+OLD CS1 Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 No one has yet mentioned an obvious truth -- that Parker Brothers' TI conversions were light-years ahead of both TI AND Atarisoft in terms of looks, sounds, and gameplay. Q*Bert, Popeye and Frogger are all fantastic! I wish that team had been doing the Atarisoft conversions. Not spoken, but certainly thought on my end. (Been lurking on this thread.) I could spend hours playing "Q*Bert" and "Frogger," and I recently acquired "Popeye." My exclamation on each one was, very impressive. To that effect, I am also very pleased with "Burgertime." Really wish "Demon Attack" was more like the 2600 version -- I KILLED at that game. But I digress. Of the Atarisoft games, I think DK looks the best, but gameplay is definitely lacking. Some of the others, like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, are so sluggish, I've never spent a lot of time with them. After spending a lot of time collecting all of the Atarisofts I could find, I am mostly disappointed in them. The only ones I really like are "Shamus," which runs just like on my aunt's PCjr, and "Moon Patrol." While I like "Donkey Kong," there are quite a few missing elements which leave me wanting. The Pac-Mans are just down right embarrassing. I will let the rest rest. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess Ragan Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 That may be the case for the TI 99/4A, but man, I couldn't disagree with you more about Atarisoft games for other machines. Their ColecoVision games were generally in the upper echelon of the system's library. The unreleased prototype for Pac-Man was impressive until it was blown to smithereens by Eduardo Mello's near-perfect conversion. Similarly, Galaxian was incredibly close to the real thing, and more colorful than most ColecoVision shooters. The VIC-20 was a much more limited system, but Atari's programmers did the best they could with the hardware... and as it turns out, they could do a lot! Witness Donkey Kong, which was as ugly as a thumb flattened with a sledgehammer but had ALL the intermissions and ALL the stages and the proper scoring for leaping over barrels. Even the NES version couldn't claim that! The port of Moon Patrol was fugly too but there were elements of the arcade game that I'd never seen anywhere else... if you take too long to blast the UFOs overhead they'll try to crash into you! It's probably a your mileage may vary thing, but overall I've been really impressed with Atarisoft games. They were way better than you would expect a game company to make for its competitors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 (edited) Atarisoft games are disappointing..... I had the 2600 too. Back in the day I only had Defender, Donkey Kong and Pac-Man for the TI. At the time I was not disappointed. Donkey Kong (16K) was perfect. Defender (8K) was excellent though a bit sparse on graphics. Pac-Man (16K) was very nice, just a bit slow. Nice to have some "real" arcade conversions for the TI. Had no problem with 50Hz. Edited February 16, 2011 by sometimes99er Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucifershalo Posted February 16, 2011 Author Share Posted February 16, 2011 Yes, Atarisoft has the reputation of doing excellent games for non Atari systems, and maybe (probably) my judgement for Ti99 conversions was too fast and harsh overall if comparing with 2600 equivalents, what is sluggish could be a "slower" difficulty curve...when 2600 Ms Pac Man doesnt have so much different between level 1 and 4, on the TI99 "it takes its time"..... My cart of Protector II seems to freeze any idea? and yes, Atarisoft carts are working with the Speech module plugged in but not with Nanopeb+ plugged in the module, in fact none of the carts work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Some of the Atarisoft titles did cut some corners, particularly in the sound effects: weren't there enough audio channels on the 99/4a to play the ghost and dot-eating sound effects at the same time in Ms. Pac-Man, for example? That would be silly since the arcade didn't do that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfernalKeith Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Let's talk about the Imagic conversions for a minute. "Super" Demon Attack made no sense to me - I burned up a lot of time with it as a kid, but the giant (awesome looking) aliens and the boss level had nothing to do with the original. 2600 Demon Attack is one of my favorite "twitch" games for that system. Fathom and Moonsweeper both looked really nice. And Microsurgeon, of course, is in a class all its own, in my opinion. That one could have really changed some people's minds about the 99/4A, had it gotten more attention or come out a little sooner. I wish a TI version of Atlantis had come out. I love that game, I can play it for hours. Dragonfire's another one for quick, mindless arcade play, though it doesn't have nearly as much staying power. I recall reading that the unreleased Wing War prototype wasn't very good. Have any of you played it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Anyone here have a copy of Moon Patrol? Interesting scrolling in that one. I think the mountains in the background are actually SPRITEs.. They aren't, they are graphics, just like in Parsec, except Moon Patrol manages three layers. You can prove it in Classic99 by turning off sprites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Okay, I'm not going to win an Academy Award or anything, but I hope you get the idea. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tursi Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 Damn!! Nice breakdown, Sometimes99er!! I'm saving that one off for the next time this discussion comes up, hehe. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+retroclouds Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 (edited) Very nice. By the way opcode is working on converting the arcade version to the colecovision. He has a thread somewhere about that. Interesting considering the TI-99/4A and Colecovision have the same VDP. EDIT: I found the thread here. Edited February 18, 2011 by retroclouds Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sometimes99er Posted March 1, 2011 Share Posted March 1, 2011 Nice review ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv9LxpQy3Pk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zylon Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 Personally, I found the Atarisoft titles to be among the better ones for the system. Most of them seem "dumbed down" like the Commodore versions, but very playable. In particular, I liked Moon Patrol. Picnic Paranoia and Protector were just crap so I gave those away. Otherwise, I enjoyed Moon Mine, Jawbreaker, TI Invaders, & Hustle. Super Demon Attack and Burgertime leave much to be desired but tolerable. Most of the others I gave away: Parsec, The Attack, Car wars, Tombstone City, Hunt the wumpus, and others. TOD was actually given back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ceratophyllum Posted March 17, 2011 Share Posted March 17, 2011 I never much liked any of the Atarisoft games at the time.... The home computer stuff I played with a lot came from Scott Adams, Infocom, Activision, or Imagic. Most of the arcade knock-offs(on any microcomputer/console) kind of depressed me because they rarely were anything close to the quality of the originals. Recently, I rediscovered Miner 2049er, a TI (Tiger?) sidecart game that I thought was the greatest when I was a kid. I have NO IDEA what the hell I saw in it. On the other hand, Microsurgeon looked really cool but I found it boring. Now it's one of my favorite TI games. Anyhow, while some of my preferences have changed, I still don't spend a lot of time playing Atarisoft games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
am1933 Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 I think some serious corners were cut in terms of sound on the Atarisoft TI titles, did someone forget to tell the coders that the machine had more than one sound channel? and as was mentioned previously-the Parker Bro's games were absoloutely great and amongst the best conversions of the respective games on any system-check out the sprite detailing on Q*bert-it is far superior to the Colecovision version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Omega-TI Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 Personally, I found the Atarisoft titles to be among the better ones for the system. Most of them seem "dumbed down" like the Commodore versions, but very playable. In particular, I liked Moon Patrol. Picnic Paranoia and Protector were just crap so I gave those away. Otherwise, I enjoyed Moon Mine, Jawbreaker, TI Invaders, & Hustle. Super Demon Attack and Burgertime leave much to be desired but tolerable. Most of the others I gave away: Parsec, The Attack, Car wars, Tombstone City, Hunt the wumpus, and others. TOD was actually given back. It's all a matter of perspective... these were "Home Computer's" back when memory was at a premium, size and expense wise. Uber programmers were not a dime a dozen and they were trying to get them out the door as soon as possible to get the almighty buck. This was one of my favorites.... MOON PATROL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+adamantyr Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 It's all a matter of perspective... these were "Home Computer's" back when memory was at a premium, size and expense wise. Uber programmers were not a dime a dozen and they were trying to get them out the door as soon as possible to get the almighty buck. This was one of my favorites.... MOON PATROL Moon Patrol had a great scrolling backdrop! I'm pretty sure that was achieved by simply having two "sets" of mountain graphics in a character set. It then just rotates the bits in the pattern set to create the movement. One set is clearly moving faster, it's probably moving 2 bits at a time instead of one. A big issue Atarisoft had was that they had to write the games to fit into 8k only, since the base TI didn't allow you to have more than that at the cartridge port without bank-switching. This is probably while Colecovision versions of the games are far superior; the memory architecture was much more supportive. I did hear one interesting fact somewhere, though; the Atarisoft programmers only had the Editor/Assembler manual as a reference and wrote the games on a native TI-99/4a instead of using a 990 mini-computer, like the Texas Instruments programmers did. That's impressive if true; using E/A for developing cartridge software would not have been trivial... Adamantyr Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariLeaf Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 As someone who recently started collecting for the Commodore 64, the Atarisoft titles were some of the first i looked at. However once I started looking at gameplay footage of some of these on youtube I quickly changed my mind. Galaxian and Robotron are particularly horrid on the C64. Because of this thread I looked up a bunch of Atarisoft games on the TI/99 and was surprised how good they looked. Centipede, Galaxian, Moon Patrol, Robotron, Pac, Ms Pac, and some others all looked fantastic and definitely a step up on the Commodore Atarisoft titles. I find the TI/99, a machine I admittedly know very little about, a very impressive gaming machine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+OLD CS1 Posted January 10, 2014 Share Posted January 10, 2014 As someone who recently started collecting for the Commodore 64, the Atarisoft titles were some of the first i looked at. However once I started looking at gameplay footage of some of these on youtube I quickly changed my mind. Galaxian and Robotron are particularly horrid on the C64. Because of this thread I looked up a bunch of Atarisoft games on the TI/99 and was surprised how good they looked. Centipede, Galaxian, Moon Patrol, Robotron, Pac, Ms Pac, and some others all looked fantastic and definitely a step up on the Commodore Atarisoft titles. I find the TI/99, a machine I admittedly know very little about, a very impressive gaming machine. "Gyruss" and "Ms. Pac-Man" are very good on the Commodore 64, IMHO. "Donkey Kong" is not too bad. I think I played "Centipede," as well. In terms of cross-platform ports, I have to say that "Junkman Jr." is just as fun on the TI as on the C64. It was an Epyx title. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gazoo Posted January 11, 2014 Share Posted January 11, 2014 Not spoken, but certainly thought on my end. (Been lurking on this thread.) I could spend hours playing "Q*Bert" and "Frogger," and I recently acquired "Popeye." My exclamation on each one was, very impressive. To that effect, I am also very pleased with "Burgertime." Really wish "Demon Attack" was more like the 2600 version -- I KILLED at that game. But I digress. After spending a lot of time collecting all of the Atarisofts I could find, I am mostly disappointed in them. The only ones I really like are "Shamus," which runs just like on my aunt's PCjr, and "Moon Patrol." While I like "Donkey Kong," there are quite a few missing elements which leave me wanting. The Pac-Mans are just down right embarrassing. I will let the rest rest. Ms Pacman is easily my favorite game for the TI. TI Invaders would be second. They're the only two I spent hours and hours playing, and loved both. Micro Pinball caught my attention for a little while, then I tired of playing games and decided it would be more fun programming for this lovely machine. Then the hardware bug infected me, and I got into programming for the extended hardware. Great machines, TIs & Geneves! Gazoo 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unhuman Posted January 11, 2014 Share Posted January 11, 2014 Dragonfire's another one for quick, mindless arcade play, though it doesn't have nearly as much staying power. You should check out my XB game that I wrote as a kid - Dragon Storm. It's my version of Dragonfire based on the fact that I had never played Dragonfire at the time, but the commercials looked cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+arcadeshopper Posted January 11, 2014 Share Posted January 11, 2014 Ack necropost.. Why don't you upload it for us to look at? Greg You should check out my XB game that I wrote as a kid - Dragon Storm. It's my version of Dragonfire based on the fact that I had never played Dragonfire at the time, but the commercials looked cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unhuman Posted January 11, 2014 Share Posted January 11, 2014 http://99er.net/umangames.html 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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