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So, I got an Atari 2600 Emulator... This is Part A,

It's called Stella. And with it came a ROM of every single game ever made for the 2600.

So, in typical me fashion, I am now going to play EVERY SINGLE ONE. And blog about them. Because I can.

IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER:

3-D Tic Tac Toe

This is not 3d. Coincidentally, it is not fun. 1/5.

A-Team, The

This game seems to consist of Mr. T's head sporadically shooting laser beams at robots that he can't hit. And somehow I'm supposed to Save Hannibal.

This game sucks. 1/5

Acid Drop

Despite the fun name, this game is only a tetris ripoff with a horribly ear piercing soundtrack. Dr. Leary is nowhere to be found. 3/5, because I can actually figure out how to PLAY IT.

Action Force

This game consists of a saucer sliding on the ground underneath an undulating serpent. There is no point to this game. I do not know why it is called Action Force, as there is neither Action nor Force in this game. Just an undulating serpent being. 1/5.

Adventure

A number 1 on a gray background. Exhilarating. 1/5.

Adventures Of Tron

Okay, once I got past the hypnotic start screen, the actual game has nothing to do with lightbikes or lasers. In fact, other than the fact that there is sound effects, this game is complete ass. 2/5, because the start screen was cool.

Adventures On GX-12

Adventures on GX-12 is the same game as Adventures Of Tron. Literally, the exact same thing. The same Modem-port enemies and mutating coin-things. The only difference is the color of Tron/GX-12.

Air Raid

Hey look, a playable game. Fuck yeah. This is awesome, in a retro way. 5/5.

Air Raiders

Not to be confused with Air Raid, which was actually kind of fun, this game is unplayable and stupid. Also, AMMO has two m's. 1/5.

Air Sea Battle

One would assume this game has something to do with Air forces and Sea forces battling. That is not the case. This is a game about positioning turrets. I was sadly mistaken. 1/5.

Airlock: Data Age

I assume this was made to show people the graphics capabilities of the 2600, because all it is is some fish swimming in front of a submarine. 1/5.

Alien

It's like Pac-Man, but the ghosts don't hurt you and you can't move. 1/5.

Alien's Return

It's like Alien, but there are no ghosts and you look like the retarded brother of ET. 1/5.

Alligator People

Surprisingly fun. The gimmick of moving walls is well played, and 8-way directional movement works flawlessly. Plus, I actually enjoyed it. 4/5.

Alpha Beam

No. 1/5.

Angling

Finally, a game that captures the true excitement of angling, available for your home television! THE ENTIRE GAME LOOKS LIKE THIS. 1/5.

Aquaventure

Actually fun. Apparently the plot, as well as I can deduce, revolves around you, a diver equipped with a rifle, going around and slaughtering sea creatures until a turtle tells you you are out of air. The sea creatures, dangerous fish all, touch you and you die. Brilliance, sheer brilliance. I smell a movie tie-in. 5/5, because it's playable and fun.

Arcade Golf

This game has nothing to do with arcades or golf. It makes no sense whatsoever. And why is it made by Sears...? 1/5.

Armor Ambush

AW SWEET A TANK BATTLE GAME. These were always my favorites. And to be fair, AA does not disappoint. A solid 5/5, comrade.

Artillery Duel

AW SWEET ANOTHER TANK BATTLE GAME. This one does disappoint. 2/5, because I liked the title and the idea is there.

Assault

Nothing happens when I press buttons, that annoying thing just keeps shooting. And missing. And shooting some more. 1/5.

Asterix

Once you get over the fact that nothing makes any sense in this game, you can realize that it's not that bad. 4/5.

Asteroids

...still isn't that bad. 4/5.

Astroblast

intuitive controls... decent graphics... innovative gameplay... yeah, I actually got stuck playing this one for a bit. It's kind of like falling asteroids. 5/5.

Astrowar

This is a total combo going on here. Astrowar is another good game! THIS IS FREAKING ME OUT. As you can tell by my score up there in the top left, I really got into this one. 5/5.

Well. Damn that took a while. And that was only A-games. I still have 25 fucking letters.

Oh, and in case anyone's wondering, I did skip a couple games because the ROMs I had for them were bad. Sorry if anyone really wanted me to do Autorennen.

Chromium! (pics)

So, in case you haven't noticed, Google's pitch into the OS business has just provided its first fruits.

Chromium is here.

So, for anyone who cares, here's a detailed review of my romp into Chrome-land.

I'm using a virtual machine, as the OS is not currently confirmed as hardware ready, so as far as system requirements I'm shooting in the dark. None have been released.

But no deterrent. I hooked up a basic VM with 1 gig of ram, 32 megs of video memory and 3d acceleration, and though there is some slight lagging, overall it works superbly.

Okay so here we have my first taste of chromium.




Not bad. A nice, bare log on screen. Some sweet bevels on the corners. I would think this would be changed in the future though, so this may not be the actual release logon screen.

Alright, now I put in my username (at the moment I am using a generic name, but in the future any @gmail.com account will work)... and after a blank screen I am treated to this:

Essentially Chrome, but with a snazzy new icon in the corner. Oddly, Google calendar is the first thing to show up. I would think that the inbox or maybe a welcome page would show, but no luck.
It might be interesting to note the lack of any start/task/menubars. The closest thing you could get would be the bar at the top of the screen, but other than that new icon and the status indicators, it's pretty barebones.

In case you're wondering, here's a close up.

A clock, 'plugged in' notification, wifi indicator, and a dropdown menu that... does nothing different than if I just right clicked on a tab. Huh. Google is weird.

The browsing experience is a complete copy of Chrome, no surprises there, but the main difference is that other little icon on the left. This one.

By clicking on that you are sent to a page of 'apps', little web things mostly. All your basic email providers are there, as well as some shortcuts to .swf pages. I fail to see why shortcuts to flash games instead of installations of real games is anything too revolutionary, but nonetheless it's an interesting move. Here's the page.

I like the slightly angled pointer icon. It's a cool little touch to the OS.
Compared to other 'lightweight' OSs, Chromium seems to hog a bit of memory. Granted, the entire OS is about 260 megabytes, but the resources it requires far exceed those of say, Puppy Linux or the DSL.

Moving back to what it does, however, it seems somewhat limited. The actual OS does little, it's more focused on web apps and online resources. Google Docs is its office program, Gmail is the email, and flash games are your entertainment.

It's obviously designed with netbooks in mind, in other words. Small, lightweight, and barebones.

In case anyone is wondering, here's what the Options menu looks like, with what appears to be a GTK+ theme. I assume this will be changed to match Chrome by full release.


Apparently, Chromium also has Windowed Browsing, but without windows. It looks kind of like this.
You enter the URL up top in that text bar, and then you browse between windows with the arrows. Kind of clunky interface imho, but maybe they'll change that by final release. I guess that's Chromium's answer to workspaces.

Also, here's a task manager that I didn't notice before. You can find it by that little drop down menu on the top right.
You can't end the process for the browser, but other than that it's the same as any other task manager.

if you click on that 'stats for nerds' link on the bottom it returns you to chrome and you see this:

Interesting setup. I've never used a netbook-specific OS before, but I could get used to one, I would think.

So that's about it. There might be a follow-up blog to this if something interesting shows up, but this is a pretty big post for right now.

In conclusion, it's pretty good. Not amazing, and definitely flawed, but the idea is solid and the implementation is very well on it's way to completion. I would urge you to download it here and check it out if you want. It's totally free and legal, so no problems there.

And in case anyone is wondering, the program I used for all the screenshots here (and that I highly recommend) is called MWSnap and the virtualization software I used was Sun Virtualbox. Both are free and great programs to boot.

Weird Graffiti.

Well, I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but around the South Eugene area there has been a rash of new graffiti. A bit of it has been covered up by the school administration and there's not a bunch left in the school grounds.

But some still stands. While I was biking home listening to the new Regina Spektor album, I saw a couple specimens. Well, a lot. They're everywhere.

Ladies and gentlemen, I PROUDLY PRESENT...

THE GRAFFITI.

Shocking, isn't it.

I really can't figure out for the life of me what the fuck they're trying to say here.

Okay, so there's a moon... a pitchfork... and a crude asterisk.

Maybe it has something to do with islam. There's a somewhat better symbol on the running path, I don't have a pic though. Any thoughts? I'm stumped.

Stupid Radio Commercials.

Unlike many (basically all) of the people I know, I occasionally turn on the good ol' FM radio machine. You know, that thing that most people have in their cars that makes sounds and whatnot.

So anyway, I listen to the radio every now and then. And most of the time, I can revel in it's analog simplicity without much worry or irritation.

Except for commercials. Now, most of you may not remember this, but there was a time when you couldn't skip past commercials. And that time, for the radio, has never passed. So you have to drudge through all those darn commercials telling you about low refinance rates and how they can get you a car with no interest until 2048. Whoop de fucking doo.

The commercials typically are only a minor annoyance, until about a month ago when I noticed one about energy saving around the home.

Now, I'm all for clean energy/reusable energy/smart usage of energy/etc. So in my mind, I'm thinking this may be a good, worthwhile commercial.

Then I heard it all. This is essentially what happens.
(note to readers: the voices are of tweenage girls. The worst kind)

I paraphrased a little.

---
"Hey Jamie. Is that your phone charger over there?"
"HURR DURR NO IT'S NOT"
"WELL YES IT IS"
"NNNNNNNOOOOOOOOO IT'S NOT"
A dorky ringtone sounds. Something from Disney.
"isn't that your ringtone, jamie?
"OH JIMINY CRICKETS YES IT IS."
"HEY JAMIE DID YOU KNOW THAT PHONE CHARGERS SUCK UNGODLY AMOUNTS OF ENERGY OUT OF THE WALL EVEN WHEN YOU'RE NOT USING THEM?!"
"GOLLY GEE [erica], I DID NOT KNOW!"
Strong adult voice: "Yes, remember to unplug those pesky wall chargers. They will skyrocket your electric costs blah blah blah im really strong and adult blah blah blah listen to me blah blah blah"

Then some dorky jingle plays and I am informed that this a collaboration of my local radio stations and EARS, Eugene Area Radio Stations.
---

Well would you take a gander at that. Cell phone chargers... I would never know.

I'm sure the evidence to the contrary is just mere hearsay.

Everyone, keep driving your petrovampire automobiles, keep drinking down that oil molotov, keep throwing away your recyclables and buying disposables, keep using non-reusable energy, keep flying in your aeroplanes, it's all cool as long as you don't keep your cell phone charger plugged in.

God forbid we do that.