Bones Justice

Show some respect yourself. I was not promoting it, I was asking about prevention. I haven't even been on Atari Age for a month and was already offered a copy, which I declined of course. These forums apparently are not moderated but if you want to take someone to task, maybe you should start with the website since they ignore copyright at their convenience already.

What are they doing to prevent piracy for this game? It seems like it is already fair game under several provisions of pirate law.

Ishido: The Way of Stones I bought this game because I was intrigued by the box art (and it was cheap). The manual is actually one of those box art posters with the instructions on the back. I probably would have paid the two bucks just for the poster but I got another game for my Lynx along with it. Ishido is a strategy game that involves placing marked stones in matching patterns on a grid-like playing field. Each stone is marked by a color as well as by a symbol. To score points, you must place each stone next to a matching color or symbol. Placing a stone next to two or more stones requires matching at least one by color and at least one by symbol; you can't put a stone next to a couple of stones with the same color only, for example. The highest score is achieved by placing a stone in the middle of four other stones, which is the most difficult match to make. Each game starts with a pouch of stones that you are given random stones from, one by one. The game ends when you have either placed all of the stones or there are no more moves to make because there are no available matches for the current stone. There are several game modes, too. You can play solitaire, which is more like a puzzle though you do earn points for your moves and the high score table. There are also cooperative or competitive modes for two players (either human or computer), taking turns placing stones to either earn a team high score or to outscore your opponent. In addition to the main game, Ishido includes something called "The Oracle". The Oracle is a wise being that imparts sage advise to the player only after a four-way match. You can choose either a male or female Oracle but since it's merely text, it's all a matter of pronouns. I suppose the male Oracle offers different advice than the female one but it's hard to say since four-way matches are rare. You can turn off the Oracle if you want but it's kind of cool to get an extra reward for making the best move in the game. Despite having excellent artwork on the box cover, the graphics and audio in Ishido are simple. The playing field is a grey grid with pockets for each stone to be played and a series of dots in the corner to represent the remaining stones in the pouch. The stones are basic colored blocks with one of the symbols on top. The only real sound is the "snap" of placing a stone on the grid. Even when you get a bit of wisdom from the Oracle, it's all text (though in a nice, cursive font). I guess it's supposed to make you think but I would have preferred something like the box cover and maybe some kind of special sound effect or music. Overall, if you like puzzles, pure strategy, or games of solitaire, get this game. It's simple to learn but will challenge you in the long run. Though I'm not a big fan of the genre, I truly enjoy playing Ishido now and then.

Pit Fighter (continued from last post) Unfortunately, the Lynx has a lower resolution than the arcade so the graphics look very muddled and pixelated. The arcade version featured a lot of browns, red, and blacks, but the Lynx's lower number of displayable colors makes Pit Fighter look mostly brown. You can see the basic shapes of the digitized actors but almost all details are lost due to the low resolution and low number of colors used. The character select shows a digitized close-up of the actor's face but again, they look poor; ever one looks like a horrible burn victim or someone who's face is swollen due to an extreme allergic reaction. The one positive thing about the graphics on the Lynx is that the characters scale in size when moved closer or farther away; it would be really impressive if the sprites didn't look so horrible in the first place. I think the Lynx version is the only one to include scaling besides the arcade but it's just not enough to overcome the rest of the graphics problems. There's not much to say about the audio. You can hear the rythmic beat from the arcade tune repeat over and over. There should be audio clips between levels from the final boss but they are missing from the Lynx. Despite, the poor graphics and simple audio, I could live with it all if the gameplay was good. But it isn't. Hit detection wasn't brilliant in the arcades but it's awful on the Lynx version. Even when you are in the middle of a combo and appear to be making lots of contact, you can suddenly have the tables turned, all of the rest of your hits missing somehow, then the computer clobbering you even though they don't seem to be connecting at all. The control scheme is poor, as well, requiring combinations of the d-pad and option buttons to do even simple moves like ducking or blocking. They rarely do what you want them to do, either. I guess I could say that Pit Fighter is the best fighting game on the Lynx because it's the only one --but it's too painful. Even if you find this game for under ten bucks, avoid it.

Pit Fighter This port of the arcade game has the unique distinction of being the only fighting game for the Lynx. The arcade game came out during that period between the popularity of the side-scrolling beat-em-ups like Double Dragon and the more modern one-on-one fighters like Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. Still, it has most of the common elements, one-on-one fighting in an enclosed area, both against the computer and other players. It was also one of the first games to feature digitzed actors in the game rather than hand-drawn sprites. The Lynx version has all of the same rules as the arcade game and also uses digitized actors. The basic game for one player is a series of one-on-one fighting matches in a warehouse, surrounded by a jeering crowd on all sides that will shove or even stab you if you get too close. I seem to remember being able to retaliate against the crowd in the arcade version but you can't do that in the Lynx version anyways. You can choose from one of three characters, a karate expert, a kickboxer, or a wrestler, with each having different advantages of speed, strength, and range. You and your opponent can also pick up knives, barstools, boxes, and the like to use as weapons against each other, too. Every third round, you fight a grudge match against a clone of your character for the best of three falls. The two player game is played via comlynx and connecting is hassle-free. Instead of a one-on-one match against computer opponents, the two-player game has you fight against two opponents, though they are clones of each other. But remember how their were three characters to choose from? That's because in the arcades, three players could compete at the same time. Either they didn't think the Lynx could handle three players or (more likely), they didn't think this game would be popular enough for anyone to get a three-player match going. Every third round, you can fight one-on-one against the other player in a grudge match, again, the best of three falls. It's sad, but that's the closest thing to a one-on-one fighting game on the Lynx. (continued next post)

Nice choices! Super Asteroids/Missile Command looks great. I also like Joust; they're not just ostriches, they're CYBORG ostriches! Hah, ha! I'm sticking with my first two choices and will add XYBots as my third choice, then Super Asteroids/Missile Command, then Joust. Shadow of the Beast is good but perhaps too abstract for me to include it in my top five. Thanks, 2d gamer, for the links to the artwork. I got a chance to look over some other games. I've never played it but the box art to Basketbrawl looks good, too.

I never said I didn't like Lynx games. I don't need to spend money. I already own the games. Rather, you should spend your money on games rather than trying to get them for free. This thread is obviously off-topic now. You can carry on all you want for all I care but I'm done with it. I don't copy games.

Good point, but even if I am "desperate", it comes down to more than the cash. Maybe I bid high but still get outbid for the next copy; only one is gonna get it then the rest of us will still be talking about getting it. I'm not sure about the status symbol angle. I mean, my friends thought I was nuts when I bought a Jaguar back in the nineties and tried to have me committed when I bought my second one. I don't see a Battlesphere cartridge impressing anyone that I know, not even if I hung it from a gold-chain around my neck! I like space-shooters, my favorites being Shadow Squadron (32X) and the sequel, Stellar Assault SS (Saturn). I'm not looking for Battlesphere just so I can compare it or as some kind of status symbol. I want to play it because it sounds like the kind of game I would enjoy. Stellar Assault is also a rare game now but it wasn't when I bought it new. As much as I enjoy it, I wouldn't advise others that it's worth what it costs on eBay. I still think they could easily make a cut-down version that would allow the masses to play it while keeping the original and Gold versions rare.

I'm afraid you are oversimplified things. Assume you could indeed write software that takes the Lynx's video output and displays it on the PC's monitor. You need a way to feed the Lynx's video into the PC so the PC could convert it. There is no port on a PC that even comes close to be able to accept the Lynx's video signal so you need to create hardware to converts the Lynx's signal to something a PC port could understand. Such an adapter would be so complex that an adapter that directly outputs a RGB or HDMI signal would have a similar complexity. Robert Well, I wasn't thinking of displaying it on a PC monitor. I was thinking of displaying it on a television. But yeah, you obviously understand this better than I do so I don't think I could keep up my end of the discussion. Have you looked at the plans for the hardware? What do you think of it?

Anyone using the emulator for development, I applaud you. As for the other, what I said was that if you are using a computer, there are better games available. Are you really trying to say that you think Checkered Flag on the Lynx is better than Microprose Formula One Gran Prix on the PC? Really? Even my old PC from the 1990's runs F1GP quite well. But if you are not at a computer (which I'm not) then a portable game system makes sense. I own a Lynx and at the time I bought it, it was the best. Why should I have to justify playing it? I don't own a laptop or a PSP; why should I buy one to play Lynx games when I already own a Lynx? Also, as the original reply noted, you can't comlynx anyways with the emulator which is the one thing Checkered Flag still does better than my other portable (Sega Nomad). Games like Virtua Racing or Road Rash on the Nomad are far superior to Checkered Flag *except* that you can play the latter with three friends. I don't care where you can download copied games. It's just another justification anyways (see my previous post on that subject). As I've said several times already, I'm not interested.

Well, I wasn't thinking of converting the signal to be read by a PC. I was thinking the PC would run software that emulates the hardware that Atari used to convert the signal to a television, bypassing the need to build the hardware. I apologize if I've oversimplified this but I've only known that software that emulates hardware even existed for about two seconds. And the plans I found on the internet for the hardware are more complicated than something that I could build. If you're saying a FPGA could do the job, that's great! But I have no idea how to program one to do that. I'd even just be guessing where to connect it to the Lynx's circuit board. I'd love to learn, though.

What misunderstanding? Someone copied the game cartridges to convert them to computer files. That's copying games. Someone downloading the game files is creating a copy of a copy. That's copying games. I want no part of either.

I think the probability of owning the game is very low. How many folks are willing to spend over five hundred or maybe even a thousand dollars to buy the game? I think few. And even if you are willing to spend that much, only one of a dozen bidders on eBay can win the auction anyways. I do find it unusual that the game makers are reluctant to let more cartridges be made. If the game is really as good as some claim, I'd think the makers would want as many people to play it as possible. It's just odd to make something really good then not let very many people see it. If they are trying to keep the game rare or hard to own, why not release a compromised version for the rest of us? I don't think it would take much for the makers to disable some of the game modes. For example, sell it as a single player game with no network capabilities. This would allow a lot of Jaguar fans to play the game while the "Gold" version (and the original) would continue to be rare. By the way, I was amongst those that was on the waiting list that never got notified when the game was originally for sale. I didn't find out the it was available until a few days after the game was sold out. I did manage to buy Iron Soldier II CD before it was sold out. From my perspective, Iron Soldier II is a better game than Battlesphere, at least until it's proven to me otherwise.

I watched the video for Downfall, interesting looking game. It reminds me of the elevator shaft level on X-Men 2: Clone Wars for the Sega Genesis. There are several levels in the Sega game that are loosely based upon classic platform games (for example, Donkey Kong). I never knew that the elevator shaft level, which is brilliant, was based upon an earlier game, though, as I had never seen or played anything like it before.

I'm not touchy. I'm just not interested in copying games.