Cybergoth

Hi there! That's even worse than Arkanoid. The problem is what you have to display on one horizontal line. While turning the game by 90° won't help anything for the bricks, you have to additionally display the bat on every line. In the normal Arkanoid display the bat and the bricks are at least always clearly separated. I'd rather try adopting the original Arkanoid. As Thomas said, it might be doable with some programming tricks. Some intelligent flicker routine might be able to display every moving object with a single sprite and there might be a clever solution for the bricks too. It's exactly 100 levels, I once beat it. Well, no chance to create a brickwall with a single player. You can fill the whole screen with a single sprite, but there'd always be horizontal gaps between the bricks. Certainly, both games should be doable somehow. No. It's definetely easier with the Arkanoid approach. Try looking at this, if you're looking for a doable, yet still impressive first 2600 game idea to programm: http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=13439 Greetings, Manuel

Hi there! Here: Greetings, Manuel

Ignore this double post...

Hi there! I just found this entry about the Phantasy Star Collection: http://www.digitaleclipse.com/live/main/ma...php?v=pr&id=419 It is saying that the game is running 2 different emulators, Master System for PS1 and Mega Drive for PS2 & PS3. Well, so the good news is that this is indicating towards possible SNES emulation. The bad news is that I don't need to wait any longer for this GBA package, since I won't buy the same games twice. Too bad. They should've written a generic GBA engine for Phantasy Star and then ported all three games into the same engine, maybe even creating one single big game out of all three of them - with state of the art graphics and sound... Greetings, Manuel

One of the things why you have to love the Opera Browser, is its ability to zoom pages in and out... Greetings, Manuel

Hi Eckhard, Now I'm curious. If both the TIA and the RIOT RAM are mirrored on both pages, how can you be sure that the stack really is accessing page 1? Just because this is where the stack is located in the C64? Greetings, Manuel

Hi there! Hehe, isn't the beginning of Shakiras "Underneath Your Clothes" sounding supiciously close to "Eternal Flame", too? Pacman for Shakira too! Ah - and getting a little Off-Topic here , did everyone else notice too how Britney & Christina are recently copycating Shakira? Hope she trademarked her look and the "crawling through mud in music videos" thing... :D Greetings, Manuel

Hi Debugger! None of the original library, but homebrews like Thrust & QB do. Actually it's not page 1, but the zeropage and yes, there's the TIA registers located. You can even do tricky stuff like writing to TIA registers with PHP But normally SP is set to $FF, using the same $80 bytes you have for your game data. Every JSR = 2 bytes less RAM... Greetings, Manuel

Hi again! I just completed an eBay deal for "Adventures on GX-12" (8$ / CIB! ) So from today on I'm only looking for: - Bank Heist - Beamrider - Bermuda Triangle If you have one of these for sale / trade, please make an offer. I will trade any combination for these games (PAL:PAL, NTSC:NTSC, PAL:NTSC, NTSC:PAL) games - though I have only a few spare NTSC titles to offer and would generally prefer to get PAL games Greetings, Manuel

Hi there! Well, that's Sega->Nintendo emulation. But considering Nintendo had 1:1 SNES ports in mind when developing the GBA, it might be a lot easier, don't you think? Just assume that the graphics CPU of the GBA has modes which are compatible or extremely similar to the SNES modes? While I thought recompiling was the way how most of the stuff is done (SMA2/SMA3, Earthworm Jim... etc.) All that stuttering in BoF made me think - I mean Golden Sun does 10 times more mayhem on the screen during battle scenes and there's not the slightest sign of dropping framerates like I experience in Breath of Fire... Technically speaking, I don't think BoF was a killer app being on the limit of the SNES either, so emulation is my first guess. Greetings, Manuel

Hi there! While playing "Breath of Fire" on the GBA, I noticed that during some scenes the game starts to stutter, especially when running underwater-with-scrolling and in some of the more complex battle scenes, when some "kill" sound & animation is played, it stutters too quite regularly. Now I really wonder wether Capcom is just running the game on some sort of a SNES emulator? Maybe not a full-blown SNES emulator, but one that was tweaked especially to be good enough to play BoF & BoF2? So maybe they converted all GFX to fit the screen, but all game calculations run through an emulation of the SNES CPU? Greetings, Manuel

Hi there! Uhm... if I can choose between buying it here and from someone else, what do you mean with "event-exclusive" then Certainly. I wouldn't even repacke them. I think all this special / limited / exclusive three new levels plus three bits altered in the title screen and thereby artificially creating extra collectors items at all cost is complete nonsense. I'd just try to have some games debuting at your show and then sell the very same game / same package unlimited afterwards. Maybe offer the first run 5$ cheaper for con buyers or let the programmer autograph the con boxes or something like that. Greetings, Manuel

WWE.com Cool, you can win an autograph from The Rock! As anyone would've guessed, my favourite wrestler is the Undertaker, but since "The Scorpion King" The Rock is a close second place Greetings, Manuel

Hi Stan! I fail to see the point you're making. What would you criticise in such a policy? Greetings, Manuel

Space Instigators is Xype Release #07, yes Greetings, Manuel

Hi Tim! *lol* I never knew the original title for that, but I can't fail to ID the trademark running gag. What are the orignal words for the second one? Something like "Are you testing rockets here?" -> Love them chain-reactions in the movie! Greetings, Manuel

Hi Ze_ro! I can comment on some titles as well... - Super Mario Advance 1/2/3 (I already have most of these on the SNES, but a handheld version might be fun) I found this is not the case for 1 & 2. I haven't played 3 yet, but I got bored with the other two sooo quick - don't buy them if you excessivly played the originals. Actually I ususally end up playing the built in bonus, a revamped version of the original Mario Bros. - Castlevania (I know the first one is dark, but I never had any problems with Gameboy screens) G-O-D! One of the major titles for the system! The first is almost perfect, while the second is all-in-all way too easy and has the magic-system somewhat ruined. It has improved graphics though and is still worth the money. But try "Circle..." first! - Mega Man Battle Network (Is this a "normal" Mega Man game? Or is this something different than what I'm expecting?) This is sort of an RPG, only it has very actionized battle scenes. While interesting at first, after two days of playing it I got so annoyed with the ultra-high RE-rate and the action scenes getting constantly worse to play, so that I quit it. Due to the many battles, you're loosing your direction quite too often. On the other hand it's a nice story and very entertaining for a while. - Doom Again, don't touch this if you know the original in and out - it's not the fun you'd expect. I'd rather say try Eck's vs. Sever, being original GBA work. - Contra Advance (I didn't realize this existed until I browsed GameFAQs... is this any good?) - Metroid Fusion (Not out yet, I know...) Not yet available in Germany. - Earthworm Jim (Just like the 16-bit versions?) Exactly. As usual I got bored quickly. Any gag in it is just worth seeing it once and if you did before, it'll be disappointing. Almost a 1:1 conversion though. - Street Fighter Alpha 3 (4 buttons? Hmm...) Not yet available in Germany. - Atari Anniversary Edition Didn't touch it, why should I pay for 1:1 conversions of stoneage arcade machines? - Rayman Advance (Just like the Jaguar version?) ULTRA-HARD! If you're in for a challenge of another kind, try it! - Motocross Maniacs Advance (I loved the B&W version!) Haven't seen this yet. - Sonic Advance Nice. Brandnew levels, so I had more fun with it than with the SMAs. - F-Zero Advance Too hard again for me. - Super Mario Kart Killer Application! Still In the charts from day one - for good reasons. You can play it virtually forever, there's so much packed in this game, even I as a single player am still not bored with it after months. It contains 20 original courses plus the 20 SNES tracks, so you'll need a long time to master them all. Golden Sun is worth the money. It's tons of eye-candy, but still they didn't forget about the game. I had my 50+ hours fun with it, so - definitely recommended! Advance Wars: Must have! I'm still playing it at least once a week and I own it since the day it was released. Well, generally I can only recommend "Try before you buy" since virtually 95+% of the available games are crap. Greetings, Manuel

Hi Eric, Even if they maybe didn't always sound like that, that was my intention. Actually all you do with your game is your decission. You know, back then I had posted some mails like "Couldn't you add this, couldn't you try that" and when I got the impression you didn't care much about any suggestions (not only mine), since you seemed like wanting to have it rather released as quick as possible (for whatever reasons), I just quit any further suggestions. Actually I was really surprised to the positive that you at least added the radar thing - if only because there were so many people asking for it. I think probably others thought similar, if you check back your mails, you'll probably notice that you got virtually no more comments for the final version - not the best sign normally. It's like that - people do not want to critisize the work of someone else sitting in the same boat. I just thought, well, he wants it released, let him release it. Good luck to him. You know - I never said a word until you started publically excusing the lack of rather obvious features with the "not enough bytes" thing. At that point the programmer in me just had to say something... Then you asked me wether I don't rather want you to develop a new game and I just had to answer truthfull again, since "two rushed games still don't make one excellent..." I'm looking forward to that, really - maybe if the sequel to Skeleton is having some of the features I was hoping to see in the first, I'll even buy it. Though I think I didn't really attack you or your work, just stating my feelings and opinions - if you ever felt personally offended from anything I've written in this thread I want to apologize for that. And I want to apologize to everyone who bought Skeleton and really enjoys playing it - I didn't want to spoil the fun for you. Just pretend you never read the thread and wait for the even better sequel Greetings, Manuel

Huhu Marco! The labels/boxes have multiple languages Hm... on my label all is written in english only. But there's another label layout difference: On my Alien cartride is an actual screenshot of the game displayed, whereas on the auctioned Bank Heist there's a painted label. Would this probably indicate another PAL/NTSC difference too? Greetings, Manuel

Huhu! Habt ihr Euch mal angesehen, was der Verkäufer gerade noch alles anbietet? Zeug wie Obelix, TAZ, Motorodeo, etc... Einzelne Spiele von ihm sind schon über 20€ Grüße, Manuel

Hi Marco! How can one tell wether it's PAL or NTSC? I've "Alien" from Fox, but I wouldn't see any detail on the cartridge hinting which TV format it is for. Are them PAL cartridges different in any visual way? BTW: With the "Bank Heist" cartridge you gave me in FfM there's something odd: You can drive your car straight into the walls on top of the labyrinth! I'm soon gonna send it to Eckhard Stolberg to have it dumped, so I can further investigate. I'm very curious wether it's just an EPROM gone bad or some general pirate-introduced bug. I'll further report soon! Greetings, Manuel

Hi there! *lol* ...well... Hm... I don't know. It's like, with the old classics, you never had a chance to just tell the programmer something like "It's great, but why didn't you just...". And, though it's the programmers decission as to "when" he declares a game finished, I don't like to hear bad excuses afterwards like "space" and "time", when it's actually either "laziness" or "lost interest" or "I can't wait a day longer to see my own name finally associated with an Atari game box" or something like that. Yes, it might be the programmer in me. I - and probably another three dozen of people (including Eric himself) could probably add a thing like a level counter easily over night - so no "technical" excuse for that, please. There's the gamer in me speaking too, saying that the gameplay could've been expanded here and there. There's the homebrewer in me speaking too, being proud of my craft. I've a certain idea of a level of quality a game should reach before demanding 25+ $/€ for it. Again, Skeleton had all the potetial to be an outstanding game, but right now it's just average. All my own opinion certainly. Feel free to let yours differ Greetings, Manuel

Hi Eric, Well, sorry, but the answer is a clear no. I'd prefer if you'd add some more gameplay to Skeleton and would polish it some more. I was very sad when after the first promising version you just declared it finished, since the engine you created had so much potential for a really excellent game. I'm not complaining though, since I didn't buy it yet and never will as is. Greetings, Manuel

Huhu! Tsk, tsk Schon gesehen... phew... verdächtig viel Interesse für eine Auktion, die noch über 5 Tage läuft. Dabei ist es doch garantiert NTSC... Grüße, Manuel

Huhu! Cool, danke! Wenn es klappt werde ich mich revanchieren! Grüße, Manuel