Lord-Chaos

June 15, 2003

I find The kids controller about as often as a track ball controller. If im lucky 1 -2 every few months in the wild. Finding the overlay for the kids games is very hard most of the time they are all bent up or have holes in them.

The games seem to be really common in PAL countries ,especially Big Bird´s Egg Catch and Cookie Monster Munch , can be found new in box with overlays (I have lots of them).

But the Kids Controllers seem to be as rare as the ATARI Lightgun.

ATARI maybe did not ship many units to Europe , but made lots of the games.

Thimo

June 15, 2003

Anyone knows if the Kids Controllers are rare ? I did not find any Kids Controller for years , but lots of the similar Video Touchpad and the Keyboard Controllers.

I seems that ATARI produced many more games that required special controllers than they made those special controllers - seems to be the same with the ATARI Lightgun , didn´t see Lightguns "in the wild" for years , only overpriced Lightguns on ebay.

But there are lots of Lightgun-only games,especially for the XEGS and the 7800 ...

Thimo

June 14, 2003

Softsynth is a music program for the ATARI 8 bit that allows to create own waveforms ,similar to the AMIGA.

I don´t know if it´s well-known , it was created in 1985 AFAIK , and released as Public Domain in 1989.

You can create great music with this program , but it takes much CPU time,so the screen usually is blank.

It´s possible to show some Graphics 3 lines without much loss of quality , but higher resolutions make the music sound bad.

To make music , you have to use some sort of music-programming language , the program is written in BASIC +some machine routines and it´s possible to use music in own programs.

Since it´s Public Domain,there are no copyright problems.

I also have other Public Domain programs from Europe which may be not so common outside of Europe.I also have programs from magazines , since the magazines are dead now,this should be no problem,too.

I may upload the files somewhere , maybe ATARIAGE adds an ATARI 8 Bit Download site soon , but there´s far more ATARI 8 Bit stuff than ATARI 2600 stuff.

Thimo

June 14, 2003

i can remember me playing alley cat for hours & days... one masterpieve as i find it unique & outstanding, uses all facilities of atari computers, has nothing to do with "killing" space ship... it's kind of nintendo game... fresh idea... i compare it with mr. moskito... a rare new game idea...

hve

ps. and the sampled "miao" of the cat is brilliant...

Yes,I agree.This is one of my favourite games,too.Played it for hours.I have bought the game on cassette 15 years ago ...

And the graphics are really good.This game shows , that ATARI games can look great.The ATARI version certainly is the best ,far better looking than the PC CGA version.

Thimo

June 11, 2003

Maybe I´ll try this later when I ´ve learned more about the ATARI 2600 if no one programs it.

The problem is that a good version of this game requires a lot of programming skill and I´m working on an "easier" project now.

The biggest problem would be the "physics"-engine , the limited amount of RAM , the sampled speech.Definitely a 32K game or more.

I´ll start with an 8K game , something completely different.

The best way of improving ATARI 2600 skills is by programming.

Same problems with Arkanoid or Krakout-type games , would not be possible to make a good version in just 8K.

But its time for a better Breakout,because Breakout and Super Breakout are really old now...

Thimo

June 11, 2003

Which games do you think flicker the most ?

AFAIK most or all of the Activision games did not use techniques that produced flickering.

But I have some games with annoying flickering:

Phantom Tank (Bitcorp) :

Your own tank doesn´t flicker,but it seems that they´ve used 1 sprite to display 5 enemy tanks.This can be quite annoying.

But the Coleco version (Tank Wars) of this game also flickers.

Mission 3000 (Bitcorp) :

Many sprites in this space game,but it isn´t so annoying as in Phantom Tank.

Any other games with annoying flickering ?

Thimo

June 10, 2003

He definiely would be better off selling the items in pieces. Granted it is a bit more work but more likely to sell. Only a serious collector would be remotely interested in such items and serious collectors probably already have a majority of the items that were listed.

Yes.No one would pay that much for these games.

Collectors only search certain games and re-sellers won´t pay that much.

He should offer each of the "better" games in a single auction and may offer "not-so-good" games in auctions together with hardware/or 5 games in one auction.

This can´t be much more expensive than such an auction.

Nobody bids on this , the same with all the huge ,overpriced collections.

Thimo

June 9, 2003

I´ve posted the idea of a C64 to ATARI 2600 port of this classic game a few months ago.

Anyone now working on this project ?

I must admit that I don´t have the skills for such a game,so I cannot write it on the ATARI 2600,on the ATARI 800 it would be possible,but not on the ATARI 2600.

I think this one is something for the skilled ATARI 2600 programmers , because it has some physics , many screens and the original even has sampled speech.

So it has to be at least 16K,better 32K.

BTW. Anyone working on an Arkanoid or Krakout -game , a better Breakout game now for the 2600 ? I mean this is difficult,too , especially with Paddles , so I cannot program it for the 2600 , but maybe someone else ?

On the ATARI 800,there are enough Arkanoid-games (Arkanoid,Ataroid,Unicum) , so on this system it wouldn´t be a challenge.Breakout can be programmed in BASIC in a few hours on this machine.

Thimo

June 9, 2003

I offer all my games on ebay now :

http://cgi6.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewS...owpics=1&stab=0

Although I don´t have really rare games , I have some games that were only released as PAL versions - shrinkwrapped FATAL Run by ATARI , boxed Ghostbusters 2 by Salu for example.

And many of the ATARI 2600 games are special versions that you may only find in Europe or Australia , this may be interesting for collectors.

There also are some NTSC games , some ATARI NTSC games in European boxes , sold by ATARI in Europe - Galaxian and ET for example and some Telegames games like Lock n Chase,International Soccer or Super Challenge Baseball.

The ATARI XEGS /ATARI XL carts are NTSC versions , ATARI did not make special European versions,so all the games are English versions.

They also work on PAL systems.

If you don´t want to buy on ebay , you may ask for the complete list , I´ll also sell games without ebay.

Thimo

June 8, 2003

Most of the ATARI XL carts (in silver boxes) or old ATARI 400/800 carts will work.That means games like Dig Dug,Pengo,Moon Patrol or Galaxian,Defender , Space Invaders etc.

But most (or all ?) ATARI XE carts , in the blue boxes , not.Most of these games require 48K , some like Airball 64K !

I don´t know about non-ATARI games - the old ones should work with 16K , but some may only work with 48K.

Thimo

June 7, 2003

Hi,

can you tell me if these shipping costs (German Post) are ok ?

Or too high for overseas letters/packages ?

(1 Euro is about $1.18)

1 game (up to 250g) 6 Euro surface mail/8 Euro Air Mail

possible to send 2 games ,if the weight isn´t too high ,but usually ATARI

games are too heavy.

(for Europe it´s 4 Euro)

2-about 15 games as package :12.30 Euro (Europe 8.20 Euro)

Up to 2000g , that means up to 15 or maybe 20 games.Surface Mail , can be slow , but usually takes 2-3 weeks.

more than 2000g : 29 Euro , up to 5000g , at least 40 games (Europe 16.50 Euro)

These are the prices of German Post.Do you think this is too high / are US/Kanada to Europe packages/letters cheaper ?

Boxed ATARI 2600 or XE games usually weigh about 110g , Telegames carts about 120 (heavy EPROMs),some ATARI carts for example BASIC about 230g,because of heavy multilingual manual and Keyboard Controller overlays.

Salu/Activision carts weigh only about 70g , because they have a very small PCB with 1 ROM chip.

I ask this because I want to offer my games on ebay.com.

Another question : Do you have to pay taxes or something for games received from Europe ? I usually send everything as "gift" ...

Thimo

BTW. Air Mail packages are extremely expensive , so I cannot offer them , but if you understand German,you can check them at www.deutschepost.de.

June 4, 2003

Reproductions of games are nothing new.

In the 80s/early 90s Salu reproduced many of the Activision carts , like Pitfall or Hero.They also did CBS carts.

But these carts were no identical copies.Usually white or blue label carts , the manual is "cheaper" than the original.But they did it officially , had the licence.

HES made some games with color labels,but looking different from the originals AND they used plastic boxes.

It was always easy to say that the games were not the original early-80s version :

Activision carts look not the same,are lighter,white or blue label.

CBS carts have another color and usually black and white label

Imagic carts were in 1-color boxes instead of silver (green Laser Gates box for example) and carts are white label

Most games by HES were in plastic boxes

There were no reproductions of really rare games.I have Beamrider and Private Eye , but both cannot be called rare as PAL versions.

And it never was a problem - Salu/HES had bought the copyrights.

Selling 1:1 reproductions of rare games as the original games is criminal.

Thimo

June 4, 2003

look at

http://cgi6.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewS...owpics=1&stab=0

I offer many boxed,new games for ATARI 2600 or ATARI XL/XE/XEGS.

For example

shrinkwrapped ATARI Fatal Run (PAL)

shrinkwrapped ATARI Xenophobe (PAL)

Acid Drop (Salu)

My Golf (HES)

ATARI 7800 Sentinel (PAL)

ATARI XE Airball , shrinkwrapped

ATARI XE Rescue on Fractalus,shrinkwrapped

ATARI XE Thunderfox ,shrinkwrapped

etc.

I can ship worldwide , shipping depends on the final weight / shipping for a package with up to 10-15 games is about $15.

Thimo

June 4, 2003

I just use my Epson Stylus Photo 785EPX printer to make lables.
They run about $100-$150.

The results look pretty darn good.

I've never made a box though.

I have an Epson Stylus Color 800 , this is a 6-year old inkjet printer , but I use it because it works with every system I have (even the ATARI 800 XL).

Do you need special paper to get this results and what can you do to protect the ink ? If you touch it on normal paper , it may be damaged.

Thimo

June 4, 2003

I´ve seen that some guys made own labels and own boxes that look really good.

My question is : how difficult is this and how can you make cartridge labels that look like originals ?

I mean I have and old inkjet printer and labels and boxes would never look "original".

Do you use color laser printers (which are incredibly expensive) for it ?

Thimo

June 3, 2003

Amiga died for the same reason Macintosh (almost) died in the early 90's: PCs have become the defacto standard, and people don't want to touch non-standard stuff.

Few people buy Beta. Nearly all buy VHS. Likewise, very few people buy Amigas or Macs. Nearly all buy PCs.

Result: Commodore went bankrupt, and Apple almost did.

So you guys can argue technology, and consoles, and improper programming, but in the final analysis it all comes down to the *market domination* by VHS and Intel PCs.

I think it was a big mistake by Commodore to make PCs.They should have concentrated on the AMIGA.

They lost money with their PCs.

Apple survived by concentrating on the Mac´s strengths.

Thimo

June 3, 2003

BTW there is a site with hundreds of C64-SID remixes as MP3 called

http://remix.kwed.org/

Thimo

June 3, 2003

Who cares legal or not -- produce away and be damned

On a more serious note its Wizard of Wor not Wizard of War -- at least get the names right!!!

sTeVE

If copyright is no problem ,then someone should make all the 5200er file versions on a cart (the files made by Glenn the 5200 man) , so you could play for example Gremlins on the ATARI 800 from cart.

Another idea are cart version of the tape-only games from Mastertronic ,Zeppelin,Silverbird etc. , since loading software from tape is a pain.

For example Amaurote,Feud,Spellbound,Thrust,Chimera,Draconus,Zybex,

Blinky´s Scary School,...

And there are several great European-only games and some good games that were released in magazines.

Thimo

June 3, 2003

Damocles and Mercenary 3 were 3D games and they ran quite smooth and the Amiga.

But I can see your point that a full-screen textured 3D game wouldnt be a good idea to code on the Amiga like Doom.

There are ports of Doom , Heretic , Descent etc. for the AMIGA.They just don´t work on the A500 , but require an AMIGA with 68030 CPU and usually 8Mb RAM.

I have Doom on my AMIGA 1200 on it works ok.

There are still AMIGAs around today.An AMIGA 1200 or 4000 can be upgraded with a PPC Accelerator card and be fast as modern PPC , but this is very expensive,so it´s only a small market.

Thimo

June 2, 2003

@Lord-Chaos

I don't think the Bitplane Graphics on the AMIGA were a real problem for 3D. It's an equal thing if there is a graphics mode 320x200 x 8Bit or 320 x 200 x 8 Bitplanes (managed by a blitter). The Intel cpus were truely faster this time. On AMIGA it was possible to use less bitplanes and get more colors by the Halfbright mode. By clever usage of the colors, no one would have seen the difference... Please take note, that for a good 3D Screen the brightness variations of colors are more reasonable than the available colors themself.

I see parallels to the "death" of the ATARI X series... The system "died" due to unclever programming.

The problem on the AGA Amigas is that the Blitter can´t handle the amount of data in HiRes + 256 color modes.The custom chips work with the chipmem and chipmem is slow.In 1280*512 and 256 colors , the AMIGA 1200 is VERY Slow.

With added FastRam even without new CPU , it gets much faster and with 68030/50 it´s quite fast.

But the missing Byte-per-Pixel mode combined with the the slow 68020 made Doom-like games with 320*200 impossible.

The first Doom-clones use a special graphics mode,but it´s resolution is bad.Look at the games "Fears" and "Gloom" and "Alien Breed 3D".They´re also available on the CD32.

They run smoothly on 14 Mhz machines,but are blocky.

There also were some racing games that used this technique or some kind of dithering , but they looked bad compared to PC games.

Commodore should have given the AMIGA 1200 a 68030 CPU with at least 16 Mhz and changed the RAM.

And a "byte per pixel" mode would have made the AMIGA even better for 3D games since the AMIGA already had a blitter and sprites,scrolling,sound DMA - which would have made the AMIGA better for 3D games than a PC with all its driver problems.

The later Doom-clones and Doom itself work fine on 50Mhz 030 AMIGAs , AMIGA Quake requires at least 68060.

There even are some Ego-Shooters that work on the A500 - Citadel works on 68000 , but is incredibly slow.Ambermoon is a role-playing game,but uses real 3D graphics and works on an A500.

Gloom Deluxe and Nemac IV work on accelerated (at least 68020) A500 systems.

I think that it was a big mistake by Commodore to use a "castrated" 68020 at only 14 Mhz , only 2 MB Chipram and no fastram , no PAULA change and no VGA-compatible mode.

With Shapeshifter you can play MAC games on an AMIGA if wou have a graphics card because AGA is so slow.They look better than the PC or the AMIGA versions.

That proves that the AMIGA was capable of all kind of games with enough CPU speed and VGA mode.

BTW. the ATARI Falcon had some sord of word per pixel mode (65536 colors) which made it possible to write 3D games for it.Unfortunately it´s CPU is only a 16Mhz 68030 which isn´t really fast enough , but better than a not-accelerated A1200.

And looking at 2D games , no computer can beat the AMIGA , only consoles like the Neo Geo maybe , but AGA chipsets beat SNES and Mega Drive.I don´t know another platform that can scroll 1/4 pixel ...

Thimo

June 2, 2003

If there´s no game , maybe someone should write one.

Since the 2600 is no commercial game nobody could complain about it , when there´s only a binary without any copyrights.

And since programming the 2600 ist just for fun or to show that it can be done , no one would do it for commercial reasons anyway.

So if someone programs a Batman game , it will be there and no one can do anything about it.

Thimo

June 2, 2003

Strange.I never found one on flea-markets etc.

Maybe it´s one of the games that are not as common as PAL.

Some as Combat , which should be ultra-common , but you won´t find them as PAL game unless you count the ultra-common 32-in 1.

Thimo

June 2, 2003

Did they ever make Batman game for the ATARI 2600 or is there no such game ?

Because I know Superman , a Spiderman game , but not Batman game and I think these 3 are the most popular superheroes.

Thimo

June 2, 2003

It´s easy for people in PAL countries - PAL TVs usually run both PAL and NTSC games , even 20 year old TVs do , only a few smaller TVs don´t cannot display 60Hz.

The only problem is that the colors are wrong.

But it seems that NTSC users have much more problems with PAL games.

Anyone ever bought a PAL TV just for games ?

I mean in Europe these are really cheap and old TVs and Commodore monitors (1802 or 1081/1084/1085S) can be found for about $20-$30 on every flea market since they were popular on the AMIGA or C64.

The biggest problem is that they all have internal power supplies and need 220V , so you need an 220V->110V Adaptor and that monitors are quite heavy , that means about $30 shipping from any place in Europe ...

I remember that one guy on the ABBUC (ATARI 8 Bit Club) meeting in 1997 bought several PAL games from me and before he bought a PAL TV just for these games.He was from the US AFAIK.

Thimo

June 2, 2003

I have several games that were only released as PAL versions,there is no official NTSC version available :

Fatal Run by ATARI , red box , new and shrinkwrapped

English UK version with English instructions/box text

$15

Ghostbusters 2 by Activision/Salu , new and boxed

English screen text , instructions in English,German,French

$15

My Golf by HES , new and boxed

English instructions and text on screen

$5

Acid Drop by Salu , new and boxed

English box text , instructions in English,German,French

$10

Sentinel ATARI 7800 , new and shrinkwrapped

English text,English instructions+added French manual

$5

9 BitCorp games :

Bobby geht heim/Bobby is going home

Der Postmann/Mr.Postman

Mission 3000

Phantom Panzer/Phantom Tank

Schnecke gegen Eichhoernchen/Snail against Squirrel

See Monster/Sea Monster

Sesam oeffne dich/Open Sesame

Tanzende Teller/Dancing Plates

Weltraum Tunnel/Space Tunnel

$5 each

These games have German titles and German text on the box , but German AND English text on the cart and the instructions are English and German.

AFAIK some versions of these games were sold in Canada as NTSC , but they are very rare and hard to find.

Open Sesame is one of the 2 official games with voice synthesis.

All the games are PAL versions , that means that they may not work on an NTSC TV that cannot display 60 Hz.

I don´t know much about NTSC TVs but modern PAL TVs always support 50 and 60 Hz.

If you´re interested in the games , please contact me.

Shipping : 1 and maybe 2 games can be sent as Air Mail "letter" for about $10 , heavier packages only as package for about $15.

Payment : I think paypal is the best way , since checks/money orders are expensive for me ($15 fee at bank) and sending cash is dangerous (will probably be stolen).

Thimo

P.S.

If someone is really interested in PAL stuff : I can organize cheap PAL TVs and monitors , usually Commodore 1081/1084 and similar.The only problem is that shipping is a bit exepensive and that you need a 220V to 110V converter since TVs and monitors usually have no external power supply.

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Posts posted by Lord-Chaos