mos6507

Activision Classics DOES use the original ROM images. They may not show up when you try to read the disc, but they are in there in one form or another. It's just that the emulation itself is inaccurate. The PSX only has a 33mhz RISC processor. It's only barely theoretically possible to do a VCS emulation at full framerate. And since AC was a quickie rushjob, there was no way such hand-tuned assembly coding was going to be done. Even so, the colors and the sound probably could have been done better even given a jerkier framerate.

I'm not very good at playing most videogames, but Phoenix is just too easy because I can play it endlessly. The only wave that has any challenge is the mothership wave. The game just doesn't ratchet up the difficulty well enough in the higher waves.

Is this supposed to be a 1450XLD do you think? XLD?

quote: Originally posted by Adrian M: MICROSOFT XBOX. It truly represents the next generation and allows you to play revolutionary (not to mention highly enjoyable) new games such as HALO, Dead or Alive 3, Higher polygon boobs jiggling isn't exactly revolutionary... The bottom line on the XBox, though, is that it's too much like the PC. It's less than half the CPU clock speed of most modern computers, and in short order its GPU will also be equal or less powerful than the average PC graphics card. So it's straddling two demographics, the console and the PC crowd. It will be interesting to see whether it can hold onto market share after it starts to slip into obsolescence vs. the PC. Since real PCs 1gz+ are selling for less than $600, the XBox is a somewhat limited machine in comparison.

Is there any way a Win32/DirectX binary can be compiled with each official release? I mean, it is 2001 and DOS should finally be on the way out. Jeff Miller is no longer updating StellaX so somebody has to provide the Stella emulator to the dominant operating system (Win2K/XP).

I have a Space Duel cocktail and an original B&W Tank upright. I try to stick to good 2+ player games to keep the hobby from being antisocial. So I also have a Wizard of Wor cocktail. The other 2 are 1P at a time, Rastan and Star Castle. I'd like to get a 4P Warlords cocktail some time down the road. I think Cocktails fit into a home setting better than uprights, although they require more space to accomodate players on both sides.

It's not just because Ms Pac and Galaga still make money in the arcades that they cost money. It's because they are also the most popular machines for consumers to buy for their home. Obviously the two phenomena are related. The only way to make this an affordable hobby is to buy machines directly at auction, which usually means they won't work, and know how to fix it. Most nonworking machines have something really minor wrong with them, but because they "don't work" they go for almost nothing. If you buy from somebody who offers restored games you will pay a premium.

Berzerk is the one to find, cuz it has the VOICE.

Did it come out way before Wipeout? Stun Runner is probably Wipeout's grand-daddy.

>> Actually, that pretty much describes both system << I think there are two kinds of dead. A console can be commercially dead in the mainstream and still have a strong aftermarket/homebrew life. The 2600 is 25 years old and falls under that category. I don't think the Jaguar has a particularly large userbase these days, but Songbird has been able to push out several titles. I don't know long-term whether the Jag has much of a future with homebrewing, although the tools are definitely there. It really has to have a cult cachet in order to keep alive.

Nuon's a dead platform now and barely any games were made for it. It's really only useful as an advanced DVD player, and I don't think it's going to be that dominant a DVD chipset in the future.

I actually think some effort should go into reproducing the DPC chip using modern components. Then we could have all sorts of games that utilize its features. Activision was going to use it in more than just Pitfall II, you know.

Because Howard Scott Warshaw shot this in a casual manner over a long period of time, with a non-obtrusive DV camera, the interviewees were in a more casual and genuine mood than is generally possible with interviews. I was especially moved by how Carla Meninsky cried at the end when expressing her nostalgia for the old days. It's one thing for us to be nostalgic of our innocent Atari childhoods because most of us are nostalgic of our childhoods regardless of any real justification, but it is an affirmation of our nostalgia to see the Atari employees expressing similar feelings from their point of view. You really get the sense of it being an idealistic era that can never come again, kinda the way I feel, as an employee in the sector who worked through it, about the brief dot-com boom. My documentary is more technical and reverential in nature rather than introspective, although it has its moments, especially with Nolan, who has more reason to be angst-ridden about what happened to Atari than anybody else.

>> That's a laughable assumption to make of anyone << If the DP guys don't want to disclose what they have or who they know (and they've been very vocal about their oaths of secrecy in this regard) and given that they like to reveal stuff last minute and get everyone all excited, it's not far-fetched to think they have enough mystery titles stashed to keep CGExpo humming for the next decade, whether that includes Pink Panther and Charlie Brown or not.

quote: Originally posted by Scott Stilphen: There's no "if" about it - it was clearly on display for all to see at PhillyClassic. I'm talking about games which even AFTER Philly Classic remain in an unknown status like Pink Panther, Charlie Brown, etc... I would bet that the DP guys have the ROM images to every remaining prototype that is rumored to exist but is not in circulation, and they will continue to control when and whether we will find out they have it, be able to see it, be able to play it, or buy it. BTW, where did the most recent Proto releases to AtariAge come from? None from Digital Press, I presume?

quote: Originally posted by Scott Stilphen: Except for the fact that we now know that it really exists I think it's fair to assume at this point that if it's rumored to exist, they already have a ROM image. It would just be nice if they would let us know and at least send AtariAge a screenshot. I realize that they insist on making these releases into publicity events so there is no way they are going to release the ROMs before they sell carts at a show. I guess it's an improvement over only being able to stare at cart cases under glass. [ 04-29-2002: Message edited by: Glenn Saunders ]

Wild Western? They were going to port that to the 2600, BTW.

I don't know why you'd want to stretch it anyway since everything is going to look too wide. I see this a lot with widescreen TVs. They either crop the top and bottom off the frame or everything is stretched when dealing with standard NTSC signals. I don't see the point of that.

I think Berzerk gets plenty hard in the higher levels because the robots tend to get deposited right next to you at level-start which is quite a handicap, and their shots and movements are so fast that you really have little time to react. If the robots could shoot diagonally, their bolts would probably have to move like the guy's shots do, sliding while pointing at a straight angle, which would be harder to evade than the arcade's diagonal beams. The 2600 could do an HMOVE on a single-width missile to get a 45' angle on the sprite, but there might not be enough time in the kernel to do so.

There seems to be conflicting reports on this, but wasn't Fatal Run released for NTSC? Let's find out once and for all.

128 colors. The Atari 8-bit supports 128 also, or 256 (only in GTIA modes, somewhat limiting). All systems designed by Jay Miner's team (2600, 5200/8-bit, Amiga) have the ability to shift color palettes on a scanline by scanline basis, and sacrifice number of colors per scanline in favor of this feature and a greater color palette. Actually, you can also shift color registers in mid scanline, even on the 2600. Puzzle games like Cubicolor and Klax do this. This was enhanced to its ultimate degree with the Hold-And-Modify effects on the Amiga (which came out initially with a 4096 color palette). (The Lynx, which was designed by an Amiga alum, I think also can shift palettes per scanline.) Most other systems have a fixed (usually 16) color palette, with more of them available on the screen at once at a time. The Apple II, C=64, Intellivision, and so on. The Astrocade actually has a 256 color palette, and also has the ability to shift colors per scanline. But the problem with the Astrocade is that it effectively has half the vertical resolution as the 2600, and since all animation is handled via bitmap graphics, it's hard to really utilize a rainbow effect without also striping your moving objects as well. Since the 2600's objects are handled by sprites, their colors are independent of the playfield. And you can stripe your sprites too. The end result of all this, to me, is that the Atari/Amiga machines tend to have a more artistic quality to them, where you can pick appropriate colors, and other systems tend to look more garish/unnatural and have to resort to dithering to simulate missing hues. Games like Archon for the 8-bits and Enduro for the 2600 put the large color palette of the Atari machines to practical use as a gameplay feature. That's why when discussions comparing the 2600 to other more "modern" systems like the Intellivision come up, I have to bring up the above issues because playfield resolution alone does not tell the whole story of a game system's capabilities.

quote: Originally posted by John K. Harvey: [QB]This can lead to fanatic people calling someone to praise them about their work they did 15-20 years ago.[QB] That may be true for some programmers, but then again, the Activision guys specifically left Atari because of a lack of recognition, and very conspicuously corrected that by putting their names and likenesses on their products. Other 3rd parties from then on tended to also credit their programmers, such as Imagic, Starpath, etc..., while that trend didn't trickle down much at old Atari. If you look at the game business as following that of the movie business, then I don't think it is fair for game developers to expect anonymity anymore than a Hollywood director. Most people in Hollywood take pride in seeing their names in the credit scroll-- even if the end product is a piece of crap, it's still an acheivement. Generally speaking I think we all honor the programmers when we link uncredited games to their creators.

quote: Originally posted by Buyatari: I really din't think the game was slated for release. It was just used for promotion as far as I knew. I always thought they were going to offer the game with the cologne like a package deal. If the end-user was going to ever be able to get a hold of it, I'd consider that a planned release.

quote: Originally posted by Russ Perry Jr: I'm pretty sure you can't mod the game or Supercharger to play an 8K game on it... The 6K limit is all the RAM you have, so you couldn't fit 8K into that 6K no matter what you modified.. The whole idea behind the Cuttle Cart was to take the foundation of the Starpath Supercharger audio system and have it support other larger cart configurations. Unfortunately, this does not include, for instance, an 8K+ all-RAM configuration. It only supports simulations of other cart types (16K+Superchip for instance, being one of the largest).

quote: Originally posted by KAZ: I've heard about this thing, but don't know what it does. Can you play some games ONLY if you have a supercharger? Thanks! FAQ You can get this: Stella CD Here: Hozer Video