offers them. Believe me, I've looked around! There used to be a controller converter called the Redemption available on AtariAge, but it's since become a thing of the past... like the dinosaurs, or competent US presidents. I guess it's solderin' time for me, then! Here's the schematic I've got planned. As you can see, it's not going to be an easy task...
8/11/07
There's a new sister site to The Gameroom Blitz... I call it Re:Activator, and it's a blog that exclusively covers classic video game systems and homebrew game releases. It's a segment of the industry that doesn't get much press, and I figured it was time that changed. Click the Blog link at the top of this page to give it a look!
8/10/07
I've added two articles to the History page, including a review of the trashy teen comedy Joysticks and a detailed look at the early beta version of Gunstar Heroes. Both features were offered exclusively to members of a short-lived premium service on the site, but now, everyone gets a shot at them!
There's also a video review of Lead that repeats my earlier observations on the game. If you want to see those musings brought to life through the power of moving pictures, this link's for you!
What else we got...? Oh yeah, there's some not-so-good news about the online NES database. After several hours of typing, swearing, then typing again, I discovered that the database software I'm using sucks in ways the human mind cannot conceive. I never had any serious complaints about OpenOffice before, but Base changed that in a hurry. When it's not freezing up, it's corrupting files, and when it's not doing THAT, it's throwing every error message under the sun in my face. Fortunately, I'll have plenty of chances to shop for an alternative when college starts in a couple of weeks.
In collecting news, I've got an Atari 5200 and an Atari Lynx coming my way in a few days. The original plan was to get a ColecoVision to replace the one I lost in Arizona all those years ago, but those systems have been going for boku bucks on eBay, so I went with the next best thing. I have fonder memories of the 5200 anyway... I spent a lot of time sitting in front of that console colossus back in the mid 1980's, playing Wizard of Wor, Mountain King, and Moon Patrol until my eyes glazed over like a summer ham. I have every intention of reliving those days, but the tricky part's going to be finding all the games I once owned.
I'll have more luck finding games for the Lynx... in fact, the system comes with six of them, ranging from the futuristic 3D shooter S.T.U.N. Runner to CyberVirus, one of the system's later and more impressive releases. Now I've just got to track down Xybots and Roadblasters and I'll be set!
Wait, wait! There's one other thing. I just played Ephemeral Fantastia, which I purchased a week ago for the low, low price of two dollars. The price wasn't low enough. This has got to be one of the most schizophrenic role-playing games ever made... you'll be walking along for a couple of minutes, looking for armored crabs to slay, and all of a sudden, you're told that it's nightfall and sent to a castle on the other end of the island. Hey, knock it off! I'm not Scott Bakula, and this isn't Quantum Leap. On the plus side, Ephemeral Fantasia introduced me to the super sea louse, which will go down in history as the best-worst enemy ever in an RPG. Not only did I not know that lice live underwater, but that they come in regular and super-sized varieties!
8/7/07
Rez... on the Atari 2600? Maybe not, but Lead is as close as you're gonna get. Designed in Italy by hobbyist programmer Simone Serra, Lead is a shooter split into several different stages. Each stage has a different goal, but all of them take place in a tight corridor that doubles as a musical scale. Any onscreen events, whether it be shooting aliens or dodging meteorites, play notes depending on their position on the scale. Blast an enemy on the left hand side of the corridor and you'll hear a high-pitched tone. Zap a foe on the right and a low-pitched note is your reward.
Like any good twitch game on the 2600, the screen is tightly packed with threats, but in Lead, this not only makes the gameplay more intense, but enhances the astonishingly complex soundtrack. This effect of "synthestasia" is more profound in early builds of the game (including Lead 1K, included as a bonus in the latest beta), but the new versions have a lot more flair. Once you've finished a stage, your ship streaks toward the next one, and when you're struck by a stray asteroid, an EKG meter warns you that a flatline is just seconds away if you don't press the fire button to continue. At the moment, pressing the fire button doesn't actually let you continue, but I'm confident that this flaw will be addressed in future builds. Even with it, this has got to be the most exciting development for the 2600 since the introduction of Fred Quimby's Batari BASIC in 2005.
Before I go, I wanted to make three announcements regarding The Gameroom Blitz. The first is that I've finished a new video review... click here to check it out! The second is that I've added a history section to the site. This handy page lets you check out past Blitz updates, from September 2001 to July 2007. There are also a handful of articles from the early days of the site, brought back with new material that puts the rants on 1990's pop culture into perspective.
Finally, I must regretfully announce the cancellation of Awesome NES. All the content originally written for the book will be added to an online database similar to the rarity guides on Atari Age... that way, it can easily be revised and modified when necessary. That just wasn't possible with the book, where any necessary changes broke the layouts of five or more pages, resulting in hours of monotonous editing. On top of that, I wasn't really thrilled with the prospect of publishing a book that might be torn to shreds by its picky target audience. If I make a mistake with an online database, it costs five minutes of my time to fix it. If I made a mistake with a book, it costs thousands of dollars and leaves me with hundreds of unsellable first editions. For someone with limited funds but plenty of server space, the choice is obvious.
8/2/07
I don't have much to say, but plenty to post! There's a new video review on my YouTube page, a recently rediscovered Saturn review, and two redesigned system pages. Check 'em out!