ranger_lennier

Nam-Cap might well be the best Pac-Man clone on tape, but that's not a super high bar. AstroBASIC doesn't seem to be well suited to this style of game. I do think the ghost blockade is a clever idea, but the implementation isn't perfect. Check out this example where the enemy is trapped by the ghost, but it's also impossible for me to complete the stage because I can't get to the last blank spaces. I also ran into a case where the enemy got stuck against a ghost, keeping me from reaching the final space. A bug that helped me was when the enemy just disappeared once, leaving me to complete the stage at my leisure. Playing BASIC games on the older BIOS is kind of annoying, because of how the text gets garbled. But unfortunately my other systems are currently semi-functional at best. What sort of score would you expect for completing the maze three times? The high score screen says 731. But when I selected the number of players and turns, the numbers it displayed were 1 too low, i.e. I picked 0 if I wanted 1 player, and 2 if I wanted 3 turns. So if that's consistent, I got 842. I suppose at the moment I've got the high score by default, but if someone else posts a score that may be higher, they should get the bonus point.

It's definitely a good Pac-Man clone, though pretty shameless (they even use the music at the start of the stage). I did need to get used to less forgiving collision detection than the arcade game. It seems like you can't even brush against a ghost. My high score is 27,220. I also played some two player games with billnewsome, who got as high as 9,930.

Did you ever say what the points are for playing Nam-cap? Is it one point for playing, and a bonus point for getting the high score?

I've been playing around with the Atari computers a little lately and got curious about the state of software archiving. I have a few questions, if you don't mind. Is this the most up-to-date list available? If a program was released in multiple formats (like disk and tape), do those tend to be exactly the same, or are there important differences? What does it mean if a program's Atarimania page lists the dump as "MISSING"? At first I assumed that meant it wasn't dumped, but that doesn't seem to always be the case. Here are three examples that aren't on the list in the original post. Conversational Spanish is listed as missing, but recordings are available on the Atari Wiki. Perhaps that's a special case because the game uses recorded audio? http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-conversational-spanish_1336.html https://atariwiki.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=Conversational%20SPANISH%20CX4120 British Heritage Jigsaw Puzzles Vol. 1 is listed as MISSING, but I found it on some ROM sites, though I'm not certain the dump is good. http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-british-heritage-jigsaw-puzzles-vol-1_795.html I couldn't quickly find a dump of The Jar Game / Chaos, though it might be out there somewhere. http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-jar-game--chaos_1237.html

I can't think of a Pac-Man clone, or really any dot-eating game, published in the newsletters. One pretty good dot-collecting game, and not overly derivative of Pac-Man, is The Gate Escape by WaveMakers.

I'm onto you Adam--you just wanted me to set up an Atari 8-bit emulator. Well, you got me. It was pretty neat trying Down The Trench: Remastered Edition. The extra colors and animations definitely add a little pizazz to the game. Playing with a joystick was a mixed blessing. I could more easily make fine adjustments to my horizontal position as compared to the Astrocade knob, but if I started out too far away, I couldn't get to the center in time. However, you do have a mile counter in this version, so you know when to dash for the center. I hadn't read the description of how to avoid the lasers from the Atari instructions until now. Perhaps that same strategy works on the Astrocade version. I was able to destroy the Death Star on difficult 10.

I had a little trouble wrapping my head around this one as well. They're definitely trying to pull off something neat with perspective and 3D gameplay, but the graphics are so simplistic, I never felt like I was really experiencing the action in three dimensions. The best I could do is start to develop an intuition for where my shots would land when I was at various points on the screen. It looks like Space Encounters does a better job of this. The graphics give you a decent sense of actually flying down a trench. It's even less of a fair comparison, given that you're flying in first person and moving a target, but Atari's Star Wars arcade game from 1983 does this quite well. But what I lack in force powers, I mostly make up for in perseverance. My best game I won 20-6.

billnewsome really kicked the computer's butt at Star Battle, 20-5. He also tried Down The Trench, but the force is stronger with me for that game.

I played a two-player game of Star Battle with billnewsome. He's better than me at this one.

The first few games I played, I kept getting hit by the lasers, before I figured out how to make evasive maneuvers. Once I started seeing the sights, I think I got the Death Star on my third try. I don't remember ever starting way off from the center, but maybe there was some luck involved. You can correct your horizontal position quite quickly by turning the knob, but the vertical movement is slower. You do need to pull the trigger to actually start the aiming section, after the screen flashes on the right. I'm not sure if there's a time limit here, but there's at least some opportunity to adjust your ship's position beforehand.

I figured out how to destroy the Death Star, at least on easy. Here's my video review. https://youtu.be/2LJ4DUcUlew

I love how there are a variety of enemies with very different behavior. I definitely spent more time chasing a high score on this one than usual. You're going to make me feel guilty for chasing more bonus points, haha. But the original post says you get one point for documenting what happens at 10,000 points, and another point for making a video. It also says you get one point for each prototype documented, up to three points. So I think that would be 18 points total. There were indeed a lot of bonus points available this round. Of course I didn't spend weeks practicing to get good enough to beat the historic records. Maybe next time!

Yeah, Space Gauntlet is painfully slow. It seemed pretty buggy, too. Sometimes, it seemed like my ship stopped moving until it scrolled off the screen. Other times, it was like I was stuck in a pattern where I kept landing in between the aliens and wasn't able to shoot one. But I did manage to get 410 points, somehow.

Here are some observations on the prototypes. Version 3.9 seems to be extremely close to the released version. The only definitive difference I saw is the menu screen misspells 'Conqueror' as 'Conquerer'. The other versions are definitely earlier. I think that the version without a version number is probably earlier than 2.8. Here are some differences that apply to both: 1) The menu says simply 'Conquerer'. 2) There's a difficulty selection instead of a system selection. 3) Gravity is stronger. (I believe that the final version does have a weak gravity effect.) 4) Sprites look very different. 5) Points awarded are lower. 6) I saw smaller planets than I ever saw in the final version. Here are some observations specific to the one with no version number: 1) No display of how many ships to destroy. 2) Lives are represented by icons rather than a number. 3) There's no cutscene where you warp to a new system. 4) I never saw the missile launcher respawn after destroying it. 5) I once saw the background color change to purple, then it changed back to black, but the bullets turned green. The game crashed soon afterward. Here are some observations specific to version 2.8: 1) The cutscene looks different than the final version, has no sound, and cannot be skipped by pulling the trigger. 2) The missile launcher sometimes has a checkerboard pattern on it and cannot be destroyed. 3) I once saw a bug where it said there were 5 kamikaze ships left to destroy, but nothing but asteroids would spawn. I finally crashed into the planet to get the game to continue. 4) I once saw it crash suddenly, with no obvious problems beforehand.

Great game! I look forward to discussing it on the podcast. I reached system 9, planet 1. And scored 17,765 points. The display only says 7765, but I can confirm the reported behavior at 10,000 points. The score counter resets, you get six extra lives, and I did notice a brief distortion of the sound. Check it out in action: https://youtu.be/5t_XdStFK7w Special thanks to Bill Newsome for being videographer.

Yes, that's correct.

I finally escaped from the haunted house! I ran the 300 baud version through our digital processing tools. Each item actually has three different messages--the standard message, a clue message, and an escape message. That's 144 messages total! I'll attach the text in case anyone wants to take a look. But be wary of spoilers. hauntedhouse.txt

I largely share Adam's frustrations with Blast Droids. I tended to just stay in the safe spot for the first couple of levels, which was optimal from a standpoint of getting a high score, but also super boring. The third level was potentially interesting, but I tended to respawn practically on top of enemy ships, which was just frustrating. I did finally make it to the fourth level, but didn't live long enough to get much of a feel for it. My best score was 3900.

You can search old Usenet posts here: http://itools.com/tool/google-groups-usenet-newsgroup-search Here's the first result I found that might be what you were thinking of: https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!search/astrocade$20kiosk/rec.games.video.marketplace/BgAa9iL2dP4/olMHwZNkvSgJ

I got 52,337 on Robby Roto, and made it to level 5. It's a fun game. I like the hostage rescue element, where you have to actually get them to the exit or they can be captured again. I do wish it were easier to see where the maze is. I definitely died several times thinking I could dig through a really thin wall. I got pretty frustrated with Q-B2B. I just couldn't get the character to move consistently. I don't know if it's the game or my controller. Same score display problem as Outpost 19, though in this case it may just save me from the embarrassment of what my actual score would have been.

I think it would be very difficult to determine what became of the ZGRASS rights without looking at the associated contracts. If it's a major company like Bally, Warner Bros., etc., I doubt they would just release them. It's not that they'd exactly care. In fact, I'd say the odds of any consequences for just releasing it without permission are minuscule. But there's no advantage to them even taking the time to figure out who owns it. At one point, Alternative Engineering, a small third party hardware developer, had a license to release the add-under with ZGRASS. I don't know the terms of that deal, but it's not impossible they still have those rights. I've talked to one of Alternative Engineering's owners, Ed Larkin, fairly recently. I believe he no longer had any documents, though, and wasn't sure how to contact the other former owners of the company. Does Tom have other versions of ZGRASS, such as for the Datamax UV-1 computer? I could probably find someone who could read an old tape if he were willing to loan it out.

It looks like you put roadrunner's score of 768 ahead of my score of 832. Congrats nd2003grad!

Yeah, I haven't seen any evidence that Tapes 19 (Outpost 19 / Music Keyboard) and 20 (QB-2B / Tomb Pirates) were commercially released. Outpost 19 and Music Keyboard were printed in the Arcadian. I don't think most people had any way to get QB-2B and Tomb Pirates, though they must have gotten passed around in the community to some extent, since Mike White had a copy to give us.

I believe that Tomb Pirates was never officially released either. It's too bad--WaveMaker's later games were some of their best. I don't think this is how Outpost 19 is supposed to look. Maybe it's because I loaded it on a Home Library Computer. Oh well, I'm pretty sure I didn't beat Adam's score in any case, so I'll just take the participation point. I got 832 on Galactic Invasion. It's quite a fast paced game.

Very interesting that this turned up. I do think it's highly likely that the ROM is the same as the European version. There haven't been any differences in any games checked thus far. I agree that it's probably a pre-production sample. But we can't say for sure a few weren't sold just because it hasn't come up for sale before. It would have been at the end of the life cycle for a console that was never popular. Some of the European releases, including Bingo, I only saw on eBay once in years of searching. Hell, I've never seen the APL/S cart for the VideoBrain for sale, and that does seem to have been commercially released based upon the posts of one owner of the cart.