Channel 2

Enough with the gradients already! I've got your stinkin' gradients right here. Introducing: A No new mazes. No new challenges. It totally sucks. But it's got gradients! See if you can find my carefully hidden easter egg. advsi.zip

This is something I was wondering about a while back. I knew Hozer was making bankswitching cartridges but had no idea which schemes he could make them for. I finally figured it out, comparing the list of games he could make with the list of what games use what scheme. Now Hozer is gone. What bankswitching schemes can I expect to be supported this year by AtariAge or whatever other cart makers are out there? What other features (like memory) can I count on? And where do the special components for the bankswitching come from, are they salvaged from existing carts?

I seem to recall that the EEPROM couldn't be used for the RAM because of its limited lifespan. I take it that the Non-Volatile RAM is more durable? And does this mean a battery will be involved?

Wow that is cool. Good graphics and I bet it's lots of fun. And I wish I could work that fast. Making the fuse gray would be cool too, but no doubt you've thought of that. Any chance of having the fuse burn down as the timer approaches 60? When you wrote "bomby" I read it as "Bombay" at first. Actually, that would be a good name for the game if you're not satisfied with Kablamo. It sounds a little like Taipei, which is also a game named for a city.

The distinction between a console and a computer is often how it is packaged and marketed. In the case of the 2600 and its contemporaries, the hardware is so limited it would be useless as a computer, but later consoles are more powerful than earlier computers, and often are the same machine inside as another that's sold as a computer. We all know that the X-Box is a stripped down PC, but the XE game system isn't even stripped down--it's a 65 XE with a detachable keyboard. To me, the Atari 8 bits were close enough to a console already that if they package and sell it as one I'll readily agree. But since we're calling the 8 bit line computers, and the XEGS is exactly the same as one of them, it only makes sense to lump it in with the rest. The 5200 is a different case, even though it's just a modified 8 bit at heart. There's no way to turn it into a passable computer, and it has no compatability cartridge-wise to the other 8 bits. For one thing the cartridges are a different shape--which should have told me the XEGS can't use them, if I had been thinking. I wonder if it would be possible to build a converter. Or how much work it would be to convert the roms for use in the XE and make cartridges.

I fixed the blink on the title screen, the rom is attached below. I used distella on the binary and patched the resulting code, and got the same botched result as you. As it turns out, the problem was pointers. The Adventure code I'm using uses lables so that DASM can put in the right numbers in at compilation. But if they're just numeric data in the code, or you're hacking the binary file directly, they get screwed up when the code is moved. The solution was to take the excess four bytes out at the start instead, there's nothing between there and the added code that a pointer points to. By the way, I hope I don't come across as a know-it-all or anything like that. Everything I know about Assembly I learned from hacking the Adventure code. The guys who made the labeled decompilation did a great job. I just wanted to mess around with the graphics and maybe the room connections when I started on it, but it was so easy to work on I just got sucked in. If anyone wants to learn to program the 2600 and likes Adventure, it's a great place to start. advplus.zip

Like the subject line says. How rare is the XEGS system, and how much would I expect to pay for one? I'm living in Seattle, Washington, but if I ever have the space and time for it, I'd probably get one online. Another thing. I understand the XEGS will play most 8-bit computer (the original 400/800) and 5200 carts. Is this right? If so, it would make it a perfect system for me to collect. I had a 400 when it was new and played it alot; also a 2600, and when I heard of the 5200 I wanted that (not knowing it was much the same thing as the 400); and I actually won a XEGS in a contest when it came out, but my mother persuaded me to take the second place prize instead, and I never saw it.

Where can we find the short version?

Strange. I went and tried it on the original adventure code, and it worked for me. Maybe it's compiling into the wrong size .bin file? It should be 4096 bytes exactly. If it's any more or less, try adding or taking away from the line just before the end-- LFFEF: .byte $00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00,$00 --one $00 per byte. If that isn't it, I have no idea what's going on.

Another old system that the SP resembles: http://www.pixelpower.on.ca/supervision/

I dug around a little, and I have a rough idea what is going on with the blink. The memory location that says which room the 'surround' (the orange rectangle of lamplight) is in remains set to zero until the player enters an invisible maze. As long as he remains in an invisible maze room, the surround is automatically moved to the current room. When the maze is left it stays in the last invisible maze room the player was in. Since the Title screen is room zero, the surround is there though invisible whenever you're in that room. The solution is to set its location to another room right from the start. Since there's no table of data with that info that's being loaded into memory, you have to add a few lines of code. I put the surround in an invisible maze room where it makes no difference, since it would be there the moment the room is entered anyway. If you wanted, you could put it in a non-invisible room; it would be invisible like it is in the number room, but it would take one less visible object to cause blinking in that room. Until the player enters an invisible maze that is. The code is best put in the SetupVars routine, right at the start of the program. The added lines are in red:

I notice that the title and the game number flash, even though there's only the two objects to display. Normally it starts flashing when there's more than two, because the 2600 only has two sprites to use. And when there's less than two objects on the screen, there's an object in the program called the null object with completely empty graphics that fills up the available two slots for objects. It's given the color black, which is why the thin walls start out black. They're the missile graphics and so they take the color of the objects, the left one of the first object and the right one of the second. I think the title screen blink must be related to something odd I noticed when I was playing around with the Adventure code. I changed the player's block so that it used both of the missile graphics instead of the ball (which takes the color of the playfield). Normally when there's only one object on the screen, the two missile player would be partly black, so if it were the bridge the player would be purple and black. On the game select screen, the only object is the number which is green, so I would expect the player to be black and green. But instead, it was orange and green. I couldn't figure it out until I remembered that the lamp light in the invisible mazes is done with a sprite--it's technically an object, which is why you get more blink in the invisible mazes. That's the only orange object. Why the program thinks it's present in the number room I don't know. It probably has something to do with initialization, since it is object zero. If you like, I could track down the code involved and see if it can be fixed to not blink on the title screen.

Coleco Tabletop is the general idea, but the best option would be to have a minimalistic GBA core, and a variety of 'cabinets' to encase it in to choose from. The exterior would be the cheap part, if controllers are also a seperate item, so you could have a lot of them, maybe one for each game. Come to think of it, you wouldn't have to wait for Nintendo to get around to it, someone with a little skill ought to be able to design one with available LCD screens and GBA motherboards and so on. Maybe that would be a good project for Triton Labs if the SP starts to eat into Afterburner sales. I think if you move a thread, it still shows up in the original forum with "MOVED:" in the topic as well as in the new one.

People have said that the new GBA SP reminds them of a multiscreen G&W. Actually, with the SP Nintendo is starting to target an older audience, so maybe they would consider a series of retro styled GBAs. Another thing I'd like to see is a GBA-based tabletop, with a bright backlit screen, good sound, and maybe some optional controller attachments like a real joystick, a programmable keypad, paddles and/or trackball that works like the Atari driving controller, etc. It should plug into the wall, but maybe it could have a rechargeable built in too. Make it compact as possible for portability but still cool looking. This thread has lost whatever on-topicness it may once have had. Maybe it's time to move it?

Only one problem: 'tis a silly place. There could be a subtitle, like Adventure On, or The Adventure Continues, or The Next Adventure. I heard that when the new territory of Nunavut was split off from Canada's Northwest Territories, there was a referendum on what to call the remaining part, and it almost wound up being called "Bob".

Cafeman is already working on an Adventure II for the 5200. Anyway it's a pretty bland name. Maybe you could call it Avalon ? That's what I was calling the hacked Adventure I was working on for a while. The chalise originally having been the holy grail and all. I gave up on the hack, not that it couldn't be done even with my modest coding ability, but I was wanting to add so much that it would make more sense to start over with a whole new game. If I ever do get around to it, I'll probably call it Ms. Adventure or The Venturead.

I was puzzled too, when I started getting interested in the GBA. It's been a long time since I was interested in a current system, so I didn't know if it's just the way it's done now, or something new with the GBA, which seems to be the case. Anyway, the odd thing is the colors themselves. If they're going to make a big deal about it, you'd think they'd give you more options, or at least better looking ones. It looks like they're trying to make them 'cool' and dull at the same time. Maybe the idea is to emphasize case color to draw attention from the dark murky screen, without upstaging it with actual vivid colors. I really want an SP, just give me the silver one in the pictures. Or the black one, but black's way overdone. If they really want my attention, they should have a special Atari branded one, black with woodgrain and silver trim.

I'm not much into modern gaming systems, but I've taken an interest in the Gameboy Advance recently, and I'm struck by the emphasis put on case color. Glacier, platinum, fuchsia, whatever, but also imports, and special models from Toys 'r Us, the Pokemon Center, and so on, with the retailer's logo and the like. It would be cool to have a John Deere model, a la the John Deere 2600 hoax. But what I'd really love is an Atari GBA in woodgrain and black from infogrames. And after I thought of that, it occurred to me that it might even be feasable. Infogrames/Atari does a fair amount of publishing for the GBA, and the Atari library seems apt for exploitation on it, though I've heard dissapointing things about the Atari Anniversary Edition. The Atari retro theme might be significant enough that they would consider offering an Atari branded GBA. What do you think?

Oh, it can definitely be done but it seems a little awkward to me for a 2600 owner to have to do this. How about this? Whenever the state of the BW/C switch changes, toggle the pause mode, then don't count further changes for a second or two afterwards (just be sure to keep track of where the switch is). So just flipping the switch once on the 2600 will turn pause on/off, and hitting the pause button on the 7800 would also toggle pause as long as it's not held down too long (else it will be toggled again when released). It's a little like the << and >> buttons on a CD player.

Question: are these truly what the colors will look like on the real thing? There's another color chart that shows a different set that's approxomately the same but less smooth, and neither chart agrees with what I see on StellaX. Related question: which emulator if any reproduces the colors you get on a real 2600? I get different results between StellaX and PCAE, for example. Not way different, but enough that something can look good on one and awful on another. I'm assuming that there is enough regularity between different VCS models and TVs for there to be a 'standard' set of colors, but maybe there isn't.

Is there any chance it could be on a Sunday this year? Or at least run to 9 or 10 o'clock?

I decided to seriously collect for the 2600 two or three years ago. I guess I should have started in 1990, there wasn't much left by the time I came around. I have maybe 30 unique games. I don't know, they're put away now, but my two systems with the games and controllers and all the rest fit in a single smallish box, and there's lots of duplicates. My showcase title? Well, I have no rare games for the 2600. The cartridge I was happiest to get and most looked forward to showing other people was Adventure, but I had to get it from a dealer and that just isn't the same as finding it at a garage sale or thrift store. I also have some Atari 8-bits, and some stuff for the TI-99 that I got cheap at a thrift; therein I found the only rare cartridge I own, 4A Fighter.

Plaque Attack.

Keystone Kapers.

A Gameboy, no. A portable TV should work if it has an antenna jack. Probably the most technical part of the job would be splicing cables and perhaps transformers. There's a forum dedicated to making portables at http://www.classicgaming.com/vcsp/ Seems like a good place to get some knowlegable help. Thinking about a briefcase sized portable has given me an idea: why not use a miniature generator instead of rechargeable batteries?