NIAD
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Posts posted by NIAD
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Thanks for the tips! They will come in handy as I never played this one seriously. +1
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I don't mind waiting.
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Another one already? I'm still stuck in ADAMBomb 2, I want to record the ending (if any). I've already played Diablo a few years ago, so I know what it is.
My question to the author of this game is : Why it's titled Diablo?
The first time I've played Diablo, I was thinking : "This is a very small game that should fit into a ColecoVision cartridge, maybe we can convert it." After only a few hours, I've abandoned the idea because I've realized that even if the game size is ok, the amount of RAM needed to run was much more larger than 1KB (limit on the console) which is a problem. So, I've played the game a few times instead of porting it to the ColecoVision game system.
Love keeping you busy Daniel!
The author's name of the TI version is Manuel Constantinidis, so it be interesting to see if he can be found and an answer to your question given. The ADAM version was done by Image MicroCorp, but I don't know any of the names behind that company. They did release a number of other ADAM programs including: The Stock Market Game, Black Gold, Disassembler, etc.
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I never played it with the Roller Controller, but WarGames seems to be a logical choice.
I thought WarGames was one that requires the roller controller.
No, it is a hand controller game that uses almost every key on the keypad to switch between regions of the U.S. and your different defensive weapons. Spent a lot of hours playing this one.
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I never played it with the Roller Controller, but WarGames seems to be a logical choice.
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I just happened to be reading some articles on the Old Computer site tonight and when I got to this one about the Adam:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=57
There's a mention in the last line about a possible CD drive:
"Greg Bowman reports that he got an external CD drive for his Adam from his uncle who was then Vice President of Coleco. He notices that this CD drive was designed especially for the Adam. If anyone has more information about this CD drive, don't hesitate to mail us."
Was such a thing planned or exist in protoype from, or is the guy making up a story?
It quite possible what he had was a prototype of the CED Module that Coleco was working on after the wafer tape Super Game Module was given the AX... it's hard to say for sure especially since CD drives did not make their way to other systems until a number of years later.
There also was a ADAM Hard Drive in development by MPI Technologies (the maker of the ADAM 5 1/4" Floppy Disk Drive) that was said to be working and a number of Honeywell Service Centers supposedly had them. The other item of information that was discovered by someone (sorry, the name escapes me) was that the next generation ADAM was already in development by an outside company and it was called "Goliath". Once everything went south for Coleco, this unknown company supposedly continued development and it was eventually released in Europe under a different name.
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Did you know that Diablo also exists for the TI-99/4A Home Computer?
Could be the original version, because its title screen says "©1983 Extended Software".
Check the TI Gameshelf here
That's the system that it was ported too or vice versa... thanks for the memory refresh. It's logical that it made it's way to or from the TI since there are a number of hardware similarities between the two computers.
The ADAM titles screen also lists a copyright of 1983 by Extended Software Co. and then a 1984 copyright by Image MicroCorp.
Does anyone remember the name of the Gameboy version? Was it Mario Plumber, or something like that?
BTW, thanks for the link to the TI site. It looks like there's a lot of great stuff on there that will consume hours of my time!
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Diablo
by Image MicroCorp (1984)
(no extra hardware requirements)
For the fourth installment of the now called "Game of the Week", I give you Diablo by Image MicroCorp. Diablo was one of the first 3rd Party programs released for the ADAM and considering when it was developed and released (when tech. info. wasn't available on the ADAM), an incredible accomplishment on the part of the unknown programmer... so much so that it was ported to other computers of the time. It is also one of my personal favorites.
The premise of Diablo is to continually create an ever connecting path for a ball to travel on by sliding squares sections of different track pieces around a 13x9 (116 square sections with 1 open section) game board one at a time with the goal being that the ball travels across every section of track to remove it from play. If I recall correctly, there are 232 sections of track that the ball must travel over as some squares actually contain two sections of track that the ball must travel over. Don't let the track become interrupted or let the ball run into the red border as this will cause the ball to fall out of play. Once you clear 60 track sections, the red border, which can't be touched, turns to green and allows for the ball to pass thru to the other side. Also, if you have a good amount of tracks connected properly, you may speedup the ball by pressing the fire-button.
This game may already be familiar to a lot of people as it's been available in the TOSEC ADAM Archive for a long time and I recall a similar game being available many years later on the Gameboy... if you have never seen it before have fun with it. Diablo is one of those games that really gets your heart pumping once you get close to clearing the game board of track.
Diablo is playable using all available ADAM Emulators.
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I'm still somewhat of a newcomer to the CV, so I haven't seen that yet. Very cool!
Welcome to AA!
Hopefully around summer-time, CollectorVision (retroillucid) will be releasing "The ColecoVision & ADAM Virtual Musuem DVD". This DVD will contain information about almost everything ever done for these systems and a whole lot more. Watch for it, as it's going to be something special... I should know, I'm working on it with him. So don't feel bad being a johnny-come-lately, we're going to do our best to help everyone catch-up!
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Thank you for doing these reviews, NIAD. I don't have an Adam and probably never will due to lack of space, but I enjoy reading your reviews just the same.
Having fun doing them and glad to see that people who don't own an ADAM are able to experience some of the games that were developed for it over the years through the use of emulators.
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Do I ever mentioned that Telegames sucks?
I got your +1 for you!! In fact, I got a couple of +1 to hand out.
Actually, I always hated TeleGames Skiing until it came up in the High Score Competition. When you play it under those circumstances, it's not as bad, but I'll probably never play it again now that the compo has ended.
Gotta give TeleGames some props for making available a number of games for the ColecoVision that would have otherwise been buried or at best taken YEARS to eventually surface.
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Yeah, that is a bummer. Wonder if that is an aftermarket deal.
AX
Maybe they didn't have one for the keyboard and the old lady made one on the sewing machine.
Classic Covers made one for the keyboard as well with the ADAM Logo on it, so the one shown on eBay came from somewhere else or was custom made.
Well Ax, looks like we are gonna butt heads on this one. I saw it a couple days ago when it first went up and was hoping no one else would notice it. And to think, I had two sets for the Stand-Alone ADAM and 1 for the Exp. Mod. ADAM back in the day, not to mention a large stock of them that we used to sell through our mail-order all nicely boxed-up. What drove me nuts was when people would open the box and take them out to look at since I could never get them back in the box neatly... kinda like a then and now of Kirsty Allie!
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Hey Luc, what are you going to do with all that empty space once you ship everything? I guess you'll be able to see some walls that have been hidden behind boxes of stuff eh? Not only do you have all those games in box and shipping boxes and track and field controllers... my oh my... it must look like a warehouse there!
There used to be stuff (DVDs, books, etc.) on the shelves currently occupied by all my Team Pixelboy stocks, and that stuff will be put back where it belongs after all my games have shipped.
What? Not planning to do another big release of six games at once!
Guess I'll just have to be satisfied with one at a time for now on.
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Thanks for taking time to post these topics, it's really appreciate!
I'm kinda surprise to not see another Steve Pitman's Coleco ADAM game this time. I was not aware of the existence of A.C.E., how many games they made for the Coleco ADAM?
This game looks great! It's certainly easier to show (video) and talk about it than ADAMBOMB which I'm still trying to master in order to be able to talk about it wisely.
Actually having fun going thru these games to see what I will post next and don't worry, I have 5 or 6 more games by Steve Pitman to post in time (one of them, RoboThief, is probably the hardest game to master that I have ever come across although Steve doesn't think so because he play tested it so much when he was developing it). Plus, if I kept posting all of Steve's games, I would have to change the thread name to the "Steve Pitman Game of the Moment".
As was mentioned in the post, A.C.E. released only one program for the ADAM, StratoZAP. It is my opinion that the author was none other than Soloman Swift and he developed and released this game to try and make some quick money. A couple months after this release, Soloman got back in contact with a number of users groups and then A.C.E. was never heard from again. If I had the instruction manual, I could tell you the two names that were listed as the creators of StratoZAP... but I'm pretty sure they didn't exist or were just cover names.
Not to knock Soloman Swift as he was almost single-handedly responsible for keeping the ADAM Computer a viable system for years, but there was always a lot of baggage to deal with when it came to him. Just of the top of my head, I can recall three periods of time when he disappeared with a lot of people's money and then there were the countless company name changes:
- Data Doctor (P.R. Dick was the name he started under)
- Digital Express Inc./Nibbles & Bits
- Allied Creative Engineers
- Phoenix 2000
- Swift Enterprises
- The SoftWorks Factory
- Z-Delta Swiftware
and I think one or two others that are escaping me right know. What made it easy for people to forgive and accept him back were the tremendous program he released over the years including a lot released freely, his incredible newsletter publications and his willingness to always help out other programmers develop their titles like he did with "Temple of the Snow Dragon" by Digital Adventures.
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Here is the third installment of ADAM game software produced by 3rd party developers. After starting off this series with two pretty involved and challenging games, I figured I'd throw a no brainer, arcade action game out there for everyone to enjoy. So without further ado, I present:
StratoZAP
by Allied Creative Engineers
(no additional hardware requirements)
I don't have a copy of the including instruction manual so I included a review I did back in 1989 for the N.I.A.D. Newsletter in PDF format that should provide enough details on how to play the game. StratoZAP borrows elements from a number of different games and since there was some discussion recently about making a version of Missile Command for the ColecoVision, I thought it'd be a great time to put this one up.
A little known fact about this one and only release by Allied Creative Engineers (A.C.E.) is the strong possibility that this game was actually developed by none other than the infamous Dr. Soloman Swift of Digital Express fame. At the time that I received the demo, Soloman Swift had disappeared from the ADAM scene and no one had heard from him for months. As soon as I took the manual and disk out of the mailer, I knew it had to be his handy work as his style was stamped all over it. Also, the game expands upon a public domain program called PUFF that he included on his SpritePOWER program as well as listing it in his Nibbles & Bits Newsletter. A short time later, he resurfaced and A.C.E. was never heard from again.
StartoZAP will work in all ADAM Emulators, but you cannot save your High Score when using M.E.S.S. due to incomplete emulation.
StratoZAP (1989) (Alliend Creative Engineers) with PDF Review.zip
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227,900
A definite destroyer of joystick fire-buttons... can we get Daniel to hack this one and add an auto-fire feature!
One of the BEST ColecoVision titles.
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You'll be amazed at how fast you can fill-up the included 32Mb SD Card... think I have just under 2Mb free on mine!
Then you'll be jealous to know that my cart came with 128MB SD.
Son-of-a-&^%&^, oh well, I'll just have to swap out the 256Mb SD Card in my camera and replace with the 32mB SD that I got with the cart... so there! At least until the wifey notices that the camera won't store as many pics.
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I've barely started loading up my SD multicart (still using the USB cart), but I'm envisioning multiple methods of gaining access to each game. The directory tree might look something like this:
alphabetical
- 0-9
- A-G
- H-O
- P-Z
date
- eighties
- homebrew
rating
- awesome
- good
- okay
- crappy
demo
For instance, Antarctic Adventure would be in the "A-G" folder, the eighties folder, and either the awesome or good folder. I'd put non-playable demos and the like in a completely separate folder, likely just once.
You'll be amazed at how fast you can fill-up the included 32Mb SD Card... think I have just under 2Mb free on mine!
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Thanks for doing this SlowCoder... options are always good and now everyone will have a choice as to what setup/layout they want to use. +1
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The size of a game isn't so important, as how well it plays. Come to think about it, that same concept can be applied to other things ... joysticks, swords ...
When women say that, they really don't mean it! What they are really saying is bigger is better!
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1. Using Linux scripts, I have reorganized the files in a way that works for me, into their respective folders per the multicart instructions. Everything works except for the box art folder "\coleco\boxes". When I press 7 on the keypad, the art does not show. However, I can navigate to \coleco\boxes and view all the box arts, which means the files are intact.
Anyone got an idea what's up with it?
2. NIAD, you put a lot of work into this, and I don't want to steal your thunder. I'd like your permission to provide your work reorganized into the separate folders that the cart is designed to work with. I'd post it in this thread. Is this ok with you?
BY ALL MEANS, POST AWAY!! I'll probably even grab it in case I ever decide to change how I have mine laid out.
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Someone has already hacked A.E. to run on the ColecoVision, the rom file was never made available unfortunately.
Really? .... Someone over here?
I must be the only one who like this game, but I kind of like the backgounds in this game
Not the better game I played, but enough to give it some try
Pretty sure it was somene associated with Digital Press and quite possibly Sean Kelly, but I am not 100% sure. Think I may be stopping by his store again soon with some offerings and hopefully this time there won't be so many shoppers in there that made it hard to talk to him (pre-X-MAS rush and all).
Another person that has the necessary knowledge of the CV and ADAM to pull off a port of A.E. as well as some of the ADAM SuperGames is Jim Walters of Walters Software Co. In fact, Jim Walters was the go to guy back in the 80's and early 90's for a lot of projects including disassembling the SuperGames that were only supplied by Coleco on Data Pack and patching them to work from Disk. He also patched/fixed a number of other unreleased Coleco software programs to get them to work correctly. Unfortunately, Jim has been battling some health issues which has made it impossible for him to be involved anymore.
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Sounds like another very busy and exciting year! Just don't forget to find some time for your significant other and the little guy!
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I'm thinking if I remember correctly its the PAL/SECAM systems that don't display it.
I'm not sure but I think it doesnt work on the ADAM standalone too, I might be wrong on the later.
You're right about it not working on the ADAM. When I ran the users group/mail order, we used to include a patched version of Defender on Data Pack or Disk with the CIB Defender cart.
Super Cobra also has issues with the ADAM Stand-Alone. The Exp. Mod. #3 ADAM does not experience these problems.
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A big +1 for the service you are providing for ColecoVision enthusiasts!