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Finally a good Xevious on the VCS ! I have the previous game on an "undressed" cart since almost 20 years and I thought it was a good point from starting a "complete" Xevious, but this one has a completely new engine that makes spectacular use of the characteristics of the VCS ! The various "programming tricks" that have been seen for more than a decade now are part of all realizations of a certain depth, so EXCELLENT job, Chris, Nathan !! If I can (I'm a coin-op fan and a decent player with a few hundred thousand points), the Solvalou is a tad too fast on the move (and that's something that would have been nice in the arcade ) and so is enemies' bullets. It may be that it is my impression also due to the fact that I'm used to playing it in vertical development but obviously VCS can't do it on a TV screen...

... maybe now is the time for a porting of the awesome arcade version (1985, Sega / Activision) ? I mean a TRUE porting, not that "thing" made for Sega SG-1000 & ColecoVision. I link here one of my post in a thread on the 2600 section... http://atariage.com/forums/topic/261070-pitfall-ii-the-arcade-game/#entry3672026

Got some more time tomorrow morning to play again with the latest release and get at least a perfect in the first levels... Seems you fixed the "head coming-off" issue, but if you watch the ending of the first level sequence you could see that when Harry's jumping L - R repeatedly he's pretty much rid(d)iculous . I see the modded final sequence sprites and I like them ! Quicklaw is so quiet and peaceful, with its big nose and its pleasant face . Nice job !

Too late ... just finished. I did a 1st level "speed-run", which took me about 10 minutes, and an hour of falls and hxggxds for the lost levels... Yup, I noticed exactly what you just said: the levitating rope sequence still has original sprites: Btw, I took some pic from the game, just to show... [notes] I see when Harry is jumping he has no feet . and, I personally think that the movement of Harry's head is a bit too "goofy" ... perhaps moving it a pixel closer to the center of the body ?

Here it is some "walkthrough" indications for the shortest routes to grab all the objects (but not all the treasures) : Regarding the Arcade game I mentioned in my previous post, I'm still disappointed that no one has thought of (re)programming a "Pitfall II Arcade" version for the VCS and/or even Atari 8bits. It would certainly be a kind of "goose with golden eggs"... Too bad I'm not able to program anything else than a June seaside vacancy with wife&daughter...

Sure. Just a few "precisations"... I'm an "hardcore" Pitfall II fan, since VCS' age, and I also have a WR (MARP, top score with 1cc, 1life) in the FABULOUS Sega's arcade game. Bt, sincerely, after all of those "big words", the "perfect pattern" (if there ever was one) for the "Lost Levels" of 8bits "Adventurer's Edition" is not clear to me, so that I could reach the rope in an safe (or not too complicated) way. In this particular case, vultures are extremely difficult to avoid because Harry must simultaneously make complicated and extremely precise jumps on the underlying platform, interrupted in several places ! And, my word of hardcore videogamer, this section is one of those shitty bastards for which you risk to throw your console, computer, TV or monitor in the landfill, and this is all spiced by rivers of the most varied and disparate blasphemies... Well, the first levels takes about 10 minutes to go, but the lost levels are really, really and incredibly difficult... maybe I'll find some time just tomorrow .

In "Pitfall II - Adventurer's Edition" (for Atari 8bit computers and 5200 consoles), Harry's mission, after goin'thru the portal at the end of the "standard" levels , is to collect four main objects: a rope , a pot , a flute and a SNAKE ENCHANTER . Then, he'll have to go to a "particular" place where these collected objects will be combined so that the snake charmer sounds the trumpet making the rope, which is inside the pot, levitate . This will allow Harry (with Rhonda, the Raj Diamond and Quicklaw, whose reappear just in time to leave the caverns but we didn't see them since before Harry passed the first-caverns-portal - seems he carried them in one of his pockets ?! ) to reach the upside ground and finish the adventure ! So... the subject you changed the appearance wasn't a lost explorer but a snake charmer !

At least, I see this in the Store : https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1130 Definitely a good game, but I think, as I already said before, that it is a good attempt to re-create the arcade game but it has almost no elements of the gameplay of the Sega coin-operated game ! To be clear, I don't want to dispute or criticize (I haven't the power to do it, coz' I'm not a programmer), but out of the SG-1000 conversion, it could have been done much better, with the potential of the ColecoVision ! ... and, OBVIOUSLY, our VCS could do such a game !

Hi again, Tom. It seems to me that the difference between the standard palette and this your is quite marked about the black level, so I find it much more faithful with CRT's colors (seen on a LCD computer monitor... wonder if they're too much dark if displayed on a CRT PC monitor...) . John, I played (HeavySixer+HarmonyEncore) with the "testing-mode" invincibility cheat until level 34 and it seems there's something strange... I grabbed all the objects but the level didn't end. I waited until the lost of all the available lives, so not only dying by jumping three times on the same bumper but also making the "killer green coin" appear (sorry... I can't find another name for it ), but it didn't want to go to level 35. I tried another time but no level 35, again... [EDIT: despite the necessary "alternating display" used to overcome the known limitations of the VCS, it is truly INCREDIBLE the amount of stuff movin'on the screen !!!]

Have to try, maybe on Saturday, when I'll have some more spare time

Hi again, Tom ! Ok, yep... level counter colors are ok... unveiled the arcane ! Doors are ok, too... wonder why all the times I hit F12 it didn't show a light-blue door... a special case ! In this pic you could see my settings on Stella (Win7): And here it is the full PAL50 palette color test:

I'll sure try it again, maybe tomorrow evening when I'll be at home, Tom .

Hey John ! > Well, regarding the fact that the game actually seems to come from a much more powerful and advanced console, I participated in a "heated" discussion on my own Facebook group (translated) "the Dawn of Videogames" ... always the same topic, when a game like this appears on the wild: "Using the DPC+ in this way is cheating or not?" ... of course I ended with my thought, which is always the same; as also Duane stated, "If you plug a cartridge into an UNMODIFIED VCS/2600 and you can play the game, then it's a VCS/2600 game, no matter if it has 20 Gigabytes of ROM and a magical half-unicorn fairy living inside of the cartridge !". > HAHA ! Exactly he same for me, John : my "very first contact" with Mappy was on my PSX and Namco Museum vol.2, which also has one of my all-time-favs: Xevious !!!!!!!!! > Yep, graphic and music are really awesome (that really low distortion we could hear, if compared to Pitfall's music, means an intensive "cleaning work" !). Very nice, Nathan and Mike ! > NP... I would have bored you with my usual arcade-line artworks . ____________________ Got some "free-hours" before goin' to my job tomorrow morning so I played for some minutes... When I reached, with test-mode-invincibility, the level 24, at the beginning of it the game crashed with black screen, 1-second diagonal white bounds and an audio "beep".I use a NTSC Heavy6er console, which I modded with an E.S.board for CVBS + S-Video + AudioStereo outputs, and my Harmony Encore has the latest bios, updated the last year from http://atariage.com/forums/topic/156500-latest-harmony-cart-software/ . It does almost the same thing when switching it on with my Saboteur loan cartridge inserted, while my other (PAL) consoles seem to work perfectly... I'll do some further tests with the emulator and some other on original hw...

Thanks, Tom ! Ok, I've just tried it but all I noticed is two "bad" changes compared to both the NTSC and "previous" PAL palettes. You could see from the pic attached, which is one of the 24 I "captioned" for a few seconds from the beginning of the game (I might have just obtained the "F12 - hits per second" world record ), colors are pretty much the same except for the light blue in some doors, which it is never appeared to me with that palette, and the level number, which is turned to purple instead of green (sometimes also the bumper near that number, the first on the low right, turns the same purple). Mappy PAL60 with full PAL hardware (CVBS out) [same picture in my prev. post] Mappy NTSC - screenshot from Stella emulator Mappy PAL60 (DEFAULT PALETTE) - screenshot from Stella emulator Mappy PAL60 (ALTERNATE PALETTE) - screenshot from Stella emulator

Hi John ! ... been a long time since I played "something"... and this new porting seems really outstanding ! Maybe more than it happened with your Scramble/SuperCobra, people here won't believe it's a VCS game !!! Unfortunately here in Italy, or at least here in my area, the game was not well known because many arcades strangely ignored him. I remember I had seen it in an arcade when I was in a seaside resort but, frankly, I had never played it there ! "One point less" for a "first hair gamer" like me, apparently... Turning to game features, I noticed the "Left Switch A"/"invincibility" mode, which I used to record the two little clips at the end of this post, the "usual" pause mode that can be activated with the Color/B&W switch and the awesome sampled music thrown inside the DPC(+) and played on the left channel just as Pitfall II did with its "situation-music" in the 80's (and also as Darrell did in his marvellous Stay Frosty 2 !!!!!!!). Colors of the PAL version are apparently excellent and, in accordance with the huge lack of "nuances" of the TIA PAL palette, enough matched to those of the NTSC version. Above all, they're absolutely not like those represented on the emulator Stella... and here I would like to ask one thing: is it me who did wrong with Stella settings or it is true that many games (fortunately not all...) seem, wrongly, just NTSC cartridges inserted in a PAL console (and with the resulting colors from "Courage the Cowardly Dog") ? NTSC - modded S-Video & Stereo NTSC "Heavy Sixer" Mappy_NTSC_20180603_214440.mp4 PAL60 - modded CVBS PAL "Vader" Mappy_PAL60_20180603_214115.mp4 Nice job, as always, John & all the Champ Games Team !! ... a label contest "in the air" ?

Hi there, this is Marco from Italy. I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine who owns a "Super Pong 10". He has never been able to correctly view images on LCD TVs and therefore he'd like to make it to be modified to have the composite output, in order to play on his livingroom TV (a LED 55'). I have already personally modified dozens of VCS and/or 2600, from the Heavyes to the Juniors, but having never done anything to other consoles, even to MY Sears Pong, I am asking to any experienced in this specific case: from what you you know, can it be modded in such a way ? Is there any scheme that would allow me to make the mod "in security"? Thanks, anticipately

Surely there will still be done (many) progress with the programming of the VCS (unfortunately no "Bus Stuff", however, apparently... I read that some CPUs were frying...), and this on is a great "experiment"... but what I had in mind is not really such a thing. When I talked to David Foster (from the Digital Leisure) we thought about a platformer, just like NES & / or SNES portings (I hate them, heavily !), but playable and beautiful like Pitfall ( II ).

Hi Mike ! Sorry... I was really too "blind" to haven't see this ***pretty interesting*** post before... If you want (and as you probably already know... ) I already have, since about 10 and more years, many "things" related to Dragon's Lair for our VCS. And, as it's one of the most important thing if one of us really want to build up a game named "Dragon's Lair", also the rights from the owner (I already know people from the Digital Leisure, as I was involved in the copyright granting to share laserdisc capture for the Daphne emulator through the "internal" DaphneDownLoader torrent, and it was about the 2006 or 2007). We could and should sure talk about it

Hey Jack ! Carlo owns several (boxed) console, cartridges, computers and rarities at all, and he's a good friend of mine. If we knew that dump-matter before... 😢

Awesome find !!! Of course... please send me the manual scan and I'll translate it for you Cheers, Marco

Tom ! ... and ......... what about a deep-hack of Pitfall II to create that masterpiece game that is the Sega coin-op ?

Thanks for the clarification, Ketah, impeccable esamination ! And thnx to you, too, Fred ! (Heh... Who better than you can know these things ? ) -[ Hope it's all right for you now ]- Just wonder if that "5-:-3.3 matter" would affect the LTOflash for Intellivision (yep, many people asked me about it, but being able to repair TV and building audio amplifiers does not turn me into one who knows everything... )...

Heh ! This is something we are wondering in many, even here in italy, after that "someone" has spread this link in almost every retrogaming community: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2017/07/flash_carts_could_be_slowly_killing_your_retro_consoles?utm_content=buffer721d8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer After all, that's not completely "wrong"... but the concern of "fading" something would only exist if voltage differences were much greater and/or currents involved were higher. A power increase of about 2mW [(5-3.3)V x 0.012A] and the consequent increase in energy dissipation in the form of heat would not even justify the substitution of the "dissipation" resistor (let's call it that)... So, I checked around in the AAforum(s) but I haven't seen a thred about this "5-:-3.3 mismatch"... so I ask here ! Does anyone have any idea about this thing and if it could also involve our Harmonies+VCS' ?

It's a matter which has been fought since 1984 here in Italy, since we all could read in a magazine (of course italian: VideoGiochi - Jackson Publishing Group, No. 13 - March, 1984) that the top score achieved by a player was 61110 points. Now ... after at least a period of 20 years in which I have returned to videogames as a hobby, I met several people, including some of the editors and reviewers who had also worked for that magazine, as well as in many others. So, they say that the "videogara" contenders, in order to validate a score, necessary send up photos that "testify the true" ! Assuming, then, that the reported scores are REAL, take a little 'a look at the next pictures..................................................................................... 65860 ?!??!! 170000 pts ?!??!!???!!!????!!!!?????!!!!! ... If everything is as it should be (that the photo was sent and then validated, taking that at the time there were no photoshop or related...) may be that (at least with PAL version, the one played here) there must be "something" (easter-egg ?!?) that at some point and/or a "particular" racing behaviour give a substantial surplus-bonus points !!! Oh yeah... it might be worth to look deep in the Pole Position code ... ((( in the last picture you could see my personal highest score, 60910, made on my full-PAL system )))