adafruit ntsc pal television tft display 1.5 diagonal pricelist

Yes, this is an adorable miniature television! The visible display measures only 1.5" diagonal, the TFT comes with a NTSC/PAL driver board. The display is very easy to use - simply connect 6-12VDC to the red and black wires, then connect a composite video source to the yellow and black wire. Voila, a television display! There"s a little button to adjust the LED backlight brightness (5 levels) - there is no other adjustment available but we found that the color and contrast look great right out of the box.

To demonstrate it, we took some photos with the display connected to a Raspberry Pi, but it will also work connected to any analog composite-video output such as a YBox or Propeller w/Video out. It will not work with a device that only outputs VGA, HDMI or any other digital video signal.

Please note, these miniature displays are very delicate and require care to avoid ripping the delicate flex connector. These are best used by electronics geeks who have experience and are comfortable working with delicate electronic components. WE CANNOT REPLACE DAMAGED DISPLAYS if you are not careful and rip the flex connector!

Yes, this is an adorable small television! The visible display measures only 2.5" (6.35cm) diagonal, the TFT comes with a NTSC/PAL driver board. The display is very easy to use - simply connect 6-12VDC to the red and black wires, then connect a composite video source to the yellow and black wire. Voila, a television display! There"s one little button to adjust the LED backlight brightness up and down.  There is no other adjustment available but we found that the color and contrast look great right out of the box.

To demonstrate it, we took some photos with the display connected to a Raspberry Pi, but it will also work connected to any analog composite-video output such as a YBox or Propeller w/Video out. It will not work with a device that only outputs VGA, HDMI or any other digital video signal.

Please note, these miniature displays are very delicate and require care to avoid ripping the delicate flex connector. These are best used by electronics geeks who have experience and are comfortable working with delicate electronic components. WE CANNOT REPLACE DAMAGED DISPLAYS if you are not careful and rip the flex connector!

If you received a display where the connector cable has red & black wires going to the composite plug then connect yellow to ground, and white wire to 6-12V, thanks!

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Way back in the Paleolithic Era of computing (about 1980), I bought my first computer, an Apple ][+. I still get a kick out of the clever way Apple “spelled out” the Roman numeral two with those square brackets. My ][+ was totally tricked out: a whopping 48 KB of memory, two 120 KB floppies (no disk swapping for me!), a beautiful 10” black & green monitor, an Epson MX-80 dot matrix printer that lasted me far longer than any other piece of computer gear I’ve ever owned, and a genuine Hayes 300-baud modem (the height of “online connectivity” then) that cost $300 (just for the modem, not the whole computer!), a nice even dollar-per-baud. Somehow I convinced my wife that we should drop well over a month’s income (and we were both employed, too). I promised her I would make it pay for itself. I guess I did. How? Hacking. The computer classes that existed then were for “real computers,” where you typed Cobol onto punch cards and handed your deck to the “computer operator” hoping he would run your program sometime soon and give you back a big pile of paper so you could figure out the results! Real programmers didn’t play with home computers. But then, I wasn’t a real programmer. We had to learn things by ourselves. I sat in front of that Apple and typed hour after hour, writing code that didn’t work, then figuring out why, changing it and trying it again. Rinse. Repeat. I was just sure that I had missed the boat on becoming a programmer. All those guys with the college Fortran classes would have all the fun. Eventually I bought and read enough books that I figured things out. And discovered that instead of being way behind the curve, I was actually ahead of it. While they were better at algorithms, I understood people, and humor,

A few months ago, I was playing a classic Game Boy game, in all its 15-yearold monochrome glory. But the version I was playing was markedly worse than what I remembered from 1989—it ran a little slowly, had some graphic glitches, and there was no sound. And it was one of the most impressive things I’d ever seen. Why? Because I was playing it on the Sony PSP. It had been a pretty amazing week. Intrepid, brilliant Japanese hackers had discovered a security loophole in Sony’s new portable game console that let them run executable files off of the Memory Stick media. Within days—literally days—they’d progressed from a simple “Hello World” display to a program that emulated the Game Boy hardware. As we went to press on this book, there were PSP programs that played games from consoles like the Neo Geo and Turbo-Grafx CD. By the time you finally read these words, there will probably be software that lets you do much more. This volume is dedicated to the appreciation, understanding, and application of just that sort of impressive hack. And you don’t even have to skirt copyright law to do it—you’ll find that public domain and freeware games exist for most gaming consoles. The creation of these so-called homebrew titles is in and of itself a retro gaming hack—and a damned impressive one at that! And if you want to try your hand at creating a Game Boy title of your own, you’ll find tips and tricks to help you get started right here. As for me, I like having the actual classic game hardware. The feel of hooking up a classic NES deck, blowing on the cartridge to get it to work right, shoving it into the ancient plastic, hearing the barely-audible clicks and hum of the television as it boots up (or doesn’t… and we’ll show you how to fix that). Getting hand cramps from the old rectangular controllers, then throwing those controllers around the room, knowing they were so durable they’d

Online Shopping The miracle of the Internet is how it brings people together across vast distances. Nowhere is this more apparent than in e-commerce. Buyers have the ultimate choice between sellers, and sellers have multiple buyers banging down their virtual doors. eBay. Throughout this book, you’ll see hack authors constantly referring back to eBay. And how could we not? The prototypical online auction site was founded in September 1995 and quickly became one of the most-visited sites on the Web. Millions of items are posted by independent sellers on the site every day, from the mundane to the unimaginably rare. You can find anything you want on eBay, and that is especially true for classic video games. Although many eBay listings are run in the traditional seven-day auction format in which the highest bid wins, many have a “Buy It Now” option that let you purchase the item immediately for a set price. Early eBay sellers gained a reputation for “price gouging,” and it is true that the auction-style formats did in some cases tend to inflate the price that rare (and sometimes not so rare) games would fetch. But as more and more people joined eBay to sell their stuff, prices began to fall in line with real market values. You needn’t be afraid of eBay; indeed, in most cases it can be the best option for finding what you want in the condition you want. eBay and its subsidiary PayPal (an online credit card payment system that most sellers accept) have extensive buyer protection policies, so in fact you can be safer when bidding on an eBay listing than buying games from an independent online retailer.

In an early episode of “That 70’s Show,” the teenaged characters sit around a thirteen-inch television screen playing a game of Pong, marveling, mouths agape at the advance of high technology. Most of the modern-day audience laughed along at the concept of two lines and a dot on a TV screen being the pinnacle of scientific advance. But if you found yourself not laughing but seriously contemplating playing a game of Pong, this hack is for you. There’s something appealing about breaking out the most retro of retro games, and you can still do it on the (relatively) cheap.

Odyssey Actually, let’s put “cheap” on hold for a bit to talk about the very first video game system. Invented by a brilliant engineer named Ralph Baer who had spent the last 15 years working on military projects, the Odyssey was released by Magnavox in 1972 (though Baer had completed the prototype in 1966). It played not only line-and-dot video tennis but also many other games that required only a line and dot. Magnavox failed to sell many of the systems, so the Odyssey is now a high-priced collector’s item. And it gets worse. Because Magnavox didn’t think ball-and-dot gameplay on its own was enough to satisfy consumers in the age of color TV, a whole mess of accessories was included with the original Odyssey package—about three hundred pieces in all! Color overlays were included that stuck onto television sets to produce translucent “backgrounds”; some games were board games that used the television display for crude accompaniment but required stacks of Monopoly-style money; some games required sets of cards and dice. All this was included in the box with an Odyssey system, so if you do find one for sale, be sure that the asking price is commensurate with its completeness! An exhaustive list of accessories can be found at http:// fusionanomaly.net/odyssey.html. There were “game cartridges” released for the Odyssey, but it is not considered to be a programmable system. The cartridges were simply circuit boards with no ROM chips that made the machine’s dot-and-line setup respond differently to player controls. A light rifle, called Shooting Gallery,

Will the Real Pong Please Stand Up? If you search on eBay for pong system you’ll get lots of auctions for ancient game hardware that is not, technically, Pong. The name is a trademark of Atari, who partnered with Sears to release the original home Pong system in 1975, after the success of the arcade game. That system (called Tele-Games Pong) is difficult to find, but many of the official successors to the machine (which featured more variations on the game, color graphics, and other upgrades) are a little easier to hunt down for between $20 and $40 each. Some examples of these are Super Pong, Tele-Games Pong Sports IV, Hockey-Pong, Ultra Pong, etc. Although the original Odyssey bombed, Magnavox caught on to the Pong craze and began to release a line of scaled-down systems using the Odyssey name. The Odyssey 100, 200, 300, and 400 were released between 1975 and 1976; the 2000, 3000, and 4000 followed later. Some display in black-andwhite while some display in color, and the outer shells of the system and the games they play also differ, but all play variations on TV table tennis. But many other companies released their own Pong-inspired hardware in the years following the successful Christmas 1975 introduction of home Pong. And if you don’t mind that your game of line-and-dot doesn’t have the Atari name on it, you can pick one up quite cheaply. One historically significant yet not heavily sought-after line of systems is Coleco’s Telstar series. Search for coleco telstar on eBay and you’ll pull up all sorts of auctions that can be won for ten dollars or less. Other companies that produced their own generic Pong knockoffs include Zenith, Sharp, RadioShack, and K-Mart (!).

Being an Informed Consumer of Pong Stuff While many “Pong” systems support AC adapters, these were usually sold as optional accessories. You may have to power them up with a bunch of C or D batteries, so be aware of this as you browse for a system to buy. Also, find out how the system hooks up to a television. Some may use standard RF connectors [Hack #3] but some (like the Odyssey systems) use proprietary hardware, so make sure a switch is included with the system when you buy it. Also be aware of the system’s controllers. The higher-priced systems back in the day didn’t necessarily feature more games in the hardware, but they did have more comfortable, removable control dials. The cheaper ones had both dials attached to the body of the machine, which means that you and your sparring partner might have to get a little closer than you’d like. The prices

Maybe you sold it at your own garage sale. Maybe your mom threw it away while you were at college. Maybe you were too young to own one in the first place. Whatever the reason, you’ve found yourself wanting an Atari once again. Yes, the very first video game company did produce many different consoles, but when I say “an Atari” you know what I’m talking about: the Video Computer System, a.k.a. the VCS, a.k.a. the 2600, a.k.a. the Atari. For the purposes of this hack, I’m assuming that you’re not interested in the collections for PlayStation 2 and Xbox that let you play emulated versions of classic games [Hack #16], nor are you interested in the popular standalone consoles that plug directly into your modern-day television’s AV inputs and play from a selection of classic games [Hack #15]. No, you want the real thing, whether for nostalgic reasons or to play the games you remember that, for licensing reasons, will never, ever, be included on Atari Anthology, like the execrable E.T. or the 2600 versions of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. Well, then: here’s how you’re going to do it.

A TV/Game Switch or equivalent Unlike the power supply, the RF switch (the bit that hooks your Atari up to the television) included with the 2600 was a standard, nearly universal piece of hardware. You can buy them today for about ten dollars at brick-and-mortar RadioShack stores or online at www.radioshack. com; the catalog number is 15-1268. This uses the classic-style plastic switch that you have to flip yourself by reaching around the back of the television. If you’d prefer an automatic switch, you can have one for a mere three dollars more (catalog no. 15-1267). Be aware that although the RadioShack adapters feature 75 ohm output (in layman’s terms, the familiar cable that runs into the back of your TV set), the adapters that shipped with the 2600 only featured 300 ohm output (two little U-shaped bits of metal that were fitted onto screws that have since been removed from modern TV sets). So unless you’re using a very old TV you will need a new adapter. There is a slightly more elegant solution, if somewhat restrictive. RadioShack catalog number 278-255, called the Standard “F” Connector, is a tiny connector that directly links the phono plug on the 2600 and your TV’s VHF input. This is a much cleaner-looking result, the downside being that you can only connect one console at a time and cannot pass your cable television connection through. If you have a television reserved for classic gaming, this may be your best bet. Controllers of both types. Strange as it may seem these days—when game consoles ship with a bare minimum of included accessories—the Video Computer System’s standard package included two standard joysticks and a pair of “paddles” with dial controls. You’ll want both to fully enjoy the system’s library of games. The paddle controllers are necessary for playing Pongstyle contests, and since two paddles share one controller input you can easily play doubles Pong with an extra set of paddles. The 2600 Jr. shipped with only one standard controller. What cheapskates they had become in only a decade. Of course, the system retailed for about a sixth of the price of the VCS. What games to buy. There are no games built into the VCS, so you will need at least one cartridge. Since so many were made, the odds are overwhelmingly in your favor that when you buy a VCS—whether online, at a thrift store, or wherever—some games will come along with it. Should you strike out on your own and want to beef up your collection with classics that are both enjoyable and very inexpensive (no more than a dollar or two for the bare cartridge), here is a starter list.

Running an Atari If you have everything listed earlier, setting up the 2600 should be a snap. You’ll notice that the VCS has the wire that connects to the television switch

box hardwired into the body of the unit, but the 2600 Jr. does not (so make sure that is included when you buy it as well, or it will necessitate another trip to RadioShack). Plug that into your switch box and plug the switch box into the VHF input on your television set. (If it has a manual switch, make sure it is set to GAME.) Plug the whole mess of wires into the wall socket and cross your fingers. Common troubleshooting issues. If these steps do not immediately work, be sure that your television is set on either channel 3 or 4—that’s the actual television set, not your VCR or cable box or satellite dish receptor or whathave-you. In these modern days, we rarely change the actual channel on our actual television sets. Go ahead and give it a try. Also, check the back of the 2600 console for a Channel 3/Channel 4 switch. If the image or sound quality is bad on one channel, try another. If the image is in black-and-white and you’re sure you have a color TV set, locate the Color/BW switch on the 2600 unit itself. Flip that and you should be seeing the game in three or four glorious, vivid, living colors. Also, if you find that your paddle controllers don’t seem to work properly— instead of moving smoothly, your vertical line in Pong is jittering and skipping all over the place—you can fix the paddles if you have some degree of technical expertise (or don’t care if you ruin the things because they only cost a buck). See Hack 4, “Use Atari Paddles with Your PC” from Gaming Hacks (O’Reilly) for a brief tutorial on de-jittering your precious paddles for prettier, precision Pong play. H A C K

Mattel Intellivision There were other video game systems on the market when traditional toys giant Mattel threw their hat into the ring in 1979, but the Intellivision (short for “intelligent television,” don’t you know) was the first major competitor to the 2600. Mattel ran comparison advertisements on TV directly attacking the 2600’s admittedly lesser graphics capabilities, and Atari fired back with ads demeaning the Intellivision’s lack of arcade hits. And they were both right! But they each took steps to remedy these deficiencies—Atari by introducing its RealSports line that looked and played better than their earlier efforts (but not as good as Intellivision Baseball, etc.) and Mattel by introducing some original shooters like Astrosmash. Intellivision Donkey Kong is just plain awful, though, and not in a funny way. They made Donkey Kong green for some reason. The vast majority of Intellivision games shipped with “overlays,” thin printed sheets of acetate that slid into the number pad on the system’s controller and showed you which buttons did what. Many games are playable without the overlays, but some more complicated ones are next to impossible if you don’t know the button assignments. If you’re missing any, printable-quality scans of overlays are catalogued at www.intvfunhouse.com.

Although all 5200 models look alike at first glance, there is one important difference to keep in mind. Earlier models of the system, which had four controller ports, used a single cord to do two things: receive power and transmit the RF signal to the television set. This cord was, luckily, hardwired into the system; however, the special adapter that split the signal into power and RF was not, and the system is useless without it. If you find a version with two controller ports on the front, it uses separate cables for power and RF (and will work with any TV/Game switch).

Neo-Fami and Yobo In 2004, after Nintendo stopped producing Famicom hardware, a Japanese firm called GameTech stepped up to provide their own solution. The company had already achieved some notoriety by releasing attachments that let you play your Game Boy Advance games on a television set (this was before Nintendo’s own Game Boy Player let you do the same thing with much better results) and watch broadcast television on your GBA system. Their latest product, sold in most Japanese electronics stores, was called the Neo Fami. Although the video quality of the hardware was not as sharp as the original and standard Famicom controllers could not be used with the system (it shipped with two controllers that used an Atari-style nine-pin connection), it was well received by Famicom aficionados worldwide. You can buy Neo-Fami systems in different colors at import shops, such as PlayAsia (http://www.play-asia.com). If you want to play American and/or European NES games on the NeoFami, however, you will need an adapter. A Honeybee adapter, as described in “Buy Retro Games from Japan” [Hack #9], will suffice, but they are hard to track down. Lik-Sang (http://www.lik-sang.com) offers its own adapters for $9.90 each at the time of this writing. If your local shopping mall has one of those “As Seen On TV” outlet stores that have been popping up recently, you may want to look around it to see if you can find Neo Fami systems being sold under the name Yobo FC Game Console. These are also available at the Hawaii-based retailer Toys ‘N Joys

3. Remove the tray cartridge screws. There are six screws that hold the tray cartridge in place. Two of these screws are slightly longer than the other four (and usually a different color) and will need to be placed back in the correct spot when reassembling the unit, so pay attention to where each screw comes from. 4. Remove the RF unit screws. Before removing the tray cartridge and replacing the 72-pin connector, you need to remove the two screws near the RF unit. After removing these screws, you will be able to move the main circuit board. 5. Remove the cartridge tray. Now that the main circuit board is free, you can remove the cartridge tray, shown in Figure 1-5. Simply slide the tray forward and lift the front edge of the tray. You may have to lift the main circuit board slightly to remove the tray.

Game Theory Admiral Sporting one of the clumsiest product names ever devised, the Game Theory Admiral sprung onto the retro gaming scene a year or so ago. It featured a form factor quite similar to that of the Game Boy Advance and was much smaller than the Game Axe Color. In fact, it was so small that Famicom games could not even fit into the unit’s cartridge slot! A special adapter (included) fit into the unit and held the cartridge at a 90 degree angle protruding towards the player, hanging over the system like an awning. The GTA (note the familiarity of the abbreviation—coincidence or carefully crafted marketing?) also featured A/V output; cables were included in the box. Thus, you could hook the unit up to your television set. When online retailer National Console Support (www.ncsx.com), who sold the units for a

time, tested one, they found the television display to be “perfect.” The bright, backlit TFT screen was also found to be much nicer than the Game Axe’s. And the price was right at just over $50. The only drawbacks were that Mystery, the company that released the system, apparently didn’t stick around long enough to release an AC adapter or an adapter to run NES cartridges. You might try using the adapters found on Lik-Sang [Hack #5], but because of the way the cartridges hang over the system, this setup would be unstable at best. Most of the retailers who carried the GTA are long out of stock, although I found some on eBay selling for between $50 and $75.

PokeFami The PokeFami is a portable Famicom-compatible system from the makers of the NeoFami [Hack #5]. This is the newest such system, having been released in 2004 by GameTech. It is sold in most major Japanese hardware stores and is generally made of tougher stuff than the Admiral. It features a 2.5" LCD screen and takes 3 AA batteries. Of course, it costs more: I found different retailers selling them for anywhere between $70 and $130. Like the systems mentioned earlier, the PokeFami includes A/V output to a television screen. Its cartridge slot is far better than the Admiral’s, since Famicom cartridges slide into the unit—although some reports indicate that the slot is too wide, thus enabling the player to accidentally shake a cartridge free during gameplay. An adapter is required for NES gameplay. At the time of this writing many different online retailers, including Lik-Sang (http://www.lik-sang.com) and Play-Asia (http://www.play-asia.com), stock the Pokefami.

This is especially true as this model of Famicom almost definitely won’t work on your U.S. television set. As you can see from the list of parts, it only features RF output, and then only using 300 ohm leads (those little screw things that used to be on the back of all TV sets but are no longer). And even if you could hook the Famicom up to your TV, odds are you won’t see anything. Japan and the United States both use NTSC television standards, but the RF frequencies are different. Some people have reported getting Famicom games running on channel 96 with no sound, but I have never been able to get one working. I understand, of course, if you want an original Famicom for your collection even if you can’t use it. But if you do want one that you can actually use to play games, you have a few other options. I lied a little bit when I said the original Famicom design didn’t change much. The very first design of the system was indistinguishable from later models except for the fact that the A and B buttons were square and made out of a mushy sort of material. Most of these were recalled due to an unrelated hardware issue, and the next run featured the round, concave A and B buttons we know and love. Of course, collectors consider the ultra-rare square-button version to be the “true” original Famicom.

The Vectrex is one of the “holy grails” of classic video game collectors, the centerpiece of any collection. Not bad for a system that was an abject market failure as soon as it hit store shelves in 1982, finding itself in the clearance bins just a year later. Released by a company called GCE or General Consumer Electronics (that was swiftly purchased by Milton Bradley during the age when every toy, movie, and candy manufacturer wanted to get a finger into the video games pie), the Vectrex was the first and only home console to use a vector graphics display. Vector graphics were already all the rage in arcades, having been used for such popular games as Asteroids and Battlezone. Vector graphic displays produced sharper, cleaner graphics because the beam in the monitor would draw the images based on specific sets of X/Y coordinates (i.e., vectors). Atari’s home versions of their vector games for the 2600, although they may have replicated the gameplay, couldn’t have replicated the graphics because home systems that hook up to a television set all use raster graphics, drawn by a beam that scans horizontally across each row of pixels, from the top down. But the Vectrex included its own built-in vector monitor, so it didn’t need to be hooked up to a TV. Thus, it was marketed as portable, although its heaviness and large size (and requirement of a wall socket to plug into)

probably precluded it from that sort of use. The monitor only displayed in black and white, because a color vector display would have been prohibitively expensive for a consumer product, but tinted acetate overlays provided with each game cartridge added some color and background graphics to the games.

Fixing the Vectrex Inspired by collectors’ stories that I’d read online or in the Digital Press Collector’s Guide, I hunted in vain for a Vectrex (as well as pretty much any old console I didn’t have) for years, but never did see one at a yard sale. Once I had pretty much given up on ever finding one, my father came home and said he’d found a Vectrex on the side of the road. Plugging it in, we discovered why it was there in the first place—it didn’t work. Specifically, it had a problem that I soon discovered was evident in most Vectrex systems. When powered on, it just displayed a single white dot in the center of the monitor. We never did get around to fixing it, but I did find all the information we needed. At some point in 1998, the original Vectrex troubleshooting guide and repair manual—the documents that GCE sent out to licensed Vectrex dealers—were located, scanned, and converted to PDF file format for easy viewing in Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can download it from http://www. playvectrex.com/shoptalk_f.htm and download the reader from www.adobe. com. Note that both guides assume knowledge of electronics and that you have certain general tools used in television repair. As for the white dot issue, the Vectrex FAQ (http://www.classicgaming.com/ museum/faqs/vectrexfaq.shtml) has this to say on the subject: There is 1 common problem that will cause this symptom. Inside the unit there is a 4-wire power connector connecting the side board to the bottom board. Often units with no picture have bad solder joints on this connector. Try resoldering the pins and see if that helps.

tangled up. Everything you need to play them, anytime you feel like it, is right there in the hardware. (Provided you keep an ample supply of batteries around, that is.) Handheld games are colorful display pieces Display your Atari 2600 collection on a shelf and it’ll look like a black box with a bunch of smaller black boxes stacked up next to it. But put your collection of handhelds on display, and it’ll be a symphony of colors, artwork, and interesting shapes, all reflective of the toy design sensibilities of the time.

might rediscover a fond nostalgic attachment to. If that doesn’t work, read this section. Mattel Classic Football. Okay, it wasn’t called “Classic” when it was first released, but you’ve probably seen this handheld, revitalized for the modernday retro-happy market, on shelves in Wal-Mart. It proved single-handedly the theory of suspension of disbelief by creating a football game out of nothing more than a few horizontal lines of red LED lights. You controlled a dot running to the right and tried to dodge the dots coming from the left. If you reached the end, touchdown! Of course, they could have turned the dots on their side and it could have been called Avoid the Bricks, or turned it upside down and called it Sink or Swim. It’s just a few lights. But the football branding paid off and other sports handhelds followed, such as Basketball (which Mattel has also rereleased). Coleco tabletop games. It’s hard for me not to love Coleco; I’m from Connecticut just like them, and of course they made my favorite golden-age system, the Colecovision [Hack #36]. They also made incredible tabletop games based on popular arcade licenses like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Frogger. Not only are they superb display items, shaped like foot-tall, miniature arcade machines with replicas of the cabinet art found on the originals— they play pretty good, too! They use multicolored LED displays to create bright, detailed (for a handheld game!) displays with solid gameplay. Unfortunately, the fact that they were considered to be toys, not electronic equipment, meant that they got banged around a lot back in the day. So it’s rare to find them in mint condition (or at all!). Nintendo Game and Watch. If you want to combine your love of handhelds with your love of Nintendo, this series can be a rewarding hobby. The tiny pieces of hardware (about the length and width of a credit card, though ten times as thick) held some big games, many of which were based on Nintendo’s arcade and home successes like Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. Unfortunately, since these are so coveted, collecting them can be expensive. Some of the more common games, though, can be had without dropping a lot of cash. The Game and Watch specialty web site linked earlier in this hack features selling and trading forums for collectors to hook up and make deals.

Finally, it might be worth going into your local (perhaps slightly rundown) arcade to see if they have any old cabinets they might sell cheaply. Unfortunately, given the upkeep of a lot of these establishments, you may not find a perfectly preserved artifact, but it’s better than nothing. Buying used Japanese JAMMA cabinets. Although the mid- and late-"90s Japanese arcade cabinets that made their way to the States have the same basic design and no region lockouts, they have quite a different style and form factor from American cabinets. To start with, they’re generally made of metal and are much shorter, so players sit, not stand, at them. They also have larger monitors—at least 25 inches diagonally—and have generic, goodlooking decals on the sides, which should suit almost any game you put in them. If you can deal with sitting down to play and sometimes being uncomfortably close to your fellow player when dueling in 2-player combat due to the smaller size, then Japanese cabinets are the stylish, cool-looking choice for the JAMMA acolyte in a hurry. Remember, you can play American games in Japanese cabinets and vice versa.

Golden-Age Grails When the U.S. video game market crashed in 1983, it crashed under the weight of too much product. There were far more video games, systems, and accessories on the market than consumers wanted, all produced because of what turned out to be an overly optimistic prognostication of the industry’s future. That is to say that there were actually some excellent video games produced during this time, but when the companies went out of business, only the small quantities that they’d produced up until then ever trickled out to retail. Lots of inventory was destroyed. And some devices were only testmarketed in certain regions before a nationwide launch that never happened. Chase the Chuckwagon. And some, like Chase the Chuckwagon for the Atari 2600, weren’t produced in huge quantities to begin with. When Atari video games were all the rage, makers of other consumer products rode the wave with giveaways of special 2600-compatible games that shilled their products. If kids sent in box tops they could get a Kool-Aid Man game, a Tooth Protectors game from Johnson & Johnson, and this: Chase the Chuckwagon, from the then-popular brand of dog food. Sending in proof-of-purchase labels from the bags would get you an Atari 2600 game, produced especially for the giveaway by publisher Spectravision, in which you, as the dog from the famous Chuck Wagon commercials, chased the titular horse-drawn vehicle. Since it was only given away as a promotional item, it is rare today. Loose cartridges can cost in the $100$125 range. Quadrun. Chase the Chuckwagon was produced by a relatively obscure publisher as a promotional giveaway, while Quadrun was produced by Atari themselves. Which is by far the more valuable title? Contrary to what you might think, it’s Quadrun. Atari only produced 10,000 of them, and distributed them by mail order only to Atari Club members. Why? The web site

What’s the easiest way to play retro games right now? Emulation requires more computer knowledge than most people have, and retro collections for modern game systems [Hack #16] require you to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of hardware before you can play them. There is a solution for the rest of us, and it’s more than likely that you’ve already seen them around. Standalone plug-and-play joysticks going by names like TV Games and Arcade Legends have been all over toy and electronics stores for the past few years. These devices run off of AA batteries and plug directly into your television set, containing a handful of games and

take an expert technician to do it right. The process will void your warranty, however. See http://www.atarimuseum.com/fb2hacks/ for illustrated instructions, and enjoy! Activision 10 in 1 TV Games. Many of the best Atari 2600 games were actually made not by Atari but by a publisher called Activision. Luckily, they’ve licensed some of their classics to Jakks Pacific as well, and you can find an Activision version of the joysticks in stores now. It contains ten games: Pitfall, Atlantis, River Raid, Spider Fighter, Crackpots, Freeway, Tennis, Boxing, Ice Hockey, and Grand Prix. The joystick model is based on some of the third-party joysticks that were released for the 2600 back in the day; it is much more comfortable and features a fire button on the top of the stick for extra ease of use. Namco: Pac-Man. Namco’s Pac-Man controller (Figure 2-3) is the first TV Games joystick that made me stand up and take notice. I was never much of an Atari player, but the idea of having an inexpensive, attractive-looking joystick that played five Namco games—Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Galaxian, Rally-X, and Bosconian—was enough to get me pretty excited. I wasn’t disappointed with the final product—the retro-styled menu screen shown in Figure 2-4 was particularly cool—but I did find that the versions of the games were hardly arcade-perfect. Indeed, it seems they were reprogrammed from scratch. The Pac-Man patterns [Hack #81] that allow you to evade the ghosts in the original arcade versions simply don’t work, and you’ll notice other changes made to the rest of the games. And although I love the snazzy yellow-topped joystick, it’s very hard to hit the diagonal inputs. This isn’t really a problem with four of the five games, but it makes Bosconian basically unplayable. If this is a problem for you, you might check out the pocket version of this device that Jakks recently released. The joystick is replaced with an eight-way directional thumbpad and the entire device fits into a much smaller form factor. Namco II: Ms. Pac-Man. Following up the success of the first Namco games joystick, Jakks released a sequel featuring Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Xevious, Pole Position, and Mappy. The pros and cons of the first Pac-Man joystick apply here as well. The reason it gets its own section is because by the time you read this, Jakks will have released a wireless version of the controller, as shown in Figure 2-5. Plug the included wireless base into your TV set and you can carry the joystick anywhere you want. It seems as if they are only releasing the Ms. Pac-Man stick as a wireless product, but as a bonus it

Atari Retro on the Go Depending on your portable system of choice, there may be a classic Atari collection for your mobile lifestyle. Atari Retro (http://www.mobilewizardry. com/multi-platform/atariretro/index.php) is a software package available for Palm, Pocket PC, and Nokia Series 60 Smartphones that includes seven games on a single MMC card. Also available is Retro Atari Classics for the Nintendo DS system, which features versions of ten different Atari games. These are not emulated; they are entirely reprogrammed and redesigned to take advantage of the DS’ dualscreen, touch-enabled hardware. You can slide the Breakout paddle with your finger, for example. It also includes “remix” versions of all the games, which feature graphic updates by popular graffiti artists. You’ll also find many of the titles described in this hack for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance, including Activision Anthology and collections from Midway and Namco.

Those who remember the Intellivision might be wondering how the system’s controller—which featured a numeric keypad that was used heavily in many games—is emulated. Pressing the Select button brings up an image of the classic controller on the TV screen, pasted over the game display. You can then use the analog stick to move a cursor around and push the buttons. This is a limited, but understandable, solution. Bonus features include historical information, a handful of previously unreleased games, and interviews with the Blue Sky Rangers. You can even view classic Intellivision TV commercials. Activision Anthology. This was one of the very first retro collections to hit shelves—and still one of the best. It helps, of course, that Activision’s Atari 2600 titles were some of the best software on the system (and based on original ideas, thus the company still owns the rights to publish them). But what really makes Activision Anthology worth a purchase is the amount of polish that went into its design. First things first. There are 45 classic games on this PlayStation 2 disc, all from the 2600. If you owned one, or even if you didn’t, you know about or have played Activision’s games: Pitfall, Freeway, Ice Hockey, Kaboom, River Raid, Stampede… any of this ringing a bell? There are a few previously unreleased games here as well, and the emulation on everything is fantastic. That’s just scratching the surface. One of the best touches to Activision Anthology is the photorealistic 1980’s vintage gaming setup that serves as the main menu. The game cartridges are accessible from a classic spinning organizer, and a stereo off to the side of the TV set plays a classic 80’s soundtrack, featuring brilliant songs like “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” “Tainted Love,” “Take on Me,” and “Safety Dance.” Adding this soundtrack to the mix makes the games even more fun, and a variety of unlockable extras—including new video modes that map the game display onto rotating cubes or trippy patterns—are available for scoring high on every game. Even Activision’s 2600 version of the Data East/Capcom shooter Commando is on here—wonder how they arranged that? A version of Activision Anthology for the Game Boy Advance was released to rave reviews, not only for the accuracy of the emulation but because Activision included in the package many games from the Atari 2600 homebrew development community [Hack #75].

Namco Museum. Namco Museum titles, featuring the company’s classic games like Pac-Man and Dig Dug, have been released for a number of different systems, including the PSone and Dreamcast [Hack #17], but the package currently on shelves is available for the Xbox and PlayStation 2. In comparison to the packages listed so far, Namco Museum’s game list is paltry. The classics available when you boot the game number only seven: Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Galaxian, Dig Dug, Pole Position, and Pole Position II. If you score over 25,000 points on the two Pac games, you’ll unlock two more: Pac-Mania and Pac-Attack. The games are reprogrammed rather than emulated, which means that you might find them to be slightly different than the arcade games you remember or just completely wrong. For example, if you know any Pac-Man tricks [Hack #81] you might be disappointed to find that they don’t work at all in the Namco Museum version. The rest of the collection is filled out with what Namco dubs “Arrangement” versions of the games. These are similar to the classic games, but with 3D graphics and some new gameplay elements. In Pac-Man Arrangement, there is a new ghost named “Kinky” (not even kidding you), and panels on the floor let you dash at high speed, knocking out ghosts in your path. Unfortunately, some of the arranged games feel unfinished—there are no sound effects to be heard in Pac-Man Arrangement, for example, just music. Namco has released a Museum collection for the Sony PSP handheld. It features many more classic games (seventeen instead of seven), head-to-head play over WiFi, and Arrangement versions that are much better and well-suited to the portable hardware.

online, PopCap offers free downloadable standalone versions of each game. If you want to upgrade to the super deluxe editions, you can buy them either as a download or shipped to you on CD. The site even offers versions of many of the games that will play on your PDA, whether Palm or Windows Mobile (Pocket PC).

Stinko Man NES players will appreciate the classic graphic effects and intentionally bad translation work (both on display in Figure 2-10) in this Mega Manstyled side-scrolling platform shooter.

Animal Crossing In Nintendo’s innovative life-simulation game, you start a new life in a woodland town filled with animal neighbors. As you while away the hours in Animal Crossing you can collect furniture and other things to fill your ingame house with—including NES consoles that play emulated versions of about twenty different games. And if you have a Game Boy Advance and the appropriate link cable, you can download the games to your GBA and play them until you shut the system’s power off. A memory card included with new copies of Animal Crossing will start you off with two random, common NES games. You’re supposed to find the rest of them by playing the game and waiting for special events in town, trading with friends, and/or buying packs of Animal Crossing e-Reader cards,* hoping to find rare games. But if you want to skip all that, you can use the following passwords to unlock every common game except Tennis and Pinball. To use these passwords, talk to Tom Nook in the town’s general store and select the “Say Code” option: Balloon Fight: CbDahLBdaDh98d 9ub8ExzZKwu7Zl Baseball: 1n5%N%8JUjE5fj lEcGr4%ync5eUp Clu Clu Land: Crm%h4BNRyu98d 9uu8exzZKwu7Zl Clu Clu Land D: Y#PpfrxSOAMLSG B7H3K5xBho5YSY Donkey Kong Junior Math: bA5PC%8JUjE5fj ljcGr4%ync5EUp Donkey Kong: [email protected]%8JUjE5fj ljcGr4%ync5EUp Excitebike: 3%Q4fhMTRByAY3 05yYAK9zNHxLd7 Golf: Crm%h4BNRbu98d 9un8exzZKwo7Zl Wario’s Woods: bA5PC%8JUjE5fj 1EcGr4%ync5eup As of this writing, there is another game that takes little effort to snag. To get Soccer, go to the official Animal Crossing web page at http://www. animal-crossing.com/news.jsp and click the banner with the talking pelicans. You’ll be taken to a special Flash-based page where you will be able to enter your name and town information from Animal Crossing to receive a unique code for Soccer. Enter the code using the same methods as the others. (Other games that were previously released in this manner include Donkey Kong Jr. and Donkey Kong 3, but the pages are no longer available on the site and no universal passcodes have been found for either.) That leaves five games: Ice Climber, Punch-Out, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Mario Bros. The only legitimate way to unlock these is to buy packs of Animal Crossing e-Reader cards and cross your fingers that

this sentence, you’re well on your way to learning how to use your computer to play classic arcade games. Before you even think about firing up your engines and diving headfirst into the world of MAME, ROMs, and reliving those days you spent in the pizzeria plunking fistfuls of quarters into the Pac-Man machine, you need to do a couple of things. First off, you’re going to need to get an emulator. This is the program that allows you to play MAME ROMs. For Macs, the best and one of the only options is MacMAME, available for download from their web site at http://www.macmame.org/. From the main page just click on downloads, and then check to see you’re downloading the most recent version. Also, if you want to get started right as you’re reading this, it’s good to make sure you have a fast connection and some time, as MacMAME is 10 MB and up, depending on which version you want. Also, MacMAME isn’t updated too frequently, since support for over two thousand games is firmly in place. The updates only come out as often as a real fix is needed to deal with overall performance issues. So don’t be alarmed if you see that the last version of the software came out sometime in 2004. The MacMAME team will still be hard at work making sure the emulator can play as many games as possible. Something that’s also really great about MacMAME is the fact that it’s available in a variety of languages other than English. So for those nonnative speakers of the English language, MacMAME is available in French and Italian on the project web site, and an unofficial Japanese version available at http://www.zophar.net/. Also, those wanting to use alternate displays, such as TVs and Fixed Frequency Monitors will get more mileage out of Advanced MAME, which is available for download at http://advancemame. sourceforge.net/. While the file size is only 12 MB, there are no binary versions available for Mac OS X, so if you’re not confident in your ability to compile a large program yourself, you are better off sticking with MacMAME. Compiling the program really isn’t a daunting task, but for the rest of the instructions in this part of the book, I’ll be explaining how to do things with MacMAME. It’s much more of a ready-to-run application than Advanced MAME. This isn’t to say one is better than the others, but those who are just getting into playing MAME games on their Mac would be more at ease with MacMAME. However, more detailed instructions about using Advanced MAME, as well as the compatibility with certain ROMs and how to use certain features are better covered at the project’s web site.

Xmame I start with Xmame, which is a port of the MAME program to Unix. It can use native X11R6, SVGAlib, ggi, XF86-DGA, OpenGL, or SDL display drivers. The fact that Xmame supports pretty much every combination of libraries, hardware, and ROMs out there is a definite win for the serious emulation fan on the Unix platform. To build and install Xmame, follow the instructions for your Linux distribution or flavor of Unix. Gentoo Linux. To install Xmame under Gentoo Linux: 1. Become root. 2. emerge xmame Other Linux distributions/Unix flavours. To install Xmame under other Linux or Unix distributions, check your installation media or online package repositories to see if it’s already available. You should also check the Xmame project’s home page (http://x.mame.net/) to see if a binary version is available. If not, you can install it from source: 1. Visit the Xmame project’s home page, click on the Download link in the menu on the left side of the page, and save the latest Xmame source tarball to your /tmp directory (remove any older versions of the Xmame source tarball you may have lying around first). Then, run the following commands: $ $ $ $

You have just built Xmame using the X11 graphics drivers. If you would like to build versions of Xmame for another display driver, simply run make DISPLAY_METHOD=METHOD (such as make DISPLAY_METHOD=SDL for SDL). Then run make install as root. (The available values for DISPLAY_METHOD are SDL, svgalib, ggi, svgafx, openstep, and photon2.) If you survived this long and arduous process, you will have Xmame installed. To run it, open a terminal as a normal user and run something like this: $ xmame.SDL -jt 7 -rp rom_dir -s 2 rom_name

This is the SDL version of Xmame (the one I compiled with the make DISPLAY_METHOD=SDL incantation). SDL, or Simple Directmedia Layer, is a cross-platform multimedia library used by many popular games and emulators. You can find out more about it at http://www.libsdl.org. I am using SDL because it handles video better for my laptop’s video hardware than any of the other display methods. -jt 7

You will be immediately warned that GXMame could not recognize the gamelist version, and asked if you want to rebuild it—this is expected. Click the Yes button and let GXMame do its thing for a few moments. You will then be presented with the main screen, which displays the very impressive

list of all of the games that Xmame can play, helpfully categorized for you. The first order of business, as in any frontend, is to do a little configuration. Configure the path to Xmame. Click on the Option menu, and then select Directories... in the Xmame Executables section of the GXMame directories tab. You need to add all of the various Xmame versions (e.g., xmame.SDL). In the bottom of this tab, you may need to change the base Xmame data directory from /usr/lib/games/xmame to wherever your distribution installed Xmame. For Gentoo users, this is /usr/share/games/xmame. If you need to, change /usr/lib/games/xmame to the correct path for all of the paths: Flyers, Cabinets, Marquees, Title screenshots, and Icons. Configure the ROMs directory. Now, click on the XMame basic paths tab and add your MAME ROMs directory to the Roms Paths list (you will probably also want to remove the default, as it is unlikely that you want to keep any ROMs in /usr/lib/games/xmame/roms). In the Samples Paths list and the Artwork Path text box, you may need to change /usr/lib/games/xmame to the correct directory, as in the preceding section. Click on Xmame’s Additional Paths tab and change all of the directories, if necessary. Click on the User Resources tab and verify that all of the paths are correct—they should be, since the defaults match my Xmame install. Now, click OK to close the directory configuration dialogue. Set gameplay options. Click the Option menu again, then Executable, then select the executable that you plan to use (e.g., xmame.SDL). Now, click on the Option menu and select Default Option, which will open the Default Properties dialogue to the Display tab. Flip through the tabs, making any changes that you like. Make sure to change the DSP Plugin option on the Sound tab to Alsa Sound System DSP plug-in if you use ALSA instead of OSS. Also, change Joystick type on the Controllers tab from No joystick to the proper type of joystick driver (again, I recommend the SDL joystick driver), and check any of the applicable boxes to the right (interestingly enough, even though I have a PlayStation DualShock 2 controller, if I check USB PS Game Pads, my controller will not work!). When everything is to your liking, click OK to save your preferences. Play a game. You may mess about with the other items in the Option menu if you like, but when you are done, you’re ready to actually launch a game! Click the View menu, then Refresh (or hit the F5 key on your keyboard), to re-scan your ROMs directory(s)—you will need to do this every time you add or change a ROM path. Now, click on the Available folder in the left

pane. The right pane should now display some games as shown in Figure 3-12! To start a game, simply double-click its name (you can also enable the “Allow game selection by a Joystick” option by selecting the Option menu, then clicking Startup Option).

Freeware Arcade ROMs In general, publishers want to hold onto the rights to their classic properties, mostly so that when the time comes they can re-release them as part of a retro game compilation [Hack #16]. But in a few cases, the rights holders have given their permission for the games to be freely distributed. ROMs for the following three arcade games are available at the miscellaneous downloads section on mame.net (http://www.mame.net/downmisc.html). Gridlee A charming action game in which the player, controlling a beakershaped alien, must run around on a grid collecting balls while avoiding enemies and electricity-charged grid squares, Gridlee was planned for a 1982 arcade release but never saw the light of day. Designed by Howard Delman, a former Atari engineer who developed the vector-graphics display used in such classic titles as Lunar Lander and Asteroids, it was originally planned for release by the company Videa, which Delman started with former Atari colleagues Ed Rotberg and Roger Hector. The three have since authorized the game’s free distribution. If you’re simply interested in checking out Gridlee without going through the trouble of setting up MAME, there is a standalone Gridlee emulator and ROM download available at http://www.aarongiles.com/gridlee/.

Various Tech Demonstrations A few tech demos—non-interactive screens full of colorful text displays that do little more than demonstrate that the hacker in question is indeed able to get a small program up and running on obscure hardware—are available at PDRoms and elsewhere. All games for the Neo Geo system share a common BIOS ROM that was embedded in the hardware and contained information that each game used. This ROM, with the name neogeo.zip, must be in your \mame\roms\ directory for any Neo Geo game to run. Since it is a copyrighted file, neither I nor the official MAME site can offer it for download.

Pong, being entirely constructed from electronic hardware, contains no ROM code and therefore cannot be emulated in MAME. But even some games for which the graphic and gameplay data was coded on chips in ROM format, the sound effects were done using analog electronics. Furthermore, the coders of MAME have not yet been able to accurately emulate some sound chips. In the case of Q*bert, the mock curse words were randomly generated using a speech synthesizer chip that has not been emulated. Fortunately, there is a solution. Owners of the original arcade games have meticulously recorded the individual missing sound effects, in WAV file format, and the writers of the emulation code have included support for these files. In a remarkable display of foresight, some games that have been dumped and emulated have been coded to accept samples even if recordings of the arcade sounds are not yet available, in the hopes that one day an owner of the original machine will record the sounds.

Filling Your Cabinet Once you have your cabinet, it’s time to find a computer to mount inside of it. As a general rule, the newer the games are you want to play, the faster your computer will need to be. A 400 MHz PC with two gigabytes of hard drive space powered my first MAME cabinet. It was perfect for playing the classics like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, but for more recent games you’ll need a bit more power. Playing newer games requires a faster processor, more RAM, and more hard drive space. You may also want to add a network card and/or a CD/DVD drive to simplify adding new games and software to your cabinet. Another consideration is the operating system you’re going to run. Although anything from DOS to Linux to Windows XP can be used, slimmer operating systems like DOS and Linux typically run better on lower-end computers. Although I’ve never built one personally, there are plenty of MAME cabinets out there powered by Macintosh computers as well. While you’re installing and configuring your MAME PC, be sure to check out some of the frontends available for MAME [Hack #20]. Frontends are graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that simplify choosing and running the game of your choice. Remember, in your MAME cabinet you’re not going to have quick access to your mouse or keyboard, so using a frontend is an essential part of navigating through MAME. The simplest frontends allow users to pick a game from a menu and play it. More advanced frontends will display

screen shots and marquees, play MP3s during the menu, and even let you sort your games into different groups. Almost all the frontends available for MAME are free, so try several out and find which one works best for your cabinet. In an ideal situation, a MAME cabinet will boot directly into its frontend and be able to shut the machine down when MAME is closed. When it comes to monitors for MAME cabinets there are three choices, each of which has its own benefits and shortcomings. One option is to simply use a computer monitor. It’s the easiest of the three options since you can connect it directly to your PC and no major computer configuration is need. Unfortunately, computer monitors provide the least arcade-like experience due to their clarity (computer monitors have a much higher resolution than arcade monitors). Another fact to consider is most arcade cabinets had 19" or 25" monitors in them, so a 15" computer monitor sitting in your cabinet is going to look rather anticlimactic. A second option, if you’re lucky enough to have one lying around, is to use a real arcade monitor. While this is clearly the most authentic-looking solution, you’re going to need a special video card to connect it to, and possibly more parts to get it to work (not to mention that all monitors contain lethal doses of electricity in them—this may not be the project on which you wish to discover that). If you still want to try this, software capable of video-trickery, such as VGA2TV drivers or ArcadeOS (http://www.mameworld.net/ pc2jamma/frontend.html) can be used for routing PC video output to a standard low-resolution arcade monitor. The third option (and a great middle ground) involves using a television set. This provides a picture quality similar to actual arcade monitors, and hooking up a newer television to a computer is a breeze especially when using a newer video card with s-video or composite video outputs! Bear in mind that the video output generated by the TV Out on most modern video cards won’t be as pretty as an arcade monitor’s display, due to the interlacing that video cards use when generating NTSC signals. Another detail to begin considering is whether you want to mount your monitor horizontally or vertically. Most classic games from 1983 and before (like the aforementioned Pac-Man and Donkey Kong) used verticallymounted monitors. The majority of games after that date moved to horizontally mounted monitors. If you mount your monitor horizontally (e.g., by simply setting a television set on a shelf), you can still play vertical games; however, a lot of empty black space will appear on either side of the game. Likewise, horizontal games can be played on a vertically mounted screen, with black bars appearing at the top and bottom of the picture (kind of like the black bars that appear when watching a letterboxed DVD on a standard

4:3 ratio television). Again, it’s all about forethought, deciding what type of games you’re going to be playing the most, and building the cabinet that fits your needs. If in doubt, go horizontal; it’s easier.

board, which then sends the key press to your computer, and eventually to MAME. Hacking a keyboard is a time-consuming, intricate, and often frustrating experience, but it is cheap. The alternative (and usually preferred) method is to purchase an encoder. These handy devices are small circuit boards with pre-made connectors on them for your wire inputs. The backsides of these encoders have either a PS/2 or USB connection that is used to connect the encoder to your MAME computer. Ultimarc’s I-PAC encoder (http://www.ultimarc.com/ipac1.html) runs $39, but the advantage is that by using an encoder you can hook your control