DEBRO

I saw gameplay of this game on YouTube. Reading that it was programmer Scott Smith’s first or early 2600 game had me interested in reverse engineering it. Is there an official PAL50 release of this game? I haven’t been able to find one. It was done in 1984 so I guess it’s possible one doesn’t exist.

@Dutchman2000 thank you for finding and sharing this. I particularly like the statement on the GCC version. I have found the screen for Millipede does roll on higher levels. There can be a lot going on. Chances of reaching those levels can be slim (at least for me) but you can see it with the demo too if you let it play long enough. Still, it is a great arcade replacement for me.

I remember way back in 1997 when Glenn Saunders gave us the “Stella at 20” documentary tapes…yes video tape (i.e. VHS). I think I got my copies around 1999 or 2000. I watched those tapes so much. I can probably recite them both from memory. To think that next year will mark 20 years of the Atari Flashback 2 is just amazing to me. The first Atari Flashback was released in 2004 but the Atari Flashback 2 was Curt’s real dream. Curt Vendel is missed in this community. We won’t have a “Milo at 20” with him being interviewed but we still have old interviews of him floating around the internet. Cheers Curt!

Hi there, Thanks @SpiceWare for bringing this to my attention. 😁 I have always used the illegal skipDraw in my work. The one used in Climber5 also changes color of the climber each scanline and gives a 1LK. I finally placed the source on my GitHub if you would like to see it. Keep in mind that for skipDraw, your sprite must reside above its max allowed vertical position in ROM. You can see this in the Climber5 source. It may make more since seeing how the graphics are stored in the code. https://github.com/DNSDEBRO/Climber5

Hi there, I'm glad to hear that. I really enjoyed the challenge when I was building it. I also still enjoy playing it too. I admit that I build the ROM with the original speed though LOL...that wasn't the intent. I struggle in the TIA sound department but glad you liked it.

Hi there, Not sure if you know but I reverse-engineered Mouse Trap and all four cats are assessable / functional. The fourth cat was removed from the production ROM. You can read more about it in the Mouse Trap discovery? thread. A link to the disassembly can be found in the Mouse Trap Disassembly thread. The final ROM was made available in the Pacman4K Source Code thread. I have also made the source (updated) on my GitHub. https://github.com/DNSDEBRO/Pacman4K Also try Daniel's (DINTAR816) New pacman for atari 2600. It is EXCELLENT! A great version of Pac-man for the VCS.

@Thomas Jentzsch and @m.o.terra kaesi I see that. If @ZeroPage Homebrew decided to do this then I would lean more to a “Best New Artist” type of category for new emerging homebrewers.

But is that the fault of Champ Games? They are winning the categories because their projects warrant the award.

Hi there, This was news to me as a hobbyist. I never thought or imagined that game companies had to re-certify their updates but it makes sense. And to Ben's point, the changes are not substantial enough to warrant the cost. Not likely...this is owned by Atari so I can't release it and again, not enough to warrant the release. Seeing this helps. I'll see if I can take a look at this release to see if I can find anything that might cause this. I don't have the source for this release any longer so I'll have to dive into the ROM to reconstruct it. This will take some time. Thank you for sharing the screen captures.

Hi there, Yes, that would be me. I guess I can talk about this now. I'll add some history too. I may miss somethings so I might come back to fill in. Let's start with playing digitized samples from the 2600. Back in 1997, Eckhard Stolberg posted a demo to the [stellalist] of playing digitized speech from the 2600. This same technique was used in Quadrun to get the game to repeat the game title when the game cart was started. I'll stay out of the particulars for this thread. Now fast forward 7 years! I reverse engineered Berzerk and posted it to the [stellalist] at the end of 2004. When I reverse engineered the game I noticed that the data for having the robots fire diagonally was in the ROM code however the mechanism to activate the diagonal firing was not present. You'll find some old threads here on AA discussing this and even a hack to enable the diagonal fire. In that hack there was also some graphical changes as well. Now enters Mike Mika... Mike had the bright idea to give Berzerk speech to simulate the arcade experience. He took my reverse engineering code and the demo posted by Eckhard and married them together. This resulted in the the Berzerk: Voice Enhanced cartridge that is currently being sold in the AtariAge store. This is a 16K cartridge. It does not have the robots firing diagonally or the graphical changes however it does have a title screen and includes the voice samples..."INTRUDER, ALERT! INTRUDER, ALERT!", "CHICKEN, FIGHT LIKE A ROBOT!", and "HUMANOID MUST NOT ESCAPE!". This is where some things might get cloudy... In March 2023, Atari acquired the rights to a dozen arcade games from the Stern library which included Berzerk and Frenzy. I'm not sure if I reached out to Mike Mika saying how cool it would be to have his speech enhanced Berzerk released by Atari or if I reached out to Atari to discuss Mike's work. Either way, some how (and I can't remember the details) we all got connected. I was asked by Atari if I could get the diagonal hack in a speech enhanced cartridge. Being that I already had the code and items plugged in I responded with yes and it should be fairly simple and easy to do. To do this though, I needed the speech source code from Mike. Mike looked through his archive of source code (which I would love to see someday) and couldn't find it. Time continued to progress. It just so happens that I was upgrading to a new computer during this time too. I was going through old HD looking for data I needed to transfer and guess what turned up? I found the source to BerzerkVE on one of my old HDs! Now the work begins... I started using Mike's samples and combined my hacks to produce a ROM. This was doing the summer of 2023. Atari would ask how things were progressing and I would respond all was well since I had the source to BerzerkVE. Here is where things get interesting. Keep in mind, I'm not a game developer by trade. I have a regular position for another company and do Atari code and reverse engineering as a hobby. Atari on the other hand is a game corporation with deadlines to meet on their projects. I continued to work on the game off and on...more off than on because again...it was the summer of 2023. I kept saying to myself, I need to finish this work for Atari and it won't take long. I took a vacation with my family (again...summer) with intentions to spend time finishing Berzerk for Atari. Well...family fun got the best of me and I didn't touch that work all week. When I returned from vacation, I had a message in my inbox from Atari saying they needed Berzerk so they could submit it for ESRB ratings. Again...game corporation with deadlines. I wish I had known about this deadline when I started because we wouldn't be where we are now if I had. I responded that I could get something to them but it wouldn't be the complete game or complete as I saw it. Atari told me that would be fine. They could submit what I had to the ESRB and release the updated finished game on the cart. What I (we) submitted to the ESRB was a 32K ROM with... modified graphics to look more inline with the arcade robots firing diagonally extra life bug corrected original Berzerk would end the game if you got more than 127 lives startup bug corrected there was an issue on some 2600s with the original Berzerk when it started it making it unplayable BerzerkVE has a bankswitching issue that may prevent it from starting up the following digital samples GOT THE INTRUDER! GOT THE CHICKEN! HUMANOID MUST NOT ESCAPE CHICKEN, FIGHT LIKE A ROBOT Some keen AA users will notice that this doesn't have all the speech from BerzerkVE...and you would be correct. To save a few bytes of ROM, I changed the routine to produce the digitized speech. In doing so, that meant I needed to modify the speech data slightly. This why it didn't make the ESRB build and the final cart. For the final build we had the additional samples of..."GOT THE HUMANIOID! GOT THE CHICKEN!", "GOT THE HUMANOID! GOT THE INTRUDER!", and "INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!". The samples would alternate based on how the player escaped the previous maze. So if the player exited the previous maze without destroying all the robots then "...GOT THE CHICKEN!" would play when the player lost a life. If the player exited the previous maze destroying all the robots then "...GOT THE INTRUDER!" would play when the player lost a life. Also, to mix up the speech slightly so it wouldn't get too monotonous..."INTRUDER ALERT! INTRUDER ALERT!" would play occasionally as you exited the maze. As an added "bonus" the final build also contained a way for the player to disable the digitized speech if they tired of hearing it. This was controlled by the left difficulty switch. The samples would play when the player had the left difficulty set to PRO or A. The samples would be disabled when the player had the left difficulty set to AMATEUR or B. I also, want to add that I reached out to Bob DeCrescenzo @PacManPlus for more digitized samples and he promptly filled the request. Bob used these samples for his excellent 7800 port of Frenzy in the AA store. I had to compress these samples to fit within the ROM limits of the 2600. A title screen was planned with an easy way to chose game selections too but I ran out of time. Again, referencing hobbyist have no deadlines however corporations do. Also, each build delivery contained ROMS for NTSC, PAL60, and PAL50. I know some would want to know. This was a lot, I know but hopefully it will give some history as to how this came about. I'm not sure why you are having issues with this game on your 7800. It is a standard 32K Atari ROM. Anyone else having issues with this and their 7800?

I vote for Rikki & Vikki. It would appeal to old and new gamers. Great puzzle game play, great graphics, and cut scenes.

Actually, I forgot. The animation was slowed down slightly to show the fragments.

That seems odd. This routine would not or should not have changed and it is the same number of animation frames. 🤔

I reread preface (again). Now I get it. 🤦🏾‍♂️

Hi Matt, Nothing really to call out. It uses all 4K though some optimization could be done. The PAL50 version is ~17% slower than the NTSC version which is typical for Activision releases.