ranger_lennier
-
Content Count
156 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by ranger_lennier
-
-
I just tried out the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 versions of Gorf. On the Atari 2600, the gameplay is definitely simplified a lot from the arcade. Still, I'd say the sprites look pretty good, and it plays well.
The Atari 5200 is able to do a much more faithful conversion, with features like the shield in the first stage.
-
When my son got this game for the Wii, I could never play it that well. I just couldn't get the hang on the control scheme. In fact, I never could quite grasp the Wii's controller, but some people loved that systems control method. My son's friend got the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess. It seems to me that it probably played better, but I've not experience with that version of the game.
Adam
In fairness to Nintendo, there is a sort of visceral feeling to swinging the controller to swing your sword, even using a button would have been more precise. When they used Wii Motion Plus for Zelda: Skyward Sword, it was more interesting because the game actually reflected the angle you swung at, rather than just replacing a button.
Feel free add anything I posted in the thread to the website.
-
There is indeed a wide variety of monsters, and they can get pretty creative. They do tend to mix and match the same parts, which can make some creatures a bit abstract. The ones with just a straight line at the bottom tend to look kind of ridiculous. I keep seeing alien pogo sticks and such. Here's a good sampling of what I found, and some guesses at what they might be.
Snake:
Flying alien:
Moth:
Spiders:
Werewolf:
Seahorse, Alien:
Slime:
Jellyfish;
Cthulu demon:
Squid, mothman, snakeman:
Stag, UFO:
Pogo alien:
Spidersnake, robot, hydra:
Cyborg:
Cthulu, dragon, antler pogo stick:
Flying demon:
Flying jellyfish:
-
Here are my instructions/tips.
Introduction:
Conan The Barbarian is an unfinished game developed by Astrocade, Inc. in 1982. Astrocade claimed that it would be the first video game based on a movie liscense. As it stands, you play as Conan, using your sword to clear rooms of enemies. Try to advance to the highest level you can, but once you die, you have to start from the beginning.
Controls:
Move Conan with the joystick. Swing your sword by turning the knob back and forth. Pull the trigger to flip the direction Conan faces, and thus the direction of your attack. You can play the game on MAME, but will probably need to use a different control setup than usual. I used an XBox 360 controller with the joystick mapped to the left analog stick, the knob mapped to the right analog stick (so you could swing your sword by pushing the stick up and down), and the trigger mapped to the right bumper.
Gameplay:
Your character has three stats--stamina (health), strength, and defense. As it is, your strength and defense never goes up, but at the end of each level, your maximum health will increase, and you'll recover your health. Each level is a single, rectangular room. The size and shape varies, but there are never any obstacles inside the room. After the level starts, one to four monsters will spawn. There are a variety of monsters with varying shapes and speeds. If you clear the room of monsters before you run out of health, you'll advance to the next level.
Tips:
The battles are more RPG-like than might be immediately apparent. You don't take damage simply from touching an enemy. They have to actually attack you. But monsters might charge at you from the other side of the room. As such, I found it most effective to concentrate on offense rather than defense. Fight like a barbarian. Rather than trying to avoid monsters, charge into battle swinging your sword as quickly as possible. If you see multiple enemies grouped up, you might be able to hit them all at once. Remember to turn to face the enemies so you don't have to move to the other side of them. The faster you can clear out some monsters, the less attacks you have to worry about, so start attacking whatever monster spawns closest to you. Once you start attacking a monster, you'll probably want to concentrate on it until it's dead. You have a little time at the start of a level before the monsters spawn, so you can use this time to move to the center of the room.
-
billnewsome made it to level 25.
I got to level 58. I'll try to write up some pointers in a little while.
-
I can't think of another game that uses a control scheme that works like this: it's not a good method to play the game, but at least Astrocade, Inc. was searching for a way to try to find something original to do with their unique controller. The control scheme is nearly completely broken, but I applaud them for trying it out!
The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii?
OK, not exactly the same, but it did come to mind since you waggle the Wiimote back and forth the swing your sword. And I have heard people complain about getting "Wii wrist" the same as you could get "tennis wrist".
-
The Crown Of Zeus sounds interesting, but as I feared, is rather unplayable on my system.
-
I played Conan and the Conan prototype and didn't see any differences aside from the obvious title screen change. Then, I decided to get a little more technical about it and actually diff the files. I can conclusively confirm that nothing is changed aside from the title screen. Dave Carson even kept the number of characters the same, which means you wouldn't need to worry about any GOTOs. The prototype text is:
"C COPYRIGHT ASTROCADE 1982"
The release text is:
"DAVE CARSON SOFTWARE 1985"
Including some extra spaces, each string is 27 characters long.
So, not much programing work on Dave Carson Software's part, but at least more people got to try out the game.
Another thing I noticed is that the last nearly 2K of the 8K ROM is just FF, so there was quite a bit of room left for development.
-
I should have 14 points total. You got the bonus points correct, just not the final total.
Also, this is the 280 Zzzap topic.
-
I ended up playing the Bally BASIC version of The Mummy's Treasure, so I could actually read the text. It's largely the same game as on AstroBASIC, but there are some minor differences, so I figured it might be interesting to make a quick video review.
I didn't get the treasure there, but I did eventually get lucky.
-
billnewsome and I played some Ms. Candyman multi-player when he visited last week. He managed to get 29,304.
I got in some additional practice and finally managed to cross the 100K threshold yesterday, with 106,128.
I enjoyed the game. It definitely gets pretty crowded on the later levels. It's not as fast paced as most maze games. The enemies tend to guard the lifesavers as much as they chase you, so you sometimes have to wait a little while before you see an opportunity to dash in and out. It's a more unique take on the maze genre than you'd initially anticipate.
-
Do you still have Baseball/Sumo Wrestling? It would be interesting to see if you could match the dump of that one.
-
280 Zzzap kind of bored me. Maybe with other cars or a more complicated course it would be cool, but as it is there's not a lot to it. It does seems like you can improve your score a little beyond just not crashing by steering well, because I got up to 6.17.
This is the only game billnewsome ended up getting time to play. He got 5.95.
-
Dodgem is definitely challenging, though I did find it pretty frustrating. There's just not a lot of time to react. Occasionally I'd manage to get in the zone and not crash for a little while, but mostly I was cursing at myself for steering straight into the other cars. I did find that MAME worked OK using an analog stick for the steering. My best score is 4.95.
[P.S. I just realized that last Super Slope post might sound a little weird since sometimes I'm talking about crashing in the sense of the game failing and sometimes I'm talking about the skier hitting a rock or tree, haha.]
-
There are definitely some graphical glitches in Super Slope, though they didn't bother me too much. I was about ready to say that I'd never seen it crash, but when I played it some more today, it crashed a few times, which was definitely frustrating. There was also one stretch where I kept running into invisible objects. But when it works, it's a fun game. I think it would be really hard to not crash at all, because you start gaining on the bottom of the screen as you go, then reset to the top once you crash. I did get 29 24 with I believe just one crash. I think it makes sense to think of that as a time, though it's certainly not an accurate one.
-
What are the issues with Super Slope? It looks to me like it's been archived from two separate commercial tapes, so I believe it's correct. I tried playing it again and there are some graphical glitches, but I didn't see any gameplay issues. The only inconsistency I noticed with the instructions it that the scores seem much higher than what the instructions describe, so that may have changed after printing.
I also tried Tomb Pirates again. I don't see any two player option.
Yes, I was thinking of two-player only carts as a bonus instead of or in addition to the main game. I'm just not sure how you would use them as the main game in a high score competition, unless we literally all get together and have a tournament. Do you have another idea?
I looked at the Arcadian program page. It's pretty neat scrolling through the screenshots.
-
Well, Speed Math does give you a score. Any nostalgia for math races on the blackboard?
I could see throwing in two-player games as a bonus point, but I'm not sure how they would work as a main game.
Of the main carts you mentioned, I'd say my favorites are Pirate's Chase, Ms. Candyman, War (need to be careful about the A.I. bug in the original version), and ICBM Attack (probably best played on an emulator due to the controller). Of course, we probably want to space out the best games a bit.
Some good tape games include Super Slope by Esoterica, Quadron by The Tiny Arcade, Tomb Pirates by WaveMakers, and Planet Mongo by Fred Rodney.
-
Yeah, the game's perfectly normal, it's just the text. This one looks especially strange because there are a lot of spaces that get turned into something weird.
-
Thanks for the Caterpillar advice. Unfortunately, whatever the Home Library Computer does when running these programs, there's no going back (well, aside from resetting). You can LIST the program, and it appears in the same garbled font. However, that did let me experiment with the font. It's a consistent character substitution. Basically, numbers are one too low, and also also shifted vertically a little so they look kind of strange. 0 appears as a front slash.
So, I could figure out that my best score was 2636. I did start to get used to the limitations of the game, trying to leave space to keep myself from getting trapped. Also, if a disk appears on top of the caterpillar, you can approach it perpendicularly, and it will leave a gap in the caterpillar once you collect it.
-
I use an XBox 360 controller. I wouldn't recommend it for a paddle game, but otherwise, it works great.
-
I got 36,776 on Sneaky Snake. I was definitely an expert at sniping those spiders close up by the end. It has a few quirks, but on the whole I think I like it.
-
There are brief instructions, which do say that running into anything will kill you.
http://www.ballyalley.com/cart_manuals/pdf_manuals/Sneaky_Snake.pdf
-
Are you calling simply dying from running into a mushroom a bug, or is there something more to it? That definitely seems intentional. It's even mentioned in the review. "There is no escape now. In your panic, be careful not to bump into a mushroom; you will be destroyed if you do."
Whether it's a good design is debatable. It does produce extra obstacles if you wait too long to destroy the snake, and it is possible to clear them out. So, I guess I'm OK with it. I did find it frustrating that if two segments were moving very close together, I might shoot one, then have the other quickly change direction on the new mushroom and run into me. But even that could probably be avoided with practice.
I tried Caterpillar as well, and again my score display is messed up. If someone plays it and gets a chance, could you give me a couple examples of what the score is at specific points? Something like getting just one disk before dying, or finishing the first level then immediately dying. I could probably figure out how to convert my score into the real number. Hopefully that's consistent for any BASIC game. Hopefully they aren't doing something complicated like giving you more points if you reach a disk quickly.
-
Yeah, it really does seem to be a pain to play the games on your system-- so extra-special thanks for joining us! Besides text being messed up, what else is displayed wrong? What about in-game graphics? If a game is straight BASIC (no machine language routines), then do you still get screwed up text?
Adam
I haven't done any comprehensive testing, but I haven't seen any problems aside from the text. And it's not a problem with every game, either. The Bally BASIC games I've tried like Haunted House and Space Gauntlet ran fine. So it may well be specific to games with machine language routines.
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
HSC02, Round 7: Gorf / Nuke the #%@$*&!
in Bally High Score Club
Posted
I think Colecovision is my favorite port so far. It's strange to see such different graphical interpretations. But not surprising since the hardware was so different. Comparatively, a PS4 and an XBox One are practically the same machine!