almightytodd

Speaking of guitar-playing... I was in a grocery store today and saw a toy electric guitar for 8 bucks. I looked at it, and in my head I put four plastic, colored buttons on the fret board. Then, I imagined a spring-loaded momentary toggle switch in the middle of the body. I imagined this running to the "fire" button pin of an Atari joystick. Then, I mapped the four buttons on the fretboard to the four joystick buttons... ...you see where I'm going with this, don't you? ATARI VCS GUITAR HERO!!! Just add some 2600 rock music and some kind of a descending colored blocks graphics (...maybe hack Zach's Non-Infringing Russian Block game...) and there you go! A 21st century game concept meets 1970's technology!

There's this one game on a Coleco plug-n-play that I have (...hey, it was five bucks - I spend more on the AA batteries it takes to power the thing...) where the object is to grab a fly with chopsticks. The thing is, all you have to do is press the fire button as quickly as you can the moment the fly first appears on the screen. If you play one-player mode, all it does it tell you your reaction time. In the two-player game though, it tells which player has the fastest reaction (I think it does best two-out-of-three, but it's been awhile since I've played it). It's pretty stupid, but add some alcohol, a party atmosphere, maybe some techno music, it could have potential. If anything, it might suggest that the overall loser should have someone else drive him/her home...

Hey vdub, First, let me say that I'm really enjoying following the development of this game in the forum. Thanks so much for sharing this with us and involving us in some of your design decisions. Personally, I liked the brighter colors of some of the earlier versions, but I can see where there isn't much realism in terms of colors that might be used as hotel hallway decor. Ultimately, you're the author, so you get to decide what looks "right" to you. I suppose it probably depends on who you think your target audience is for this game: If you are primarily concerned with aging classic gamers such as myself, the subdued, conservative color tones are probably more appropriate (...my preference for brighter colors not withstanding). If you are thinking of this as a "kid's game" - somewhere between Big Bird's Egg Catch and Air-Sea Battle, then the brighter colors might work better. Thanks again for asking, and congratulations on a terrific new game!

Nice looking demo, Gorf. I've been kicking around some thoughts about "vertical" arcade games ported to horizontal home TV systems. I've discussed it in this 7800 thread, and also this one in the 2600 Forum. It's nice to see someone experimenting with writing the actual code. It may turn out that the 90 degree rotation of these games is just too disorienting to retain the "feel" of the original game. But I think the only way to find out is to try it.

I opened one of mine up today, and saw that there is a rectangular plastic device underneath the control wheel with the electrical leads connected to it. It appears to be glued together. Is the entire unit available as a part? Can it be taken apart and repaired? Thanks,

So far as I can tell, it adds an extra 1,000 points to your score. Other than that, I don't see that it does anything. It doesn't seem to affect your oxygen or energy levels

EXTRA???

I've updated my Secret Quest web site with an explanation of the Sonic Door found on Station 2, a link to a web page that lets you download a stand-alone Secret Quest remake game, and a more accurate explanation of hexadecimal notation. I also added some meta data to the header section of the html file, so some of the web search engines might start finding it. Let me know if you're playing this game and find my site helpful. If you're playing the game, and are farther along in it than I am, I would greatly appreciate it if you could share access codes for higher levels. You could convert the code symbols to hex digits using the chart on my web site, and reply to this post, or PM me. Thanks,

Nukey Shay's hack is AWESOME! It combines a graphical look that is more faithful to the arcade version, while retaining the maze layout and game-play of the original 2600 version. There are so many great hacks of Pac Man. I love playing the different versions, one after the other, and enjoying the variety in mazes, graphical looks, speed and game-play. The 7800 Pac Man collection is really fun too. There are also plenty of DOS, Windows, Java, and Flash versions of Pac Man out there, including the Grandpa pac-man here. It's amazing how such a simple concept can be so much fun and inspire so much variety.

Yes, clicking on the picture from the MSN main page just takes you to the PC World article. I think a more significant link to follow from the tech.msn.com page, is this one, which takes you to an article titled, "The 10 Worst Games of All Time". Ranked number one is Atari's E.T. I believe this is totally undeserved and is the result of an urban legend, born of ignorance. I totally agree with the opinions expressed by Duane Alan Hahn, who explains that if you actually bother to read the manual, and come to understand how to play the game, not only is it definitely not the worst game ever, it's actually one of the best. It is definitely inaccurate to claim that the game "caused" the collapse of the home videogame industry. Atari suffered financially because of it, but that was more due to over-production than to the game itself not being a good game. If the pits had been made smaller (available now as a hack) and perhaps game 1 and 3 had been swapped (...so that the game versions became progressively more difficult the higher the game number... ...intuitive to how most other Atari titles were programmed), it might even had been a huge success. And if Atari had more than five weeks to program it to where they could have done some user testing of it, before rushing it into production to meet the holiday season deadline, these drawbacks might have been discovered and corrected. I noticed another thread starting here, talking about the original Atari port of Pac Man. That game is also on the list, at spot number five...

nope. Yeah, I guess if I'd looked at a few posts down, it might have clicked that Lily's Woods is a Pitfall hack... ...nevermind.

I would think most hacks (...and there are some REALLY good ones) are available only as ROM files, since there are copyright reasons preventing them from being sold on cart. Is that right?

I'm thinking that what has always been lacking for the 7800 system, is four-player games. I believe an adapter could be created, to allow two CX40 joysticks to deliver various voltage divisions of the 5 volts sent to the paddle controllers, which plugged in two to a port, allowing for four-player joystick games. The trouble is, it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario in that such a game would have to be programmed with the four-player joysticks in mind, and then the four-player joystick adapters would have to exist to allow for development of the game. I'm not sure if what made Gauntlet more fun, was that you were trying to stay alive on as few quarters as possible, or if it was the cooperative competition dynamic of three players, with different attributes of speed, strength and magic. I always thought the arcade version of Rampage was more fun with three monsters tearing up the town at the same time too...

This is a terrific little game, vdub. Congratulations on your nearing the finish line.

It's always good to see portions of our technological history restored to working order. I'm doing something similar with some electric guitars that I "saved" from pawn shops. Details here... Do you plan on selling any of them once you have some fully restored with controllers and power supplies? I have a friend who recently acquired a 2600 who tells me the controllers only work in the right port. He said he opened it up and didn't see anything that looked obviously wrong on the PC board. Would you consider taking his in on trade with a nominal fee for your work and for shipping?

I've created a Secret Quest web page with maps and codes for anyone who's interested. If you have additional information to what I've written there, reply to this post, PM me, send smoke signals... whatever. Thanks ,

This is what I'm thinking also. Here are some mock-ups: As you can see, you wouldn't have to physically turn your TV sideways (...or lie on your side) because the scoring/status information would still be oriented horizontally. But I would think the actual gameplay would be a more accurate representation of the coin-op versions, because the spacial relationships of the on-screen objects would be preserved.

Is it just me? Or does it seem like some of the Mattel ports to the 2600 play better than their Intellivision counter-parts, while the Atari ports to Intellivision are better than the 2600 versions?

I'm talking about a true monster gaming PC with the latest video cards and Blue-Ray DVD (like the PS3 has)... I guess I have something like this in mind... (one of the lower-priced AlienWare PCs, actually...)

It looks like Id software DOOM is in the lead with the most votes

To me, consoles like PS3 and X360 are for players who want the experience of playing games on a $2,000 hot-rodded gaming PC... ...without having to spend $2,000 on a hot-rodded gaming PC.

Basically, I'm saying I admire you for not feeling like you need to go along with the apparent consensus that Adventure is the greatest game ever made, and that you're willing to give Secret Quest a chance. So far as "stature" goes, I was referring to your Moderator status, and over 5,000 forum posts. I'M NOT WORTHY! I'M NOT WORTHY!

A very good, objective analysis. Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for in this post. I was playing Dark Chambers last weekend with my 17 year-old daughter. She exclaimed, "Hey, this is like Gauntlet". I was impressed with the level of graphic detail, the cooperative play, and the programming to get a scroller-type action game ported to a 2600. It is significant to me that an Atarian of your stature would take this position. Thanks for your reply. Warren's article was very informative and brought up a lot of issues I hadn't really given thought to. Thank's for posting the link. I think I'll give Adventure another chance... ...after I've spent some more time with SQ. Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful replies to this thread. I was hoping that this wasn't a rehash of a previous discussion. I did a search of the forum for Secret Quest and didn't find anything exactly like this topic, so I hope you found this discussion "fresh". Thanks again.

The game "Adventure" frequently scores very well as one of the "best Atari 2600 games". In fact, the latest "Top 100 2600 Games of all Time" list ranks it as number 2. In contrast, "Secret Quest" does not even make it into the top 100. My first exposure to either of these games was through their inclusion in the Flashback 2 Adventure Games section. I can't help but wonder if the popularity that Adventure enjoys over Secret Quest has its basis in the chronology of the two games. It seems to me that Adventure was ground-breaking in its appearance, as one of the first video games that combined the puzzle-solving nature of role-playing games such as those available for TRS-80 and Apple II computers of that era, with the graphic nature of the then current crop of coin-op arcade games. Playing Adventure was certainly a far different experience from the typical reflex-action games of the time, such as Pong, Air-Sea-Battle, and Combat; games that if not direct ports of coin-op games, were certainly in the same spirit of "try to stay alive and get a higher score". Secret Quest was one of the last games released for the 2600, and had very little new to offer in comparison to the numerous side-scroller action/adventure games being played on the NES at that time. While the "enter a code to restart where you left off" feature was innovative for a 2600 game, it's not as though there weren't any NES games doing something similar (Megaman comes to mind). Still, from my perspective of evaluating each game strictly on its merits as "new to me", I feel that Secret Quest is getting a raw deal. I've tried to give Adventure a chance to become a game that I love to play, but as I direct the motions of my little colored square on the screen, and wind up-and-down along the maze section to try and reach the move-able bridge, I inevitably reach the point where I exclaim, "This is boring!" and instinctively open up the "Deluxe Invaders" hack in an emulator and try to clear a few screens. This past weekend was the first time I gave Secret Quest a real chance. I played it on Stella, so I could stop and take screen-shots along the way to build a map. My joy in completing the first level reminded me of my first experience of playing the PC game, "Doom". I knew that the first level was intentionally simple, compared to the levels that were to come; provided as a "confidence builder" to prevent players from becoming frustrated and giving up before really giving the game a chance. So far, the game seems to have a pretty good balance between puzzle-solving/navigation and fighting bad guys. If you can kill the bad guys quickly enough, you can actually increase your supply of energy/oxygen, as opposed to just trying to keep it from reducing. I get the feeling this will become important later on, as the enemies become harder to kill, and the size of the stations becomes larger. I don't know if there is any context where Adventure and Secret Quest could be compared and evaluated objectively in such a way that SQ could end up rated as the superior game. The fact of the matter is that the history of these two games, and the nostalgic feelings we have when we play them does color our perception of whether we consider them "good" or "bad". The degree of actual participation (or lack thereof) by Nolan Bushnell in the design of the game seems to have an overall negative impact on people's feelings about the game. I'm just trying to give both games a chance, and rate my feelings about them objectively by my own experiences with them.

The solo gaming vs. family/group experience aspect is a really good point. This is an observation that has been made by many here and I believe was one motivating factor in Darrell's creation of the Medieval Mayhem game. I think the idea of bringing people together to share in the videogame experience is the reason behind the huge success of the Wii.