Bally Astrocade question

[sku_u]

I just scored a huge lot of games. Among them are a number of Bally Astrocade games. I was wondering if someone could tell me a little about this game system and if it's worth shelling out 100+ on 4jays to get the system itself.

[christianscott]

anything astrocade is a rare find, although its not a sought after collectible for many people. potentially it was a more powerful system than the 2600 but never enjoyed the kind of long term development needed to show that. this system had a sort cult following, people were even publishing their own games for it. in total there are about 45 games and each one is worth $10-20. the system itself is worth $60 or so and very prone to breaking down. the controllers are pretty cool though, and it allowed for 4 players! so in short you'd get an afternoon or two of fun out of the system but its not as deep as the colecovision, INTV etc...

 

oh and if you decide to trade those astrocade carts, drop me a line i'm still looking for a few to finish my collection.

[Rob Mitchell]

Christian did a great synopsis of the Bally Astrocade system.

 

Off hand I can only remember three games that use the four controllers: Panzer Attack (bad 4 player tank game); and (I think) the Tennis Pong clone game; and Checkmate (which is built-in).

 

There are a few gems for this system: Incredible Wizard which was programmed by the guy who actually programmed the arcade version of Wizard of Wor!; Dogpatch is a great 2 player game; Galactic Invasion (Galaxian) is a challenge; Muncher is dead on Pac Man! Everything else is mediocre to poor.

 

Controllers are cool ..

 

You should wait and find a system for cheap .. or try out your carts at a game show (Philly Classic).

 

These consoles are prone to overheating if played too long on a carpet.

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[glitch]

I guess I would be one of the members of the cult following. I've had a Bally since they came out in 78/79 and it still is my favorite system out of the 24 that I own. The Bally is kinda like the "system that never was". Very few people had heard of it and even fewer have ever seen one. It's a great little machine. It was more powerful than any other consoles during at it's launch. But Bally/Midway simply did not know how to market & service a home machine. They basically sold it through direct distributers and had an exclusive contract w/ Montgomery Wards (the Wards units actually had Montgomery Wards printed on the cover) later they tried other outlets but the 2600 had already had a head start by that time. Originally it was going to be marketed as a low end computer but then decided that would scare people away from buying it so all their pre-sales information was aimed at it's programablitly and usefulness but then quickly was buried and what little advertising that came out after that was strickly game related except in Bally usergroups (yes their were a few) & newsletters.

 

The main highlights of the system that I like are:

 

It's controllers. They are pistol grip shaped (like a gun handle) with a regular gun trigger. The joy stick is on top of they handle and doubles as a paddle knob also. Many of the games released for the Bally took full use of the controller style so you had to move / aim / shoot using all three control types.

 

It's programablility. You could get a "Bally Basic" cart that allowed you to program your own game & applications. This included a cassette interface to save your programs (initially a separate unit, it was built into the cart w/ Astrocade Basic). Unfortunatly the system only had 1.8k for code but they utilized a "tiny basic" that had all the key commands (print, gosub, for/next, etc) as single byte functions, the graphics commands were also simple to use (box, line, point, etc) so you could still do some fairly impressive programming. Add-ons were also available to increase the available ram & add more complex functions. I have the Blue Ram add on which could increase the memory to 16 or 32k and added new commands such as Circle and such. It also added a full size keyboard since all programming in Bally Basic is done on a calculator like keypad where you would press a color button and a key to get letters & commands. I am a software engineer by trade and can honestly say that I owe it all (or curse it depending on the day ) to the Bally.

 

The system came w/ 2 games, calculator, and drawing program built in. The two games were Gunfight which was a nice version where you used the joystick to move around, the knob to aim your gun at angles and the trigger to shoot, and checkmate which was a surround like game that could be played w/ up to 4 people and could have computer controlled opponents if you had less but still wanted 4 opponents. The scribble program was also pretty neat in that you could cycle your colors & drawing sizes but there was no way to save your designs. It also had an automatic draw mode where the computer would make some fairly cool symetrical patterns.

 

As far as games go it has some very impressive ones. The best are:

 

Incredible Wizard (Wizard of Wor). This game was almost dead on the arcade version and still one of the best I've seen to this day.

 

Space Invaders (aka Astro Battle). The Bally version was much closer to the original than the Atari. It didn't have all the different modes but the graphics were much smoother and multi-colored and the aliens looked similar to the arcade as opposed to the Atari version

 

Football. This is one of the few 4 player games available. We used to spend hours on end playing this.

 

Galactic Invasion (Galaxian). A very good port of the arcade, again w/ very smooth, multi-color aliens.

 

Space Fortress. This is a very simple game in which you are in the center of the screen and you have to shoot aliens which pop onto the four sides before they shoot you. This game keeps getting faster and faster until it's impossible to win. It's addictive in the way Kaboom is.

 

Muncher (pac-man). Probably the best version I had seen of pac-man until the Atari 800.

 

Bally Pinball. This game is actually very simplistic but was still a lot of fun. It had 2 different "tables" and you used the triggers of two joysticks to flip your triggers.

 

Seawolf/Missile. Basically Air-sea battle except Seawolf was closer to the arcade version, but not by much.

 

Soccer. This was a great little version. If I remember it could also be 4 player but it's been a long time since I've played it.

 

Tornado Baseball was also fun. One player controled the batting w/ the trigger and the other controlled the pitching w/ the joystick (speeding the ball up/down, curving left/right) while also controlling the outfield w/ the knob.

 

A lot of other games were released by 3rd parties on cassette (and some carts) such as Starship commander (the basic text based star trek game), ICBM Attack, Darts, Dungeons of Dracula.

 

Drawbacks

The Bally did have a few drawbacks.

The main one being it's lack of games. There were only about 30 or so games released by Bally/Astrovision (not counting cassette based 3rd party games). But the games that were released were of superior quality to their Atari counterparts except in the number of variations as single game could have.

 

Early models did have a tendency to overheat (this is one of the reasons Bally/Midway left the home market). When the system was re-released by Astrovision the heat shielding problems were taken care of (although you still cannot block the vents on the bottom). There were modifications you could make to the heat/rf shield that would prevent overheating.

 

Using the keypad for programing and data entry. Although I still view this as adding character more so than a limitation.

 

Lack of support. Due to it's poor marketing and support, it just never took off so the user base is very small. Those that like the Bally and are still into it are very die hard and are still programing and modifying it but there were very few of us back then and even fewer now.

 

OVERALL: If I had the chance to pick up an Astrocade I definatly would. $100.00 is a little steep though. I'd consider $60-75 a reasonable price range. You may also want to try to get the Astrovision version since it did have fewer heat problems. It's a great little system and side by side against the 2600 it can hold it's own.

 

Sorry, that was a lot longer than I had originally intended.

[sku_u]

Thanks for all of your help everyone. Here are the games that I found in the lot that are Bally astrocade games:

 

Astro Battle

Seawolf and bombardier

Space Invaders

Bally Pinball

Galactic Invasion

Artillery Duel

 

I think I'll hold onto them and try to get a system for a reasonable price as mentioned above. I must admit, I'm surprised there isn't more demand for the system. It sounds like it has the best joysticks out of all the early systems if nothing else.

 

BTW, I've gone through the box I obtained recently finally and have carts for a lot of systems including Atari 2600, Colecovision, Fairchild, Vectrex, and TI. There was also a Super Pong that doesn't work, a couple of old PC joysticks and some Activision Patches and instruction manuals.

 

Nothing of a rarity higher than 5 for Atari.

 

Final cart tabulation:

 

Bally Astrcade: 6

Fairchild: 1? Not sure but assuming it's Fairchild.

Vectrex: 15

TI: 3

Atari 2600: 212

Unidentified: 7

 

If I ever get my act together, I'll post up a trade list. I haven't tested any of the carts yet or determined which I want to keep, but they should all work. To my surprise, a Pitfall cart in the collection does not have any acti-plaque.

[glitch]

Nice haul. If you're interested in trading the vectrex games, let me know.

 

There's a NIB Bally on eBay right now w/ a day and a half to go. It's currently at 56.00 and I'd expect it to end around $70.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=1946547502 It comes with 280zzzap which is an ok game, Incredible Wizard (probably the best game on the Bally), and Astrocade Basic. Just a heads up.

[sku_u]

Nice haul.  If you're interested in trading the vectrex games, let me know.

 

There's a NIB Bally on eBay right now w/ a day and a half to go.  It's currently at 56.00 and I'd expect it to end around $70.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...item=1946547502 It comes with 280zzzap which is an ok game, Incredible Wizard (probably the best game on the Bally), and Astrocade Basic.  Just a heads up.

 

WOW. Thanks for the heads up.

[Chris++]

My pal Adam is one of the online Bally gurus. He'd be able to assist you in your pursuits, and would also, as a bonus, be able to answer any questions at all about the Astrocade that you might have, either technical or game-related. Here's the Bally web site he has created. You can e-mail him from there and read the terrific articles he's written about the console:

 

http://www.ballyalley.com

 

 

 

 

CF

[sku_u]

My pal Adam is one of the online Bally gurus. He'd be able to assist you in your pursuits, and would also, as a bonus, be able to answer any questions at all about the Astrocade that you might have, either technical or game-related. Here's the Bally web site he has created. You can e-mail him from there and read the terrific articles he's written about the console:

 

http://www.ballyalley.com

 

 

 

 

CF

 

Thanks for the link. It's definitely going to be useful to me.

[sku_u]

My pal Adam is one of the online Bally gurus. He'd be able to assist you in your pursuits, and would also, as a bonus, be able to answer any questions at all about the Astrocade that you might have, either technical or game-related. Here's the Bally web site he has created. You can e-mail him from there and read the terrific articles he's written about the console:

 

http://www.ballyalley.com

 

 

 

 

CF

 

Thanks for the link. It's definitely going to be useful to me.

[Chris++]

No sweat.

[Chris++]

No sweat.