Add another platform, Pandora, to the growing list of open source portable gaming platforms. Personally, as part of my handheld arsenal, I'm an owner of a GP2X F-200 and have mixed feelings about what is presently the most popular open source multimedia handheld (along with its sibling, the F-100). On the one hand it's very versatile and does well with a wide variety of emulators, while on the other hand it's a battery hog and the end user is left to his own devices to pretty much do anything (like install programs). "Pandora", while presently tracking to be double the price (around $320 US versus the F-200's $170), looks to have a tremendous all-in-one design with helpful features like an onboard keyboard and multiple controls, superficially making it seem like a superior option for running emulators overall. Still, it all comes down to developer support, which the GP2X handhelds have in spades. If Pandora works as advertised, no doubt support will ramp up quickly and we may very well have a new "alternative handheld" leader. I know I'd eventually be onboard if it was a little easier on the end user side to install and run software, not to mention if it featured intelligent battery life management. We'll be keeping an eye on this one...

DEFINING PAST AND PRESENT GAME GENRES

Why past and present?  Certain game types, while still alive through the efforts of thousands of active hobby programmers, are no longer available in mainstream retail outlets and thus don’t knowingly exist to large portions of the game playing public.  Therefore, described in alphabetical order is what has been and what is still available.  Keep in mind, however, that one of the beauties of gaming is that many games don’t fit neatly into one specific category.  When example software titles are listed, only the publisher or developer is noted in parentheses, along with one of the systems or platforms the game appeared on.

DEFINING HOME VIDEOGAME, COMPUTER AND HANDHELD ERAS

What is often lacking in casual discussion of eras or time periods when certain systems or types of technology dominated is an agreed upon definition of what these really encompassed.  Below is one attempt at defining the significance of eras in the key classifications of home videogames, computers and handhelds.  As with any type of grouping, it's important to remember that there can be significant overlap, as some systems lasted a year or less, while others have been going strong for a decade or more. 

Could this be the product Coleco has been talking about for a while? I hope not, but until a unit is issued that includes real Coleco games it will have to do.

http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/sr=1-3/qid=1161671380/ref=sr_1_3/60...

Ocean Depths game packaging: for Atari Jaguar CDAmong other updates, prior Armchair Arcade interview subject Carl Forhan and his Songbird Productions is making, among other things, the "Ocean Depths CD" and "Bomb Squad CD" homebrews more widely available for the Atari Jaguar and its CD attachment. Both games are from Starcat Developments in Germany and require a modified Jaguar that can play encrypted CD's or the use of a bypass cartridge (which is the solution that I implement).

The full update with more information is here:

Basic Fun's Officially Licensed Atari 2600 Plug 'N Play Keychain Series: {Image from the Basic Fun Website}While this is hardly breaking news, it's been interesting to follow some of the drama around the "Atari 2600 Plug 'N Play Keychain" series from "Basic Fun". The first part of the drama involves the company's falling out with engineer Curt Vendel, most famous for being the lead on the "Atari Flashback" and "Atari Flashback 2.0" products, and launching "Awesome Arcades". The second and more relevant part of the drama involves the simple fact that these products, amazing form factor and low price aside ($15 each), are awful simulations, seemingly ignoring all the progress made over the past few years in TV Game quality (in fact, reverting back to the NES-on-a-chip of the first Flashback, which has been proven unable to properly simulate Atari 2600 games!). Perhaps "Basic Fun" should have just went with the quality product that Curt had originally delivered for them, rather than scrapping it and doing the products on the super cheap!

While the "Atari Flashback" was a weak simulation of both the Atari 7800 and 2600 systems using the readily available NES-on-a-chip as the platform, the "Atari Flashback 2.0" rectified this by incorporating a clever Atari 2600-on-a-chip, almost perfectly emulating the original hardware. After that and the prior "Commodore 64 30-in-1" (which essentially featured a C-64-on-a-chip), it's hard to go back to the kind of innaccuracies that are present in these keychain devices. Bottom line, the bar has been raised and we truly have the right to expect more, based simply on precedent and the countless other TV Games devices out there that do offer more authentic experiences, even of latter day systems like the Sega Genesis or arcade machines.

Well, as many of you know, several of us here at Armchair Arcade have been in the process of moving or have recently moved. I'm finally in the "recently moved" category after being in the former for a little over a month. As many of you also know, I'm very much into collecting computer and videogame-related stuff, hardware, software, books, accessories, collectibles, etc. Pretty much anything and everything relevant. Unfortunately, the bigger the collection, the harder the move.