ericanthem

I've fostered a number of Atari related fantasies since 1980. 30+ years later, they're starting to be realized... 1. To be able to play Atari on an arcade cabinet with the original joysticks permanently mounted. (I finally built it in 2009 - see Gallery) 2. To know people as into the 2600 as I am. (I rank finding AtariAge up with the advent of PS2 online gaming (Madden 05)) 3. To have people to play Atari with (all my friends quickly moved on to Intellivision and then Colecovision - and I'm an only child . I've finally found a competitive Atari friend/opponent, plus my 2 kids are almost old enough to compete - FINALLY! 4 for Warlords!!!) 4. That someone would fix Pac-Man and fix the Adventure dragons. (I only discovered that hacks & homebrews existed in the last 5-10 yrs) Only one dream remains untouched: 5. That Activision Skiing integrated the button and moguls and jumping in a mogul/freestyle/free-skiing level. Kind of like Intellivision began to, but considerably better. Here is how I can see it being done: 1. The button makes you jump/hop. 2. The light and dark moguls correspond to mogul size (i.e. single and double bumps}. 3. The course is very dense with moguls and much less with trees. 4. Skiiers compete for time OR points. 5. You only accelerate when on the ground. 5. Hitting a single bump is akin to pushing the button. 6. A single jump/bump maintains speed (no acceleration) 7. Speed is maintained when rotating in the air, but turning on the ground decelerates you. 8. The button is disabled while airborne. 9. In the air, direction is maintained but you can rotate. 10. Hitting a double bump not only launches you higher/longer, but also slows you down. 11. Realize that if you hop a mogul, you will land short of where you would, had you bounced off a mogul (sm or lg) 12. Jumping before/over double (dark) bumps maintains your speed and lessens time airborne. 13. Strategy and efficiency depends on speed and mogul size and mogul spacing. 14. Rotating in the air moderates the deceleration of turning while on the ground. 15. Points are scored by hitting moguls (e.g. 5 pts for large and 10 pts for small); or it's a timed downhill-like competition. That's most of it, I think. I'm a bit sleep deprived right now, so I can't be entirely sure. SO... What do y'all think? Is this a relatively simple hack? Does anyone have interest in pursuing this? I can think through the logical processes, but any specific coding, syntax, or whetever else make these game cartridges work is a mystery to me. Thanks for your reading and consideration. Cheers -e