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oky2000

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Posts posted by oky2000

  1. Posted

    Why would anybody leave this classic almost finished A8 game like this and spend a few years on converting some budget crap like Chimera? If it was Elite then fair enough but fraking Chimera?

     

    I've lost interest now, even if it is released I wouldn't bother playing it now, it was released on every other 8 bit computer known to man (including Tatung Einstein and Memotech MTX!) except the VIC-20 and Atari 800XL Should have just released it as is 95% finished and got on with your conversion of Chimera mate. It doesn't take 4 years to add a fraking pause option to all but finished game.

  2. Posted

    Despite on the fact that the C64 version has nothing to do with the PC Hexagon, the Atari version could look and play .... and ... well... sound like the the PC version, just some generation(s) lower.... but worth to get the name "Hexagon" ;)

     

    The C64 version is just 16kb remember and is pretty much like an LCD tabletop game using a lot of precalculated graphics so with 64k and some modifications it could include the more complex gameplay. Also only uses 2 colours which with a single colour for barriers means you don't even need to use colour ram. It's a quick simple port.

     

    Hexagon is just a Commodore PET/APPLE 1 maze game scrolling off the screen but the maze just zooms out like a tunnel in 3D and rotates now. Actually it's pretty much N2O on Playstation 1 gameplay with simple Starglider 2 flat poly which looks a bit too plane.

     

    About as playable long term as a Mastertronic £2 game, very difficult so as to hide simple short lived gameplay :)

  3. Posted

    It's a great game on PC and if nobody is doing an Amiga version I will be doing my own code and graphics to convert it. My version will have 32 shades of each colour piece of hexagon so will be a bit like Tempest 2000 polys. I think the 16 shade mode of A8 would work well similar to that tunnel game on A8 (16 shades of blue, forget the name).

     

    The music does sound more like POKEY (and GB/NES combined) than SID too so it should sound authentic.

     

    Option to switch LEFT/RIGHT controls would be nice too.

     

    (Also be nice to have a disk/tape version on 64 with speech and all music),

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    Quo Vadis was the first epic tile based graphic system generating 10,000 screens of play area inside the 64kb of the Commodore 64 in 1984 by the EDGE software. This was actually explained on National TV on Micro Live via the BBC.

     

    The Intellivision didn't really use the disc for direction all the time but well before NES there was the Suncom Joysensor with standard D9 plug where the 'disc' is hard wired for directional use. NES pads are terrible, I'd plug a zipstick into it to play Galaxian,,,,,,if iy didn't have stupid connectors.

     

    In the EU there was no video game crash, we bought ZX/A8/C64/VIC tapes in 1982 and still in 1984...more of them even :)

     

    (no point reading the rest with such factual cockups already)

     

    Wiki people should have to state if they are US/Jap or unbiased when talking about gaming as outside Japan and USA Nintendo were unheard of especially in the UK/ west EU except from Donkey Kong conversions from Atarisoft/Ocean ;)

     

    Any country that bought NES and PC EGA combo for home when they could have bought ST or Amiga 1000 for $2000 less in 1985 doesn't deserve to comment on 80s gaming history, WTF would they have known? ;)

  5. Posted

    I am personally only interested in sales in UK (western EU at best) because my understanding is Harrier Attack on Spec/Amstrad/C64 sold more copies (250,000+) than most NES games in the UK and it's a horrible early 8bit game.

    I can't speak for EU residents in the 80s but in the UK price was king as was a belief consoles were toys and computers were educational. It's more likely a parent would buy their kid a £299 ST with £9.99-£19.99 RRP games than a backwards step of 8bit console for £150 and inferior games on the whole of £50-60. Commando, Ghosts n Goblins, Defender of the Crown, Rocket Ranger, Gauntlet etc were salivated over on ST/Amiga only. NES was just background noise here, a curiosity.

     

    OTOH SEGA was well known in the UK for arcade gaming and Mastertronic/Virgin were also well known in the 80s and with cheaper games than NES it took the lion's share of a very small potential piece of the home computer tape based gaming market with some slick advertising. Rad Racer on NES was great but I never knew it even existed!

     

    However as my friend pointed out to me there is a single load tape game on C64 that is better in every way than NES Zelda and cost £50 less (Times of Lore). People outside the UK scratch their head why before SNES/GB Nintendo were also rans in the UK but then the Spectrum increased market share by 10% after second generation 64 games like Beach Head started coming out. Maybe in Germany/France/Spain etc price wasn't such an issue but I never met an NES owner once in the 80s and 90s.

     

    I can tell you that Julian Rignall certainly wasn't aspiring to the NES.....because I had a quick go on R'Type on NEC PC ENGINE at a show where he was and that was the Japanese console he wanted to see in the UK he said whilst showing me the system.

     

    More people would remember playing Sonic on Megadrive than SMB3 on NES at the time over here probably. The Megadrive did do well here but what do you expect with such badly programmed Amiga arcade ports like Outrun/Afterburner/Powerdrift :) I'd rather pay £25 more for Megadrive Outrun too haha

     

    The SMS and NES library is limited and expensive and this hampered their sales in the UK where BMX Kidz on 64 was 95% as good as NES Excite bike but cost £2!!!!!!!!!!!!

     

    (sorry for lack of facts)

  8. Posted

    There was a tribute to the ST version of The Pawn on a UK computer show in the 80s and I want to finish that project in a sort of longplay if you like for this grounbreaking adventure game.

     

    What I need though is every single location's graphics from the ST version. Can anyone help rip these?

  10. Posted

    There's footage of it from the 7800 commercial featured in the start of The Videogame Years 1986 Part 3 but I am 100% sure the footage is of the C64 version due to the SID SFX heard. It's a real shame as had this and Rescuue on Fractalus been launch titles and one of them a pack in games it would have shown how boring and childlike the NES library was and more original the the SMS 90% shoddy arcade ports(the NES didn't sell bugger all in the EU so the only competition was the SMS):)

  11. Posted

    Paula is a DMA chip. It plays samples by stealing bus cycles. AMY is/was a synthesizer chip so it's considerably more complex to use, but it can create waveforms internally.

    Which is exactly how Portia (Paula)+ mhz 68000 + DMA bus in Amiga 1000 was meant to be used...not looped 20 second looped samples taken from Tesco tape decks like US Gold did lol you can blame dirty ST ports 1985-90. It's just 4 DACs with AM/FM registers really and meantto be used the same way Windows uss sound drivers this century.

  12. Posted · Edited by oky2000

     

    Edge Magazines comments on it in Jan 2000:

    'The existance of the 65XE still now rather beggars belief.It must be assumed that Atari sought to offer videogamers a taste of home computing several rungs down from it's ST series of the same era, but this market was already in rapid decline.As a gaming system the machine was in competition with with the company's own 7800 console;as a computer it was hideously unde-specced.It was in ploughing millions into launching products such as this that Atari showed tangible signs of loosing the plot.
    Coleco's Adam system had famously proved that console/computer hybrids could not work, but no one at Atari had apparently noticed.'

     

     

    1. Tramiel uses his personal wealth to get Atari.

    2. Inherited company accounts bleeding money.

    3. Stock dumping of XLs a resounding success in EU

    4. Just a $799 to $999 'as entry level product' 520ST != business sense.

     

    3+4 = retooling for new run of 800XL technology in 520ST case with numpad chopped off = quick stop gap. IIRC XEGS was designed to clear massive inventory of A8 carts?

     

    It was all in the 4 Computer Buffs episode with debut of both machines had they looked. EDGE are Speccy owning losers so ignore their ideas and reviews. Most retro collectors know more.

    • Like 1

  13. Posted

     

    I consider that poor analysis on that writer in Edge Magazine's part in regards to the Coleco Adam. The Coleco Adam is not a case study in the failings of a videogame/computer hybrid, it's a case study in a botched launch and initial quality control issues. In fact, early sales were quite strong for the product. It was the initial execution that doomed the product's ultimate potential. Of course there were other factors, like the C-64 decimating the low end of the market that the Adam was meant to compete in, that were in play.

     

    I also don't think it was necessarily a poor strategy to go with the XEGS or any of the other post XL Atari models. In retrospect, the issue was Atari had too many models to choose from by that point. A better strategy would have been to rally around one single model, i.e., give consumes only one choice and make that the new standard spec for software. The XEGS could have easily been that model, though any of the other 64K or greater models could have served the same function. Still, the same thing applied to Atari 8-bit computers by that point as it did with the Coleco Adam--there was no competing with the Commodore 64's combination of price/performance/mindshare.

    I thought Apple II variants were king not C64 in 1983-82 Coleco years?

     

    Plus the Coleco Adam was like a $500 MSX spec machine which was just too much. Bloody leather companies!!

  17. Posted

    How was Popeye in such high res if it could be swapped out for Mario Bros or Donkey Kong? I figure all those games would run at the same resolution being 'conversion kits' of one another.

     

    I'm guessing it's just a trade off for 200% vertical resolution increase for 30fps not 60fps the same way Amigas do. To the video hardware it's still 512x224 x 60 screens each second so still double most arcade games..

     

    It's a shame that so few home computers included selectable interlace feature.

     

    The backgrounds are probably simple because...

    A. Deluce Paint 3 wasn't out

    B. The small 32ish colour pallette which would flicker like hell without 1000s of shades of colour to smooth out interlace transition flicker between the jarring 2bit palette values.

     

    Anyone who has ever seen Workbench 1.x in hi-res interlace vs dynamic interlaced HAM pictures will understand :)

  19. Posted

    I don't think ANY of the classic 8 bit machines from that era can be developed and made production ready for anything like the cheap options available right now. I too bought one of those PSP knock-offs for 25 bucks including postage and the screen on it has to be about 10 buck because it is excellent. So for 10 bucks you have something that is powerful enough to emulate a Gameboy Advance and play Mario Kart Advance etc pretty smoothly.

     

    This added to the fact such boards clearly are full 24 bit any colour anywhere you like on the screen and fully 16bit audio equipped means sadly we are never going to con some third world country to be playing Archon or Monty Mole ever again.

     

    BUT I don't see why there is no room in the market for a DTV style product for Amstrad or A8 etc for around 30 bucks. The DTV had a very tight budget and was already pretty much done....it was just a cost cutting issue compared to the C-ONE computer Jeri was working with as a basis for her ASICs etc.

  21. Posted

    Shopping online with the super high feedback score box shifting twats is not going to help anyone either AND you get the pleasure of wasting a whole afternoon in the post office to send items incorrectly spec'd for you by said pricks via recorded delivery.

     

    Best thing is to just google what you need with hard specs only and take it from there these days. Neither minimum wage shop workers can be expected to help as per the good old 80s independent shops or said box shifting clueless twats on ebay/amazon who had never even heard of 1.8" IDE drives let alone that they had different pin number/assignment to 2.5" IDE drives :)

    • Like 1

  23. Posted

    Atari 2600 on ebay = 5 bucks

    C64 on ebay = 10 bucks

    Atari ST on ebay = 10 bucks

    Amiga 500 on ebay = 20 bucks

    Spectrum on ebay = 10 bucks

     

     

    So for 55 quid you get the whole damned lot....until FPGA boards are made by people with more than 50 pence in their pocket and can mass produce them to cost LESS than all the machines bought together they are a waste of time 100 percent IMO :) The C64DTV is the price point these people should be aiming for...AND 90+ percent compatibility.

     

    I bet the C64 emulation on that thing is horrible, the C64 is a more complex machine than any other to get 100% right in just the sound dept let alone everything else on the motherboard AND 100% disk image compatible for protection/fast load routines left untouched by most cracks.

     

    As an example of what a real business can do with the idea look at the AT GAMES portable megadrive console...it's like a PSP and the emulation is flawless and it even comes with an SD slot to load standard Megadrive BIN images you can find in 2 seconds on google...and this baby with a colour screen built in costs 75% LESS than all these FPGA 'solutions' ;)

  24. Posted

    Just so we can identify fanboy comments from others please can negative comments like "Amiga sucked so hard" be backed up with evidence.

     

    As a creative tool there is no comparison to a PC even in the 2000s let alone 1980s. Even today you can't even find a paint program that will let you take 256 frames of a BSG Viper Mk2 and use the mouse to draw a brush animation over multiple frames. As for the hardware, my A1000 had better build quality than my mid 90s Pentium PC costing £2000+ from a very famous brand. Oh and 99% of PCs have terrible keyboards too...and given they ran a CLI based DOS as your interface that is pretty retarded :) Some 520ST/STM models and some A500 (usually KS 1.2 red LED) had keyboards as good as very expensive Cherry keyboards as did all the professional machines from both Commodore and Atari too. So no, the absolute depravity and retardedness of even using a PC is nothing like using even some of the bottom of the range budget STs or Amigas in either OS ability to stay up or quality of components compared to budget PCs.

     

     

    Yes the Amiga was intended to be an ultimate games console technically but not a restrictive toy one like the NES, it was always meant to have a keyboard, a floppy drive to load games and expandable memory (clearly visible in the prototype case designs). In fact Jay Miner and co had to deceive Commodore management to ensure the front and side expansion slots for memory on the A1000 stayed in the final prototype, you don't need expansion facilities for a mid 80s games console if it is going to be a toy like the NES for young children.

     

    I suppose it was comparable to a console like the PS3 today (had an OS from launch, loaded games from HD not just BD DVDROM and keyboard and mouse support built in) as opposed to the Xbox 360 RRoD design MS launched.

    • Like 1

  25. Posted

    I dug out my own 2600 Jr and all 3 games worked first time after swapping out this Jr. I think something must have gone on the board when Defender cut out after 20 seconds. There's nothing obviously wrong visually with the board or the cartridge slot so maybe I'll just keep it for spares as is...the case is not bad either.

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