Wargle! ripped...

[zektor800]

I am *still* waiting on my 400+ floppies to come in the mail. While all of my other goods were shipped UPS, the seller shipped these to me media mail Anyway, I did have four disks here that are game compilations, and I had the time today to finally test my SIO interface with Prosystem. I successfully copied them, and here they are. Does not look like anything here is unreleased game wise, but maybe these compilations are unique? Anyhow, enjoy!

Game_Compilations.zip

Edited September 28, 2006 by zektor800

[Rybags]

There are very few games which aren't available for download. Many of the games still being sought are wanted for prosperity of the original format - ie- intro screens, copy protection, cassette media, etc.

 

Compilation disks aren't really the rage any more - individual binary files are the desired format for games because of hard disks and the ability to emulate large drives in APE.

 

There should be a list on Atarimania.com somewhere of the games they want to complete their collection.

 

Between them, and http://vjetnam.hopto.org/ (Vjetnam Games Archive), most of the Atari 8 bit collection has been covered.

 

Fandal's site (don't have the link here, but it's in his tag) has games and demos, and also conversions of some supercarts into binary files.

[www.atarimania.com]

All the games on the four compilations are very common but thanks for checking! Here's a fairly complete list of the commercial stuff we're still looking for: http://www.atarimania.com/MIA_January_2006.zip

 

Please let us know what you find when you get your 400 disks

 

There are very few games which aren't available for download.

Well, that's still some 2,000 titles at least! Nearly all the important games are around of course so it's a matter of trying to get the very rare stuff, mostly very old software, homebrews written in BASIC or educational programs.

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[zektor800]

I will compare what I get to the MIA list. Hopefully I can help

[zektor800]

Welp, got my disks in today. Did a quick look and almost immediately found one on your list:

 

Wargle! / Hayden Software

 

It is an original disk, so I was not sure how to handle the dumping. I was under the assumption that all retail disks are write protected in some way, so I ripped it to PRO format. Then, I tried standard ATR format. Both seem to work, although the PRO version is a few bytes larger. How to tell if something is protected? Will it simply not boot if copied? Or will it boot and at some point in the game crap out because it is a backup? Anyway, here it is, in both formats.

Wargle_.zip

[ijor]

Wargle! / Hayden Software

 

It is an original disk, so I was not sure how to handle the dumping. I was under the assumption that all retail disks are write protected in some way. Then, I tried standard ATR format.

 

Is it an educational title? Many Hayden educational titles are not copy protected.

 

Anyway, if the ATR image seems to work, then almost sure it is not copy protected. Very few titles don't show immediate evidence that the protection has failed. And in most (but not all) cases attempting to make an ATR image will at least give some kind of error.

 

Some second level protections do are well hidden. That is, they have one initial protection check that if fails, the game won't boot. And they have another one somewhen later, that might not produce immediate effects. The idea is to fool the cracker (an idea that didn't work most of the times ), or to fool somebody using a copier not good enough. But at the same not to fool a legal owner whose original disk might be defective.

Edited September 28, 2006 by ijor

[zektor800]

Not an educational title for sure, just seems like a pretty cheesy game At least it is one that can be checked off from the MIA list. It boots and plays fine as ATR and PRO, so chances are there was no protection scheme. But why the file size difference?

 

Question about the MIA list tho. How do you know that these are the only titles left missing?

Edited September 28, 2006 by zektor800

[www.atarimania.com]

Not an educational title for sure, just seems like a pretty cheesy game At least it is one that can be checked off from the MIA list.

Much, much appreciated. Glad you found that one

 

It boots and plays fine as ATR and PRO, so chances are there was no protection scheme.

Yeah, I'd say something like three titles out of ten don't have protection and it seems Wargle! was one of them.

 

Question about the MIA list tho. How do you know that these are the only titles left missing?

There are bound to be lots more but, as far as commercial games are concerned, I believe this list covers some 80% of the missing stuff. There are often new entries the database so it should keep growing but this is really a big part of what still needs to be found.

 

Basically, if it's in the MIA list, if you don't see it listed at all on our site or at Fandal's place, we're interested in getting the program.

 

There is no definitive list of everything ever written but it's pretty fun trying to get close to that. Some programs were never advertized, released in extremely limited quantities, in specific places, for special markets... so it's a huge task even getting the information. Sometimes, you have homebrew programs sold in the classifieds of a rare magazine so it sure doesn't make things easy... Still, with people trading disks and tapes, chances are you can find rarities. That's why it's important for people with big and old disk collections to thoroughly check what they have.

 

Thanks again for the game and let's hope you get to dig up some other ones

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[zektor800]

As soon as I get more time (that is the biggest issue for me lately) I will scour these disks for anything missing. Hopefully there is more in there!

[deathtrappomegranate]

What Frog said. Great work!

 

[Gury]

As soon as I get more time (that is the biggest issue for me lately) I will scour these disks for anything missing. Hopefully there is more in there!

Great zektor800, thanks for the time you take for this. With such resources on AtariAge, plus the new from Fandal, Homesoft and Holmes I will manage to keep together 5000 games and much more. I will do my part in retrieving all entries from DAL-ACE, SPACE newsletter and the others. I am still waiting for the remaining Page 6 magazines to be put online...

[+DjayBee]

Mega necrobump

 

Wargle actually IS copy protected. It uses the same timing protection as several other Hayden titles.

Track 21 contains (most probably) 18 duplicates of its 1st sector. The protection checks how long it takes to read this sector 379 several times in a row.

 

FInd attached a hand-made working ATX of it and a real crack.

 

The currently available ATR (incl. the one in Farb's torrent) only work with non-accurate sector timing in the emulator; and maybe with track-buffering real disk drives.

 

And a big THANK YOU to zektor800:

Your PRO image does not work because ProSystem does not correctly emulate the timing but it gave me a lot of informtation to make the ATX.

Wargle! (1983)(Hayden Software)(US)cr CSS.atr

Wargle! (1983)(Hayden Software)(US).atx.zip

Edited April 22, 2018 by DjayBee

[Fox-1 / mnx]

Looks like the game was just an EXE file, but hidden.

 

File version: WARGLE.zip