ranger_lennier

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.

Sea Devil does start out pretty slowly. But then, I had to make an effort to slow down once more enemies started to appear. Better to let the poachers get a few abalone and live to fight another day. Did anyone else feel like the hit detection was off? There were several times when I thought I managed to dodge the enemies/projectiles but ended up getting hit. I managed to reach level 20 with 163,250 points. I've always liked The Pits. It took me several tries just to get to the end this time. My best score is 15 moves.

I helped beta test Crazy Climber back when it came out, but it's been awhile since I've played it. I got 11,300. I got 1100 on Missile Defense.

I finally got Bill to submit a score. He registered as billnewsome, but his account hasn't been approved yet. He got 3544. Bill says, "It's a treasure trove of fun!"

Treasure Cove is one of my favorites. It's got a ton of big, animated sprites, a great soundtrack, and tense gameplay. Patience is definitely a virtue. Don't dive until you've got an opening. I got 13115 on level 7.

And I will say in defense of eBay, a lot of obscure collectibles were just thrown away before eBay came along and made it easy to connect with the the scattered bunch of people that actually cared about them.

Castle of Horror always restarts on me as soon as I finish a game. I'm horrified that I could get a fantastic score and then have it slip away. As it is, I haven't gotten a fantastic score, but I did capture 1120 on camera.

Yeah, Pinball is pretty tricky. Too bad there's no tilt function! I got 6030 on Pinball I-- and 5380 on Pinball II--

"Avalanche!" (Steve Walters, 1982) looks like a Pachinko game, but rather than a fast-paced, luck-based game of Pachinko, it's actually a turn-based strategic game. The playfield has six slots on the top to drop balls into. The field then widens to eight channels. As you go down the field, you run into a series of levers--three on the top level, then four, three, and four again. Each lever will always be tilted diagonally such that the top of the lever will be either on the left or the right. There are walls between the levers with gaps that let balls switch between channels in certain circumstances. I'll describe a single-player game here. When the game starts, four balls automatically drop onto the field. The player then has 17 balls which they can always drop into any of the six slots. So, what does a ball do when you drop it? This is entirely predictable based upon the position of the balls and levers. A ball will drop straight down until it encounters an obstacle. If a ball hits the top of a lever, it stops there. If a ball hits the bottom of a lever, it flips the lever to the opposite position, and the ball keeps falling. If a ball hits another ball, it slides to the other side of the lever and keeps falling. Next, it will hit the bottom of the lever and flip the lever. This means the ball that was originally stuck there will start falling, and hit the lever again. Ultimately, both balls fall, and the lever ends up in the same position it started in. You "score" whenever a ball falls to the very bottom and leaves the field. But the goal of the game is to prevent this. Like golf, you want as low a score as possible. You have to drop all 17 of your balls, so at the end, you want as many as possible to be stuck on the top of a lever. There are 21 balls in play (your 17, plus the 4 dropped initially), but only 14 levers, so you can't keep every ball up. In this example, I ended the game with 9 balls on the levers, for a score of 12 (9 balls saved + 12 balls dropped = 21 balls total). Perhaps you can do better. Is it possible to end the game with a ball on all 14 levers, for a score of 7?

Yes, I definitely interpreted it as lowest score wins. That's consistent with the Sourcebook ad. Here's the description I wrote at the time: "1-4 players drop blocks through a system of levers. Depending on the positions of the levers, the blocks will either get stuck or fall to the bottom. After a set number of turns, the player who let the fewest number of blocks fall to the bottom wins. This program is very similar to Hang Up!" "Hang Up!" is an interesting variation, which I'm not sure was ever officially published. "2-4 players drop blocks through a system of levers. Depending on the positions of the levers, the blocks will either get stuck or fall to the bottom. Each player begins with a limited supply of blocks. A player loses a block by dropping it during a turn, and gains any blocks that fall to the bottom. The first player to run out of blocks wins. This program is very similar to Avalanche!" I'm going to try playing it again this weekend.

Mazeman's pretty cool, though it can be a little glitchy. I sometimes passed right through a ghost rather than eating it. At least once, I turned around for another go, and it happened again! Another thing I realized, which could be a bug or a feature, is that you can chain together power pellets to get a lot more points. I'm not sure I completely figured it out, but basically, eat a power pellet, then eat up to three ghosts, then eat another pellet before the survivor turns white again. If the ghosts you ate had enough time to go back into the maze, you can go after them again, and keep the combo going. It's hard to keep up, but definitely helped my scores. At first, I wondered if you could keep the scores growing exponentially until you maxed out the score counter, but it seems like the most you can get is around 12000 per ghost. Still, not bad! I got 270613 on five lives, and 61120 on one life.

Mazeman just doesn't have any sound, Chris. Congrats on getting through all the mazes! I tried, but kept getting trapped on the later mazes. I managed to get 6980 on Candy Man. I'm still amazed at how fast this game runs, when I'm so used to BASIC games being slow.

I vote for Candy Man by L&M Software. A few of the later tape programs incorporated machine language routines and storing extra memory in screen RAM for very fast and sophisticated programs. This is one of the best examples. I tried out Secret Of Pellucitor by L&M and it's got the maze aspect for sure, but damn those pixel width corridors hurt my eyes. Also, your score doesn't stay up for very long, which I'm sure would cause everyone to pull their hair out.

I should have 4 points total, not 6 points. Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't have said anything.

Brickyard: 310 Clowns: 217 Brick 'N The Wall: 458

I got 205 on L.T. and made it to the last level. I think I'd do alright if not for the 2nd level. I really had trouble getting past that one. The ground kept disappearing beneath my feet before I had somewhere to jump to.

So why exactly are we going into this dungeon? The story doesn't provide much motivation, but does make it clear that it's the player going to the wizard's home, which makes us sound rather like invaders harassing the wizard with shots that can't actually kill him, and slaughtering a bunch of his pets. Billy and I played some two player games. Our best score was 6830 + 5780 = 12610. I prefer playing it co-op. And I definitely got better scores. It's much more likely to take out the worluk and wizard to get bonus points when you have two players to cover the exits. On my own, I got 2990. I tried to get Billy to submit a score, but he wasn't interested.

Intensity 9 is tricky. Everything's very fast, and the enemy ships fire a lot of shots. Getting the shields is especially important, but you almost have to be constantly rocketing forward to reach the bombs in time. I think it's worth the risk, though, because if you can get all four bombs, you not only get extra bonus points, you get an extra shield that will help you take out take out a bunch of enemies and bombs in the next sector.

Intensity 9 Sector 6: 14,820

I felt pretty terrible at this one when I started out, but then I got the hang of when to go slow and when to rocket forward, when to collect the shields and when to save them, and how to take out the bombs. The shields don't last long, but you can do a lot of damage while they're on. Rush forward as fast as you can, fire away, and if you can't hit something with your lasers, try to just run right into it. High score is Sector 10: 31,840.

It seems strange that manuals list School House 1, even with the alternate name of Computer Quiz, if it never came out, though. But maybe they added all the existing titles to the list before they'd all came out.

Thanks for the scans. I just wish I read Japanese. Would you mind uploading your original scans somewhere? Something like Dropbox or Mega works, but this would actually be a good candidate for archive.org. Just put everything in a zip file and go here: https://archive.org/create/

Thanks for that very detailed writeup about the release history. You mentioned that some carts could have been programmed in color for forward compatibility with the Studio III. I would like to throw out an alternate/additional explanation. It could have been for the European/Australian clones. Whenever we've checked, carts released both in America and internationally had identical ROMs. The systems are all software compatible--try a European-only release in a Studio II emulator and it plays just fine, just in black and white. So, an American release could have been programmed with color in mind so it would look better on the clone systems. Thoughts?