Are TI Atarisoft games really "all that" (and a bag of chips)?

[Omega-TI]

 

deep fried Mars bar anyone?

 

You dog! That looks good, now I'm hungry!

Take this...

[TheMole]

Hailing from the country that perhaps has the strongest claim to having invented the deep fried potato sticks that are mistakenly called "French Fries" across the big pond and "Chips" across the little pond, I think my voice should carry some weight in this discussion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_fries#Belgium).

 

So, y'all better believe me when I say that there is only one condiment worthy of accompanying these glorious salty conveyors of the marvelous taste that is oxen grease fried potato starch, and that is mayonnaise.

 

That is all...

Edited January 28, 2015 by TheMole

[UKRetrogamer]

deep fried Mars bar anyone?

I know they're popular in the UK, further North than I am (Newcastle and Scotland) but I can't think of a worse thing to do to a Mars Bar. Frying them must make them taste horridible™.

 

I love to FREEZE mine in summer and cut the into slices instead (so I don't break my teeth or bite my tongue, trying to bite them).

[Willsy]

They also fry pizza here in Scotland. I shit you not.

 

Animals.

[+OLD CS1]

They also fry pizza here in Scotland. I shit you not.

 

Animals.

 

North of the wall... what do you expect?

[am1933]

Willsy and OLD CS1 rapidly cruisin for a bruisin!!!!!!! :mad: :mad:

[PeBo]

I was thinking of chipping in, but I think this thread has already been de-railed. (I'll get my coat).

 

I think the Atarisoft titles are quite playable but just imagine if the programmers knew then, what some on these forums know now. How much could the likes of Rasmus have earned as a programmer back then. He'd have been the "Ultimate Play the Game" of the Ti world!

 

But as others have suggested, the main issue these programmers were facing was likely time contraints. In the early days of Atari, programmers were given 6 months to complete a 2600 game (port or otherwise), if they needed another week or two for polish, they would more likely get fired than get the extra time. They would then be chastised for what inferior work they were producing ("inferior" work that Atari was making a small....no a BIG fortune from).

 

And programming of the Atarisoft brands was not even done by Atari, it was contracted out, so pressures and lack of motivation would have likely been even more severe. I wouldn't be surprised to find that they went through several teams of disgruntled coders to produce each port...and if you've ever had to step in and finish someone else's work, you know that that presents it's own challenges that can slow things down.

 

They were likely told "here's the machine you're writing for, here's the technical data sheet on the machine, here's the game you're doing. You only have x # of days, so get to it."

 

I don't think creative talents like Rasmus would have thrived in such an environment, and it is quite possible he would not have produced anything better that what the Atarisoft programmers did.

 

Ofcourse the abuse and mistreatement of the early Atari programmers did have one great benefit...

 

...it gave us Activision and Imagic (made up of programmers who jumped ship from Atari), and the impressive library of great games those companies produced (Imagic was not a prolific producer on the TI, but their small collection of titles for our vintage machine of choice remain the best of the best).

 

(and leave your coat right where it is...topics don't de-rail, they morph and merge and bend and twist into all kinds of wonderful shapes, but the main topic is usually right under the surface, popping back up for air every few messages.

 

Anything else would be monotonous and boring,

 

(And consider that maybe BurgerTime was born out of such a seemingly off-topic conversation as we're having here! You've got to admit that "Deep Fried Mars" would be a great name for a game!)

Edited January 28, 2015 by PeBo

[+OLD CS1]

Willsy and OLD CS1 rapidly cruisin for a bruisin!!!!!!! :mad: :mad:

 

Warp 9. Engage.

[+OLD CS1]

Updated my previous post to include Ms. Pac-Man third intermission music.

[Kurt_Woloch]

I own some of those Atarisoft games as well, and I think they were overall quite good for their time... they just made different compromises than other companies. Most Atarisoft games are 16K in size (2 banks of CPU ROM), so this was maybe a given limit while some of TI's games (e.g. Parsec) are larger than that. Of course you can only do so much in 16K. "Donkey Kong" is quite a good conversion, plays smoother than the Coleco version and also has all four screens with only a few corners cut (such as the missing springs on the elevator level). Dig Dug could have better sprites and faster action (maybe move them in 2-pixel steps instead of 1-pixel?), but was OK otherwise. Jungle Hunt for me was OK as well. Defender runs a bit choppy, but still is fine to play. With Pole Position I think they had to make quite a few compromises in order to do it on the TI's relatively slow CPU. At least the 3D effect looks somewhat convincing which you can't say of all ports, and the mountains are colorful. Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man are not bad at all, but while Ms. Pac Man was a huge improvement to Pac Man on many home systems (especially the Atari 2600), it shares the same codebase on the TI-99 with just the "necessary" improvements like 4 mazes and jumping fruit.

 

I think that Atarisoft's programmers didn't know the TI-99 as well as TI's own programmers, but they generally started out later and had more experience programming computers in general than the TI programmers had when they wrote the TI's first games. This results in generally better graphics, but often slower motion and animation and noticeably weaker sounds, often converting the arcade music into monophonic lines.

 

As for the C-64 "Galaga" you mentioned... I have a similar, but multicolored version. As far as I know, Henrik Wening first did the PET version which looked like the screenshot you showed, and then Kingsoft took him up on it, and it was converted to "Galaxy" on the C-64, which was what Kingsoft officialy sold. The C-64 version called "Galaga" was probably leaked from a intermediate version before the Hi-Res graphics were inserted. Maybe Henrik Wening attempted to self-publish that version as well before Kingsoft contacted him. Henrik Wening then went on writing "Space Pilot", a very respectable port of "Time pilot" which in my opinion is closer to the arcade than Coleco's version, and also closer than Konami's own MSX version.

(By the way, I can recall someone attempted to port "Time Pilot" to the TI-99... whatever happened to that?)

 

And that's not the only unofficial port of "Galaga" to the C-64, there's another one called "Zalaga" by Firebird.

 

As for Anirog, I think this company was a partner of Kingsoft, distributing their software abroad under their own name while Kingsoft mostly sold their software in their home country, Germany. Space-Pilot has been sold by both companies.

Edited February 1, 2015 by Kurt_Woloch

[The Usotsuki]

...still can't imagine deep frying an American Milky Way. *shakes head*

 

But fish and chips will always be most proper with steak fries.