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I just joined this forum to sort out some issues I was having with my flashback X but thought if any group of people would appreciate this life experience.. you all would. I was born in 1975 My dad worked for Parker Brothers in Salem Ma from 1972 till the day they closed the factory and sent it all to china in 1993. He ran the bobst ( sp) machine.. basically 50% of every game box made from 1979 till the day they closed went through my dads machine while he was running it. He can open any parker brothers game box 79-93 and look at how the corners are seamed together and tell you if he or Barry the night guy did it. somewhere in 82, 83 ish my dad started bringing home atari games. I never noticed it at first, I was like 8 or 9 but he would ask me questions about the games he would bring home.... My dad never cared for video games, so it always struck me a little odd... I had a really small black and white TV I won from cub scouts for selling candy.. EVERYONE loved my dad at Parker bros, so he took in the candy sales sheet and sold me enough in one day for the TV or the Bike prize lol ... I remember playing popeye on the B/W tv and finding a glitch in level 2 or 3 where the side shooting bullets couldnt be seen, or something like that and my dad told me that he told his boss, and they had 2 very old ladies in the office playing the game trying to get to the level to see the glitch.... I dont know why but that visual to this day still cracks me up. one day he came home with 4 games. Montezuma's revenge, and then these three has special instructions I could not 1. play them with friends, 2. trade them to my friends 3. Talk about them to my friends... Frogger 2, Qberts cubes, and a labeless cart that had the ewok starwars game. I had to give back the ewok cart almost right away.. but I held onto frogger 2 and qberts cube... context is king here, at the time the game crash was starting but it wasnt a " game crash " back then, it was just atari wasnt selling anymore. right around this time you could get an atari for about 50$ and raider or ET for 1$... my dad started coming home with huge boxes of new atari parker bros games he dumpster dove for. Atari800 computers, those nice Wico microswitch red ball white button controllers. I had stacks of unopened games, I would trade with friends for non parker atari games, lol I had a nice racket going haha Knowing then what I know now.... yikes, The stuff I should have kept that I lost or traded over the years. I remember being 9 or 10 with that atari 800 keyboard thing and nothing else , no drives, nothing, not knowing basic, and thinking, this is junk and giving it away to a friend lol .... and yes... we had every nerf thing you could think of ... i hate nerf ... those boomerangs never worked!!! and every version of monopoly made lol

Thanks to the quick reaction of Kski, the author of the game "Albert", today we have the opportunity to publish a new version, marked 1.01, which has some significant technical changes: - when the game is loaded, a hardware test is performed, but differently than before. Instead of detecting whether the computer is PAL or NTSC, it checks if it is in 50 or 60 Hz mode; - the music speed is improved for the NTSC 50Hz systems; - the ESC key allows you to exit to the game menu; - with the key OPTION on the start page, in the menu, you can turn on or off both music and sounds (MUSIC ON / OFF, SOUNDS ON / OFF); - falling off platforms has been delayed. Now, while running, you can jump from the very edge (where the hero could no longer stand), it makes the gameplay easier; - minimal delay, when starting from a standstill, has been introduced, so the acceleration of the hero takes a bit longer, it makes the gameplay harder. Download of version 1.01 traditionally here: http://atarionline.pl/v01/index.php?ct=katalog&sub=A&tg=Albert#Albert PS. Is there at least one person who finished the game, and will show us the final screen photo?

It is undoubtedly, in part, testimony to the beauty of the excellent tools put out by @RevEng (7800basic) and @mksmith (Atari Dev Studio). I've lost track of how many games are written using 7800basic and how welcoming it has made development for the console. Atari Dev Studio tricks it out with an interface, tight integration among other apps and tools that helps the learning curve along with saving resources. It's also a testimony to the support and heart of this community coming together; I am in amazement of @Defender_2600 graphical details and eagle eye as well as the musical achievements of @Synthpopalooza Additional wonderful contributions by @playsoft, @Pat Brady, @tep392, and of course the gorgeous box art from @Atariboy2600 to look forward to once this hits the AtariAge store. Most of all - absolutely and completely blown away by @darryl1970. I have to sit back, catch my jaw from dropping, and wrap my head around how in less than 6 months, what started as a 'simple' mini-game (Which is great in itself - holy crap - first time effort out the gate), has become one of the greatest Arcade ports of all time on any 8-bit system. It is incredibly inspiring to state the very least. What he has accomplished is phenomenal.

I looked into the rail. In breaking them down into smaller rails, I could get 4 smaller rails to plot across. This only gained about 2 tiles of the crow's nest, since 16x16 sprites had to overlap the posts. However, the extra sprite plots slowed down gameplay. Therefore, I need to stick to the single 48px sprite during the game play. I WAS able to use this concept in during the intro however. I have room for the smaller rail in the intro, where I couldn't fit another 48px sprite. I can plot 3 across, and it doesn't affect gameplay. I think it's a nice detail that I didn't think was possible. I used Popeye's pallet, in order to keep the rope from getting lost in the mast color. His gray is a little darker than the arcade's gray, but I think it works. I also caught the previous mention of the level 1 tile. That's fixed.

I left that, because you didn't circle it. lol. I noticed that the arcade looks like it is slightly longer on one side of the post, so I thought it may work. It does look a little big though in retrospect. I think I am about ready to call this done, aside any breaking functionality. Since you made Popeye's head smaller, I cropped it to a 64px-wide banner. That gave me extra graphics space to add the pipe as a separate sprite. I didn't have the space before. Now Popeye's pipe is brown.

Of course. Check out the TI-99/4A development resources thread for all kinds of ways to program it—Forth, C, Basic, Fortran, Pascal, TMS9900 Assembler, Logo, etc. Did I mention Forth? ...lee

Thanks @Trebor.... I was just going to post this: Thanks to Trebor, I realized that Olive doesn't scold Popeye if a letter falls into the water, on the ship levels. Thus, I have remove that scolding on RC 3.3. I suppose this makes sense, since Olive is captured at this point. How would she get away? I did add the word, "HELP!", at the bottom, to make it more obvious what happened. I know it can catch one off guard when a letter sinks. RC 3.3 is posted on the first page. It includes other small graphical details. I am really hoping this may be it. I need to call this done at some point. --Darryl

It's snowing sideways.

Hi All. I finally decided to register with Atariage!! I'm glad i did (thank you Jay!). Some of you may be aware of my previous Aquarius game AQUARIWORM that was released last year on physical cassette tape via Cronosoft (the first commercial tape release for the Aquarius in over 35 years!)... Well, just yesterday my new Aquarius game BOMB CATCHER 2 was released! Again, as a physical cassette tape through Cronosoft!! Both Aquariworm and Bomb Catcher 2 are available to purchase from Cronosoft's main site for a very modest fee. I make no money for the sales, it all goes towards keeping the homebrew market alive, thanks to the awesome non-profit Cronosoft. I am a retro computer collector and restorer with over 100 machines (not inc dupes!) in my collection. The Aquarius was my first computer! and I still own it! I love writing games for the wee blue key underdog! Aquariworm is also available as a digital download (BC2 will follow suit) via itch.io and any donations go to the Centre for Computing History Museum in Cambridge. So if you want a couple of new games for your Mattel Aquarius.... then click the link! https://cronosoft.fwscart.com/MATTEL_AQUARIUS/cat5357733_4720275.aspx I'm hoping to code more games for the platform as time goes on, and I'm already working on a platform game.

This is insanely good, well done, everyone. ?

I got my copy of Stadium Mud Buggies today. That was the last of the 125 I never had.

The Atari was my very first game system, owned by my parents before I even knew what it was and handed down to my brother and I as we got older (86-87). I played the system a lot, even after I owned the Vic 20 and then the C64, I still had fun with the old 2600. Fast forward to today and I play playstation, xbox games etc and the realism is crazy as well as the level of gore involved in some games. Atari games remind me not only of simpler times when it comes to being care free as a kid, no internet etc but of gaming in general. I think prefer games that lack realism because they focus on the simplicity of game dynamics. Players when they died did so with a blip and less fanfare of today. Violence is there with the classic games but death in pixels is so different than today. Space ships may explode, characters dying, things being eaten but only for you to hit the button again to attempt to reach your next high score. I appreciate the 2600 for the lack of gore, lack of over the top fan fare. I can play a game for 15 mins or 2 hours and both have the same result. Yes I enjoy a good RPG and spend 3 hours and not realize they had elapsed but the love of being able to pick it up and play it will keep me coming back decades to come. Games of yesterday are a struggle for players of today's generation, maybe I'm wrong. I feel they need a continual dopamine hit of loot boxes, save/check points and engaging story line to get me to enjoy some game time. Arcade games had a level of difficulty which was designed to feed the machines and keep the customers coming back to the arcade. That methodology doesn't work with today like it in yesteryear. Anyone else feel this way? Not just a simpler time but a simpler method of gaming. Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

This could become the killer app. I'm expecting the demand for 7800 consoles to spike on eBay.

I haven't been this excited for a 7800 cart release in years. This is a masterpiece and everyone involved should be very proud of what they have accomplished.

LDA #0 STA 65 for the masses... ;) as Jacques pointed out... several minutes of Beep... I know the pain... I forgot to disable the loading sound in Arsantica demo... presented at Revision on that huge stage and stereo... haha... wasn't fun.... ;) I was just kidding with SKR... loading bar is enough or sector counter or some other progress...so you know what's going on while loading... but honestly... I bet it's the least issue... let's finish the game... (looking at myself of finishing Beyond Evil game or others finishing Elite! :P)

FM Towns: Raiden Densetsu - 30 min. Spent most of the week completing the story in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order for the Xbox. I'm also redoing my computer room so I may not have any times for next week.

Slight improvement.

This was an unfortunate era for TI, since they were numbering the bits in their bytes and words (16-bit backwards from the rest of the industry). You can find internal memos where engineers complain about this, and TI did finally come around (not sure when, but I suspect they were not doing this for very long). Sadly the TMS9900 CPU and 9918A VDP were caught up in the reverse bit numbering. It is important, as other mentioned, to realize that is the *ONLY* the numbering that is reversed, and not the bit-values. Bit-value goes up from right-to-left, just like they always have, and just like decimal numbers. Basically this: 128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1 Bit *place value*, MSbit is always on the left 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 TI bit *numbering* duing the 9918A era 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Bit numbering for the rest of the industry ------------------------ 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 = >E0 The MSbit is always on the left in both numbering schemes, and the "endian" of the 9900 CPU, while important to know when programming in assembly, has nothing to do with the bit numbering. To help prevent errors, I find when working with the 9900 and 9918A that using the bit-value (or "weight") prevents ambiguity. For example: TI bit-2 would be bit >40 (0010 0000) TI bit-5 would be bit >04 (0000 0100) TI bits-2..4 would be bits >38 (0011 1000) Specifying the bit positions this way works no matter how they are "numbered".

This week's update: - fixed a number of concerns & bugs from ZPH's twitch stream 100hp potion bug (it was fun to see you trying to figure out why one potion gave 100 hp, most maxed at 50 - that was just a bug. 50hp is max) ghosts move faster (hint: definitely use the map to find the best route) updated enemy spawn positions (they're less likely to spawn on top of the player, but I'm not happy with how it is now. I'll continue to tune) tuned enemy hp so it's not quite as many shots in the beginning - fixed gravestones reappearing after use (hopefully for real this time!) - tightening up enemy/player collisions and knocking back enemy after a hit the bat's movement make him tough to hit now, so I need to tune - removing lots of duplicated code - fixed bug where pause/map cleared out gates immediately - retain weapons level-to-level - added a bunch of code to support for new weapon types/levels - it's used but nothing new added yet - reworked distribution of enemy types and items for each level - a bunch of new enemies, mostly in later levels - all magic items hooked up w/ unique powers - new sfx - special (and hopefully cool) surprise at the end of every 4th dungeon! - hit the 48k limit and starting to get creative I added a ton of new code, so as usual it's a WIP and I likely introduced some new bugs I tested in JS7800 going all the way through, a few minor things I noticed but nothing egregious. Enjoy! wizarddungeon_wip.bas.a78

My very modest time for the week: PlayStation: Star Ixiom - 12 min.

ATARI 2600: Millipede (for HSC) - 45 minutes Pooyan (for HSC) - 15 minutes Strategy X (for HSC) - 16 minutes ATARI 7800: Fat Axl - 10 minutes Pac-Man Collection - 48 minutes COLECOVISION: Donkey Kong - 68 minutes

We had a dimmer switch that stopped working. Luckily it broke in the "on" position, so I could still turn the light on and off at the fixture with a pull chain. Anyway, I did the simple job of replacing that broken dimmer with a "regular" on/off light switch. I hooked it up correctly on the first try, but then I somehow convinced myself that it was going to show the word "OFF" when actually on. Rewired it a few times and even tripped the breaker until I realized I just needed to flip it upside down - LOL. Glad I didn't start a fire.

This one is growing on me. 81,200

Also: logged an hour in Killing Time for the 3DO last night.

Hi everyone. I have been working on a game with only 4k that was challenging, fun and that looked like games from the 70s and 80s. So "K-Jo chases the cheeses" was born! The biggest challenge was to put all the concepts imagined in just 4kb, using batariBasic as the main programming language. For that I had to adapt some functions, rewriting them in Assembly, which made me learn more about the language and optimized the game in size and performance. There are 60 stages with 10 different mazes. Every 10 stages, the color of the walls changes, characterizing a new house. There are 6 houses with 10 stages each, totaling 60 stages. The amount of cheese to be collected starts at 4 (at the first stage), and at each new house (10 stages) is increased by one. The time you have to complete the stage is always the same: 40 seconds. [ UPDATE ] Hi guys! K-Jo chases the cheeses will be released here in Brazil. If you are interested in the game, please send me an email (leocsantiago@yahoo.com.br) so that I can put your name on a pre-order list. As soon as the game is officially released I will contact you. Please put as subject the word "K-Jo". Thanks! [ UPDATE ] Very limited demo version: 10 levels 4 cheeses on all levels All available game challenges K-Jo_Demo.bin or Play K-Jo on Javatari Advertisement : Promotional Vídeo: You can also watch James and Tanya playing the full version at ZeroPage Homebrew. Leo

Yeah.. the new code that checked which bank had the cartridge header was modifying the ROM to write a header byte even if it didn't belong. XB and RXB have their header in GROM, not ROM, so parsing the data as if it was a header caused the garbled menu.

I know that this game will be on many Top Ten Atari 7800 Games of all time lists. Especially when finished.

Here's a great little Windows program that will check and correct the OS Rom checksum for you, created by @HiassofT. Hias PatchROM-1.33.zip It'll also patch your OS Rom with High Speed SIO routines if desired. I included a pdf that gives a brief description of how to use it. Visit HiassofT's Atari 8bit world for even more information.

I have made some progress in adding assembly support to compiled code. So far a compiled program can CALL LINK to an assembly support routine and return to the compiled code. The two test A/L subs are simple; PRINTA fills the screen with "A" and PRINTB fills the middle of the screen with "B" As yet no variables can be passed in either direction with NUMREF, NUMASG, STRREF, STRASG. I have hopes these can be modified so this possible.

My times for Classic Gaming are going to be a little odd because they were in a collection but ROMs- (Capcom Arcade Stadium). The total was about six hours so I divided the time between the games I played. @carlsson - if you'd like me to post these differently that's no problem at all. Arcade: 1941 -- 28 minutes 1942 -- 28 minutes 1943 -- 28 minutes 19xx -- 28 minutes Battle Circuit -- 28 minutes Carrier Airwing -- 28 minutes Commando -- 28 minutes Final Fight -- 28 minutes Ghouls n' Ghosts -- 28 minutes Ghosts n' Goblins -- 28 minutes Gigawing -- 28 minutes Progear -- 28 minutes Senjo no Okami II -- 28 minutes

Just thought I would post this, from time to time I need to create fairly simple sprites and found that other programs were either too complex or crashed/hung so often (Genesys) there was no point in using them. So as an exercise I thought I would write one, just for the hell of it. The program will allow 9 8X10 sprites to be created, you can animate them if needed and obviously Save/Load as required. There is a small help file, but I think most of it is fairly obvious !!! You can do a crude animation on the main screen or a "real" animation from the menu screen. I've also included another program CREATESP.XEX which will turn the sprite data into either BSIC DATA statements or .BYTE statements for ASSEM ED/MAC65, again fairly straightforward to use and can be used on any binary files if needed for maybe USR routines in BASIC. There are a few example files on the disk of data and processed files. Sprite.atr

It was a real big week for Sega games around here this past week! I started off the week by finishing Lunar: The Silver Star on the Sega CD (which I apparently had just over half an hour left to go in), which should put that game in the 2,000 minute club, then got together with the misses to do a playthrough of the original Sonic the Hedgehog trading off controllers between levels. We beat it with all the chaos emeralds collected, and once that was done I decided to check out Lords of Thunder on the Sega CD for the first time via the Mega SD and holy fudging Norse god fish sticks Batman, that game is metal as all heckin' get out! I don't drink alcohol but Lords of Thunder makes me wanna take off my shirt, put on a bandana, drink a beer and smoke cigarettes! It's also a fairly easy game as far as shoot 'em ups go and I was able to finish it on my first try, so highly recommended for any fan of the genre who likes heavy metal themes and doesn't mind playing via emulation or flash cart, since a real physical copy of Lords of Thunder will set you back $300+. I think I'll stick to playing on the Mega SD for that one. Next up I put a bit more time into Snatcher, which I keep trying to like but gosh darn is that game obtuse as all get out. The atmosphere and story is great, but I have no idea how anyone managed to beat this game back in the day without a guide since so much of what the game seems to want you to do is really cryptic and difficult to decipher... either that or I'm just not good at point and click adventure games lol Continuing the Sega theme, the spousal unit and I did a play through of Sonic CD and got the good ending by destroying all the robot generators the in the past in every level, then she did a solo playthrough of the original Streets of Rage with Blaze and beat it on normal difficulty by herself for the first time; which was pretty dang impressive if you ask me. Finally, wrapping up the week, I played through the original Mortal Kombat on the Genesis then just last night sat down with the misses again for more Sonic time and played through Sonic the Hedgehog 2; nabbing all the chaos emeralds along the way. At this point the plan for next week is to play through Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and I'm thinking I might play Silpheed on the Sega CD as well then start in on Lunar: Eternal Blue. I was really trying to like Dead Space 3 on the Xbox 360, but it just doesn't feel at all like the first 2 games so I think I'm just done with it at this point. The first two Dead Space games were really moody atmospheric survival horror at it's best, but Dead Space 3 just feels like a cash grab crafting fest designed for co-op play that's constantly screaming, "Buy our DLC! Buy our DLC!" right in your face. It's just... not fun, to me at least. So, back to Sega I go! P.S.: I was apparently so distracted by all the Sega games this week that I totally forgot to play in the Atari 2600 High Score Club and missed the round entirely! Doh! >_< Ineligible Dead Space 3 (Xbox 360) - 45 minutes Sega CD Lords of Thunder - 89 minutes Lunar: The Silver Star - 38 minutes Sonic CD - 420 minutes Snatcher - 38 minutes Sega Genesis Mortal Kombat - 24 minutes Sonic the Hedgehog - 137 minutes Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - 229 minutes Streets of Rage - 90 minutes Total Video Game Play Time This Week 1,110 minutes (18 hours 30 minutes) [1,065 minutes eligible] Individual System Play Times This Week Sega CD: 585 minutes Sega Genesis: 480 minutes Xbox 360: 45 minutes

Cart please?

Arcade Dig Dug 26 Atari 2600 Circus Atari 29 for FB HSC - fun game Demons to Diamonds 15 Eggomania 13 Millipede for HSC 28. Coming in last this season. still having fun. Popeye 36 for FB HSC Solar Fox 151 All fun.

Amazing what you learn every day. It's going to take me a little longer to adapt to this system but at least I know I am not going crazy. Thanks for the explanation.

After removing about half a cm3 of dust from the mouse, the scroll wheel now is responsive again.

"Offset Maze" bug fixed. BTW, this happened in Pac-Man Plus as well as Ms. Pac-Man Plus. PMC_XM.A78 PMC_XM.BIN

Ahh, finally back on topic. Actually, PoP is not a game for a quick play. That said, I would even accept loading it from tape in 40 minutes. For me personally it loads and I can play it. I think, optimizing the loading speed is not essential for the gameplay, so it should be done, when the game itself is done. On my Atari 800XL (PAL) with U1MB I load the latest version from an SDrive2. It takes 35 seconds to get to the menu, and then 40 seconds until I can start playing. Totally ok for me, because once loaded, it will be played for much longer than most other games. The only thing that I would ask for is to NOT disable the loading sound. Maybe it´s kind of romantic, but I like to have that kind of feedback, that something still is going on.

Can't edit my first post, can that be altered so I can post/revise the list there? Here's a picture of the proposed orientation just so there are no mixups:

Somehow I think a What did you sell today thread might not be as fun but maybe [emoji848] Anyhow these were my dailies.

Now that we are almost done with domestic releases and variants we are on to the Foreign Games. Right now we are at about 120 sealed foreign games....and growing by 3 or 4 a week it seems.

Here's something kind of cool I did tonight. I started putting together the title screen. I'm not sure about the font I used. It's actually the "official" Tron font from Disney. I had to modify that D a little bit since it looked terrible before, just the the C but flipped around. I plan to add some color with creative screen interrupts. What's cool about this is that the title is using the super-high-resolution monochrome mode. I've never used this mode before, so it was kind of fun to mess around with it.

Not really Intellivision related but whatever. We all like arcades.

148,551

Oh I see. Well I would have to agree in this case. I'm certainly not interested in torturing myself. Just my personal preference, however. No disrespect to anyone who enjoys this game in that way.

To prevent the rock, you need to consistently shoot down the wolves as they ascend. Once six of them make it to the top, that's enough to push the rock. What's particularly harsh is if you die as a result of the rock, the game only removes a couple of the wolves at the top of the screen. If just two more wolves make their way to the top before the end of the round, you'll get smashed again by another rock. When the screen changes to a red border, you're close to the end of the round and one of the ascending wolves will have a balloon which changes colors. This is the boss wolf. With the flickering inherent with the Atari 2600, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish the boss wolf's balloon from a white balloon. I never notice the boss appearing in about half the even-numbered rounds I complete.

If you enjoy programming, yes. There's always a curve to overcome, 16 bit programming and an 8 bit data bus AND little memory to use. But there are new toys to help overcome this. I started learning assembly 2 years ago along with learning Turboforth and have enjoyed all of it. If you like BASIC, the new RXB 2021 just came out, it gives you lots of power.

You won your necrobump challenge!!

Atari really need to raise some capital to properly ramp up production and marketing for the VCS. Time to sell to WarnerMedia?!

I'm as serious as Ronald McDonald having a heart attack. But it's also something I'm only doing in what little free time I have in the evenings, and getting the sticks/buttons from overseas are a bottleneck, so this is very much an unhurried process. I made sure that the harness allows for swapping a similar Sanwa/Seimitsu style stick, at least among the variations I have on hand, but I can't account for everything. This is what I've got so far: joeatari1 -Buttons on left side, joystick on right side bydoempire -Buttons on left side, joystick on right side -^CrossBow^- Gandor hizzy - potentially wants precut shell but no stick/buttons? Oldschool80skid TrekMD - Buttons on left side, joystick on right side JVersh - Joystick on left side, buttons on right side ZeroPage Homebrew - wants two shipped canada john_q_atari - Buttons on left side, joystick on right side SledgeHammerD mmervine - Buttons on left side, joystick on right side Neogeoman ZillaRUSH - Buttons on left side, joystick on right side If you haven't expressed a preference I assume you'll want the original configuration I pictured in the first post, which is joystick on the left, buttons on the right. So if you want the other arrangement, or if I missed you entirely, speak up. I've already drilled a few joystick-left, buttons right arrangement before talk of a right handed version came up so I hope I can still move those. I'm also gonna put the brakes temporarily on reservations/interest past this point and will start a proper thread in the buying/selling section once I clear this run and get more supplies. Some materials were supposed to come in Saturday so I could have finished at least ten sticks over the weekend but postal delays have once again come into play.