Herbarius

Dragon's Lair

I just weighed mine and its 640 grams (without a tape in it). If Google's unit conversion is telling the truth, that makes approx. 1 pound and 6 and a half ounces in American measurements.

I think it should work... but you may have to make/modify your own cable... Get the documentation for the Atari computers video output pinout, look where Chroma, Luma, Audio and Ground are, then look where they should be for the CBM computers, and if they don't match, modify the cable accordingly. Or maybe you've to solder a different plug to it, if they don't use the same plug. In the 80s everyone seems to have used those DIN plugs, but even with those there are several different variants (more pins or less)...

I agree from the Game Design standpoint, and with some games, especially some emulated NES games, I actually use the autofire option myself. If you're just supposed to hammer away at the fire buttons, that's stupid game-design wise, and they should have implemented rapid-fire when holding down software-wise. Again, I believe that's an old habit from the Arcade games, where it propably was quite intentionally built that way you have to hammer away at the fire button, causing your hand to get tired, so you to fail faster, and you - or the next person - will put another quarter in. Then there are some games which give it to you as a powerup: You start out having to hammer away on the fire-button, but a while into the game you can collect an item which gives you rapid fire. I had it occur that I used auto-fire on such a game, not knowing there's such a powerup, and then when I finally collected it feeling like I had cheated... but then again I don't really like that approach either. The worst case is, when you can collect a rapid-fire powerup, but that "rapid" fire it gives you isn't quite rapid enough for what the game demands from you, so you STILL have to hammer the button, and the powerup is completely worthless. Two PC games with that problem that come to mind are the classic "Xenon 2" (where you have to invest the game's currency you earned in the powerup, it's not as "rapid" as you need it to be, and if you die once - it's gone... So: don't buy that powerup, it's useless) as well as "Xatax" (Shareware game from 1994).

I fully agree with that... Don't know what to vote, as I appear to fall between the third and forth option with this opinion. Maybe you should rethink that, Emehr. Are you really sure? IMO, your form of input is *central* when designing a game, especially when you think about the "old days"... About the joypad issue for 2600 games, that's a little strange. As far as I know, in the US the Atari joypads were never really "big", I don't know if they were even availabe, sold seperately. But even for Europe, the joypad was released very late in the 2600s life-span (it came as the standard controller with the 7800 an 2600jr). And yet, a huge percentage of Atari 2600 titles seem to be "designed for" the joypads. Basically every game which might require pixel-perfect movement and/or (especially) quick (and precise) changes in direction. I think most would agree that for those kind of games you could say: D-Pad > Quality Arcade Stick > CX40 So, there's a little paradox in all that. Maybe the game designers didn't after all think too much about the controls (apart from an abstract "left, right, up, down, fire" in their mind, without thinking about the physical controller). Or maybe that was even intentional, as to create "Fake Difficulty" - which would be an old habit from making the Arcade machines. What do you say about that?

And now I feel stupid for not thinking of that myself... Thank you!

It's about my C64 again, well normally it works like a charm, but occasionally it acts up, like this: When I power it on, the picture comes up almost like normal, except one of those two things: Each character on the screen seems to have a different color, giving me a very colorful display, but these colors are "fixed" for each character, so no matter what I try, they'll never change All over the screen (but only inside the main area, where the characters are not the border) are some dots lit up, giving a display that almost looks like RF interference (despite using S-Video), but if you look closely you see that each character square on screen has the exact same anomaly. (Never had both occur at the same time, but I can't know if it is mutually exclusive.) Again, it happens very rarely, and usually when I hadn't powered on the computer at all for a while (like a couple of weeks). But when it happens, it stays that way even when I power it off and then on again. But, the magical fix, which always works instantly: 1. Power off 2. Lift the C64 by a couple of inches 3. Drop it back on the table 4. Power on And Tada, everthing is fine! I figure there are propably solder joints which are weak, but who could tell me where to look for them? I certainly do not wish to reflow the entire board Yeah, I could always "just live with it", as rarely as it occurs and as quickly as it can be corrected, but then I don't feel comfortable with dropping the C64, even if it's only a few inches, on a semi-regular basis, and also from my experience with electronic equipment of all kinds is that those kinds of "quick and easy fixes" tend to make the original problem even worse in the long run

And yet, in what follows, you still have both number of "good" games and number of total games...

I thought this side-discussion in the other thread was quite interesting, but instead of replying there again and cluttering up that thread with more off-topic, I thought I'd better "fork" it into a new thread, and here it is. First of all, it's VERY subjective. Some people find something scary, others not a bit, especially when it comes to games. But to go back to the game that might have been the first game to succesfully "be scary" (at least for most players), I have to say System Shock, which predates the first Resident Evil by 2 years. However, again something subjective, for many people today it's not scary anymore, because the graphics are so outdated. For the time however they were quite good. You make your way through the dark corridors of a space station, behind every corner may be an agressive mutant, robot or cyborg out to kill you. Ammunition is scarce, you can't survive a lot of hits. You soon learn to listen for the "trademark sounds" of different types of hostiles. While you may have some hope to find other survivors at the beginning of the game, you'll soon realize that everyone else is dead, has been mutated or turned into cyborgs by the evil computer. Oh yes, did I mention it, the whole station is under control of an Artificial Intelligence that has gone mad and pictures itself as a god! Also, you play from a first-person perspective. In my opinion, this way a game can be much more scary than it ever could be if it's third person. Well yeah, System Shock's a classic. The original Alone in the Dark (the sequel came out just after System Shock) would have to be among the classics though. There were some horror themed graphical and text adventures prior to that (though many with a humorous undertone), but Alone in the dark is generally the first survival horror game to fit the modern discription. (possibly the first really scary one) It does have a good bit of suspense and good shocks to it, though the graphics are a bit laughable by today's standards (for what that's worth ). System shock really gets the psychological horror down though. (similar with the sequel, and then there's the more recent bioshock games, and the Silent Hill series, of course) I've seen a good bit of System shock, but haven't played it, that's one on my list though (and the sequel). The Silent Hill games tend to have the tank-like controls as well, I think. It does indeed give a more claustrophobic feel. Yes, of course, how could I forget Alone in the Dark. I actually think of that as the direct spiritual predecessors to the Resident Evil series, because it had a somewhat similar setting and premise, and also it did that weird camera angle thing to heighten the suspense. However, I must admit I never found it very scary when I tried to play it as a kid, I merely got frustrated with it because the controls were stiff as hell and I didn't know what I am supposed to do at all, also the very "exaggerated" animations of the player character broke my suspension of disbelief (even back then when I was used to not very advanced graphics). But, as I said, these things are very subjective, and maybe when I would try to play it again now, maybe I would "get it" because as a kid the game went right over my head. I still think the third person perspective is inherently less scary than the first-person perspective. It's easier to get invested into the game world and be afraid of something, if it's like you see it with your own eyes... it's almost like you yourself are in that frightening or dangerous situation, whereas with a third-person perspective it's "just that guy" (or girl or group of people) in the situation and you observe it from a safe distance. However, playing with camera angles, exactly what they do in horror movies by the way, makes it a little more scary again. Or, rather, it heightens the suspense and then releases it at the exact right moment. That's not quite the same, though... By the way, if you plan to play the original System Shock youre tolerance for weird control schemes has to be quite high, especially if you are used to modern FPS controls. It's still worth it, in my opinion, but be warned, you may be put off by it. System Shock 2 however has modern/standard FPS controls, and it's also very good. However, from what I heard about the BioShock games, they may be good, but they don't have that atmospheric horror/scary thing anymore, it's just a straight shooter, so this may not be what you're looking for. You are talking about "tank-like controls" in the Resident Evil and Silent Hill series. Could you elaborate on that, as I don't quite get what you mean by that.

First of all, it's VERY subjective. Some people find something scary, others not a bit, especially when it comes to games. But to go back to the game that might have been the first game to succesfully "be scary" (at least for most players), I have to say System Shock, which predates the first Resident Evil by 2 years. However, again something subjective, for many people today it's not scary anymore, because the graphics are so outdated. For the time however they were quite good. You make your way through the dark corridors of a space station, behind every corner may be an agressive mutant, robot or cyborg out to kill you. Ammunition is scarce, you can't survive a lot of hits. You soon learn to listen for the "trademark sounds" of different types of hostiles. While you may have some hope to find other survivors at the beginning of the game, you'll soon realize that everyone else is dead, has been mutated or turned into cyborgs by the evil computer. Oh yes, did I mention it, the whole station is under control of an Artificial Intelligence that has gone mad and pictures itself as a god! Also, you play from a first-person perspective. In my opinion, this way a game can be much more scary than it ever could be if it's third person.

My first computer was very similar to this one: Actually it had exactly this case, however the part with the logo was slightly different (not red font on black background, but gold fonts on red background, and it only said "Highscreen", nothing else). But even the floppy drive setup is the same. It was a 286 PC, had 2MB RAM, a 20MB Harddisk and, initially, a Hercules monochrome graphics card. I got that machine when I was 8 or 9 years old, and by that time it was already an "old PC", as the 486 was the state of the art. With time it got upgraded. VGA card and Sounblaster card, as well as more memory (I think 4MB) came soon, a bigger harddisk (or a second one) at some point; later it got upgraded to an 386, that was awesome. However, at first it all should have been quite different. The first computer my parents got for me was a VIC-20, which didn't work; then I should get a C64, but again, it didn't work (as far as I recall, both these Commodore machines had the same issue, all they did was display a screen of random characters...) I did keep the manuals and actually taught myself the basics of BASIC just using pen and paper. In some way I'm grateful for how these turned out, as it made me familiar with IBM-type PCs quite early, earlier than most of my classmates. On the other hand, the C64 might have been nice as well, if it had worked, this would have largely changed many of my childhood years. However, I would have had to make the jump to "real PCs" at some point, which maybe would have been hard/sad.

Well, here's another quote - from the same book, published in 83 - to blow your mind:

If I may add something about the whole "Shovelware" thing: Chris Crawford wrote in 1983: I realize he doesn't call it Shovelware, and it's not exactly the same thing, but it's similar and he also uses the word shovel.

Huh? After my post I would have thought the existance of the French language version is pretty much given... A quick look at Wikipedia tells me, that it didn't even originate in the US like I had thought, but in the UK in September 1998. The US version came in August 1999 and the German version September of the same year. The French version started in July 2000. I really should have known it's from the UK not the US... About the survey-thing, yes sometimes it seems they can make them with whatever result they want to have... Once I read about a survey done in the UK with a list of historical and fictional events, and the participants had to check for each of those events if it's historical or fictional. Allgedly, less people checked World War II to be historical than people who checked "The Lord of the Rings" to be historical. I don't believe for a second that's representative for the population of the UK.

I actually know where that comes from. It was not a survey, or a "decent source" whatsoever, but from an episode of the French version of "Who wants to be a millionaire"... One of the early, supposedly "really easy", questions was what evolves around the Earth, with the possible answers being the Sun, the Moon, Mars and Venus. It seems that for that guy this question wasn't that easy, maybe he just had some kind of "mental blackout", or maybe he really didn't know (and then attempting at a quiz show like that isn't really a good idea I would think...) So, what did he do? He used the "Ask the audience"-joker, so the audience voted, and propably a lot of people in the audience thought "let's screw this guy" and voted for "the sun", so in the end there was like 60% votes for the sun and 40% for the moon. He picked the sun. You could even hear someone laugh in the audience. Well, long story short, it appears this has led to the rumour of the French thinking the Sun revolves around the Earth, but well, I don't think so. I think it's rather obvious the people in the audience who voted for "the sun" (at least most of them) did in fact know but did it "for the Lulz"... Of course if you have a source to point to for your survey, please post it, I always like to be corrected. But it's hard to believe. I don't know what some of you people over there in America think of us Europeans, but I don't think we're that stupid. By the way, yes we have electricity. Yes, including rural areas.

Mhh I always thought of the button being red... Yes, okay, maybe it could be even more red, but as there's only one button, "red" is quite okay... It's not like there is a second button that is really red, then of course you'd have to call the orangish-red button "orange" to differentiate. Am I making sense? No offense intended, but in my experience, women do not handle colors that way My mother always hated it when I called something that was cyan "blue", and I never got what the deal was, it's not like I would have done this when having to differentiate between a cyan and a proper blue bowl or something.

Yeah, RF thingie makes sense. Come to think of it, later in the lifespan of that VCR it got impossible to get a clear signal to the TV at all, no matter how much I fine-tuned. There were two "sweet spots", an audio sweet spot, the point where the sound was clear, and a video sweet spot, the point where the picture was clear. But those two sweet spots didn't match up like I guess they should, but at the audio sweet spot the picture was very grainy, and at the video sweet spot, the sound got virtually inaudible, being replaced and/or overlapped by a loud hum. So I had to adjust to some frequency in between those two "sweet spots", so I could get both sound and picture, neither of them quite clear, but not too bad, either.

This reminds me of a similar phenomenon I once had in using the combination of my old TV and a VCR. There was a hum in the signal which reacted to the colors onscreen. The loudest it got when there was a lot of bright blue on the screen, followed by when it had a lot of red, which was significantly less loud, but could still be heard easily. If the screen was mostly dark, had mostly grayish or greenish or simply "mixed" colors with not to much red or blue, the hum would almost disappear. I don't know to this day what exactly that was all about, I now have neither the TV nor that VCR anymore. But maybe it is related to the topic here, which would add credibility to the chance it may not be the console, but the TV, or maybe an issue of the combination of both.

My Atari 2600 games don't fit into cassette shelves, I tried. They're too "fat". (I'm talking about ones which have individual "compartments" for every tape. Don't know if you might think of something else.)

Can't be. You just color dinosaurs. There is no platforming game in it.

Oh I know that from here on ebay.de (Germany) too. The most egregious examples are when they have the 32-in-1 and some other loose cartridges and then "add them together". E.g. putting into the title "Atari 2600 with 39 Games" and then you look at it, it's really an Atari 2600 with the 32-in-1 and 7 other games.

I won't purchase it, but maybe I'll make one myself at one point (when I do my S-Video-Mod as well), however as yet I can't predict how soon I'll get the courage Quick question: Do any of the people who are intricately familiar with the 2600 hardware see any differences between NTSC and PAL concerning the Pause-Button-Mod, or is it the same for both? I think it doesn't have anything to do with Video Output, so I think there's no problems... However, it might have something to do with CPU clock speed, that could be problematic.

Thanks clearing that up

Uh-oh... From my knowledge and experience with the C64 there is no such thing as "well-behaved software" That concept doesn't really make sense with computers of that generation in general... But isn't it the C128 that's "not behaving well" in that case, not the software? "Unused" for me means, "unused" - as in "you can do whatever you want with it" But maybe I'm on the wrong track here. Back to the topic, I believe GEOS already has been mentioned in passing, but let me post this quote from a website about GEOS:

BTW, has there ever been a variant of Pac-Man before with 2-player simultaneous action? I guess that's a first