mos6507

Plus the ball, for 51.

I don't think the DPC has a Pokey anywhere in it, especially given that it was an Activision product. 7800 Ballblazer does, though. The DPC is really more of an automatic pointer-indexer so that the VCS kernel doesn't have to manually index pointers to memory forward--in order to spool graphics and sound onto the hardware registers.

The two most senior employees would be Eugene Jarvis and Ed Logg. I'd be surprised if they were not transferred to Midway proper. If they got layed off that would be a stupid waste of talent. When I interviewed Eugene Jarvis in 1999 he told me that he thought arcade companies would always be around, but unfortunately I think he was blinded by the luck that seemed to follow his career all those years.

Atari Video Music produced some displays that would take a fair amount of work to simulate on the VCS: http://www.atarihq.com/dedicated/videomusicmodes.jpg

It should be noted that if you are talking about code rather than data, the 6502 requires very deliberate byte sequences, and the opcodes themselves don't use up all 256 values in the byte. So if you had some kind of routine that switched between code and data you'd wind up with far less than the theoretical maximum combinations and you'd be more likely to get games that run.

I think the only way you can justify that price is if you are manufacturing them from all-new components. Then it might make sense because the new components would probably give the console a longer lifespan. All 7800s are over 12 years old, some nearing 20. If they could add any new hardware to the console, like built-in POKEY chip or high-score cart ability, A/V outs (a must), that would also help make it more worthwhile.

I dropped the difficulty switch idea. I'll use the switches for something else. It's going to require a Y adapter otherwise you'll be locked in forward gear. I won't release the game on cart unless there are pre-assembled Y-adapters available from somewhere. I don't want anyone to have to wire their own. http://www.homebrewgames.net/deathderby/

I think Space War might have been Bob Whitehead. I know he did Star Ship. There were several 1st gen 2600 programmers besides the well-known ones. There is a list of them in Larry Wagner's production notes that were scanned and put into the Stella CD v.2.

Kaboom is the best 2K game there is, bar none. It's amazing that the first Activision titles were all 2K.

Before Space Invaders, coinop arcade games were MUCH MUCH more of a niche. Yes, Pong, Breakout, and Tank were popular, relatively speaking, but the industry in general was very nascent, so much so that when the VCS came out few people probably even recognized that many of the games came from earlier arcade games. Also remember that Atari Consumer and Atari Coinop were completely separate divisions back then and management kept them in the dark about what eachother were doing. The consumer group were staffed with first-time game programmers and they naturally looked to the arcades for ideas. The whole notion of copyright on gameplay was new, so Atari made no effort to license games from companies like Exidy or Midway although they probably should have. The coinop group were also pissed off internally that the consumer group were 'ripping off' their games. It was a wild time.

Then sic the lawyers on them like you did with Hozer. I find it ironic that these multicarts and repros were going on under the noses of Hasbro themselves who were sponsoring CGE. If that doesn't smell of silence = consent I don't know what does. I like to see consistency in corporate conduct where classic copyrights are concerned. Selective enforcement only encourages more abuse.

If John and Sean do indeed own the copyright then yes, they do have the right to prevent these games from being reproduced. But if they want to protect their copyright, they should conduct themselves in a more professional manner, like being able to follow up on communications privately. (They don't seem to have any trouble following up in these flamewars). This was part of the reason for the Nolangate fiasco (look it up in Google if you weren't around). Also, I do think this is one case where an entitity buying out the rights to a catalog may do little for the interests of the classic community unless by some miracle there are a bunch of A-list Commavid protos they acquired in the deal waiting to be released I don't know about.

Isn't the delay in getting a ROM out always legit? Cheers, Marco The timing of "getting the ROM out" traditionally has had more to do with when a certain convention organization thought it would be the best time to promote their conventions, deliberately paced out from year to year.

These guys sure have become a lightning-rod for controversy of late, haven't they? Maybe they are just trying too hard to keep the attention of the classic community that they have to disrupt the scene like this.

How big can one print a sticker on a color laser printer? If you can print to full 8.5"x11 why can't the box be a cardboard "blank" and basically cover it entirely with full-size stickers? I know it would be time-consuming and exacting work, but I'd like to see how this might look. The Ebivision boxes didn't turn out that well because they just printed color inkjet and glued it to another sheet of paper to make it thicker. Very messy. But if you started with a sturdy "blank" gatefold box then after the stickers are applied, assuming the adhesive is a good one, it should hold up better.

I have thought about it. I think there needs to be more demand to justify doing this, and given that the documentary footage is now over 5 years old, I think I'd have to freshen it up with some new content somehow. It might be better to do something completely new. I'd actually like to document the homebrew movement. Maybe after Thomas and I finish Death Derby... Interviewing homebrewers would be a good way to justify some international travel to meet with the programmers in europe.

Any opinions on how to do homebrew boxes? I am thinking it might be best to do them like a keepsake gatefold sort of thing. Make the boxes more heavy-duty so they won't easily crumple, and when you open it up, give it a sleeve for the manual and an inset section for the cartridge. If you make traditional boxes, if you intend to play the game then the box is going to just be this hollow thing up on a shelf taking up space and you still have to store your cart and manual. Other opinions?

See Cosmic Ark and Vault Assault.

>> One or Two Player: Death Race with driving controller. << Looks like that may actually happen now that Thomas has offered his help to me.

Why can't you use a missile and the ball for the scrolling and free up the players? The ball would be the logical choice anyway since it's the same color as the playfield.

For those who don't recall, I've been consistently hyping Chris' work since he modified my 2600 a long time ago (over 3 years I think now). There are many video mods out there but they are all very hacky. The worst part about most video hacks is they tap lines off the motherboard intsead of the TIA chip. By doing this they are grabbing a weaker, dirtier signal full of all sorts of interference (especially from the RF modulator). NTSC video is a very finicky beast and Chris has put a LOT of research into optimizing the TIA's output for NTSC, which isn't easy because the TIA does not output a truly legal NTSC signal to begin with!! For my prototype he tapped the TIA chips directly and defeated the RF output and the resulting picture is very clean. It's what I used for much of Stella at 20. But he's since improved the signal even more and I've been looking to upgrade to his final board design all this time. The way he modified mine it yields 4 RCA jacks on the back. Two are for audio, and I just use a Y cable to sum the stereo back to mono for TVs that don't support stereo. Two are for video, using the C=64 style approach of chroma/luma through RCA, with an internal switch on the breadboard to go from composite to Y/C. When in composite mode one of the lines switches to composite (I forget which). For hookups to normal S-video gear you need an RCA->S-Video adapter which is pretty easy to make by hand by cannibalizing an S-Video cable. You aren't going to get component from the 2600 because the TIA outputs Y/C. You'd have to synthesize component by splitting the signal further and you won't gain anything that way. In fact, to some people Y/C might not look that good. There is a weird banding problem that is really the 2600's fault when you use the Y/C signal. Chris has worked hard to minimize its appearance but it can't be completely fixed. (This problem also shows up on the Atari 8-bit, especially the 130XE). Chris can explain it better but it has to do with the way the chips output more of a square wave than a smooth sin wave. But with all the manual controls he's planning, I'm sure everyone will be able to tweak it to taste. Because it's designed now as a daughtercard that plugs into the TIA socket, I don't think it involves much if any soldering to the motherboard itself (unless your 2600 has a soldered TIA chip or one of those 1-chip designs). If this gets released as planned I am sure it's going to be the must-have piece of hardware for 2600 fans next to the Cuttle Cart, and if you have already hacked up your 2600 for A/V you are going to regret not waiting for the real deal.

I thought it was Sentinel for NTSC. PAL KLAX was the last Atari Corp release I know of for the 2600 worldwide, and Save Mary was the last commissioned Atari Corp game finished and ready to go (but not released for any TV standard).

>> They Sold It In Australia And New Zealend Between 1992 and 1993. Atari Australia thought that they would sell more if they put more games built in. At this time, The Australian government didn't care about pirated video games, etc and always allowed the sale of pirate stuff, etc. Atari obviously thoguht they could make a buck or two out of selling them here, cause 1. Atari was strong here, espically in the Early 90's due to HES 2. The Aussie Government didn't care about vidoegames and allowed everything that came in to be sold. << So you are saying that Atari definitely deliberately engaged in piracy?

I think having homebrews on a disc like this is a highly symbolic. It's like Activision giving a Quality Control seal of approval to the homebrew community. One game that I think definitely deserves to be on something like that would be Oystron. It really "feels" like an Activision game. I think games like that which have been in circulation for a long time could easily be included since there is no way Activision can expect any sort of exclusivity years after the game has been circulating openly. I also see no reason why a homebrewer might not want to write ONE game exclusively for a disc like this, at least if Activision's contract allowed the game to be distributed online and/or on cart after some fixed time after the disc was released. The coolest thing they could do, however, would be to make a limited run of real cartridges as a promotional/contest item. I think that would get _enormous_ press coverage. I wanted to get Hasbro to do this with Save Mary or NTSC Klax as a promotional gimmick and Activision has the same opportunity available to it with its protos. Even better if they officially COMMISSIONED a game to be written from scratch. I'd like to see what Thomas (or heck, David Crane) could do, for instance, writing a new game for the DPC chip. Since only one game was written for the DPC chip, any AA redux would be in need of a new game to use this feature of the emulator again. And they could certainly revive the patch program and start issuing real patches again. Or if they got the online component working they could sponsor programming contests and have David Crane and Al Miller be judges. So many cool things you could do that go beyond the disc itself that go more into branding/community. None of this kind of stuff would be tremendously expensive in relation to the millions of dollars that new titles require, and could bring in a lot more good PR and really tie together the new Activision with the old. But it's so nontraditional that they just have a hard time doing it. If they can't even see fit to put interview footage on AA, it doesn't bode well for other out-of-the-box ideas.

This is my "reference game" to demonstrate that the 2600's wider color palette and ability to change it on the fly does in fact allow for games on the system that simply could not be done (at least not with tons of dithering) on systems with fixed color palettes (like the Intellivision or Apple II or C=64). The use of color here is directly intertwined with the gameplay. It's not just eyecandy, although it probably is the only 2600 game that one could consider "immersive" in a visual sense. It really is a showcase of the strength of the TIA chip. Has there ever been a more modern driving game that could be considered a successor of Enduro, that has the full day/night/snow/fog environmental treatment? Activision should have made one by now, that's for sure. The one thing I miss with Enduro is analog steering and gas pedal. Control is okay but it is, in the end, digital and there is only so much driving feel you can squeeze out of the joystick. There is a lot of tapping of the stick and the button you have to do at times to approximate the precision you could get from analog controls.