I have collected for Odyssey 2 and TI-99/4a, and mechanical games (such as Tomy arcade) I'm very interested in Vectrex and 1960s Electro-mechanical games

Well, there might not be much to say about it but since I joined the Wierd, Oddball Systems Collectors club, and no one has posted anything in the past many months, I figure I'd start a conversatio about the Action Max. The Action Max was a home video game console using VHS tapes for games. It was manufactured in 1987 by Worlds of Wonder. The system had a very limited release outside the U.S. Using light guns, players shoot at the screen. The gaming is strictly point-based and dependent on shot accuracy, and, as a result, players can't truly win or lose a game. The system's post-launch appeal was limited by this and by the fact that the only real genre on the system are light gun games that play exactly the same way every time, leading to its quick market decline. Before playing, a red sensor must be attached to the lower right corner of the television screen. This corner contains a circle that was usually black, but flashes rapidly whenever something on the screen is targetable. At the same time, targets are highlighted by rapidly flashing panels for the player to shoot at. The console uses the corner circle and light from the targets (picked up by the guns) to determine when something has been hit. Flashes in sync with the corner circle count as enemy hits, and earn points for the player. Flashes out of sync with the corner circle count as friendly hits, losing points. There were only 5 game officially released for the Action Max: .38 Ambush Alley, a police target range; Blue Thunder, based on the eponymous 1983 motion picture; Hydrosub: 2021, a futuristic underwater voyage; The Rescue of Pops Ghostly, a comic haunted-house adventure; Sonic Fury, aerial combat, bundled with the system. Blue Thunder is basically the "Stadium Events" of the system. I've been looking for one for years and haven't seen one on eBay. The other four, however, are much more easily found on eBay. Another cool aspect of this device is that since scoring is based off of basic light gun mechanics and detection from a device that attaches to the corner of your CRT display, you can actually make homebrew titles quite easily. There are a couple that have been discussed on AtariAge but since the device is strictly using detection of what is happening on a screen, you can use a DVD player instead of a VCR player, or potentially YouTube/Streaming media sent directly to your CRT. So, anyone else collect for this system? I have every title sealed (except Blue Thunder) an a NIB Action Max. Anyone else interested in this device and potentially making a VGS homebrew? (PLEASE NOTE if you'd like to comment and can't, you might have to first join the club. I've noticed that most club posts are locked until you join the club.) Web-Ripped Photo Gallery

Hey everyone, just thought I'd throw a couple of pesos in the fountain. Presuming that an Oddball system is anything that the average gamer would be more or less unfamiliar with, I currently have an active interest in the following: Colecovision Intellivision Atari 7800/2600 Commodore 64 Apple II Atari 400/800/XL/XE Admittedly none of these are extremely oddball, they are just the ones that I have and actively play/collect. In the case of Atari 400/800/XL/XE I have games but am still on the lookout for the actual computer... Colecovision is the only one I'm looking to complete the official collection for and I'm most of the way there... Other stuff I find interesting but do not own: Odyssey II , Fairchild Channel F , Vectrex and pretty much anything else that came from the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th generations; Amiga CD 32 etc. Bally Astrocade struck me at one point as something of potential interest but I know very little about it. I also have one of those Fairchild Controllers and found it to be Extremely interesting. I haven't used it much however as it tends to drift to the left and I haven't gotten around to fixing it/attempting to fix it. Never even heard of that Atari Starpath Super-Charger before - Very Interesting.

That's shady. The Fairchild library is small enough I'd like to complete it someday. I already have the hardest to find game for it, so it shouldn't be too tough. That and Colecovision. I'd like to complete that one just for nostalgic sake.

As far as my Fairchild system goes, it's also an interesting story. Several years ago, a local pawn shop had a HUGE influx of video games all at once. It turns out that someone had recently died and his family didn't know what to do with his video games, so they sold them in one lump sum to a pawn shop. I bought a decent chunk of the collection which included some of the following: Atari 5200 with several working controllers, track ball controller and about 25 super clean CIB games Both models of Atari Lynx with about 12 CIB games Fairchild Channel F (non-working) with about 6 CIB games Atari Starpath Supercharger with about 6 CIB games About 20 CIB Atari Jaguar games And what I didn't buy included the following: IntelliVision with about 30 super clean CIB games Atari Jaguar several NES and N64 games Turbografx 16 I wanted to buy more but despite getting a good deal on what I bought, I was still spending more than I wanted to at the time, so I had to cut myself off. However, I'm glad I bought as much as I did because I'm the only collector who bought anything. Most of the rest ended up in the hands of a local reseller who is known to be pretty scummy person. He later tried to sell some of the exact same items under the guise of "I'm selling for my friend who's Mom is sick."

Believe it or not, but a flash cart for the Fairchild exists. It's not SD card based. It already has all of the games, along with a prototype game included in it. There is a guy over at Atari Age who makes and sells them. They aren't cheap, but it provides a full library that is playable on the original system. I would have bought one a few years ago if my system was working.

I found most of my Fairchild games by accident. There was a guy at a flea market that always had weird stuff and I noticed some yellow cartridges. I asked him about them and he basically said he didnt know what they were and didn't have the system. When I asked how much he got real weird and asked me a bunch of questions like why I wanted them and what I was going to do with them. He finally sold them to me and I tracked a system down with some more games. I don't play it much but it has a cool story being the first cartridge based system ever released.

I never thought about it, but it is like Bop It. I sort of wish I still have my Fairchild, but I don't know what I would have done with it. I also have an Odyssey2 and ColecoVision, but I've slowly been selling that stuff off. I've found that the 2600 is the only console from that generation that I have any gaming interest in.

@TDIRunnerThe Fairchild controller seriously reminds me of a Bop it! That's crazy about the Atari peripheral. I've never heard of or seen one.

Another interesting system (or add-on is probably a better description) is my Atari Starpath Supercharger. It's an add-on for the Atari 2600 that increased the RAM of the 2600 from 128 bytes to 6,272 bytes (yes seriously). The add-on itself didn't play any cartridges. You would insert the add on into the cart slot, and plug a cord into the headphone jack of your cassette tape player. Then you would play the games which came on cassette tapes in your player to download the game data through the headphone jack into the add-on to play on the 2600. It sounds crazy, but it works really well and allows you to play a much more advanced version of Frogger compared to the original 2600 port. There were only around 12 games released for it, of which I own about half. Today, you can buy digital versions of the games and play them through an mp3 player to skip the cassette tape player if you wish, but you will still need the actual Starpath Supercharger add-on to play the mp3s without using emulation.

I had a Fairchild Channel F up until last year. I only sold it because it didn't work, and I didn't have enough passion for the system to try and fix it. The person who bought it seem really interested in it, so I think it went to a good home. While I had it, I was really interested in the design of the controller. It had the typical 360 degree joy stick. But you could also push it down to use as "button 1" or pull it up as "button 2." The joy stick would also twist in either direction to act like a paddle controller. All things considered, it was pretty interesting.

@Speedy_NES @LutherDestroysTheGond

I finally figured out how to post topics in here! So, what weird systems are you into? My first system was a ColecoVision and I still have my original machine and games and still play them often. I also collect Fairchild Channel F and Bally Astrocade. How about you?