Most liked posts in thread: What's new Pussycat too?

Point very well made, Matt.

That's it then - Atari 8bit Commando on expert mode/difficulty and get practising, fellas!

Let's try and get a little comp going by 1st October and say that the highest score achieved by month's end at this level - with accompanying photographic confirmation of score screenshot - is the winner (and gets a night out connected to an Oric). Runner up gets two nights out soldered to an Oric etc.

C'mon now, let's be aving you ;-)

 

You guys have a ball with this, for the competitive folks, there's the Hi Score club on AA (all welcome). So having a similar thing on here would be nice. I'd try to take part, but there's not much hope of that as the neck is giving me serious jip and I've started to get patches of mild numbness on my arms and legs. The consultant said to expect it as the condition worsens.

Looks like I'll be in the old hospital sooner, rather than later for decompression surgery (NOT looking forward to that). No need for sympathy or worry, it's something I knew would happen and made a decision way back to leave it as long as possible, which the consultant begrudgingly agreed with.

Anyway, enough about me, get this game thing going, and no cheating (That's also a reason I'd not partake, I'm a serial open cheat, I spent more time cheating an dissecting games than I did playing found it more fun making the cheat..

 

Commando + and "bog standard" are exactly the same gameplay wise, the + version just has the revamped title screen that plays either the arcade original music or the C64's SID version (I forget which source they used) music in stereo (if you have it) and was created with Rasta Music Tracker (RMT). Game play is identical and the in-game music is the original 8-bit Pokey tune still. Play which ever version you have or want too, it will make no difference to the contest.

Commando + requires 320K, as it is the 256K rom cartridge turned into a file, and like the cart, requires 64K of main memory to run, hence 320K required for the file version. The cart/rom version will run on 64K as long as you have the cart or Atarimax or TheCart! or one of the many flash drive option available for A8's.

If you don't have any flash cartridge type for the rom/cart image and less than 320K memory (main+extended)for the file .xex version, then you are out of luck.

 

My latest acquisition may or may not pique your interest. It's a Head Mounted Display (HMD) from 1996. Takara brand from Japan. But this one is special enough for me personally to buy instead a modern one with higher resolution. The resolution on this one is good enough for what I'm going to use it for.

It's the Takara HMD Dynovisor. Philips also released an identical version of this HMD at the same time called the Scuba HMD. But what makes the Dynovisor and Scuba HMD especially unique to any others is that both HMD's rose from the ashes of the Atari Jaguar VR headset!

Though missing the head tracking hardware from the original Jaguar VR, everything else about it is identical tech to to the Jaguar's VR unit. There were two Jag VR proto types that exist and are often seen at Jaguar shows runnning Missile Command 3D. One is the red version, which is the same as the Dynovisor and Scuba visor, and was rejected by Atari and Virtuality went back to the drawing board to make one that was higher resolution display which postponed the Jaguar VR to the point that Atari went out of business before it's release.

Virtuality, with the death of Atari had to try and recoup development funds and save themselves so they licensed the tech out to Takara and Philips.

So what does it matter now? What makes it uniquely special? Well though it's missing the head tracking, which makes VR more immersive, it's not missing what makes Virtual Reality virtual, which is the two perspective screens and the optical pupil projector that give the (Jaguar) HMD it's true stereoscopic 3D projection. This tech is still built into the Takara and Philips HMD's, though as far as I know, no games were released for either HMD taking advantage of this stereo tech. Except one singular game: Missile Command 3D on the Atari Jaguar!

That's right, even though I will have to use a controller still to play MC3D, I will get to play MC3D is TRUE STEREOSCOPIC 3D as it was meant to be! With revolutionary tech at the time by virtuality, with dual perspective screens that give the deep distance effect into the image as well as the optical pupil projector(s) that give the image the pop-out, in-your-face 3D, actually projecting objects into your eye pupils for maximum effect! And it works as intended with this Jaguar game!

http://jagcube.atari.org/jaguarvr.html

Jaguar VR



Scuba HMD




My brand-new, old-stock Dynovisor straight from Japan!

 

Bloody marvellous, mate.

Great pics and description/history of what was developed... and what went wrong.

Sounds incredible even just for the 3D Missile Command (one of my faves of all time in the arcades and of course the Atari home computer ports).

A Beeb clone, btw, which I can very definitely recommend (but it aint in 3D stereoscopic vision!) is called MISSILE CONTROL...

FAST FWD to 2:20, guys.








A stone cold (war) classic!

 

Jesus, that Bob seems to be everyone's Uncle

 

Bob Monkhouse? I thought he was dead....

In other retro news, I'm hoping to be picking up a little 8 bit bundle later this evening. Pictures to follow, hopefully...

 

Just collected. Heavy rain here so will stay in the boot until I can lift inside tomorrow....

Can you spot the different bits?

 

Well done Andy!

There is an 800XL hidden under the box along with a 1050 disk drive and a 1029 printer. All with power supplies but apart from the seller saying the XL powered up I have no clue if the rest of it works. He is a member of a local Amiga user group and was just looking to trim his horde so I purchased the trio for a little under a £100 which I think seemed pretty reasonable as untested. What do you reckon?

Funny thing is, I don't know what I'm going to do with any of it. Already got two 800XL's and don't really need the printer or floppy drive so if any of you guys are wanting to buy them for cost price then more than welcome. Or maybe a swap even.

In the meantime I'll give them a quick clean up once I retrieve them from the car and see what's on the disks.

 

Would be interested to know what's on the floppies, just in case there's sommit rare (if they even work)..

If no one on here wants the gear then get it up on ebay or other sites and make a few quid.

 

The Dynovisor and Scuba HMD's I've seen come along over the years were always north of $200, most higher than the retail prices about $300. Though, like all electronics, I'm sure there was a window of opportunity when it was just old tech and not yet considered collectible where they could be had for close out and bargain bin prices.

I missed the dirt-cheap close-out era of the Dynovisor and Scuba HMD's because back then I wasn't aware of the fact that they were actually copies of the Virtuality's Jag VR HMD tech! If I had known that I probably would have paid full retail price for one just to play Missile Command in stereoscopic VR form with a code.

Now, of course, we have the actual working rom of Missile Command VR with the VR options right in the main menu, usable with BigPemu using Steam VR, or for the fellow that owns the $10,000 Jag VR unit with a real Jag (actually, I think the Jag VR proto has a proto of the Missile Command VR and is what the released rom is derived from), or, less the tracking, on a Dynovisor or Scuba HMD like myself and one or two other Jag owners throughout the years...I know Clint Thompson, long time AA member owns one too.

 

@nysavant I would be interested in the 800XL Allen.

 

LOL my highest was 7000

 

Hey, many happy returns, Al - you've got a sunny one I hope - the weather is much better as we towed it back from France!
I know next to nothing about Apple Mac gaming but that volume looks a class act.
Enjoy, mate, and post us the best bits!
Hope you get out and have a drink or four with friends/colleagues/family etc or just celebrate in with a wee drop of good whisky, that book and boot up Commando!
Cheers, fella.
All the best
A&B.

 

Many happy returns old man...One year closer to slippers and a blanket for the legs..

 

Again? Do you even remember where you work?

 

In the little free time I've had of late I've been trying to get back into my hobbies. It's been long enough that all my nice shiny refurbished and modified computers and consoles are going to need a thorough cleaning again with dust caked into every seem and key/button. All stacked up in a giant "junk" pile as I moved stuff out of danger's way as the puppies have grown.

Of course my new Atari VCS, and HMD unit for Jag MC3D (VR) and new games for the Jaguar have helped to jump start my can-do ambition to get it all back in order. But in the mean time, it's been the Atari VCS, HMD and Jaguar I've been "hobbying" and playing on.

VCS:

Though I haven't gotten around to upgrading the VCS memory yet (I see no reason for an internal drive upgrade since I have USB ports and thumb drives), but I've been adding the peripherals and OS's.

Different from my previous pictures posted, in this one I have a second modern controller (aftermarket XBOX 1) for $10 and when I got it home I noticed how closely the design matches the Atari controller! Did I just happen to purchase a controller from the company that made the Atari VCS modern controller?!? IIRC, the brand is PDP.

Anyway, I also upgraded to a premium quality mouse, slim profile with RGB LED backlighting to match my Atari keyboard. I also purchased Atari's Linux USB stick for the PC side. I made a 64G thumb drive boot loader Windows XP and two more thumb drives formatted for use with the VCS for game storage. I only use internal storage for the VCS apps and emu's and streaming services.

I also got a USB 3.0 to Sata/IDE adapter and added a 2.5" 180G mini IDE HDD and 3D printed a case for it using a model done for C64 cartridge that I modified slightly to fit. It is for Windows 7. Also a 500G SATA 3.5" drive with Windows 10.

Lastly, I got a USB 3.0 4-port hub. Picture below.

As for the HMD, I'm still working on upgrades and mods for it and will let you all in on it very soon. And I'll do a review/comparison of the original 1996 Towers II: Plight of the Stargazer and the new 2023 Towers II: Enhanced Stargazer Edition.

 

Hello my friends. After spending yesterday evening working on my HMD, it's coming along great, but I'm doing it right so I ordered some items to help to do that, so no pictures of my mods and upgrades yet. Then I spent most of the day watching news on Youtube streaming networks about the new war in Israel!

But later this evening, I need a break from the tragedy and so I'm posting now. After much trial and error, I was able to capture a decent enough screen image of the Dynovisor/Scuba/JagVR HMD.

Most people like to rag on these early HMD's due to low resolution screens. And they were lower resolution than even the standard PAL and NTSC TV's of the day, but so were all the video formats and gaming consoles until the Sega Dreamcast! I'm not saying some, including the Jag, weren't capable of higher resolutions, but for 99-100% of all the games on all the consoles of the era didn't use a resolution higher than 320x240 (or PAL equivelant), so standard-def TV's were too much for 20th century console definitions!

So I have to ask the nay-sayers; "what are you planning on using the HMD for? Console gaming, right? So then the only question is if the screen on these HMD's had a higher resolution than the graphic modes the consoles of the day (and before) used, right?

Well, there was no direct 111x222 pixel resolution numbers given in the specs of the Dyno or Scuba. BUT, the Dynovisor's specs do say two, 180,000 pixel, Sony active TFT LCD screens. The Scuba specs say 400 lines of resolution. So dividing 180,000 by 400 gives a horizontal resolution of 450. So is 450x400 resolution screens enough to display up to 320x240? Yes, so nay-sayers go pull your heads out of your asses. The cherry on top is that everything plays at full screen, not in a window, so the HMD is actually upscaling the 320-240p image to 450x400p, which in fact causes an anti-aliasing side effect so everything is perfectly smooth in a progressive scan.



Down below is that screen shot I promised, now keep in mind that the distortion and blurriness is due to a poor quality picture, taken through a magnifier in a very hard spot to get the camera eye to, not the screen itself. But the brightness, contrast and brilliant color of these little screens magnified to a 120" virtual screen is caught! I think it's fantastic and it couldn't have been the low resolution that is the reason Atari told Virtuality to go back to the drawing board, but because Atari already knew the Jag was dead by then and were getting ready to lay-off, liquidate and sell out! There is no need for a higher resolution screen for the Jaguar's 320x224 99% games resolutions (Doom is 160x224!).

Now the real issue with these HMD's that do make them practically unusable is how uncomfortable they become to wear in short order. But in my case, I don't cry and give up, I make it into what I expect it to be, and my new padding worked wonders and it is extremely comfortable now for longer gaming sessions. But it's not ready aesthetically, so no photos yet!

 

Surprisingly I didn't really make any retro game purchases when on holiday last week. Got a couple of books and some music cd's and that was it. With my left over holiday money though I've made a couple of buys in the last few days.

Got Pixel, Amiga, and Amstrad Addict magazines. They're all really good reads, Pixel Addict being my favourite. Now prefer them to Retro Gamer which I think difficult to read because of the paper stock and font they use (the old eyes ain't what they used to be fellas).

The other purchase was a C64 Mini. Yes, I already have a full size The Vic20 which does the same job but I was looking for a new joystick for 2 player games and it wasn't much dearer to buy it complete with the console!


(the observant amongst you may notice a car mag creeping into the back lol)




One last thing I just remembered is a Steam purchase called Tiny Football from Microprose. It has been on my wishlist for a while and was down to £5 in a sale so I snapped it up. Love my football games and this one reminds me of Sensible Soccer but a bit easier to play. Very nice

https://https://www.microprose.com/games/tiny-football

 

I really like Sensible soccer on the Jaguar, I'm told it's a direct Amiga port, and it does show, graphically, but I thing the sound was enhanced.



The Jaguar has two footie games for you Brits and Europeans, the other is a more arcade style game rendered in isometric perspective and playing and looking very Neo-Geo like.



My all-time favorite Footie game though is the 3DO version of Fifa Soccer. (Go to 3:12 to skip all the FMV and see the gameplay)



I will have to check out this footie game on Steam as I've recently set up my PC VCS and Steam is the main reason for that, even streaming and basic apps and internet with Chrome already exists on the ATARI VCS side...though I'll have my choice of browser on the PC side, and apps whereas on the Atari side you get what they give, and that is Chrome and google apps.

 

That art would make for a great mouse pad.

My latest procurement is a Mad Catz brand steering and pedals for the PS1/2. I decided I wanted a steering wheel for my Dreamcast, saw some crazy prices for Sega and Madcatz wheels for the DC though, starting at $100 and up to hundreds. So knowing that the Mad Catz brand used the exact same steering wheel for every major console release, I figured it would be an easy design to just buy the cheapest version for any console from the 90's to today and wire it up to use with my Dreamcast, 3DO and OG Xbox myself.

Though I did find controller adapters for the DC to use with multiple console & PC controllers/keyboards, including PS1/2,but they cost more than either a DC keyboard or steering wheel! A PS1/2 wheel popped up for $35 in that Madcatz list with free shipping, so that's what I bought. I already have it working on the DC too, using a DC cable from a broken Madcatz DC controller I have. As suspected it's child's play for me with a cross-over wiring board inside that I can just splice into for every system I want.

It will have 2-4 cables protruding in the end, but will work with all my wired controller consoles just by plugging in the correct cable.

 

There was a retro computer fair on in Glasgow today. Normally they don't get a great deal of stalls coming up from down South but today was really good with a wide selection of games and hardware. I went with the intention of looking for some Atari 2600 and 7800 carts so was suitably chuffed to find three from my wants list (Warlords, Bowling and Ceniptede (the latter for the 7800). Got those three and Pole Position for £20 so very pleased.

Also picked up a Lego Stormtrooper mini figure, two metal signs (Horace and Art of Atari), six arcade marque style stickers and finally a bento box to add to my Pacman collection

Prices all seemed reasonable and there was a lot of customers plus a little bit of bartering with a couple of my purchases.

Now all I need to do is waith on my Atari 2600+ arriving next week and I can play my 'new' cartridges!

 

Lovely stuff Andy. Your mate is going to be a very happy boy with that bundle. I never owned a Vic20 but always had a soft spot for that and C16/Plus 4. Now I feel like booting up my TheVic20 and playing some Gridrunner

I'll try and get pictures taken of my bits (oo-er missus) later tonight. I picked up another few VCS carts from my pals shop and some at a couple of retro places in Glasgow. Really enjoying the cartridge hunt at the moment and think I'm only missing about 3 of the games I still want on the 2600/7800.

Biggest find though was something very nice for my 800XL collection.... more of that later though!

 

Latest thing I bought was for my Xbox ....

 

Thanks Andy, I am better now, it was just a stinker of a cold that Sonia kindly gave me. I have been trying to get my 32KB MSX 1 back up to running condition again. There are a couple of keys that are temperamental and two of the cursor keys don't work. The keyboard is a sealed unit so I couldn't get to the membrane. I tried to upgrade the RAM to 64KB internally by replacing the 41116 Chips with 41464 but it didn't work I think the multiplexers need a bit of rewiring so I ordered a 64KB RAM cart from Japan. That should override the internal RAM in Slot 1 and make it a 64KB machine. I just got confirmation it was posted today so it will be interesting to see how it works. I ordered two so if anyone needs one I have a spare.
I am hoping to get an ELKSD128 for Crimbo for me Electron so there are a few things on the horizon. My next repair job is to fit my CoCo2 with a 6309 CPU but as always if anyone has a faulty machine Dick's Retro Repairs is open.