The classic console corner's CRT changeover

In the corner of the rear Floodgap lab sits a pile of classic game consoles. It used to look like this: The centrepiece is the 20" Panasonic cathode ray tube TV-VCR on the cart (and a DVD player balanced on top), because with the exception of the Sega Dreamcast all the consoles here only came with NTSC RF output and date from the pre-flat panel TV era. That includes multiple Atari consoles (including the inevitable VCS, here a Darth Vader 2600), several Pong machines — including two Commodore units — with various chipsets, an Intellivision (as the rebadged Tandyvision One, my first) and a Bally Astrocade with lots of upgrades. It seems wrong to use them with a flat panel, and CRTs lag less. Plus, games with a light gun (here the Dreamcast and one of the Pong consoles) often rely on the CRT's rapidly scanning beam to know where they're pointed. So what do you do when the CRT TV goes bad? You track down another one, and then labouriously redo all the connections so you can still play…

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