Swordquest Airworld Screenshots Posted

[Curt Vendel]

Here you go:

 

 

http://www.atarimuseum.com/archives/aw/rea...worldornot.html

 

 

 

Curt

[Curt Vendel]

Okay kiddies.... here is another issue I've noticed with the game: The Date, © 1983???? SW Waterworld was wrapped up quietly during the sale of Atari in 1984, so SW Airworld would'nt have come out until 1984 and since it was being developed probably in the early months of 84' then why the copyright of 1983?

 

 

 

 

Curt

[NE146]

ok I went to the site.. Where are the screenshots?

[Lemmi]

ok I went to the site.. Where are the screenshots?  

 

 

click on Curts link above your post

[Buyatari]

Now there is one thing I don't understand.

 

If this is a fake then the person who has it must know it is a fake. Because he must have had a hand in it. You don't just find fake protos in the wild. They are made.

 

I don't know the whole story but they way the seller has approached it makes me think it still may be legit. Is it possible?

 

Can what we heard from John be true and the proto still be genenuine somehow?

 

Adam

[Scott Stilphen]

Fake protos have been discovered before (anyone remember the Pitfall 3 story? ) so it's not entirely something we can rule out...esp since we all know how valuable a real Airworld proto would be. The more I look at the pictures, the more it looks like it could have been based on Waterworld rather than Fireworld (Fireworld didn't even have a title screen).

 

If the proto is a fake, then it was very well done. As for the 83 copyright date, I wouldn't read too much into it since there have been a few instances where protos have been found with different dates than the release versions (Saboteur is one I know of off-hand. I'm sure Matt can list a few others). If the programming was started early enough in 83, there was a chance it could have come out in the same year. The original Waterworld contest entry deadline was December 15, 1983, but was extended to April 15, 1984, so more than likely AW would have come out in 84.

[Atari2600Lives]

You know from reading Jeremy's post here it seems he is being straight up....it could most defintely be fake but he seems to think it was real and immediately called off the auction....it's not like he's still screaming it's real...he is being very reasonable at this point ....if he's the hoaxer then he is REAL smooth.

 

I think he has this in his collection and basically does not know what the hell it is.

[King Atari]

You know what, even if it is a fake, hack, etc., I'd still be willing to trade for it .

[Tempest]

Another thing I noticed is the character looks just like he did in Earthworld, in Fireworld and Waterworld he was all black and didn't have the bulbus head. Earthworld was done by Dan Hitchens not Tod Frye. Why would Tod use Dan's graphics instead of his own?

 

Tempest

[Atari2600Lives]

Hey how about this :

 

"the screens shown on this website are variants of the fireworld concepts."

 

Tod mentions this in the e-mail.....it could be the variants...in other words it could of come from Atari this way......anyway John/CX2K can ask Tod if there is any chance this is just something else that was laying around the Atari labs?

[Curt Vendel]

If the proto is a fake, then it was very well done.  As for the 83 copyright date, I wouldn't read too much into it since the programming was started in 83, there was a good chance it could have come out in the same year.

 

Thanks Scott, I wasn't sure on that one, I wasn't sure on the starting period of Airworld so thats why I was concerned on the 83' vs 84' issue.

 

 

 

Curt

[Curt Vendel]

Given the short time tables and extreme pressures that Management was putting on the programmers group to push out product, its not hard to believe that the programmers would reuse old code for characters, sounds, rooms and so forth to help get the core of the game going, then add on the additional information.

 

Also the SW series would've had to have been a lot different then all the other non-SW games, the source code would've been kept in a more secure directory on the servers, private meetings to discuss the hidden easter codes and such would've had to have been done, then recorded and double checked to be handed over to DC Comics for the accompanying Comic Book. Tod did some amazing coding (Xevious comes to mind) so I'm sure he would've used smart time-saving moves like re-using existing code to get things done quicker so he could concentrate on other aspects.

 

 

 

Curt

[Scott Stilphen]

Tempest- I've always wondered that. EW looks more 'polished'. FW just looks (and plays) rushed.

[broncoman]

all i can say is i have no idea im stumped

[MattyXB]

Here is the cart scan for all, who came to late.

 

 

Bitmap

 

Argg, my site is down in the moment. I hope it will work later again.

 

 

 

OK, here a new site but only with the JPG scan:

SwordQuest AirWorld Or Not???

 

The other game is a game from Thailand. Thanks to Jah Fish, who has trade it with me.

[TheRedEye]

I am 100% positive that those "captured" screenshots are NOT captures. They are either doctored images or emulator screengrabs. This guy says that he will LATER get the ROMs dumped, implying that they're not dumped now. Meaning he's lying, either by saying the game is not dumped or by saying that these screen shots are television captures.

 

Either way, this is bullshit, and I'm certainly not falling for it.

[CrazyImpmon]

I've taken a look at the alleged screenshots. I have a TV Wonder card as well, and even if one hacked the Atari 2600 to have the AV output, there's no way the screenshot quality would be that good. The only way any capture would be that good without using emulator or doctoring fake shots is if someone hooked Atari 2600 directly to the capture card but no one makes anything that can handle the oddball TIA design.

 

I had hoped the Airworld proto was for real

[Flexured]

This is not a simple video capture card. It's the ATI TV WONDER VE running on a RH Linux 7.3 machine compiled with with the latest drivers and OpenGL patches, gold cabled for 0 static interruption. If you don't know what that is, I suggest you read a little more about it before arbitrarily posting remarks challenging the method by which the images were captured. I am not an expert by any means of Atari memorabilia as you are, but I do have a competitive knowledge of capturing video from any source, and on that point I simply cannot take your baseless accusations seriously.

 

Furthermore, I will be posting new information regarding this cartridge, whatever it is, in the future on my site (www.dragonsword.com/airworld/), and will not be responding to any more inquiries/statements/flames/whatever on this board in the future. You are all free to email me if you have any questions and I will do my best to answer them in a timely manner.

 

jeremy@neosurf.net

[Warren]

I have no reason to suspect that the cart is a fake, or that it's genuine.

While the cart doesn't look like a proto cart, remember that it probably isn't. If the game was ripped off by a disgruntled employee, it wouldn't HAVE to be in a proto cart. Why couldn't the label be hand written at a later time?

The visual differences have been addressed by somebody who suggested they would enhance the game at a later date by adding better/different graphics, but needed to get a working version of the game to start with.

And the whole "screen capture" debate... the card is capable of capturing images. They do look remarkably clean, but it is possible that they're legit, with professional grade equipment.

The input from Tod is the most disturbing. Not to start a flamewar with CX2K, but the email from Tod was quoted and dumped on a message board. So is it any more authentic than the game? Who do I give the benefit of the doubt to? CX2K has been around a lot longer...

To Flexured's benefit, he again pulled the auction when seeing the Tod letter, which lends credibility that he's trying to be straight with the community.

If it is a scam, it's a whole lot of work for nothing. This is the second time the guy's cart has been dismissed by the community as a fake. There are much easier ways to scam some money off of some mark than by handcrafting a fake game and selling it on EBay. Considering it is taking years, someone could make more working 10 hours a week at Safeway.

I'd like to see it turning out to be legit. Wouldn't we all?

[somePUNK]

well i know i'm pulling for it to be real maybe it should be dumped and that all our minds would be southed and we can put up for auction and see how it gose

[Albert]

Furthermore, I will be posting new information regarding this cartridge, whatever it is,  in the future on my site (www.dragonsword.com/airworld/), and will not be responding to any more inquiries/statements/flames/whatever on this board in the future.   You are all free to email me if you have any questions and I will do my best to answer them in a timely manner.

 

Please keep in mind that due to the nature of this particular cartridge, you have opened yourself up to inquiries, statements and flames as has been seen in this thread. You're talking about a game that for the longest time has been assumed simply not to exist, the cartridge itself is highly unusual for an Atari prototype, and Tod Frye himself has supposedly said the proto is bogus. In addition, you haven't yet allowed anyone to dump the cart to examine it, which could go a long ways towards determining if the cart is genuine.

 

Given this situation and the fact that this is the second time you've popped up with this cart, you have to understand that people are going to be somewhat aggravated. It's like the ultimate tease for Atari 2600 fans, "Here's Swordquest AirWorld! I'm going to put it up for Auction to give everyone a fair shake at it! Oh! It doesn't appear to be genuine, sorry!" I would love for this to be the Real Deal, but until you offer to let someone examine the cart, we all have to remain skeptics.

 

It would be great if this entire issue could be put to rest one way or another.

 

..Al

[Paul Slocum]

I loaded up one of the Airworld screenshots into Photoshop and pasted a screen shot from Atariage's Earthworld entry over half of it. Funny thing is, to make them fit together perfectly pixel for pixel, all I had to do was resize the Airworld image exactly 200%...

 

Here's a larger version.

 

-Paul

[finalize]

. Funny thing is, to make them fit together perfectly pixel for pixel, all I had to do was resize the Airworld image exactly 200%...  

 

well, duh, if you resize any atari image it will fit the same screen. i'd say this only proves that it has taken elements from the orignal and squeezed them in, just like what john mentioned earlier.

 

here's to hoping

kaliboy

[Scott Stilphen]

Those screen photos just beg for some indepth comparison....so here it is

[Albert]

Okay, I just took a closer look at the screenshots. I'm sorry, but a consumer level video card (which is what the ATI All-In-Wonder VE is) is not going to capture pixel perfect RF images without further manipulation in some type of drawing program. I wasn't aware until I looked in Photoshop that there were no variations in color as one would expect in an RF-captured image. If the images are untouched, the only way you'd get them would be out of an emulator. The fact that Paul was able to match up the two images precisely suggests one of three things:

 

1) The image was captured in Stella using a dump of AirWorld, which is what I used to take the screenshots for AtariAge.

2) The images are manipulations of EarthWorld screenshots that were taken from Stella.

3) The images were captured using a video capture board, cleaned up, and then intentionally cropped and sized to the exact dimensions that Stella takes screenshots at, taking care to make sure the playfield matches up *exactly*.

 

In addition, I have noticed something about all the images that suggests they are all faked. The Atari 2600 is only capable of a horizontal resolution of 160 pixels. However, every one of the images has one or more elements displayed at a horizontal resolution of 320 pixels. Here are the examples (you can look at all the images here, load them into a paint program for more detail) demonstrating a resolution of 320:

 

1) The sword in the title screen.

2) Several elements of the horse and rider in the title screen are on one pixel boundaries.

3) The icons at the bottom of the screen in the in-game shots are at 320 reslution. Compare these to the icon in Paul's shot above from Earthworld.

4) The player in the third shot (facing the camera) has had his feet shortened by one pixel, and there are two pixels (each one pixel wide) of black on the left leg.

5) The clouds in the fourth shot that the player is hopping on are also comprised of several one-pixel wide elements.

 

This suggests that the images are simply modified screen captures from an emulator, and that the person modifying them was unaware of this limitation. I'll let everyone draw their own concusions, but I've made up my mind that this is a complete hoax. Until some third-party is allowed to see this prototype firsthand, I no longer give it any credence of being real.

 

..Al