Herbarius

The game I was looking for was Zone 66. I found it out here... By the way, wouldn't it be a good idea to "sticky" this thread?

Try with another E-Mail adress (one that uses a different domain, you know, the part after the @). On some sites it appears like some mail domains are blocked entirely for some reason.

This applies for Halo 2600, and I couldn't agree more. It's one thing for Ed to make himself a little pseudo-Halo game for giggles, but to actually release it to the public is not OK, and actually charging $$ crosses the line big time. Well, I figure, that's why you can freely download the ROM. Consider the price you pay for a physical cartridge as being just for expenses in creating the cart, not as an actual royalty to the coder. It's the same thing for most homebrews, even non-derivative ones. That's because the motivation for someone to make a homebrew isn't really to make money from it. If it turns out the coder can make some money at the end as a bonus, sure that's great, but even when not, the homebrewer is pleased with his game "being out there". Considering "derivative works" of this kind, there seems to be some kind of "unwritten law" that such things are okay, as long as it's non-profit. Sure, that is not legally true, so if the company which created the original content takes issue with it, it's their right to take legal action, and in fact, such things have happened (Usually it's smarter to ask for permission first). But it seems that more often than not they're okay with it, as long as it is non-profit. After all, it could even increase awareness of their franchise and hence increase their own profits in the long run.

Everyone who is into retro-computing or has had a Computer while floppy disks (especially the 5.25 inch) were still in use has propably heard the standard instructions how to best store and handle your disks to preserve them as long as possible. One of those things does make me curious: That you are told to store them upright, in a vertical position, as opposed to horizontally. Okay, fair enough, but I'm still curious as to why that is. What exactly are the physical reasons behind this suggestion? Can somebody help? This question isn't really about whether it really is necessary to store them vertically or not, but rather to look into the physics surrounding this issue. However, feel free to post some experiences of disk lastability of floppies stored upright compared to ones that were stored lying, if you have any.

Of course you have to mention the unchallenged king of all hexagonal turn-based strategy games. Battle Isle I'm talking about the first game, including both "data disks" (which strangely both worked on their own, without requiring the "main" game). Of those two data disks, the second one, "The Moon of Chromos", is propably the best of this "little trilogy". Then there is History Line (1914-1918), a spin-off of the Battle Isle series set in World War One. Game engine and interface are almost identical to above mentioned Battle Isle games, but it also includes some little cutscenes, an epic introduction video, and enables you to even learn some historical background. And finally, there's Battle Isle II, which is in my eyes the ultimate evolution of the Battle Isle series. It refines the gameplay from the first game (and its addons/spin-offs) without getting too far removed from the predecessors and also adds mouse support. Many people consider this the best game out of the whole Battle Isle series. Yes, there were more Battle Isle games after that, but from part three on they began to depart from their original formula. They may still be nice turn-based strategy games, but they're not your classical hex-field strategy anymore. Oh, please be warned, if you expect an easy game that doesn't offer too much challenge, those are not for you. These games have been on the PC, some of them also on Amiga. However, I would recommend against playing it on the Amiga, as I've heard in later missions you might wait up to an hour or even more for the computer to finish his turn. On a modern PC using DOSbox you can always crank up the cycles should you find it's too slow. They also have a multiplayer option (two players on one PC).

I am a he thank you very much! I wouldn't do that with RF cables and similar things (bascially everything which does analog signal transmission, but especially things like RF which requires quite some shielding)... You might end up with a sharp quality drop... Then again, maybe it's just my paranoia, so if you know what you're doing, maybe have done similar things before, go ahead, do it. But don't forget to post your results here, to let this thread come to a conclusion.

this was common with modems - especially the USR's as they all looked the same.. i remember people would buy a 288 and return a much older 9600 or 14400... ehh.. I wonder how much of these stories are actually true. I've heard rumours of similar things happening right here in my home-town about low-price computers which were sold by a discount chain (the first time they did that, since then it's a yearly event - well not the thing with the bricks, but the cheap PCs themselves )

Actually that has been done, I believe there is even someone selling such adapters for some consoles... I think I've read something about that around here. Don't remember exactly which consoles (NES and/or SNES? Genesis?), or whether they're planning on expanding to more consoles.

Did that work? I don't see how it could have worked, all you would get is either vertical coloured bars, or random garbage/black screen...

A friend asked me about a game he remembers seeing as a child and which didn't ring a bell with me either. It was some PC (IBM-compatible) game from the 1990s, which he doesn't remember all that much about. However, he recalls that in the intro you saw a guy running over a mountain and after that a huge mushroom cloud. He's pretty sure it wasn't a 3D rendering, but a more traditional, "pixel-art" type of intro animation. The intro had a rather dark overall appearance. He doesn't remember what kind of gameplay it was, it may have been a first-person shooter, but not sure. We've already ruled out Duke Nukem 3D and Command&Conquer. It's not much, and propably a little newer than the average post in this thread, but maybe someone can help anyway?

Rarely - if ever - were any of those versions commercial products though.

Looks like an implementation of "Towers of Hanoi" to me. One of the more common exercises for programmers

While we're at it, what is it with Microsoft and BASIC? You propably all have read something about "Microsoft BASIC" at one point or the other. I know for example that the Applesoft BASIC Interpreter on the Apple II was programmed by Microsoft. But the Integer BASIC (which were earlier) wasn't, that was programmed by Steve Wozniak. So, it seems there was BASIC before there was an implementation by Microsoft, or am I mistaken? Did Microsoft "invent" BASIC? What about the BASICs on the Atari and Commodore 8-bit computers. Were those licensed variants of "Microsoft BASIC"? Or were the BASIC syntax and the core keywords something that was considered Public Domain at the time?

A computer in kindergarten? That would've been like paradise... Or maybe like hell, as propably the big strong and mean kids would have never let me touch it. Or maybe let me do something with it, and then pull the plug when I'm nearly done with some stuff, saying "come on, you weren't even doing anything exciting"... Anyway, that way you bet I would have been able to read with 4. But no, at that age, a "computer" to me was something from the fairyland. I.e. something I had heard of, but without ever having seen one. And that was almost 10 years later...

Oh, yes I noticed this as well, although I don't recall which game it was (not Solaris, as I don't have that)... I was thinking if it may be intentional or by accident, but finally I concluded it's most likely by accident, although the designer(s) may have noticed it during development, but decided not to try to prevent it, as it actually gives the sound a more realistic feel.

If you're talking about an Atari 2600 game, what is wrong with the old one?

I wouldn't say they're very good sounds, but Breakout definitely has very beepy/bloopy sound effects. Would I call them "computery"?... I don't know, they rather sound almost like an Electrocardiograph in a hospital But maybe that is what you're looking for anyway? Yes, I think the sounds in E.T. are quite nice as well. However, the do rely heavily on the noise waveform, especially the footsteps of course.

Wow, I didn't know that, thought Sega had always been a Japanese company. They also must have "went over" very early then.

Put a smiley behind the sentence and everything is fine.

Both made Arcade games before they started making consoles. Their consoles used the same plug. (Except for the later ones)

Yes, it can be quite amusing. However, when you think about it too much, there aren't many things more depressing than people who can't f**king THINK!

According to the manual the angles thing was some crazy stuff, it seems like you're supposed to memorize that, but even if you did, the chances you'd recall it in the heat of battle and be able to act upon that are slim at best... So, yeah, I would prefer standard pong angle "physics", too. Oh, I'm talking about Breakout, don't know about Super Breakout, as I don't have that.

I actually experienced the reverse situation a couple of time, with conversations such as this: Me: One of my favourite Atari 2600 games is Enduro by Activision. Other: Wow, Activision already existed back then???

Bushnell is a Mormon?

No, how can that be... It's a pun, Heavy Sixer <=> Big Sexy... Six/Sex, very similar