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Strat-O-Gems 2600 looks decent


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Strat-O-Gems :lust: Can't wait to check this game out on z26 later. Ain't it purdy? In fact, I cannot wait until classes are over next week. I want to play some Atari so badly. ;)

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Honestly, I don't fully understand what it is.

 

The Atarivox is a device which connects to the player 2 joystick input on a 2600/7800. It provides two features:

 

-1- 32Kbytes of EEPROM memory

 

-2- A Speakjet chip.

 

If you plug an amplified speaker into the Atarivox, it will produce speech and other sound effects for games which support it (Man Goes Down, Stratogems, and I don't know what else). In addition, the EEPROM memory is used by some games for storing things like high scores.

 

An Atarivox costs about $40-$50 but the Atariage store is out of stock. If you just want the EEPROM memory, I think a board with just that is about $10.

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Thanks for the tip.

 

By the way, checked out Strat-O-Gems earlier. It is addictive but I got the hang of how it plays, etc. In Z26, pushing the up button will change the color combination so that is a great way to compensate for the inability to rotate the pieces like in Tetris and other puzzle games.

 

I think it's going to be a worthy purchase as well. :)

 

I am looking for more time to spend with my games now that the Fall semester for the college I'm attending is over after next week.

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In Z26, pushing the up button will change the color combination so that is a great way to compensate for the inability to rotate the pieces like in Tetris and other puzzle games.

 

Pressing player 1 up will switch the "current" and next gem colors. Pressing the player 1 firebutton will cycle the colors of the current 3 gems (I may make the left difficulty switch select between cycling upward and cycling downward). The current posted game supports the following cheats:

 

-1- Game starts "primed" for an eleven-deep cascade. Just drop the first set of gems down the left.

 

-2- Left difficulty switch, if set, skips gems #2-#60 on each level (makes it much quicker to see higher levels).

 

-3- Right difficulty switch, if set (and if Atarivox or EEPROM is plugged in) will cause an automatic replay any time gems are cleared.

 

-4- Pressing up on player 2 joystick will randomly reselect gems.

 

-5- Pressing down on player 2 joystick will cause a wild gem to appear, and will also skip ahead to almost the end of the level.

 

These cheats will not be available in the release game.

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Thanks for explaining all that. I don't feel compelled to "cheat" but I think that this game would be a great way to kill a boring afternoon.

 

I'm a closet fan of puzzle games though. Tetris and Dr.Mario are two of my favorites, though I'm better at Dr.Mario.

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