hansolo77

Congratulations to our May-June 2018 GOTM winner, Cynicaster! We didn't get a lot of entries this time around. Might have been due to the similarities of this game to the last GOTM, Dragon Spirit. Might have been just a bad time of year. But that's ok! So long as we have participants, I'll keep this forum alive! So thanks everybody who DID play. And for those of you who didn't, don't be discouraged. You can still post scores for this game and have the placement added to your Overall Leaderboard position!

Finally convinced myself to build another RetroPie. Gonna be a gift for my brother (don't worry, he already knows!). I've talked with him about it, and he's wanting it built inside an old Sega Genesis. Gonna be lots of fun! I've already bought the case I'm going to use, as well as the hard drive (just arrived today) and the modification parts. It's a labor of love, for my brother, so I don't care of the cost. I've already explained to him to that this won't be an overnight thing and will probably takes months to finalize. Just thought I'd share the building progress here with my gaming family. And like with @RIP-Felix who knows? It might spawn a creative spark in others! So for starters, lets get the list going. Console I asked him first off what console he would like build. Does he want a simple little case just for the Pi, or legit console? Then I asked about size, mini or full size. Initially he wanted an NES just like mine, with the same modifications I did with adding support for NES and Sega controllers. I told him it was a LOT of work, requiring shitty cutting and a lot of trial and error to make "ALMOST" work. It's not a perfect system, and doesn't work all the time. He said his wife would really like the NES though because of the NES controllers. I explained to him that even though the nostalgia is there when using a real controller, you rarely ever do play with them. Since we can use wireless controllers like the Xbox360, PS3, or anything Bluetooth, it makes more sense to use USB adapters for those times you want to play with "original" controllers. So having that necessity removed, we agreed that a Sega Genesis would work best, seeing how it was the first true console we owned (remember, the NES was our friend's, not ours). Controllers I'm still waiting to get a definitive answer on this. He already owns 2-3 Xbox360 controllers, so getting the dongle would be all that's required and he's off an running. I pointed out to him too that you can use PS3 controllers, since they can connect via Bluetooth. And that also opens up the possibility of ANY Bluetooth controller. I showed him the 8bitdo website, and let him explore that. I warned him though that those controllers are EXPENSIVE and not really ideal for start. Maybe a future upgrade. If it were up to me, I'd say go with the Xbox360 controllers with the dongle. Then we can get a couple of USB controllers (he wants the Sega ones) or some USB adapters. That will make RetroPie happy. Unplug the dongle and connect the USB controller as needed. The system reconfigures on the fly. Hard Drive I offered up the choices regarding a hard drive. First of all, the system runs on an SD card. Making backups of the SD card is critical to the building process. If you have a LOT of games, you need a big SD card. Sure, you can fit most of what you'd want on a 16gb card and be good. BUT, he likes the idea of all the extra metadata like details about the game, box art, video screenshots, etc. For that, you're going to need a LOT more space. Plus he's wanting PSX and SegaCD games too. Those eat up a lot of space as well. So the only option is to get a hard drive. The nice thing about the modification kit I ordered, it has a built in place to add a hard drive. The NES build I did didn't have that. So I had to get an external drive. This kit allows you to install a 2.5-inch laptop drive with screws. Really secure. So I bought a 1tb drive and a SATA->USB adapter. Testing will be needed before I know the combination works well. But according to the reviews on Amazon, it works great with Raspberry Pi. I know from experience that a large capacity drive (4tb for instance), it required an additional power source, and the Pi was not capable of supplying enough juice. So I have to wait and see if this will run under the power of just 1 port. Should be good though. What games I gave him the choice here. I can give you EVERYTHING, like I have. This is great for showing off, but sucks for when you want to play. You run into the problem of having TOO much, that you can't decide on what to play and end up playing nothing. Or you have so much to play, you'll never play them all. I told him we can build a customized game list, with only games you remember playing. But, he wants everything. So that is another reason for the hard drive. RetroAchievements He was definitely interested in this. I told him it would be no problem to get that set up. He asked if there was a way to have a special list of games that support cheevos, rather than running the chance of yes/no on any game he picks. I told him that I've been working with one of the admins over there an we've been developing a system that scrapes YOUR games against THEIR server and builds a custom list just for that. The default method is to build a list for each system, so you can pick the console you want then see the list of games that support cheevos. The way I do it though is to build a single list. That way I can just use the random button and pick a game that way out of everything supported. I told him when we get that far, I'll let him decide on which works best for him. Kodi I told him we can install Kodi on it too. Right now, he has a dedicated Pi running Kodi. It's great, but he runs it outside of a case, bare, sitting on his tv stand. He said it's constantly showing the thermometer icon on his TV, saying it's overheating. That's why he doesn't use the case. I tried to explain to him when he got it that the Pi gets hot, and that he needs to have a case like from FLIRC. It's designed to act like a heat sink. But he said he can't afford it. Whatever. The modification kit I ordered for his console will come with a fan, so that should help. I also ordered a couple of heavy duty heat sinks to try and help alleviate the extra heat. With this in mind, his Kodi experience should be much better. The only issue I foresee will come with controlling the interface. I don't know if we can make it work with his remote or not, given that his game controllers will also be connected. Something to look at. Extra bits I told him there is a lot of customizations we can do for his build. Changing the LED (default is red, maybe we can go blue or green). I sent him the link to RetroPie's multitude of skins. There's the ability to have bezel art (just learned about this MYSELF last week!). Does he want to see the bootup text scroll or would he prefer to have an intro video? All kinds of stuff. Also, what Ports does he want? OpenBOR, Quake, Doom, Streets of Rage Remix, etc. Also, we hope to finally figure out the issue with online co-op/competitive. This is all "future" stuff. So that's basically it right now. I sent him an email highlighting those things, see where his head was about it all, come up with ideas, and finally start buying stuff. Like I said, I already ordered the console, kit, and hard drive. Waiting to see what his final decision on controllers will be. Still have to buy the Pi and SD card (planning on doing that tomorrow). For record keeping, here is the breakdown so far: Console $19.60 https://www.ebay.com/itm/113064773189 Modification Kit $72.76 https://retro-emulation.com/shop/index.php?id_product=36&controller=product&id_lang=5 Build Video - https://youtu.be/JVc3NvOLxrc Hard Drive $45.93 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01LYNQXCP/ SATA->USB Adapter $7.59 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0716JKJ68/

Yeah, Cyn's score is definitely gonna be #1 for awhile I think.

Thanks for the recommendation. I just installed the browser addon and the app on my phone. I'll give it a while. Looks like exactly what I need.

I got home from work today and started going through my emails like any other day. There was an unexpected one from Microsoft saying something like "You're earning points now gabriella!" Rather than click on any of the links wanting me to check on my Microsoft Points balance (I learned that trick a long time ago), I decided to log in to my Microsoft account by going to the website directly. When I logged into the site, it actually showed my name as "pretty lizbeth", without proper capitalization, just like in the email. I immediately went into the security settings and saw a few invalid login attempts from several different countries, and one SUCCESSFUL attempt from India. Surprisingly, they didn't do anything in my account that I can see. Only changed the name of my account profile and signed up for Points with a different name. At first, I thought about just going through and resetting my password. Then I realized the account name I used to log into that site is the same as my legit email address. I'm one of the guilty people who use the same password for everything, even though we all know you shouldn't. I always thought my password was long and random enough to never actually get hacked. It's 12 characters long, letters, numbers, and an exclamation mark, all random without any words. But since the Microsoft account was breached, it's got me on high alert about all my other accounts I use the same username/password combination with. This site included. So I'm asking the community... Do you have any recommendations for a random password vault program? I know they exist but haven't felt the urgency to investigate reviews on them. Now I'm concerned. I'd like something that can generate like 16 or more character passwords that are completely random. I'd also like it to store these passwords (and usernames) in a "vault" that is encrypted with a 2-factor authentication lock. Something that can take a password and a Pin # from the Authy App on my iPhone would be great. Does such a thing exist? I'm not looking for an app on my phone. I do most of my forums/etc work on a computer. I'd just like to use the phone for extra security. Another feature that might be handy would be some kind of alarm to alert me to change my passwords on a regular basis. I've already changed my most used accounts to something else. But once again, I'm using the same password for them. I need something that can help me keep track of 20-30 random passwords, instead of 1 random password used on 30 sites. Anybody got any recommendations?

Nice to see some activity on this game. Thanks Cynicaster!

OMG - I wonder how much of that is true, and how much was just joke or gossip.

Nice one! It's good to see you back and posting some scores. I thought I saw a tumbleweed roll by a week ago.

Yup. I think I posted my history at one point. I was born into a family that owned an Atari 2600 (1980). When I was old enough to play video games, it was on the Atari 800. Dad bought an Atari ST System, and passed down the 800 to me and my brother. Not sure what happened to the 2600. A friend of ours had an NES and we played a lot of that after school, during the summer, and sleepovers. As I got older, we moved on to the 386 PC systems and never really looked back at Atari. At one point during a sleep over while helping our NES friend move, we discovered they also owned a Coleco, although they only had 2 games for it. Compared to NES, it sucked to the point we put it back in the box and never looked back. At our house, they bought us a Sega Genesis. It was delayed, and given to my brother as a birthday gift rather than a Christmas one for both of us. So when Dad started the PC era, he gave his old Atari ST to me. Memory is very foggy here as to what happened with the Atari 800 computer. I know it was in a box when we moved, but don't recall what happened to it. I think video went out on it, or the keyboard stopped working.. something. I had the ST and he had the Sega, good enough. We upgraded the Sega to include the Sega CD and 32X. Our NES friend also got a Sega Genesis and CD, and that opened up "borrowing" games. Not enjoying the constant fighting over getting to play on the Sega, I bought my OWN first console: the PlayStation. In return, he got an N64 for his birthday. He kept it and the 3 games less than a year before selling it and all his Sega stuff (of which I owned maybe 80% of due to the games and controllers we had for it). Got himself a nice $30-40 trade-in credit towards a USED PlayStation. I still had the Atari ST up until my Junior year of high school (1997). A buddy of mine I met in school had a computer he couldn't make work. I spent the summer fixing it, and learned it was a 286 McDonalds Drive-Thru POS. Soon after, my Dad found some computers in a dumpster where he worked. They didn't work either so I fixed one of them and learned it was a 486. Better than Dad's 386! I was able to install Windows 3.11 on it. The Atari ST died shortly around that time. The disk drive stopped reading disks and the plug that connected the spare external drive was smashed during a move. So with the ST out of commission, I remember very vividly taking it to the dumpster. I had the PlayStation, and the 486 computer, so I was good there. Then I started building my first PC with the knowledge I picked up from fixing the POS and 486. The PS2 came out, and I got that. My brother moved down to Florida. I stayed in good 'ol Ohio, playing on my PS2 and custom PC. I skipped out on the PS3 and Original Xbox. Continued to upgrade my PC and put GameEX on it. Xbox 360 came out and I decided to try that. Loved it.. Fast forward to now. Skipped the PS4 as I was now a Microsoft fanboy. The Xbox One came out but I was hesitant. Heard about the One X, and knew that was my next thing. Just got it maybe 5 months ago. Love it! Next up is the Raspberry Pi and my NESPi build project. Now that it is basically completed, except from adding more games and stuff to it, I'm in a new lull. I still have my original PlayStation, and my original PS2. I have 2 360's and the One X. I have my custom PC (which has GameEx installed on), and a custom (still building) home server. And I have my NESPi. Never in my history has Intellivision come up. Actually, I take that back. My evil b!tch of a stepmom bought one of those "flashback" consoles when we had the fire at our house. She felt like she needed to do something nice, and remembered playing on that with her daughter and ex-husband. Funny thing is, the thing she bought was NOTHING like the Intellivision. (Found it on Amazon!) It was like your current gen controller, with a left side D-Pad and right side action buttons. The cord that would go to a console actually just went to the TV, RCA, and it ran on batteries. There was only 1 game out of the 10 or so that she thought she recognized, but couldn't play it because the controller was unfamiliar to her. THAT is my exposure to Intellivision. Atari on the other hand, was in my family from my birth, to my youth, to High School. So I am understandably nostalgic for the brand.

Same.

Do I suck by saying "not interested?" Retro consoles are flooding the market now. With re-releasing the NES mini, the original release of it, and the SNES Mini.. Not to mention the Flashback consoles.. And creeping on the heals of the Atari VCS announcement. I feel like this is just a sad attempt to up-sell a console that in my mind was inferior. I mean, granted I'm already a backing supporter of the Atari VCS. But in my opinion, Intellivision wasn't that great. I hadn't even heard of the thing till I was in High School (late 90's). The Coleco was more popular I think. But it's competitor was the NES. I read the reports that it was the first 16-bit console, at a time when 8-bit consoles were the thing. But was it really? I mean, comparing capabilities, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, SNES, and the TurboGrafx/PC-Engine were the 16-bit consoles. Intellivision was more an 8-bit console, maybe along the lines of Atari 5200. But it's cross-compatibility add-on device was only compatible with the Atari 2600 generation. So they had a "D-Pad".. it was a disc, not a true pad. They had official Pro sports licensing. Big whoop. They didn't have good games. They really don't offer anything. To reboot a console now, you have to compete with Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch. Intellivision will be a niche market at best, sold to people who knew the brand. Atari has generations of software to build on. They may have dropped out of the console game with the Jaguar, but they still made games. A new console from them will help build their company and allow playability with potentially their entire library. I don't think Intellivision has had a new game since the 80's. Nope.. Atari VCS is still my go to. Will be somewhat interested in seeing where Intellivision goes, but interested in buying/supporting? Nope.

I dunno. Not really feeling a vertical view, like to see a machine that's horizontal.

Neat stuff man!

This is so touching to me. Like seeing Youtube or News clips about people/kids with autism or some other handicap getting the help they've waited forever to have. It's touching and tear jerking. I've always known there are people out there with color blindness. I'm not, so wrapping my head around the issue has always been a difficult one. It must affect more people that we realize. To think, you guys have it, and we're just learning about it. This is a small community. What are the odds? My dad's best friend growing up is also color blind. Tried to sell my dad a couch, not realizing there was a huge bleach spot in the center of it. That's when we learned he was color blind. There's also a guy at my work. I'm amazed a technology is being developed that lets you see the colors I've always seen. I'm curious to read more about what other discoveries you're seeing. Like, this is a Game forum, have you tried playing any games and been wowed? From my perspective, it sounds almost like your eyes have gone through Photoshop and just desaturated all the colors. Like they are there, but not strong enough differentiate. Like, you say a green light is the same color as the moon. That's just "wow". What does the sun look like? I mean, don't LOOK at it, obviously. But it should be like a yellowish orange. I bet it has always been a whitish color too. I know when my dad's friend was telling me about his color blindness, we were in a car driving. He doesn't even see the colors in traffic lights, and just knows which is lit up and what it means. There are actually 3 colors, red/yellow/green. Now you can see them all. And then things like Xbox//PS controllers, with their buttons having different colors. And what about stuff like RF cables (Video/left/right). They're actually Yellow/White/Red. That must be hard to set up being color blind. And I bet you'd love comic books now. It's just amazing hearing about people with handicaps experiencing things a non-handicapped person takes for granted. Like a true blind person seeing the first time with the help of implants, a deaf person hearing, an amputee from birth walking the first time (or even seeing like a dog walking with an implant although I don't like seeing animals suffering). Good stuff guys!

No love for Daisy? She's my future wife.. So I may have a date tomorrow to go see Solo (GASP!). It's not really a date. There's a girl that I've gotten to be pretty good friends with from work We're 20 years apart, and she's just turned 17 recently.. But who cares? I'm not really interested in a physical relationship with her. I mean, don't get me wrong, that'd be cool and all, given that I'm still single and a virgin. But honestly, I value her friendship too much and respect her. I'm not looking for anything like that, and all the trouble that would come out of it. She just lost her job due to attendance and tardiness. We had been talking about Star Trek, Star Wars, video games, comic books, church, photography, life, etc, for months. She's a very good match for me, closest I've had in a LONG time. Whenever she saw me at work, she would rush over to give me hugs. It was upsetting to hear of her getting fired, so I offered her a chance to hang out and see a movie we're both "meh" wanting to see. It's more about forgetting work and hanging out away from people, than it is about hooking up. She's a good girl, with good morals. I'm just glad I'll have a chance to see her again one last time. I've been pretty depressed lately too, so it'll be a nice pick me up.

Do your thing, then still say they don't work!

Indiegogo is a mess right now. I waited until the deadline, followed the instructions and clicked at EXACTLY 9:00am. Took me to a page with traffic cones saying "Something isn't quite right". So I spent a good 5 minutes refreshing the page, going back to my email and clicking the link again, etc. It finally loads, but I don't see anything glaringly obvious as a special secret perk. I see a list of perks. Try to click on one, it craps out with that same error page. Once again, reloading the page from the email and refreshing over an over. Once I finally get back, it takes me to an information collection page, asking for my Name/Address/Credit Card. I put in all the info, click the submit payment button. Wait.. nothing happens. Cone error page again. Check my bank account, nothing processed yet. Go back through, another 15 minutes of trying to load the page, select the perk, enter in all my info, submit payment, ... and ... "There was a problem processing your payment. Try again or contact support". I try again. 6 times. Still errors. Then suddenly the error changed to "Card Declined". WHAT?! I check my bank, and sure enough one of the errors had actually made it through to the bank. So I close out, go to the Indiegogo webpage to load up my profile. Wouldn't you know? NOTHING! No proof that I am supporting a campaign or project. But they took my money sure enough. I just sent them an email to their support team asking for help. This is crazy. The Atari project page is showing they've got like 8000 backers already, but I'm not one of them. I want my money to go to the project, not Indiegogo's pocket. I want to support Atari. I want my "perk" I ordered. I also forwarded the email I sent to Indiegogo's support to the Atari team. While I got an instant "We received your request for help" from their support team, I've still not heard from them. Atari, on the other hand, replied personally with a "Sorry, their website is under extremely heavy load. They're the ones who can fix this problem. Just sit tight!" So that was nice. At least they replied personally instead of automatedly, and very quickly. So yeah, if this all gets clear up, I've got one of the Woodgrain models coming, along with the joystick and gamepad. It's weird. They make no mention of it on the website, but in the email they said it comes with the controllers. On the website, they're listed separately or bundled for extra cost. I think the "secret perk" might have been that 33% discount on the Onyx console only. Kinda shady there. Everything else is full price, but you get the Onyx without controllers with the discount. Anyway, I hope this is resolved soon. I don't like seeing this big $360 hole in my bank account without seeing it being spent on what I paid for.

So wait.. you were better with a controller than a mouse? That's unheard of! Way to take over 1st place with your first submission lol. Updated OP, DB, RSS

Amen man. I read about this through the AtariVCS webpage. Sad news. Everybody has to go sometime. He was a true blessing to everybody.

Thanks guys! For those of us in the USA, today marks a special day. Not only because it's my birthday, but also because it's a day of Memorial, to all our fallen heroes in all our fought wars. Let's not forget the lives they gave up to help keep our country safe and free. Ok, back to the 40+ emails from websites saying Happy Birthday, the 20 or so PM's on Facebook, and the special "For me only" 50% off sale on POS (point of sale) equipment from eBay as a birthday gift. Like I'll ever need that. SMH

Man, you're pretty close to 1 year since your last submission (or any from anybody else....<cough>). Also, removal of "TIF" scores meant adding me back to the Top Ten. Yay me! Updated OP, DB, RSS

2 hours to get to level 14? Maybe I should play this one again. That doesn't seem like it took me that long. But maybe I'm just remembering my NES runs. Most of these stages can be beaten in a minute. Still, congrats on making the Top Ten (and knocking off rtkiii ^_^). Updated OP, DB, RSS

Nice one man! Fixed it. The DBM has a "sort" button to put everybody in the correct spot. I guess I forgot to hit it when I added your score. When I updated KRC's, it sorted itself out. Thanks for the heads up though, keeping me on my toes! Updated OP, DB, RSS

Holy cow dude. You've been practicing! Took the lead right from the old Cyn bin! Bet he'll fight you for it! Updated OP, DB, RSS

Just thought I'd chime in here too and say that I added my name to the watch list. Wouldn't mind grabbing one of these, not only for the nostalgia, but I'd like to see where it's going in terms of mods. I hope Atari doesn't lose out with their declaration of the OS being OPEN. Honestly, I think it's going to end up being little more than a Pi inside. Granted, it's running an AMD processor with Radeon graphics. Still, what are they talking about, NUC territory? If mods are available, I might try and come up with a dual-boot setup. Using Atari's system and then a sideload of RetroPie. Sounds like the processing power might be better than a Pi or Odroid. Might be able to run PS2, PSP, GC. Just gotta wait and see.