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mos6507

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Posts posted by mos6507

  2. Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by King Atari:

    That's what I think. The picture label era began the more modern era, because the games became so much better graphically. So, Superman, Adventure, and Space Invaders do count.

     

    I don't think you can really include any 4K titles as "1st generation".

     

    Not only that, but some 2K titles are clearly 2nd or 3rd generation titles. The early Activision games were 2K titles, like Kaboom or Dragster, but were better looking and better playing than most 1st generation 2K titles.

     

    There really are more than two generations with the 2600.

  3. Posted

    This is a biggie, but when and if will AtariAge start dating cartridges by release date?

     

    Even just giving them a release year would be an improvement, although ultimately we should be able to set a season or month on them also.

     

    This would be really useful to be able to order the catalog by date to see the evolution over time.

  5. Posted

    Most of these games are not 1st generation games.

     

    1st generation games are the original launch titles. I don't have the list off the top of my head but they are CX2601 through 13 or so.

     

    This does not include stuff like Superman or Adventure or Space Invaders.

     

    With this in mind, I'd have to say Indy 500 is my fav. I didn't get it as a kid because of the extra cost of the extra controllers, but it's a pretty fun and unique game to play because of them, and definitely an inpspiration in making Death Derby.

  6. Posted

    Does Sprintmaster use Superchip RAM? If it doesn't, the hack could be coded to use it--then playable on emulators or Cuttle Cart.

     

    quote:
    Originally posted by Thomas Jentzsch:

    Originally posted by legeek:

    [qb]Howdy,

    Specifically paddle controllers for Off the Wall, and driving controllers for Sprintmaster.

    Hacking for paddle control is nearly impossible, because you have to constantly poll a register inside the normally very tight kernel display code.

     

    I've tried hacking Sprintmaster too, but you need one byte of RAM to remember the previous state of the driving controller. Unfortunately I coundn't find any.    [/QB]

  7. Posted

    CEC History

     

    If you believe this history, Nolan used the profits to seed his other startups which, combined with the overall downturn in the coinop business, led to the insolvency of the company. Only after it was bought out by his major competitor did the company stabilize.

     

    Nolan got a reputation for starting new companies and losing interest after a while and abandoning them when they still needed him. Atari was the first, although he was mostly a figurehead in the end as Chairman. The thrill for him is the startup phase, not the growing pains and ultimate corporate beaurocracy that follows. So some of his better ideas may have withered on the vine when he got distracted by the excitement of new projects.

     

    uWink is his attempt to discipline himself by keeping himself exclusively engaged with a company for the long-term.

     

    BTW, uWink (not so coincidentally) owns the re-appropriated intellectual property assets of Nolan's previous failed startup, PlayNet. PlayNet ended in a very messy manner as far as the participants getting out from under the various creditors...

     

    In parts of Stella at 20 you can see the Atari veterans tinkering with a PlayNet terminal in the background.

     

    [ 02-08-2002: Message edited by: Glenn Saunders ]

  8. Posted

    Mindlink measured skin resistance and fed it to the paddle lines. It was still measuring actual physical movement, however slight.

     

    This is closer to the mind-control of Firefox, although in that movie it seemed more like voice recognition.

  9. Posted

    Atari was his only big success in business and he lost control of it in the sale to Warner.

     

    You can bet Atari means a lot to him.

     

    He's tried to capture lightning in a bottle again ever since, from Axlon to Sente and so on.

     

    His current company is somewhat of an attempt to recreate the early days of Atari--it's a variation of a coinop company.

     

    Uwink

     

    I just wish the games were more action oriented...

  11. Posted

    A game that I never thought was possible on the 2600 was Star Wars: The Arcade Game, but it's a really excellent port. Barely any playfield is used in that game.

     

    That doesn't mean Tempest can be done, since the lines that have to be drawn aren't as simple as the 3d perspective lines of the trench et. al. (lines like those can be done with HMOVE on the missiles and ball) in SW:TAG, but I think that with flicker, it might have been possible to do a subset of the tempest tube backgrounds, maybe also if the sprites were interlaced so you had a dotted-line effect.

     

    But it would have probably taken a lot more ROM space. 16K at lest.

  13. Posted

    It's not the best. It only does composite video and mono audio.

     

    Chris Wilkson's mod does switchable composite or Y/C and dual mono (i.e. stereo) audio. Chris' mod also taps the TIA chip directly rather than relying on any points on the motherboard, and cleans up the signal on the daughtercard itself. When you tap the VCS motherboard you pick up a lot of stray interference.

  15. Posted

    >>

    Heh forgot about Video Olympics, but then we should also probably mention a lot of the early 2600 games like Outlaw, Canyon Bomber, Indy 500, Surround, Space War (well.. maybe not Space War), Breakout, Basketball, etc. in the same breath as games that had nearly IDENTICAL graphics and gameplay to the arcade games that inspired them, and thus just as good if not better than the arcade.

    <<

     

    You'd be surprised to know that even the early Atari coinop games tended to feature higher resolution (probably 320x200 vs. 160x200) sprites than the 2600. Canyon Bomber, for instance, has the point values of the bricks in the graphics, and the bricks are rounded.

  19. Posted

    It's close but not perfect.

     

    The framerate/animation seems a bit more jerky than the 2600, and when you jump you can move when in mid air (like Mario).

     

    The barrel sprites also are 2-color rather than 1-color with transparent holes in them.

     

    But a valiant effort, of course.

  20. Posted

    I think it's really silly to think that the success of the NES was exclusively due to some sort of huge hardware advantage over Atari. The NES was also a 6502-based machine, and with mostly off-the shelf components that were not particularly groundbreaking.

     

    The 7800 was indeed a contender with the NES, especially had Atari standardized on sticking a POKEY in it or create some pass-through-cart.

     

    It's that with the changing of the guard from Warner Atari to Tramiel Atari, there was a final loss of vision in the game development department. Maybe Warner Atari was too busy re-porting its coinop titles to the 7800, but at least they were doing something. The Tramiels de-emphasized their gaming division entirely and only re-entered it after Nintendo claimed the marketplace for itself.

     

    The NES deal would have been beneficial to Tramiel Atari insofar as allowing Nintendo to revitalize the market through Atari instead of competing against Atari. But if Warner Atari looked at the NES purely on the merits of its hardware rather than the Nintendo game designers, I would definitely understand why they wouldn't see it as a worthwhile venture in lieu of the 7800.

     

    The worst that can be said for the 7800s video is its lack of video RAM. It only has 4K of video RAM. I believe this limits how well you can utilize its 320x200 graphics mode), and when you were in 320x200 you couldn't get many colors on a line. Most games only use the 160x200 mode, which looks chunky compared to the NES' default 256x200 mode or even the C=64s 16-color 320x200 mode.

     

    That's why the system shines so well doing Williams-style games like Robotron with few colors, solid backgrounds, and a lot of fast movement. But doing colorful platformers isn't as easy.

  21. Posted

    Defender did quite a lot given the 2600's hardware, but with more space available and more collective experience about the hardware, Stargate trashes it.

     

    Defender was a much more challenging game to port than Pac Man, so its failings are a bit easier to overlook.

     

    All of the compromises made in Defender made sense other than the way hyperspace and smart bombs were triggered. Had they gone with a 2-joystick approach like Stargate then it would have meant it could only be a 1 player game as Stargate is.

     

    The flicker used in Defender is "intelligent flicker" rather than the constant flicker in Pac Man. The blocky city was done with playfield in order to maximize the use of the available sprites.

     

    The graphics, color, and sound were more faithful to the arcade than Pac Man was, at least you could tell there was an effort there.

  22. Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by Ze_ro:

    So... uh... a few questions:

    R castle, there's also a B and H castle

    --Zero

     

    These stand for towns I'm sure, namely Hobitton, Bree, and Rivendell, respectively.

     

    There must be a way to check the map/health screen after the game starts via a toggle (color/BW??)??

     

    When you say it doesn't look like any objects effect you, I would bet it changes your wound count.

  25. Posted

    quote:
    Originally posted by Ze_ro:

    Keep in mind that the idea of "contemporary hardware" back then in '92 wasn't what it is now. Hell, I can hardly run a 2600 emulator on my mom's P90, and that's a lot more than they had back then. Of course, 30 years from now, we'll look back and wonder why we even bothered emulating the Xbox....

     

    It's strange that the Atari is actually a very difficult system to emulate.

     

    --Zero

     

    That guy posted from SGI too. So you know he had access to fast hardware.

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