It turns out there was a reason that I couldn't find Deal or No Deal for GBA...apparently it's not released yet. Its release date is tomorrow, according to Best Buy, which means this weekend, I'm gonna go down there and if it's there, get it. I did manage to watch Robot Chicken last night. It was funny. I liked the 'Worst Halloween Ever' sketch and the callback. Was Seth Green really in jail? A bumper mentioned he'll be released from federal prison soon (or were they just being silly?)... I have
As I mentioned in previous blogs, I keep all the local paper's TV listing booklets since the format changed last year. I don't know why, just something to keep me sane besides Atari, TV, eating, and sleeping. Anyway, I now have 60 of said booklets and me & mom are now using the 61st. So, who's on the cover this week? Lotsa people. The cover is about Fox airing season/series premieres of 14 of their 19 shows by Sep. 24th. So on the cover this week are "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" "Te
All hail the dot-muncher in Batari Basic!
puckman.bas.bin
puckman.bas
And they said it couldn't be done. Now that I've got that out of the way, there's a new place to put my NES games in the den. There's now a short cabinet in there with two drawers for CDs (but NES games fit in there, too.) There were a bunch of dead and alive bugs in there due to the fact that it's been in the shed for years. I don't know what possessed my mom to say "I'm going to move that thing into the den." But she did
For the most part, I like it. I think it's way better than the original. I added shooting enemies, and therefore a scoring system, both something that the original was lacking. The Combat mini-game is looking good so far. But after playing the first GoSub, something was lacking in GoSub 2: No 'no octopus' mode. Well, that was fixed. I don't know why I like video games so much since I don't do very well at them. The video games I like the best are puzzle games. These ones I think I excel at. That
Well, with all the problems taken care of in GoSub 2, I've been moving development along at a good pace. The only problem now is, what more do I add besides new mazes? Does anybody have any suggestions at all? Or do I just go full-steam ahead at more maze creating?
I finally fixed the problem mentioned in yesterday's blog (with help). Now I have two more problems. #1 - it won't tell me how many bytes are left in bank 4. This is kinda crucial information because bank 4 is where all the mazes are stored, and key because I want to know how many more bytes I can use up for maze info. Problem #2 - Dragnerok X has been working on a similar project of my mini-game before I started on mine called Combat DX. (Also being made with bB.) Since he popped up on the inte
I have a problem with the way the multisprite kernel is functioning in GoSub 2's minigame. If I can't fix it, I may just have to call off the use of the multisprite kernel and redesign the whole game (which shouldn't take too long). This means just one octopus instead of an octopus and a fish. You'll still be able to shoot things, though. I think with the use of pfheights I can still make the mazes look the same way, but then I could make them asymmetrical.
It's my sister's birthday today. Knowing that she won't read this blog, I can safely tell you that she'll be turning 28. And if she's turning 28, that means soon I'll be a quarter-century old. Now, I know most Atari 2600 collectors are older than me, but I still feel old. When I was a kid, I have never heard of the Atari 2600, even though they were still making games for it and were apparently in stores until 1990. I was into the NES (and before that, the Commodore 64, man I wish my dad hadn't g
As some of you may know, I collect long songs. Anyone can sing a three-minute song, but how about a 15-minute one? I admire the work the bands/artists put into their long masterpieces. Today, I got two: "The Decline" by NOFX and "2112" by Rush. I've never heard either of these bands until today, so I can't really judge based on the albums I got whether I like them or not. The Decline CD is pretty interesting. It's one track of 18 minutes, and the rest of the CD is clear plastic. Why not just fit
There's a stupid fly caught in our house. I was looking up the average lifespan of the housefly on the internet and found it to be between 15-30 days. Well, this is the third day of living with it, so if it lives for a month, I'll have, at most, 27 more days with a stupid fly buzzing around the house. It's annoying, but at least it's not a bee. *knocks on wood* (I knocked on wood, and my dog started barking thinking someone was at the door. I told him it was only me and he sat down and started l
You can now shoot the octopus and fish in GoSub 2. It took a few tries to get it implimented, and after the fourth try, I discovered that starting the game with the fire button was causing the problem. So I changed how you start the game to using the game reset switch. I hope you don't mind using the game reset switch to start the game with. I'd like the mini-game to be a Combat-style game (GoSub 1 was Indy-500-style.) I don't know what I'd call it, though. The bland "GoSub Combat" is the only n
When playing Jet Man today, I thought, "This could be done in bB." So here it is, without any enemies, or sound for that matter. This is just me having fun with bB and I don't plan on selling this in the AA Store. It's just a little demo, but I might work on adding sound to it later if I feel like it or I'm bored.
In my quest to have all 32k carts for the Atari 2600, the 2005 Minigame Multicart arrived from the AtariAge store today. The two games I've played so far are Zirconium and Jet Man. I like Jet Man, but there's no life counter. Instead, the background fades from daytime to sunset, and it's unclear how many hits you have left. I also like the game select screen and its music, which is one of the reasons I bought it. Sometimes if I'm reading, I pop in a game and listen to its title screen music inst
Back when I was a kid, I got this "comic book" in school that was basically a tool to get kids to think about how fun the transit system is. And what could be more fun than a superhero? Thus, Transit Man was born. He didn't live very long, and nobody except me has ever heard of him, but that didn't stop me from making an Atari 2600 demo of him. Right now, you shoot the monster by pressing left or right & fire simultaneously. If you hit the monster, she'll make a roar sound. And that's it. Si
This morning was really bad. I attribute it to being Monday the 13th. First, I woke up at 3 am to the sound of a buzz. No, it wasn't my alarm going off. I went to check on it, trying to find the source of it. It was actually a car alarm going off. Weirdest car alarm I've ever heard. It went on for about 5 hours when I quit paying attention to it. Well, anyway, I went to check on the den, and when I flipped the switch on, the light bulb burnt out. So I changed the light bulb and it still wouldn't
Well, Friday I didn't do much of anything except work on Tic-Tac-Toe. On Saturday, I went to Game Crazy Lancaster, and was contemplating whether I should buy some Atari 2600 games I have but with better labels (I didn't.) Then, my niece spent the night (I was asleep most of that time, though. I went to sleep at 5pm and woke up at 5am.) Then, I went to Game Crazy South today, and they had horribly overpriced NES games. Elevator Action for $12. Hatris for $8. Ms. Pac-Man (Tengen) for $22. What idi
Here's I want for the label (if I ever get it to sell.) Something kind of like this:
Either something like this or a picture like this squared for a Atari picture label. I used MS Paint to make this as I have no other tools. I use MS Paint a lot to either draw stuff or fine-tune something I hand-draw (like my comics.) Usually, I also put in text because my handwriting is kinda hard to read. Well, anyway, if I ever finish the tic-tac-toe game (now with two-player mode.), I'd probably have a la
Taking a break from GoSub 2, I realized that there haven't been any Tic-Tac-Toe games for the 2600 (apart from the 3D one.) So I figured why not make one? In this game, you play vs. the computer. You can download the latest binary files in the Atari 2600 Basic forum. It's 8K and I plan to keep it that way. For the label, if I plan to put this on to a cart for my own enjoyment, I want to have a human playing an Atari 2600 at Tic-Tac-Toe (imagine the 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe picture label, but instead of a
I got rid of "Octopus's Garden" and added an original composition by me. Tell me what you think of it. I'm also thinking of adding an Aegis "BIOS"-type screen before the title screen. And then after that, it'd have to be bumped up to 16k if I want to add more details for the mazes (or an Easter egg. The last bank will be full of the mazes playfield commands.)
I added a deadly fish in GoSub 2. If you press fire when you're colliding with it, it will move to a different spot on the screen, and so will the octopus even though you're not touching the octopus (and vice versa). I can't get the fish's reflecting right, though. I also changed the treasure sprite to look more like a treasure. I think the fish sprite looks stupid (like a balloon), so any replacement fish sprites would be welcome. Also, check out the M&Ms: Break 'Em review on GBA 07. I adde
They melt in your mouth, not in your hand. Geez, how old am I to remember that? Well, back when I was a kid, we didn't have the luxury of having peanut butter M&Ms. If we wanted peanut butter with chocolate in an M&M, we ate Reeses Pieces. And now they have just about every type of M&M available. And not only that, they have video games based on them. I got M&Ms: Break 'Em for GBA (you may remember I bought the DS version), which means if Metal Slug (2007) and Frisbee/Frisbee Go
A nice little update in which I added a 'game over' screen with a little tune. Also, the sub now turns red when you die. The SFX are temporary (except for the found treasure one) and I'll replace them when I feel like it. This game is looking more and more like something I'm really working on, isn't it?
So I got this weird CD. Why is it weird? Because it kept pausing weirdly. I went back to about 10 seconds before it paused thinking it was scratched, but it played perfectly the second time each time. When I ripped the only track that I listened to so far to my computer, the pausing disappeared. And that's why it's a weird CD. Either that or my computer didn't like it. Well, anyway, the track is exactly 24 minutes long, and the song is called Octavarium. It's by Dream Theater. It's very beautifu
That's the number of comic books I've made (mostly for myself and my mom) so far. It's called "Bill & George" and it's kind of like my diary in comic book form. I recently found issue 1 (made in October of 1994, right before my 12th birthday), and I had been missing it for a little while. It was like I had found issue 1 of Action Comics or something. Where was it? Right between issues 80 and 81. I have a huge stack of all Bill & Georges I've made so far. It's really tall, and I'm surpris
Let me start off by saying I'm not a big fan of the Pac-Man series. The title of this game is Ms. Pac-Man, and by golly, it's Ms. Pac-Man all right. And it looks better than the Atari 2600 version. In fact, it looks almost like the arcade version. Gee, four ghosts and a fruit without flicker sure is nice. Anyway, what got me interested in this version is the codes. I love when programmers put in codes. Needless to say I'm a big fan of the Game Genie. But since there's no Game Genie for the Lynx,
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord