Don't buy Galaga for the T-Mobile Sidekick!

When I got my Sidekick '08 back in June I was surprised that it didn't have Galaga for download. It was ridiculous because they had an excellent Galaga theme. So today when I saw it was released I downloaded it.

Boy was I disappointed:

Graphics

Above: Actual Screenshot

The graphics are the best feature of this conversion, they are pretty much pixel perfect. The color pallet on the other hand is a little off.

Sound

The sound is horrible it sounds nothing like the original arcade game. Also there is no explosion sound! The sidekick can play mp3s, so why didn't they use samples of the original game like you can in MAME?

Gameplay

This is the worst of the three, the game has tons of slowdown, the ship's projectiles move at a rate that is not the same ratio of ship/projectile speed of the original. It makes the game tedious and difficult because in Galaga you can only have 2 shots on the screen at a time. With the slow projectiles it leaves you very vulnerable to alien attack.

Final Thoughts

Overall this game is a disappointment. I am not just saying this as a Galaga fan. If I bought some other game and it was this bad of an arcade conversion I would want my money back. I know that it could have been so much better, The sidekick version of Ms. Pac-Man runs fine, granted it suffers from the same sound issues.

I cannot recommend this game to anyone as it is unplayable. Do not buy. Namco/T-mobile I want my money back!

Happy Birthday Dreamcast!

Ten years ago today was a great day in gaming, as it marked the US release of the Sega Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was easily one of the best game consoles ever, but never got proper recognition. This was mostly due to Sony's propaganda about their PS2's capibilities which were never noticable over the Dreamcast, and in some cases games ran worse on the Playstation. A great example of this is was the noticable jaggies in the PS2's anti-alias. The Dreamcast used 2x full screen anti-alias and looked great right from the begining. It took over a year for PS2 developers to fix the issue on the PS2.

Another great thing about the Dreamcast was that is was the same as the Sega Namoi Arcade Hardware, with just less memory. This allowed all the great arcade games that ran on the Namoi to run the the Dreamcast arcade perfect. A great example of this is Capcom Vs SNK and Guilty Gear.

The Dreamcast holds up awesome even today, where the rest of the consoles from it's generation display poorly on a HD TV. Just hook your Dreamcast up via VGA and it looks awesome!

My Dreamcast connected to my HD TV via the vga cable, looks awesome!

With camera flash:

Without camera flash:

My friend Matt who worked at the Babbages in Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, NY where I bought my Dreamcast posted photos from launch day, I am not in them, but it sure brings back the memories (tear).

Cutting Plexiglass Control Panel Overlay

My Marvel Vs. Capcom I bought has a plexiglass overlay over the control panel graphics. The original had spider cracks around the screws, scratches and cigarette burns.

I couldn't let the control panel couldn't stay like that so I went about replacing the plexi overlay.

The plexi had 2 different sized large holes for the buttons and the joystick. I have I have a 1 and 1/8 inch hole saw that I used to cut button holes for other control panels. The holes for this panel were not that size. I wanted it to match the orignal exactly. The soultion came from using a laminate trimmer router bit. Thanks Maxstang, Takeman, timberterror, ManiN, OldTymeToys for the suggestion! I picked one up at my local True Value.

The way it works you drill a 1/4 inch pilot hole for the bit. The bearing rides on the old plexiglass and duplicates the hole of the original in the new plexi. It leaves a nice smooth edge, much nicer then if I had used a holesaw.

Overall it worked great, you just have to be very careful of the height, I cut a little extra in a couple places, but they are covered by the buttons. My router's height slips so I had to keep adjusting.

Here is the bit:

I drilled holes 1/4 inch the same size of the bit. You can see a hole that was routed in this photo:

It is important that the bearing line up with the original plexi:

Here it is installed, looks so much better than the cig burns and spider crackes!

Hard to really see in the photo, here is an angled shot:

Looks much better than the old one:

The only downside of this method is that the bit was $25. But I am sure I will reuse it in the future.

Just Swtiched to Disqus for Comments

giving Disqus a try to see if their commenting system is the cat's meow that people are saying.

So leave a comment? OK?

Little Caesars Hot N Ready Pizza

On the way back from Utica we stopped at the Little Caesars in Illion NY, I had not been to one in years as they had all closed near me. I walked in and order a $5.99 pizza, the guy turned around opened a special warmer and pulled out a hot pizza all ready! It was good too! What a great idea!

Star Trek: The Next Generation Pinball Machine Destroyed

THIS IS NOT MY CREATION!

What you see above is the Ultimate pinball machine (Star Trek: The Next Generation) gutted and destroyed. You are asking yourself how could this happen? Was there something I could do?

Probally not, but you can get revenge for this poor machine and for Steve Ritchie who put it blood sweat and tears into the best damn pinball machine in my opinion.

So many pinball collectors search high and low for this machine, and to see one so carelessly destroyed makes them sick!

I don't know who did this, but when I do I will give them a piece of my mind!

Galaga Fixed!

My Craig's List was able to raise the money for a new monitor for my Galaga. I got it in the mail today and now it is in and up and running!

All that is left now is to get my Marvel Vs Capcom up and running.

Nice side by side shot with the Neo Geo.

Here is the old and new monitor side by side, note how the new one is much blacker.

Rear view of monitors. I hard already removed the driver board from the old monitor, I might still try and fix it.

Here is the cabinet empty waiting for the new monitor.

My Online Yardsale

In order to raise some money to replace the monitor in my Galaga and fix up the other cabinets I am holding an online yardsale!

Everything is posted on Craig's List and I will be adding more things as time goes by. I hope to sell everything, but we will see how that goes. Who doesn't want a Baldwin Funmachine???

• Retail Clothing Mannequin (female)
• Two Dish Network 311 Receivers plus dish and LNB
• Unicycle - SOLD
• Apple Macintosh Performa 575 (With Apple IIe card!)
• AD&D "DragonLance - Tales of the Lance" boxed set
• 1980s and 1990s Dirt Bike Magazines
• Organ - Baldwin Funmachine
• Mini Refrigerator - SOLD