Medieval Mayhem and Lady bug problems on Harmony

[Audiovisions]

Hi, I recently purchased a harmony cartridge. It came with Medieval Mayhem and I loaded lady bug on it. Lady bug flickers like crazy. The walls flicker/flash the entire time I play it. I thought maybe that is how the game was programmed but I watched a video on you tube and it looked a lot better. Medieval Mayhem looks distorted on the left side and has lines in the margin on the left side of the screen. I have played several other games and they look fine. Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated. The Lady bug rom I have is the final ntsc version (I live in Connecticut). Thanks in advance!

[RevEng]

Lady Bug flickers its playfield between 2 colors. Some people find this more annoying than others. Digital videos aren't in the same 60Hz 240p format the 2600 uses, so that will tend to even out flickering, or remove it entirely. Also, some 2600 youtube videos are recorded through emulation, with settings enabled to reduce flicker.

 

For Medieval Mayhem, it sounds like you're describing the black horizontal sync lines/bars on the left hand side of the screen. Those are normal for many games, and an artifact of how the 2600 horizontally repositions game objects. Not sure what you mean by it being distorted though... a picture might help.

[+SpiceWare]

Info: Lady Bug uses flicker to draw the multicolor maze. Stella has a phosphor mode that will hide the flicker by blending the video frames together - that was most likely used in the recording you saw on YouTube. Using a camera to record a monitor or TV can also suppress flicker.

 

Possible fix: Object brightness will have an impact on flicker - the higher the brightness the more noticeable the flicker. The Right Difficulty switches controls the brightness of the maze, so try changing it to see if the flicker becomes more tolerable.

 

 

 

Info: Medieval Mayhem does mid-screen repositioning of the players, the VCS' term for sprites, which results in black bars on the left side of the screen. You'll for sure see those when the screen flashes. The Dragon and Knight also use line-by-line repositioning, which results in more of the black bars showing up.

 

Possible fix: If your display's brightness and/or contrast are mis-adjusted you'll also see the black lines when the screen is black. So try adjusting those two settings.

[Audiovisions]

First of all I would like to thank you guys for your quick response and excellent help! I adjusted the brightness and contrast. The flicker is gone from lady bug and it looks great (I also changed the right difficulty). Medieval also looks great now. The distortion is gone. I am also glad to hear that the lines on the left side of the screen are normal. I have seen them with other games and I thought there was something wrong with my Atari. Thanks again!