mos6507

quote: Originally posted by jpv108: Thanks. I'll try that tonight. I have a P4 1.4 with 128mb RAM and z26 was running nicely on Windows ME. Thanks again. You'd think a cpu 1000 times faster (in MHz) than the 2600 would be enough.

quote: Originally posted by Albert: Interesting, I wasn't aware that this was being done with Vectrex cases. But I can understand this, given as there aren't a ton of common Vectrex games floating around out there that you'd want to cannibalize. I'd like to learn more about this as it's something I might be interested in doing at some point. ..Al thread

It's already been done with Vectrex cases. If someone bites the bullet and makes a single reasonably sized run then ALL homebrewers can buy from that source. I think there is enough going on in the 2600 scene to allow for that. Homebrew 2600 games have been in development for over half a decade and there are no signs of it slowing down anytime soon. And making new PCBs isn't prohibitively expensive either. A lot cheaper to prototype than making the metal mold for plastic cases. Regardless of the current rarity of OCs, I disagree on principle to cannibalizing old cartridges. It's also a slower process to have to remove the label, et. al. vs. just assembling a new cart and popping an EPROM into a new PCB.

I just think the hardware potential of a console is of little importance if no games express that potential. It's easy to claim that BS only uses 60% of the system's potential, but it's hard to prove it by showing an example of the system using 100%. If it takes 5 years to write a game for the Jag that exploits 60% of the system's potential then it's utterly impractical to write a game that reaches 100%. That's why I'd rather benchmark the system against Battlesphere than some theoretical maximum. 2D games don't really push the hardware the way 3D games do. There few Jag games that are hampered by 2D slowdown whereas Battlesphere is probably the only 3D game in the entire catalog that _doesn't_ have a jerky framerate (by today's standards).

>> Battlemorph, Iron Soldier 1&2, Missle Command 3d, DOOM and several others all have very respectable frame rates. Rayman, SuperBurnout and Skiing&Snowboarding all run at 60fps!<< In today's terms, any 3D game that runs below 30fps is not an acceptable framerate. I'm not sure any other Jag game besides BS matches BS. 2D framerates aren't much to be proud of anymore. Consoles are judged based on their 3D performance. 2D was pretty much "perfected" by the time the Saturn came out.

>> i dont quite get VCSS. Is it making actual atari games or is it just a "pretend atari" maker, where you do things not possible on the 2600. << It's a pretend Atari. The rules are loose enough that it's all too easy to make a graphic that can't be done on the Atari. I doubt it enforces only 2 8-bit sprites per scanline either. I don't blame the VCSS author, though. The limitations of the 2600 are hard to distill into an easy set of rules. It's hard to say what is or isn't impossible, although there are some absolute limits.

Want open sesame? Bid for it! Open Sesame and other Bitcorp games

The Death Derby screenshots are up now.

Old Site

Death Derby is an ongoing homebrew project to port the infamous 1976 Exidy Death Race arcade game to the Atari 2600. I have a redesigned homepage up so that people can find out more about the original Death Race film, the game, the other ports and inspired works, and also to follow the development of Death Derby from version to version. Please have a look. Death Derby

Night Driver is the first 3D racing game, well, debatable since 280Zzzap and Speed Freak were also out around the same time. Night Driver sit down is a wonderful machine. It has an unusual fiberglass cabinet. Today, only the very earliest B&W games like Pong and Computer Space are in high demand, but one day I think all the pre- Space Invaders titles will appreciate, if for no other reason than the attrition of decades of lack of interest has reduced their numbers to the single digits. They definitely are historical artefacts. [ 11-02-2001: Message edited by: Glenn Saunders ]

quote: Originally posted by Atari-Jess: i still want to get this game. it be fun, sure it may not be a real defender but what are you expecting a 2d game thats just a little better than that defender 2 hack? I just think sometimes the shift from 2D to 3D changes the gameplay to the extent that you shouldn't even call it a remake. Most classic games' 2D perspective is a necessity because it provides you a clear view of danger all around your ship. A 3D perspective, even a behind the ship one, does not give you a clear view of danger. It's a tunnel-vision view. It therefore gives you a radar of some kind (Spy Hunter has one, the original didn't need it) to make up for the tunnel-vision so you then have to spend most of your time decoding little 2D blips on the radar to avoid being cheap-shotted from the side or the rear. The radar-dependency thing goes all the way back to games like Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator. In that game, for instance, the 3D pane is almost useless as you pretty much play it like a mini game of Asteroids in the radar pane. Of course, Defender had the Radar originally anyway, but I wonder how close-range-combat is going to be handled, now from all angles including the left and right sides, while you still may only have one gun in the front. I can accept realistic flight sim perspective if the enemies move with similar airplane like physics, but the enemies in Defender stop on a dime and are relentless. They require quick-second reflexes and a lot of dodging. I don't see that possible with a flight sim type game. And imagine how tough it will be to pick up falling humanoids in a 1st person flight-sim type model vs. a 2D scrolling model. It's kinda like Microsoft Word. Why keep releasing updates if it's got everything you need already? There does come a point where any further improvements are actually degrades.

There is indeed a PSX disc with Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Island. It's one of the few PSX games I bought. It's great, although the sound is somewhat tinny compared to my memories of the arcade game. BB is one of the few mid 80s games I used to like in the arcades. Other high points for me were Rastan, Rampart, Rampage, and Space Lords. Rastan, unfortunately, never saw a good home conversion on a 32-bit or greater system. The Genesis game they made sucked rocks. I have the SMS Rastan cart but I don't have a SMS so I haven't played it yet. From what I heard, it actually playes better than the Genesis game.

It's rare alright. And the one I donated to the AtariAge auction has got to be the rarest of the rare, because it has the accidental reversed endlabel. I wonder how many are like that? I didn't do that, it's the way it came out of the factory. Sorta like the Pole Positn goofup! Bid now! Signed NTSC Motorodeo

The 7800s biggest weakness was in its horizontal resolution. Most games featured 160 horizontal res which was pretty weak by mid 80s standards. It has a 320 horizontal res but I don't think there is enough screenram to allow for the entire screen being that res, or you have only 2 color per scanline in that mode or something. Few games that I know of used the higher resolution mode. The NES therefore had an effectively higher resolution (which I think is 256 horizontal, a weird res to use compared to the C=64 and Atari 8-bits that used 320, but convenient for 8-bit CPUs to store the X coordinate in one byte). I think the NES can do many more colors per scanline, but has a more limited palette overall (52 colors vs. 128 or 256 on the 7800), and can't push sprites as effectively (regardless of how you classify 7800 sprites, games like Robotron definitely demonstrate how many simultaneous moving objects you can have).

There is a book, player missile graphics on the Atari in Basic. There are ways to do fast graphics routines in Basic, but it takes a lot of peeks and pokes, which necessitates a lot of information about the underlying hardware anyway (like assembly).

quote: Originally posted by Secret Quest: I often wonder why there isn't "Adult" games for PS2 and Nintendo. Somewhere out there has to be some perverts who would like this sort of thing. They could ever have there own special controllers...... ahhhh I'm thinking too much about this. Dead or Alive is the first "jiggle" videogame, that's for sure.

I always thought one row of the invaders looked like the McDonalds "Fry Guys".

While I can certainly imagine how the game will play in a 3D environment, it's going to have a very different feel than the original. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but in this case I doubt it'll be as much fun as the original. But I'd like to reserve judgement until it's released and we have a chance to play it. << I can bet for one thing there won't be a REVERSE button. Imagine the shock of the perspective change with that if it stayed behind the ship.

Maybe Ken can comment on what's inside these things? You may be surprised to find out.

I don't see how it will play like Defender in a 3D perspective. I can see it being a lot harder that way. Spy Hunter ini 3D, yes, but not Defender. We'll see.

I think mascots are an outdated concept. It didn't matter pre NES, and it didn't matter when the Sony Playstation came on the scene with no Mascot (they tried using Sophia from Toshinden but that was't really serious). Mascots seemed to matter when kids wanted to play 2D platformers like Sonic and Super Mario Brothers more than any other genre. It's like they looked at videogames as interactive cartoons. While 3D platformers are around today, the dominance of that genre is gone. The gaming demographic has also gotten older in the last 15 years. Sonic lost most of its luster, for instance, during the Dreamcast's run. Nobody really cared anymore about that icon. Nintendo still clings to Mario, though, but that just illustrates their difficulty responding to changes in the industry. If you are talking about branding, branding is merely a reputation for a company. It doesn't have to be a mascot per se. Sony developed a representation for good 3D games and variety in titles. Atari had a good reputation with arcade action type games before.

I think part of what made Atari great is that there WAS NO FRANCHISE. NO MASCOT. That's what the classic game era was all about. Character isn't the issue. Atari didn't need Sonic. It didn't need to pander to a kiddie audience. It just had great classic games. No BS. No sequelitis. Just great games.

Right around the events of September 11th was the California Extreme show and I decided not to attend. For a while I was thinking that videogames were pretty meaningless compared to what was going on. However, I have read reports that people are retreating for "comfort food" so to speak. The ratings on the Gilligan's Island docudrama, for instance. I read something about the game industry that indicated that people are buying fewer new games and are playing games that they feel have tried and true replayability instead. I was wondering whether you think this will result in more interest in classic games as it evokes an earlier more innocent era? To me, it has strengthened my resolve to finish my 2600 game, as the programming is a calming exercise for me. Not that Death Race is in any way a wholesome type of game, but it is going to be highly kathartic. One could certainly picture the pedestrians as anybody you wanted, including al-Qaeda terrorists.

>>Antidrug ethics already existed in the culture of that time. That's why the drug scene was said to be part of the counterculture.<< Depends on the agegroup. The 60s youth counterculture became the mainstream in the 70s. The 70s were the ME decade, the excess decade, as you recall. As we live in a democracy, baby boomers defined what the norms were by virtue of their numbers in relation to the rest of society. Certainly to most anyone a generation older looks at the younger generation as a counterculture. As a GenXer I look at GenY rap-rock, tattoos and tongue studs as counterculture And people change as they shift from age bracket to age bracket. If you look at the game offerings at Nolan's current startup, uWink, you'd probably come to the conclusion that he's gotten way conservative in his old age. There aren't even any action games there.