Brian D. Deuel

There is a message that appears in the game that says "Keep playing, the home world is near." There was originally going to be an ending, but it was left out due to ROM space issues. The last actual wave is 16, and then the last four waves repeat. A funny story... some guy played it up to level 75 and then sued Atari when he didn't get to the home world. According to hearsay that Owen Rubin (designer/programmer) received, Atari cut him a check and gave him his own MH machine!

Mine would have to be Pioneer Balloon. I remember playing this during the "fall" of arcades and for some reason having a ton of fun playing it. What are some of your favorite obscure coin-ops?

Multimedia Fusion. And after taking a couple of days off from working on the thing, I managed to eradicate those bugs. I'm done with it after this game is finished, though. I've already put a lot of time into Game Maker and really like its power and flexibility.

I started a Ceiling Zero style game (old Apple II game) using MMF, but MMF has so many bugs and requires so many workarounds that I'm switching to Game Maker and restarting it. MMF can't handle when two instances of the same object collide with other objects at the same time and you need to set a counter when it happens. It would only detect one of the collisions. Everytime I tried to fix this bug, others would pop up. After a week of frustration and trying 581204971 different bugfixes, I'm done with MMF. Besides, I dropped the $15 on GM to register it. I suppose I better get my money's worth

Now this is an excellent package. They even included Major Havoc!!! Definitely worth the $20. The games are a lot more accurate playwise than MAME is, and you can actually PLAY Major Havoc with the mouse. In MAME, it's difficult to find the right setting, and even then, it's still hard to control Rex in the base levels. Hats off to Infogrammes for this one. They finally got it right.

You know, I registered GameMaker and learned how to use it, but I cannot find anyone willing to do any graphics for me. My graphics skills are absolutely ZERO, and I don't want to use clipart or graphics from other games. I'd rather do something original. *sigh* No one seems to like classic-style games or wants to do the graphics for them....

Sorry... I was replying to someone else's post (I forget who) and forgot to quote it. The post in question quoted Gretchen Goes To Nebraska-era King's X lyrics (their best album). I just added to them, then quoted another song. The lyrics were from a song called Pleiades. Now do you see the connection? The second line I quoted was from the same album; a song called Fall On Me.

...or know the laws of heavenlys... Pain, don't fall on me...

A LOT of people forget this. If it wasn't for Atari CREATING the coinop video game, home consoles wouldn't even exist. People think of Atari as "the Atari" and totally disrespect the arcade games. Given a choice, I'd easily take home an arcade game before a 2600 and a cart. To me, that was the true essence of Atari. Now don't get me wrong, I love the 2600; I have lots of great memories of that machine and collect the games to this day. But my respect and love for the company comes from it's TRUE roots- coinop. Atari created Tank, Anti-Aircraft, Stunt Cycle, Canyon Bomber, and Night Driver... all successful coinop classics that PREDATED the 2600. Sadly, these games get no respect for the true classics that they are, because they're black & white and have simple gameplay (read: boring to less-enlightened people). It is my lot in life to save as many of these as possible, and I'm well on my way (up to 6 machines, and countless PCBs; I really need to document these and get them up on my page). For me, the real, true Atari died when Nolan was forced out of the company. Although it continued under Kassar, and some true classics came out during his reign, the company had lost its soul. Tramiel-era Atari was a complete and utter joke. Tramiel shamed and made a mockery of a once-great company. The TRUE Atari lived on as Atari Games (another company that gets no respect it seems), and some more great coinop classics were created during it's existance (give or take a couple years there... Pit Fighter? Primal Rage? Shit me-too games. Ugh). My main point is, Atari was much, much more than just a consumer company. More than consoles; more than just the 2600. Its true roots were coinop, and I choose to remember it and respect it as such.

Ditto. Word for word. Exactly.

Thanks! It appears that enhance.bas is missing from that page, though Not a big deal, though. I can use the info there to write my own routine now Brian

That's right! There isn't really a "simple" command like Apple has ("catalog"). I found more info about Atari's disk I/O here: http://www.atariarchives.org/c1ba/page054.php Thanks for jogging my memory! Brian

I know I'm going to feel REALLY silly for asking this, but no one has scanned in *any* of the original Atari manuals, and the books that are scanned in don't have this answer for me.... I know there's a way to check the file listing on a floppy from Atari BASIC (NOT DOS; I know how to do that). My question is, how? What is the command? It's been *so* long that I've totally forgotten, and my searches have turned up nothing. Any help offered would be appreciated. Brian

Oops! Sorry about the double post. Damn stuck enter key

They need to move back to Los Gatos ,where the REAL innovation took place Maybe I'm just a bit biased about the real early years

They need to move back to Los Gatos ,where the REAL innovation took place Maybe I'm just a bit biased about the real early years

I'm making an attempt to get back into 6502 assembly programming, with the eventual goal of writing a new game on old Atari arcade hardware. I figured I'd brush up using Atari 800-specific 6502. Are there any tools for the Mac (OS 9 or X, doesn't matter) that anyone recommends? I've done some hunting around and came up with a few cross-assemblers, but I was hoping to find something more Atari 800-specific (i.e. xasm on the PC) so I could use my Powerbook during those boring times at work. I've never done any programming on the Mac before, so I'm a little wet behind the ears Any help offered is greatly appreciated!

Maybe I'll load up my Breakout machine and drive down. It's only six hours from here. Anyone bringing a Breakout?

I hope Curt gets every single penny that he can get from this proto. Some people in collector circles seem to think that making money is some kind of sin. It's the same deal with some arcade game collectors. As long as they're getting $50 JAMMA games and handouts, they're fine. The second you want to supplement your income by selling a piece of something you own, rare or not, for the price YOU want, you're suddenly a greedy bastard. By doing this, you're "going against the good of the community." What a load of bollocks. When I was in the coinop amusements operating business, I sure as hell didn't sell games and parts for "the good of the community." I'd have gone out of business if I did that. Things are the same now. If you want something I have, you pay MY price. Can't pay it? Too bad. Look elsewhere for a better price. Maybe you can gripe on a messageboard for sympathy, but that doesn't change things one iota from my end. So Curt makes a few bucks from this cart. He has EVERY DAMN RIGHT to. So he doesn't release the binary until after it's sold. SO WHAT? It's HIS cart. He could smash it into a million pieces and not share it with anyone, and it wouldn't bother me one bit. Why? Because IT'S HIS. It seems to be the same in ALL collector circles. There's always someone who gets jealous and has to complain because they can't afford or can't get their hands on something that, in reality, isn't theirs (or the "community") to begin with. Get over it already. I sure want that mint Quantum on eBay, but I can't afford the $3,000 or whatever they go for these days. Oh well. It's amazing what gripes someone with a mob mentallity can come up with. I know I won't make any new friends with this post, but tough. People who think like this really piss me off. Move to a socialist country if you want to "share" everything.

Thanks for posting the link and the story, Al! If anyone has any questions for Owen, feel free to write him at the address on the site. He's VERY willing to discuss his history or answer any questions you may have.

Halcyon Days, which is formally a commercial collection of classic game programmer interviews (Tim Skelly, John Harris, Jeff "The Yak" Minter and "Uncle" Eugene Jarvis among them) is now online in its entirety!! I bought a copy of this great "book" many years ago and still go back and re-read it frequently. For anyone interested in the history of those who created the most memorable console, computer, and coinop games, this is a must-read. Check it out at The Giant List Of Classic Game Programmers website.