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  2. 😎 102 550 Should’ve been a much better score, had three lives and over 100k going into the meteors and it was brutal, no way through on the first life, dead before making it down the screen on the second and two close calls and death shortly after. I started a couple of games resuming that level afterwards and made it through there clean every time! My controller is getting worse too, stuttering and more wild movements, like taming a stallion!
  3. “I hate asparagus, but I don’t talk about it on asparagus.com.” - Shawn Drover
  4. I remember early 1984 as the time when 2600 carts underwent a dramatic price drop. I guess this was the result of what we later referred to as the "'83 crash". I remember in early '84 being very sick with strep throat. On way home from doctors, went to a toy store and parents bought me fully boxed Super Breakout for $5. Probably at the same time a year earlier, that game was probably at least $15-$20.
  5. Hey, just wanted to let you know that ti99iuc and I finished up the user manual for Atlantis in case you wanted to add it to the 'Shelf. The PDFs for the manual and cartridge lable can be download on GitHub here: https://github.com/CheungChang7/TI99_HOMEBREW/tree/main/ATLANTIS/DOCS Or you can grab them below. ATLMAN.pdf Atlantis Cart Label with cut lines.pdf
  6. @ti99iuc and I finished up the manual for Atlantis. It can be accessed on GitHub here: https://github.com/CheungChang7/TI99_HOMEBREW/tree/main/ATLANTIS/DOCS Along with the files for the cartridge label. The files can also be downloaded below for convenience. I want to thank ti99iuc for creating the manual cover and cartridge label as well as helping me to get the manual good enough for publication ATLMAN.pdf Atlantis Cart Label with cut lines.pdf
  7. I remember buying most of my 2600 games in the early 80s from Circus World, a toy store in our mall. They used to do a weekly ad in the local newspaper, and was always so excited to see that. Defender is one I really remember- $34.99! So expensive, I mowed tons of lawns back then.
  8. Today
  9. GenXGrownUp has put up a really interesting interview with Gary Kitchen who did the 2600 port of Donkey Kong (the DK discussion starts at 5:42): Like Jennell, Gary makes it clear that developers were not asked to shank the ports, there was no Coleco conspiracy. Instead, the focus was on time to delivery and ROM size. Specifically, development needed to be complete in May '82 in order for production to be done by September, and the games to be available in the run up to Christmas. Further, Gary suggests that even if he had a larger ROM, he might not have been able to do much more in the 90 days he had for development. I suspect that, if he was still around, Frank Johnson might empathize with Gary's experience. The importance of ROM space is something that should not be forgotten when comparing DK ports. On the Colecovision, DK was originally a 24KB game written in Pascal. This compares with 4K decles (5KB) on the Intellivision and 4KB on the 2600. Therefore, it's not surprising that content was cut on the Inty and 2600 versions. I believe the Coleco version was reworked in assembly later, reducing the size to 16KB with no loss of functionality. This potentially shows the overhead of using a high level language, that more ROM space might have been traded for a shorter development time on the Colecovision version, and the efficiency improvement that more development time and experience can bring. So as a really naive comparison, even in it's optimised, 16KB form, Colecovision DK effectively had more than 5KB of ROM space per level, as compared with 2.5KB on the Inty and 2KB on the 2600.
  10. The major different variant of 800XL is the later one which has Freddie. It would make sense that they use the 1-bit DRams only since we didn't see the 4-bit chips until later on in the XE lifetime.
  11. Oh and Ben, I made a video and dedicated it to you - you should feel honored. The video helps demonstrate that legit companies were in on the game too.
  12. From the "Games Not Running! Screen Glitching! Why?" thread: Break Issues One issue which will crop up from time to time is screen glitching when BREAK is enabled on the cart. BREAK is the functionality which allows you to return to the game menu with a controller button combination or apply cheats to the running game. The way BREAK works is the cartridge takes over execution of the code from the game once per frame to do it's own thing and apply cheats and check for button presses. For some games this happens at a very crucial moment and causes graphical glitches. One common example is Ms Pac-Man (NTSC) and all it's mods, this game has very noticeable screen flickering / glitching with break enabled. Until there is a work-around for specific games with issues the best option is to disable break for the game. This does mean you will not be able to enable any cheats (if they exist) and you will have to power-cycle to return to the game menu, but the game will be glitch free. To disable break, press right trigger on a standard controller or B on a Mega7800 controller and press left / right where it says BREAK ENABLED to change this to BREAK DISABLED. Move down and hit START.
  13. Considering the fact that all the Atari games were designed back when the standard tv was 4:3 there is no way, on any of the Flashbacks, to strech the video out to the size of modern tv's. The picture would probably look pretty horrible if you take into account the pixelated look of the games in 4:3.
  14. Nice to see some more competition! I like the concept of your game, didn't know it before.
  15. Playing my VCS on live radio tomorrow night! What games/sounds shall I unleash this time around on the FM airwaves?! :rolling: Also getting HSW back on..

    1. PlaidMouse

      PlaidMouse

      That's awesome! Two of my favorite things together: Atari & radio! Since you are soliciting requests, here are my recommendations:

      1. Space Invaders (lots of recognizable sounds from that game).

      2. Secret Quest (if you have it; it's got a lot of fun background sounds)
      3. Dragon's Descent (fantastic homebrew by @Revontuli with lots of great music and sound, perfect for FM)
      4. Dig Dug (Taizo Hori's shoes make music when you walk. Should be a lot of fun for the radio!)
      5. Solaris (Lot's of trippy sounds in that game)

      What FM station will you be on and at what time? Would love to listen live. :D

      Edit: Just looked to the side and saw that you broadcast on KXSF 102.5FM and KPCR 101.9FM. I'll try to be more observant next time. ;)

  16. The chips I ordered were 4164B so should be fine. I'm beginning to suspect the Pokey chip though...
  17. I made the Visicom dumper a few years ago when we realized only two of the six carts had been dumped. I sent it to @stupus who dumped CAS-130, 141 and 160, and hoping he would come across CAS-190 sooner than I would. It's a simple Arduino-based (so modern) system that writes the ROM contents to an SD cart. I know Ed Keefe made a similar system for the RCA carts, though his was a bit more polished than my kludge version FliP
  18. Tune into my new podcast episode airing tomorrow night 10PM-12AM Pst(and also airing this Monday night on KPCR at the same time slot)with special guest Howard Scott Warshaw!! Just spoke to him just now and he's gonna be sharin' some of his views on the new VCS console,and also what he's been programming lately on it. Something you shouldn't miss! Also about to hear more of my VCS in action on live radio. Interview transcription also coming soon online. Any questions you got for HSW lemme know here too thx!
  19. i sometimes have this with the taiwanese bootlegs. i use abbrasive to make it fit more but still it is a pain in the a** sometimes to get it fit properly
  20. They are very different chips, as @Rybags said, the 41464 is a 4 bit * 64K chip, the address pins are very different (and others) to the 4164 which is a 1 bit * 64K chip. I don't know if the 800XL had a model with 2 chips, but yours has 8 so it has the be the 4164 variant I know that some 65XE, 130XE have either chip, but they are not interchangeable i.e. 2 or 4 for 65XE and 8 or 16 chip for 130XE I believe that the XEGS also uses the 41464 2 chip memory.
  21. You probably meant Xbox Series S, not Xbox One S, and that doesn't even make sense, since every game that works on Xbox Series S works on Series X as well, so you should just say Xbox Series. And in my articles, I also tend to just put "Xbox" since, except the recent AAA blockbusters I seldomly write about, games work on both Xbox One and Xbox Series. It's less true for PlayStation, so I either write PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, or just PlayStation when it works for both.
  22. Hi, Imagine you have the line counter in y register and the y position of a missile in ram (e.g. missile1_y at $80), what is you favorite code to display a two pixel high missile ? I haven't found a solution I am proud of yet and need to concentrate on other things Edit : I say "favorite" because I do not have need for shorter code nor faster code for now, just wondering what solutions you find interesting / beautiful.
  23. Mega ST's - you can't just put in TOS 2.xx ROMS like for like without some extra jiggery pokery. There are some boards available from worldwide sellers to enable this for you.
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