oky2000

I have been looking at doing something on a nice game development tool I hear good things about for another system and was wondering if there was something similar to Scorpion Engine for the ST. I know there is a great set of stuff used by programmers, but I am not a machine code programmer and this is more like a modern tool that generates executable games on vintage hardware.

OK I am going to have to say excluding modern stuff so nothing after the eighties. I don't know, I will really have to sit down and play a whole bunch of them but from what I remember it would probably come down to Star Raiders, Berzerk, Space Invaders, Vanguard or Phoenix. Although Space Invaders is a very boring arcade game the extra enhancements possible on the VCS game variations like co-op play improved the longevity a lot. Vanguard is a real technical triumph AND an awesome arcade game. Phoenix for me is also better than Pheenix on Sinclair/ Commodore 16 or Eagle Empire on C64 or Acorn computers for me. There were loads of great games but these are the top 5 of the games I owned. Not sure which one I would pick but definitely in that group of 5. How about you?

The problem with all forms of digital download/online access only gaming is they will all be gone. For an entire generation their fav' games will be lost forever. I feel sorry for these people. I can go and plug in my 2600 light sixer and play Invaders whenever I want to remind me of the awesome start to video gaming of my personal gaming history but for a whole generation they will not be able to do the equivalent sadly.

I owned most, played everything on the cutting edge but of all the systems I love it is the Atari 2600, 800 and C64 that keep my love of retrogaming alive. Don't get me wrong, I like quite a few Colecovision games, ones I owned back then and some I didn't, and some nice Amstrad 464 games like Ikari Warriors but the bulk of my enthusiasm is solely for those 3 platforms. How about you?

Thanks for the heads up, will give it a go. Have about 40+ C64 compatible machines in various states of functionality lol (5 SX-64s for a start and 3 C128D units) International Basketbell was my fav' back then, I used to play for the school team as I was 6ft1 when I was 15....not a great basketball player mind lol

Haha yes shattering the glass plate was fun

One of the early C64 games I had, didn't think much of it back in 84 when I had just got a C64 myself as far as the original goes. Never played the later game though.

AGA is fine when used as designed, i.e. never put into a machine that has no CPU exclusive "Fast RAM" but the problem is the quality of artists and coders writing Amiga 1200/CD32 games were well beneath those writing the best Amiga 1000 compatible games (Lionheart, Beast1 and Lotus II being great examples) but like I said I bought it specifically for creative use, desktop video etc. I think the 520STE should have completely replaced the 520STFM at launch and been priced at £299.99 too. A bit like how Clive Sinclair discontinued the 16kb Spectrum and reduced the price of the 48k model to that of the 16kb by lowering the price by £50 in 1983. This would have meant the software publishers might have put a bit more effort into supporting the STE hardware as the market was no longer split between STFM units sold vs STE units sold in 1989/1990 etc. You have to wonder what Atari were thinking with the £399.99 STE in 1989/90. You don't need to have a Harvard Business Degree to work out that is going to end in tears.

People assume the TED chip is crap, well the sound is for musical use but SFX are up to VCS/7800 quality, when in reality it's the 16kb minimum spec that ruined that machine. In the right hands it's better than the Amstrad (remember the sound from Amstrad games comes from a little 1.5cm speaker inside the case even when using the RF modulator lol so who cares, it ALWAYS sounded bad). 121 colours, hardware pixel offset screen positioning (sub pixel in the case of multicolor mode horizontal scrolling, fast character based screen modes, fast CPU, ways to get many colours per character on a row of characters etc). Had it gone on sale with 48-64kb at £80/$80 as Jack intended it would have wiped the floor with the low end competition. The great ambient sound/sfx/speech of the game is the best bit about the C64 port.

In the UK it was only 3 years after the Amiga 1000 for PAL owners You can say the same about the non-upgrade that is the 'enhanced' chipset of the A3000, A500plus rubbish of 1990/91. Ultimately it comes down to the games, if nobody was making must have games that would sell the system it wouldn't sell anyway. Not sure about the C64, the 64k base spec of RAM was a massive deal and there was a lot of computers purchased on specs around 1982 but at the same time there were some early games even in 1983 that sold the system so the software was there to push the sales. STE only games are as rare as Commodore 128 only games. (yes I know the 128 sold nearly 5 million units)

I would be interested to know the development history of the STE. By the time the STE came out it was pound for pound identical in price to the Amiga, if you are going to do a mid life-cycle upgrade and it can't leapfrog your competition it's a waste of time anyway. Even if you got an extra 512k of RAM for £399.99 it wouldn't have helped sales one bit because by 1989 there were Amiga only or Amiga targeted developments happening but there was hardly any support by publishers for STE specific games. Memory is meaningless when the chipset upgrade is a half measure to your competition that is matching your price and getting the developer time it was bound to get eventually.

Over here in the UK nothing interesting ends up in a landfill, the workers there pick out anything unusual worth more than a few bucks (after checking ebay on their phones) and take them home and sell them anyway.

Of the classic machines sold by Warner/Atari Corp the only ones I am missing are 400 (never got round to it before nice boxed ones became too expensive), 600XL (didn't see the point) and XEGS (have a 65XE and 130XE). I probably have about 8 or 9 machines in total, 2 definitely don't work because the ebay seller was a lying scumbag. 1200XL etc were never sold here in the UK. Doesn't matter, as long as I can find my spare memory modules for the Atari 800 units (I think one is 48k) and the 810 or either of the 1050 disk drives work that's good enough for me as I have about 200 pirate game compilation disks and 30 or so cartridges. I don't really want to break the seal on my 3 XE games cartridges so hopefully my tape copy of Rescue on Fractalus works (the best 8bit game in the world ever and forever).

Although the new VCS is more than an emulation of the original, unlike theC64 products, theC64 fullsize still isn't a drop in replacement. You can't use it on a CRT, you can't use a Euromax Zipstik as there is hardly any support for even the most common USB to D9 adaptor, you can't plug in and play real carts and you can't load real disks or tapes. The only real advantage it has is the keyboard layout and all the PETSCII graphics printed on the front of all the keys for coding in BASIC. They do both play on powerful nostalgia, the total sales of C64, SX-64 and C128 models is not a million miles away to those of the VCS models of the past, that is really why I was curious. Both use an emulator to play their original games and both are HDMI only was my thinking really.

Sadly I had to sell my mint in mint box 2600 light sixer over a decade ago (mortgage!) and was only left with a working Jr when I moved a while back. I've been putting up with this failing 2600jr which has no nostalgic memory in use for me and needs to be warmed up like some old British classic car for 5 minutes before you can use it in colour. So I have a few consoles, a vader, light sixer and 4 switch woody. None of them work, I think all 3 are dead (my stuff has been packed away whilst repairing this house) but not sure. Now that I have a working PSU via the Jr I have a good place to start. So really would appreciate some links to sites or videos covering the most common problems. Would like to get the six switch woody working as that's what I had and recently got a really lovely condition outer box and set of manuals/leaflets etc from a matching 1980 unit I had as a kid. Not sure 6 and 4 switch models are completely interchangeable either but that's all I have found so far. Even if I find one that does work by some miracle I'd still like to get another one working well with clean RF output in the future to use on the big CRT TV

One developer can make a difference? lol

I run a 2020 version of Mint, because of a driver issue, on my Dad's Core 2 Duo laptop with just 2gb RAM so I am sure a 64bit AMD will be fine.

Personally, if it doesn't have a TIA chip then it isn't a 2600/VCS in my book, YMMV. I wonder how units sold compare with something like theC64 fullsize, which I don't like but at least I have constructive criticism about why

Only played two Knight Rider games (C64 and PC Engine) and I wouldn't buy either of them lol.

It was a system that was pushed hard many times. Also has the best ever version of Space Invaders thanks to all the great gameplay options added unique to that version.

I liked ACE, but mostly because it was the precursor to magazines like EDGE. It had info on the latest tech just round the corner and covered machines you might not buy, like Archimedes and PC Engine etc etc. I didn't buy magazines for games reviews because the reviewers had no knowledge of what the host hardware was capable of and therefore their opinions mean diddlysquat.

Probably should have mentioned this is a mint, including electronic components wise, condition Sony Trinitron from about 1979 and it was hardly ever used before I bought it nearly 2 decades ago and stored it away so the tube is also in mint condition. The TV is fine, tested it on a Colecovision and a 64C which I know has good quality output and it's fine, the CRT tube is still world class, hence the legend of Trinitron I can't vouch for the age/condition of the caps/resistors etc in the 800 or 800XL units I have available though and I wasn't sure if the picture quality was better on one model vs the other. I am pretty sure I have a 65XE and 130XE somewhere too but for nostalgia I wanted to use an 800 or 800XL. There is a difference between early breadbin vs late 64C units for example, the C64 breadbin has much less chroma crosstalk (crosshatching on different coloured pixel combinations) than the 64C units of the 1990s but much less gamma too (brightness/contrast of output signal) vs the 64C so technically it comes down to personal preference which you would use. For the 800 vs 800XL it basically comes down to whether I need to play any 64k games, don't think I have any 800XL only games anyway. LCD is not really my thing, I have a plasma TV but due to the way "modern" TVs use flash conversion digitisers to interpret a composite signal it's a real over compressed digital mess, in contrast anything with SCART RGB input looks perfect with no compression alaising etc. Plus LCD will never give you the correct look for some games, certainly that's the case with some C64 games like Xerons (look like monochrome sprites on LCD/Plasma but on my Trinitrons they are colourful sprites etc). Will probably test out my 800XL, have to find the extra memory modules for my 800 first. Hopefully being in brand new condition including the packaging the machine is hardly used as it seems to be looking at the physical condition so it might be fine. When I have more space I will set up an 800 with 810 disk drive in another room and on a monitor.

This is the C64 update, not a fan of the new music but the rest is cool.

Will soon be time when I can permanently have an Atari computer set up and I have chosen to use it on a TV with a CRT tube very similar to the one I used for my VCS and C64 and that my friend had for his Atari 800. Problem is this 1979 TV only has RF input, two actually, so I was wondering which machine had the best RF output generally speaking? (obviously aging components in the modulator will affect this just as much as how they came out of the factory).

The difference between Dropzone and Defender/Stargate is almost as much as the difference between Gauntlet and Druid really. I think on the Atari my favourite game of his was International Karate, probably the same on the C64.