seastalker Posted June 2, 2018 Share Posted June 2, 2018 With my XEGS, I wanted to know what light games were out ther... sadly, not much at all! Starting with the wiki of light gun compatible games came up with a list across ALL Atari platforms: Games designed for the XG-1 Alien Brigade (7800) Bobby needs Food (2600, homebrew) Bug Hunt (XEGS) Barnyard Blaster (7800/XEGS) Crossbow (7800/XEGS) Crime Buster (XEGS) Meltdown (7800) Operation Blood disk (XEGS) Operation Blood II - Special Forces (XEGS) Gangsterville (XEGS) Sentinel (2600/7800) Shooting Gallery (2600, unreleased) That is a SHORT(!) list to say the least and spread over ALL of Atari's home computers and consoles. So, then I searched the April 2018 TOSEC rom set for anything with lightgun, light or gun it it as well: Playing on an Atari 800xl or XEGS came up with the following results as to COMPLETE gun game compatibility: 1. Bug Hunt (XEGS) BOTH CART AND SIO2PC work 2. Barnyard Blaster (7800/XEGS) BOTH CART AND SIO2PC work. So I have two carts and that's it unless I migrate the gun to the home console market to test. Then I looked up others to load: 3. Cementerio (1989)(Pelusa Software)(es)[Light Gun] 4. Sharp Shooter (1989)(ANALOG Computing)(US)[Light Gun] BOTH WORK!!! Don't know if these two are official or not. What's left? The other XEGS listed games: Gangsterville (XEGS) (gun works but no on screen target cursor makes it hard to know what you are shooting. For me mostly unplayable. Crossbow (7800/XEGS) (Not enough RAM to load) Crime Buster (XEGS) (Only have BIN format- not tested yet) ALL others game do not support gun despite rom names implying light gun support _Operation 1 and 2 for example - didn't work. A game NOT on the list that is supposed to be lightgun compatible but in my case not is "Alien Blast (1993)"... Alien Blast (1993) - CRAP- loads but gun is useless. So of XEGS compatible (XL XE in general) light gun games my tests as of June 2018 show there are two commercial carts (Bug Hunt and Barnyard Blaster) that work, two of unknown origin and three to be determined. This means to sum up: The Atari 8 bit line as of 2018-06-02, There are two supported light gun games, two more that work, and then a game that technically works but with bad light gun support, then Crossbow and Crime Buster I have yet to test. At MOST, I find 7 POSSIBLE light gun games as of mid year 2018 but for me 5 confirmed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted June 2, 2018 Share Posted June 2, 2018 Hello seastalker IIRC there are two versions of Operation Blood (and I do not mean I and II). One is the original version, the other is "patched" to work with the lightgun. BTW I did a short search on Fandal's page and found two other lightgun games after entering "light gun" (with a space in the middle). "Light Gun Blaster" and "Special Forces (light gun)". Sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted June 3, 2018 Share Posted June 3, 2018 The list is incomplete. Didn't spot Alien Blast Gangsters Geisterschloss Invasion Pajaki II on yours. All XL/XE games. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirx Posted June 3, 2018 Share Posted June 3, 2018 hi! we had no lightguns when coding operation blood and special forces (special forces == operation blood II as OB was a huge success so we wanted to capitalise on this : ) lightgun versions were prepared by The Missing Link / ANG Software and released comercially. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fred_M Posted June 3, 2018 Share Posted June 3, 2018 Operation Blood for the lightgun requires the lightgun in joystick port 2. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+therealbountybob Posted June 3, 2018 Share Posted June 3, 2018 I reviewed all the light-gun games in Pro© Magazine Issue #11 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted June 3, 2018 Share Posted June 3, 2018 (edited) I reviewed all the light-gun games in Pro© Magazine Issue #11 Errrm, almost all A8 lightgun games. From the top of my head, I do not remember which ones were missing, but there were 1 or 2 games (or more?) missing in your review... but I am just nitpicking... One can also find some (not all!) lightgun games for download here: http://atari.panprase.cz/?action=lg-hry Most lightpen programs can also be used with a lightgun (and vice-versa), however the trigger between these two controllers is reversed (and the lightpen is much more in-accurate) so not all programs will play very good. And its not so great to draw/paint pictures with a lightgun... (not that it would be great with a lightpen). "Belegost" and "Exoter" by Rudolf Kudla should both work with a lightpen (and thus also with a lightgun) in port 2, tested both with my original Atari lightpen and they did not work at all. However, Fandal confirmed that the games work with a lightpen, so maybe he and the author have some other (selfmade?) lightpen or my lightpen is bad. I do not own a lightgun anymore, so I cannot test programs with a lightgun, only with a lightpen. "Mole" by C.Strotmann and a few other games also did not work with a lightpen for me, so maybe there are several (not fully compatible) lightpens out there. At least there were several plans and schematics for DIY lightpens and maybe they are not fully compatible with the Atari lightpen... http://a8.fandal.cz/search.php?search=light+pen&butt_details_x=x Since lightgun and lightpen do not work on modern LCD/LED tv's I still wish someone would convert the programs for use with Trackball or ST-mouse or Amiga mouse or Irgendwer would sell his hardware (which he created to use lightgun games with other controllers) to us... Edited June 3, 2018 by CharlieChaplin 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted June 4, 2018 Share Posted June 4, 2018 Slime? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sup8pdct Posted June 5, 2018 Share Posted June 5, 2018 Would be very interested to see how many work on the 400. The light gun/pen input is only on joystick port 4. James Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fox-1 / mnx Posted June 5, 2018 Share Posted June 5, 2018 The light gun/pen input is only on joystick port 4. Do you mean on a hardware level? I don't see any reason why the other ports won't work with a light pen / light gun. As long as paddle's work, a light gun should too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted June 5, 2018 Share Posted June 5, 2018 Slime? I remember Slime to have a trackball mode (invoked with "T") but not a lightgun mode. I think you couldn't get the required accuracy with a lightgun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted June 5, 2018 Share Posted June 5, 2018 The light pen/gun sense just causes the TRIG line to transition 1 -> 0 -> 1 and Antic detects it and latches the scanline H/V into the pen registers. It can even do so with a normal joystick attached to the port so could be useful in other areas. One sort of idea I had was connect a PortA pin to the Trig input which could let you write toggle the bit on the port and be able to work out where on a scanline you are (for what that's worth, probably not much since we can do it other ways easily). XL/XE shadows the "missing" controllers from ports 1/2 so programs that use shadows rather than hw regs for controller input will have a chance to work if they assume Port 4. IMO Slime would probably be too easy with a light pen. Part of the strategy for the game is efficient movement of the pointer. Converting light games for mouse - potentially hard given you'd need a free PM object to use as the pointer, and free cycles to do decent mouse processing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sup8pdct Posted June 6, 2018 Share Posted June 6, 2018 Check out the schematic of the 400. Only the trigger pin of port 4 is connected to antic for light pen. All others have all triggers connected to antic via a buffer. The poor 400 doesn't. My 400 is like this. James 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted September 8, 2018 Share Posted September 8, 2018 The list is incomplete. Didn't spot Alien Blast Gangsters Geisterschloss Invasion Pajaki II on yours. All XL/XE games. There are six versions of Invasion in the 800 Best Pack. Do you have any information on the publisher/creator of the lightgun version? Bulldog, Norman Lin, Pelusa Soft, PPP and a couple unlabeled ones. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted September 8, 2018 Share Posted September 8, 2018 Since lightgun and lightpen do not work on modern LCD/LED tv's I still wish someone would convert the programs for use with Trackball or ST-mouse or Amiga mouse or Irgendwer would sell his hardware (which he created to use lightgun games with other controllers) to us... I wonder if a dolphin bar type device could be made for the A8 and you could use a Wiimote gun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irgendwer Posted September 8, 2018 Share Posted September 8, 2018 (edited) I wonder if a dolphin bar type device could be made for the A8 and you could use a Wiimote gun. No. Edit: Explanation: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/257749-tell-us-what-new-hardware-projects-you-are-working-on-for-2017/?do=findComment&comment=3607243 Edited September 8, 2018 by Irgendwer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devwebcl Posted September 9, 2018 Share Posted September 9, 2018 There are six versions of Invasion in the 800 Best Pack. Do you have any information on the publisher/creator of the lightgun version? Bulldog, Norman Lin, Pelusa Soft, PPP and a couple unlabeled ones. Invasion for light gun http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-invasion_12161.html was made by Pelusa Soft. http://devwebcl.atarionline.pl/pelusa/pelusa.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devwebcl Posted September 9, 2018 Share Posted September 9, 2018 I reviewed all the light-gun games in Pro© Magazine Issue #11 I forgot about these reviews on that special light-gun issue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted September 25, 2018 Share Posted September 25, 2018 Light Gun Blaster sends me to the DOS menu, even in Altirra64. Anyone have the enhanced version by Pedrokko? Edit: got his to work with SIO2PC. Plays pretty good, although pretty simplistic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 I tried out all the ATR lightgun games I've found so far. These were loaded from downloaded files to the 800xl using either an SIO2PC from Atarimax or the SIDE2 from Lotharek (firmware not yet updated from the first versions). Out of 17 of them, I find 6-8 that are reasonably playable. I'm not sure if this is coding or just that they are mostly PAL and I am using an NTSC 800xl. Not really worth investing $250-$300 in getting a decent size PAL or multi-region crt and PAL 800XL in the states to see if that fixes it. For Geisterschloss and Hit the Mole, it loaded properly at first, but then appeared to behave as if corrupted. Invasion and Cemetario are pretty good, but shots seem to go to far off spots or not fire sometimes. Pajaki II and Fly Gun Shooter work the best, as they have guiding crosshairs. Fly Gun Shooter is the same as Geisterschloss, but works better (doesn't crash). Messe Hanau worked decent due to showing where your previous shot hit. One game, Sniper 2007, looked like it could be pretty fun and might have worked well except for extreme screen shuddering and ghost images probably due to being PAL. Fails due to poor/random precision: Alien Blast, Schiessen, Gangsterville Fails due to not loading or generally broken: Operation Blood I and II, Geisterschloss, Matrix, Hit the Mole, Bembel Wo Pretty bad due to PAL shuddering on NTSC: Sniper 2007 Decent playability, but accuracy sometimes erratic: Cemetario, Invasion Good, due to working cross-hairs/bullet trace: Fly Gun Shooter, Pajaki II, Messe Hanau, Light Gun Blaster, Gangsters, Sharp Shooter Edit: BTW, I think what makes Alien Blast unplayable is not only that your shots are off like all Atari lightgun games, but you only get a few more shots than there are aliens to shoot (lined up like space invaders) and when you run out, you just sit there until you get hit with a bomb. Cross-hairs or infinite shots and better bullet marks are needed for this game. Don't feel like it's a big loss for some of them, like Messe Hanau, Schiessen and Hit the Mole, which are similar to Coleco Telstar type shooting games, except the targets are immobile rather than bouncing around the screen like a screensaver. Will have to try the non-atr games now, of which there are 6: Bug Hunt, Crossbow and Barnyard Blaster, which work as well as can be expected, and Crime Buster, "Click!" and Jezkovi Voci, which I have not tried. Also have a disk version of Operation Blood LG from Best Electronics to try. I'm thinking this will leave about 12-13 decent light gun games for the 8-bits for us NTSC users, with a few of the xex games requiring at least 128k memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted September 30, 2018 Share Posted September 30, 2018 Barnyard Blaster, Bug Hunt, Crime Buster and Crossbow all worked pretty well. The Operation Blood LG disk from BE also worked pretty well, which I am happy about. Almost all, if not all had a cross-hair or bullet mark of some sort to help guide you, which is a very good addition. "Click!", a Christmas game, worked well. This program also works flawlessly with a mouse. Jezkovi Voci is basically just a big bulls-eye on the screen that you shoot at 9 times. However, the first few times I loaded the game, half-the time it was firing without me pulling the trigger. The a later day that I loaded it, after tweaking the picture on the TV and adjusting the UAV board, it didn't do this (not sure any of this was the reason), but firing in the same location would scatter much more than average. I'm of the opinion this erratic accuracy was more acceptable in Cemetario and Invasion, because you can land a hit will with a decent margin of error buffer, but Jezkovi Voci is entirely based on aiming and hitting the small bulls-eye with limited shots, much like in Alien Blast is pretty unforgiving. So, I count 12 to 14 games, out of 25, you can play with NTSC systems, depending on what you want to put up with. It's not too bad since twelve games is more than the 7800 and 2600 put together ( 8 ). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted November 5, 2018 Share Posted November 5, 2018 Got a TV that I can use for games that didn't work with before (required both PAL ANTIC and PAL compatible TV), so added Sniper 2007, Gun Tris and non-shuddering Gangsters. Fails due to being generally broken: Operation Blood I and II from ROM download, Geisterschloss, Matrix, Hit the Mole, Jezkovi Voci (fires without pulling trigger), Gangsters* (seems to fire sometimes without pulling trigger and other times not fire even when crosshairs are on bad guy) Fails due to standard poor precision, but limited ammo: Alien Blast, Gun Tris (similar issue as Alien Blast, as described in above post, although much better due to cross-hairs) Fails due to poor/random precision: Schiessen, Gangsterville Decent playability, but accuracy sometimes erratic: Cemetario, Invasion, Sniper 2007*, Bembel Wo* Good, due to working cross-hairs/bullet trace: Fly Gun Shooter, Pajaki II, Messe Hanau, Light Gun Blaster, Sharp Shooter, Operation Blood (BE), Barnyard Blaster, Bug Hunt, Crime Buster, Crossbow, 'Click!' *Requires PAL/NTSC50 compatible TV 15 to 16 decent to good (playing) light gun games out of "about" 25 (two are the same game as another, but one works and the other doesn't). Not all are particularly fun. Also, Gangsters, Gun Tris and Gangsterville are somewhat playable, but frustrating due to issues with playabilitiy. I think there is one called Fly Shoot by Kemal Ezcan I have not found yet to test. Let me know if I have missed any other light gun games worth testing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+CharlieChaplin Posted November 5, 2018 Share Posted November 5, 2018 Fly Shot or Fly Shoot by Kemal Ezcan was a type-in listing for his (german) ZONG magazine. Think he used one title in the article and the other title in the listing, so I am not sure if Fly Shot or Fly Shoot should be the correct title... (and the type-in listing had printing errors, which I could not fix, so on my disk-image there is the buggy type-in version and a downloaded version that works). Here they mistakenly name it Fly Gun Shooter: http://atari.panprase.cz/download.php?soubor=5332 BUT the game you download there is "Geisterschloss" (ghost castle), also by Kemal Ezcan. Hit the Mole should work with a lightpen, but I never got it working with an original Atari lighpen nor a lightgun (not in port 1 or 2), 5-Matrix (a 4-in-a-row clone, but this time with five in a row) is also a lightpen game, written by an American, works well for me with lightpen, also worked well with the lightgun when I still had one (sold the lg some years ago). Lightgun-Blaster was a Page 6 type-in listing, later enhanced in Australia by Pedrokko (named LG_Blaster_V1 and LG_Blaster_V2 by me)... Attached are some of the lightgun and lightpen games I own, including Fly Shot / Fly Shoot, Enhanced Lightgun Blaster and several others... lightgun.zip Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swami Posted November 5, 2018 Share Posted November 5, 2018 Fly Shot or Fly Shoot by Kemal Ezcan was a type-in listing for his (german) ZONG magazine. Think he used one title in the article and the other title in the listing, so I am not sure if Fly Shot or Fly Shoot should be the correct title... (and the type-in listing had printing errors, which I could not fix, so on my disk-image there is the buggy type-in version and a downloaded version that works). Here they mistakenly name it Fly Gun Shooter: http://atari.panprase.cz/download.php?soubor=5332 BUT the game you download there is "Geisterschloss" (ghost castle), also by Kemal Ezcan. Hit the Mole should work with a lightpen, but I never got it working with an original Atari lighpen nor a lightgun (not in port 1 or 2), 5-Matrix (a 4-in-a-row clone, but this time with five in a row) is also a lightpen game, written by an American, works well for me with lightpen, also worked well with the lightgun when I still had one (sold the lg some years ago). Lightgun-Blaster was a Page 6 type-in listing, later enhanced in Australia by Pedrokko (named LG_Blaster_V1 and LG_Blaster_V2 by me)... Attached are some of the lightgun and lightpen games I own, including Fly Shot / Fly Shoot, Enhanced Lightgun Blaster and several others... Hit the Mole and Geisterschloss (downloaded by this name) worked the first time I loaded the file, but after that were very buggy, which is strange. The problem I had with Matrix (5-Matrix?) was that when I would choose Man vs Atari or Man vs Man, it would only play the first choice - Atari vs Atari - or it was firing for me without pulling the trigger. Could be a bad file? With Gun Tris, about 95% of the moving targets I could hit with one or two shots but, occasionally, one would come along, same size, and I would have to shoot it five or maybe ten times before it would disintegrate or go out of range. Since you have limited ammo, afterr about 3 or 4 of those, you're left watching the targets move across the screen with nothing to shoot them with. Thanks for the files, I'll try the new ones and compare some of yours to the bad one's above. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted November 6, 2018 Share Posted November 6, 2018 (edited) try playing said games on original equipment without mods Edited November 6, 2018 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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