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The main issue for me is it looks like a game that has very little to do with classic Lunar Landar at all- it just uses the name. And whatever the game is, I can't tell from the trailers whether I'd enjoy it at all. So $30 is too much for a game that is a complete risk for me.

Well you're in the middle of being wrong and right. There are plenty of boots that aren't worth much, but also because maybe that game even when legit isn't either, but he's also right there are a great number that command some serious money from $50-500+ but you need to know what you're going after in that case. But well you lose all credibility and I'd say there's not much mind in your mindset if you feel that way about these old bootlegs. A pretty shallow pool there if you think these at this rate are contributing to piracy or cheating any legal copyright holders in a vast majority of the titles. They're no longer sold, you can't buy them from the makers, so whether it's a $5 boot of a game or a $15 legit copy fo the game, they're still used, the seller isn't going to grow a conscience and mail a check or paypal Nintendo or whoever a few bucks one each sale either -- they don't get crap for it. There is no cheated revenue outside of the slim amount that are still sold on some store front or included in a streaming service and that's really that. Authorized 100% is NOT garbage, what is wrong with you? Maybe when they were being made/sold when the games were on the market at the same time you would most definitely have a truthful case, but now it's just being petty and short sighted. Also arguing with fcgamer there probably isn't best, both because he doesn't know when to quit, but also he probably(I think does) has the worlds largest collection of bootleg famicom stuff and has been writing books about it for some time now too. it's rare to come across something related to the subject he hasn't seen before or can confuse him.

I've done this via a simple rewire mod cable and I get no response from buttons nor stick. I've tried both pigtail wire (leaving wire 5 connected) and wiring pin7 to pin5 and abandoning their mates at the pins. Both power it up and the (3 different) controllers pair, but no response to any controls.

I misquoted Mr. Drover: “I hate asparagus, but I don't talk about it on the Asparagus.com message board."

I'm confused, the center paragraph above. Does that mean if you play as a guy, the game is constantly subtley if not outright having men hit on you? And if that's the case, and you know it and don't want it, so you basically in nice or less nice ways say piss off, you end up being punished for not being some digital glory hole by getting a disability roll?? That's, if I'm reading it right, complete crap and some social engineering bs being shoved down gamers throats in that case (pun intended.) I had a passing interest in this one, but was worried about a time commit on it vs just how crazy slow the movement and battles were in past decades entries. But even if this did move at a more brisk pace to keep it going (like BG Dark Alliance console did) punishing people for not playing into the trap is just despicable.

That's a known idiosyncrasy of Atari Corp. cartridges. They produced thicker cartridge shells than Atari Inc. did, and they used the same one for both 2600 and 7800 games. The Red Label titles and 1986-88 reprints are right at home in 2600jr. and 7800 systems, but a little snug in the previous woodgrain/vader consoles.

I'm in the same boat missing the classic controller support. I agree that it's probably the limited number of buttons, but it's still a little disappointing because the gameplay seems perfectly suited for the classic controller. That said, I had a good first impression of the game. So far, I've only played for a little bit (damn life getting in the way of more Atari time), but I like the graphics and I'm a fan of the general aesthetics (it's got a cool look to it). It also looks like their's a bit of depth to the game, and I see myself playing a lot of this in the future. Taking the good with the bad, I'm really glad Atari came through and ported this to the VCS.

So I know you wanted 2.06, but I can confirm this worked with EmuTos on my Mega ST https://www.tindie.com/products/ArcadeStuff/1mbit-mask-rom-adapter/ Which will let you use.... https://www.amazon.com/AM29F010B-70JC-AM29F010B-AM29F010-29F010-PLCC32/dp/B07ZZJ6MN4/ I can't say if it will work with 2.06 as I still think you'd need a decoder. But if you're just looking for something better than TOS 1.02/1.04 EmuTos isn't a bad way to go.

No worries. Take care and hope that you are feeling lots better now.

Yesterday's (4/24) totals: Android 1) Retro Bowl College - 10 minutes 2) Snood - 10 minutes

Funny enough that game also made it to the NES in the dumbest way by renaming it Kiwi Kraze and it largely flies under the radar, few really realize it exists let alone is The NewZealand Story. I hadn't seen a copy in probably 10-15 years and a few weeks ago I came across a copy, snapped it up. Despite the few lesser colors, it was the 8bit console home port of choice as it was the most intact compared to the arcade original, fair, but a hard game, quite well done.

The Upmonsters hit two RBIs in the 4th inning and one more in the 8th as they shoot down the Bombers today 3-0.

I am working on a game that I would like to use custom voices on. This topic has been swirling around lately and it seems like I need to contact many people to try and figure things out. Perhaps a dedicated thread might help Currently, we can just use the native voice which sounds robotic. Custom voices can be created by recording a person's voice, resampling the voice in Audacity software. Then it needs to be run through a special software that only a chosen few have access to. Mike's Gaming Gala did a video here on how to resample. Also The Intellivision Gamer had a live show discussing the topic with Mike and William here My first question is do I need to use JLP Bank Switching? or can a game contain custom voices without it? Anyone Know?

I think one of the problems with a lot of AAA games are the scummy practices of the studios who make them. Releasing incomplete and buggy games with huge downloads, followed by huge updates to fix the bugs (some of which never get fixed) and then paid DLC to complete the games. Plus, some of them include online stores where you can pay real money to buy stuff, and borderline gambling with things like loot boxes. By comparison, a lot of smaller games are released complete and with as few bugs as possible, because they're made by studios who actually still care, and who also know they won't have a guaranteed sale on the name of their studio alone. And, they will sell the game, which costs way less to produce than a AAA title, at a fair price to recoup production costs and usually not include things like paid DLC, online stores or loot boxes. It's just a more authentic game experience, especially for those of us who grew up in pre-internet days of gaming.

Note that your screen data should be aligned to memory pages. In particular, a 4K boundary should not be in the middle of a screen data. If so, you also need a special display list that points to the start of the second "half" past the boundary.

Well, that definitely makes you an expert on the system, that's for sure!

The "sta (ind,x)" and "lda (ind,x)" were actually the easiest to handle. The zero page indirect address was set up to write to locations $1900 (top left pixel) and $ffff (bottom right), so that was easily mapped to VBXE address space. I set up 4K VBXE banks so the high 4 bits of the Missile Command arcade code address actually becomes the VBXE bank that I'm using. The low 4 bits is ORd with the address of VBXE video RAM bank (in my case from $2000-$2fff in regular Atari memory). So, for example, writing to Missile Command memory address $7654 turns into setting VBXE bank to $7 and writing to Atari memory address $2654. It works well, but the first pass I wrote generic routines to map and pixel read or write to the appropriate VBXE location and it ran REALLY slow. I had to optimize reads and writes to check for bank changes as efficiently as possible to allow for the final speed to be fast enough to not blow 60Hz frames. The actual Missile Command code rarely uses the 3 bit color lower screen RAM that is used for the bottom 32 scan lines (cities and scrolling text). I had to almost completely rewrite the scrolling text routine but even though I took advantage of the fact that the VBXE bank never changes, it was still too slow (the original code manipulated 4 pixels per byte whereas my code had to manipulate 1 pixel per byte, so it was slower). I ended up using a VBXE blitter to scroll the text (copy pixels 1-255 to pixels 0-254 with the blitter and then fill the last column (255) with the background color). I also used blitters to quickly clear the screen and lines of text. The sound does seem perfect to me and I've played a lot of Missile Command. The original hardware is interrupted at 240Hz to handle precise trackball reads and update POKEY. I ended up using a very low resolution 40x24 graphic mode just to set up VBIs to handle more trackball reads and handling POKEY sound updates for planes, satellites, and smart bombs - those needed 4 updates per 60HZ frame. The rest of the sounds worked out by just calling the routine to update the sounds 4 times within the VBI rather than once every 240Hz.

I noticed what look to be disassemblies of all three Thorn EMI cartridges in there. I saw a note in the Computer War (high) file that you had relocated it--I take it that this change moved it out of 32K space and into cartridge ROM space. If so, that explains a lot about how MicroPAL was able to release that title as a standard cartridge (but kept the other two running out of expansion memory).

Am I the only one who saw the two cool Easter egg buildings? One had this one it: HSW WSH The other simply said "Nolan." Nothing like cool shout outs to Howard Scott Warsaw and Nolan Bushnell. As for the game, it looks like it could be fun. I'm not big on platformers, but I'll check it out for sure when it releases.

Did you by chance install one of the DC-DC switching regulators into it? One thing I didn't mention, is that even though the Tracos I use are supposed to have filtering caps in them to reduce or prevent switching noise...it still causes the interference like you are talking about on RF output when I've installed it into 7800s. However, since those consoles also get a UAV, the switching noise doesn't show up on the composite and s-video output since the UAV is able to filter everything out using a separate encoder as it does. One thing that I've done in a few cases where I noticed it was more obvious than I would like is to add a 220 - 330µf 25v cap off the input and ground from the switching regulator. Just to try and smooth it out more. Not my idea, but it was something I noticed Tim Worthington included in his RGB kits for the 2600 and had as part of the required install process. This was because due to the extra load of the RGB boards, Tim included a dc-dc switching regulator to install to drop the current requirements of the 2600 so that even with the RGB board in place, the 2600 only required about 320mA of current. That meant that owners installing the kits didn't have to get beefier PSUs since the stock adapter with its 500mA output rating was still adequate. Anyway, just something to maybe try and see if it helps if you did add one in. Sharp eyed folks might see one attached on the bottom of the main boards for pictures I've posted on some I've installed where the RF was still being used.

🤡

It's nice to see this got a release. I picked it up on the VCS, of course. I did that for two reasons. First, I bought it on there to support the VCS. Second, I was one of the people saying it needed to come out on the VCS, so it wouldn't have been right to buy it on anything else, since Atari obviously listened to us. A lot of companies are deaf to what their customers want, so I like to reward those companies that actually listen. As for the game, it's super fun and frustrating as heck. But, that's how you know it's Lunar Lander. 😂 The graphics are top notch, as is the sound design. The fact that it's fully voice acted is also a nice touch. I too would have liked classic joystick support, but I suspect that wasn't added due to the classic joystick not having enough buttons for the game. But, I also have no issues using the modern controller. I'm just glad this game came out on the VCS. As for the price, I personally think it's worth it for what you get. As I said, it's got voice acting, that's not cheap to produce. Neither is that animated intro. The graphics are also higher quality than games like the Recharged series. But, I can also see the point of view of the people who say it's too expensive. For one thing, it's one of the three highest priced games in the VCS store. It's tied with the Atari 50 collection and Days of Doom. And, with Atari 50, you not only get a lot of games, but you also get the wonderful timeline history of Atari which, in my opinion, is worth $30 on its own. And, of course, Days of Doom is an RPG. A lot of people probably equate Lunar Lander Beyond more to the Recharged games, which are $10. Thus, they probably think 3X that is high for what you get. Though, to put it into perspective, I was happy to get two XBOX games on sale for $35 on Steam last weekend. Yes, those were AAA titles and one was an ultimate collection with most of the DLC, but $30 is still inexpensive next to games on other systems. And then, after paying $60 to $70 for a game, you find out it's not a complete release when they start releasing DLC. Compared to that, the VCS formula of releasing complete games for a decent price is one of the most attractive things about the system, in my opinion. Right now, a lot of big companies are doing some shady stuff with their games, and consumers are eating them up, (yes, I'm one of them) so there's no reason to stop. Compared to them, I like Atari's way of doing things a lot better.

Hi, Yes, ok now I get it man its been decades ago I coded ..... Now also figure out the right syntax to get the start memory address of the array...

Thank you Colin, as usual your vast archive of TI history and making it available to us is greatly appreciated.

560/561 points to the display list. You need to change the display list itself to point to your own screen Ram. In most cases display list + 4 will be what you need to change.