Nathan Strum

This was The Video Game Critic, and he gave the original Super Cobra an "F" long before the Champ Games version came out. He subsequently re-reviewed the Parker Bros. version, but the grade remained the same. (And FWIW, I refer to my Atari games as "Punch Cards". Or just "Cards" if you're one of the cool kids. )

Very cool. Looking forward to adding a HOKEY to my Concerto. (Although James will be sending me the POKEY he... uh... broke. So I'll see if I can revive that.)

You even mentioned in the after-hours stream that you noticed staying to the side helped avoid getting hit. Of course this is the sort of thing that will end up in the manual, but right now, there is none . This is the sort of thing we would've shared during the reveal as the game was played more, but with the mid-show interruption a lot of that fell by the wayside. This is how you deal with it in the arcade game, too. Crashing cars usually retain some of their momentum in the arcade game, but some of them come at you really fast. The key will be reaching a balance where they're still a hazard, but an avoidable one if you're quick enough. There's months of gameplay testing, balancing and refining left to go. Yep. I've noticed that as well. But at least the cars are actually going around corners now. Edit: I see John just beat me to the reply. 🏎️

It was great watching James and Tanya playing Turbo Arcade again! You really got the hang of it. That's one of the things I really like about Turbo - there's really not much to learn strategy-wise. It's just about balancing risk vs. reward. A few notes about questions/comments you had (you already figured out some of these): You do max out at 41 cars passed (as per the arcade game). You are briefly invulnerable after a crash or after the "cars passed" are done being counted (per the arcade). When two opponents crash, only the trailing one gets taken out (per the arcade). AtariVox/SaveKey support isn't working yet. Some of the sequences are very short, but the timing is straight out of the arcade. We may make modes where the scenes run longer. If you think it's hard now, you should've seen it just a couple of days before the reveal. Or play the early arcade ROM set in MAME. Advanced will likely be the most difficult level. But we have some ideas for additional gameplay modes. The arcade game will always be there, but it won't be the only thing. There are certainly bugs and incomplete issues to resolve. The gameplay aspects of it were put together really quickly and all within the week before the reveal. Only the trees (both types) and shrubs were scaled in After Effects. Everything else was scaled/animated in Photoshop. Cheap deaths: You do get killed if you crash into a crashing opponent. Best bet is to keep an eye on the cars ahead of you - if they get near each other, back off or prepare to dodge them. When you crash in Round 1, you will get hit from behind by other cars - a lot. This per the arcade, but we added an "out" because it's so unfair - if you immediately move to the side of the road, they will avoid you. Don't slow down too much - cars will take you out from behind. Just like driving in L.A! The ambulances should push opponents further out of the way than they currently do. In the arcade game you can more safely chase the ambulance. I die most frequently attempting to pass when I know I shouldn't. Thanks for playing the game again and giving it a really proper run-through! Glad you enjoyed playing it.

We explored this early on, and there were some issues: There's no solid sky color. The sky is two different colors on alternating lines that visually "mix" to form the sky (and other objects). There's no single TIA color that matches the mixed colors. A solid color would always appear different than the sky, effectively creating a "frame" around the score/data area. Against a striped background, the legibility goes right out the window. Even against a solid light sky color, it became very hard to read. The information in there is critical to gameplay, and we needed it to be clearly readable. We mocked up a couple of sky backgrounds behind the score area, and neither of us liked the way they looked as much as black. Black had the best contrast and was the most readable, so that's what we went with.

It would be great to have some help with it, I'm sure. We still have more stuff we want to add! I think a lot of what's in the arcade game was done out of necessity of getting things done, rather than smoothly transitioning from one scene to another. We're not as interested in reproducing the glitchy stuff, as we are making sure the essence of the gameplay is preserved. Where better transitions improve the gameplay (space permitting) we'll add what we can.

Thanks! Yes - that wall transition is very abrupt. If you step through the video I posted of our version, you'll see we did add an exit transition to it. It's very fast, so it's more visual than functional, but it's a lot cleaner looking that what the arcade game does (which is apparently just turning off different layers of graphics as you leave the scene). The wall scene is always preceded by a curved section of the road facing the same way, so at least you aren't doing something horrible like suddenly jumping from a right-hand curve to a left-hand wall. If I can figure out some way to bring that curved wall into the scene (without gobbling up tons of ROM) we may add a transition there at some point. But we don't want to "fix" too many things from the arcade game either, because those are all gameplay elements that have been baked into the history of the game for 40 years now.

Well, thank heavens they don't consider themselves Homebrewers then! I don't think we could afford that sort of damage to our reputation. (Mostly kidding.) (Seriously. I love Laser Blast.) (And Space Jockey.)

Maybe the testers they're referring to are the developers.

The original arcade game doesn't have return-to-center steering - it uses an encoder wheel, so it just steers from wherever it happens to be. You can see it in the lower illustration on this page from the arcade manual (#16 is the encoder disc, #17 is the sensor): You can also see it (for real) at 1:02 in this video: (Note to self: add deep bass sounds for the tunnel sequences) Hopefully, we can get enough resolution out of the 2600's steering controller to make it work, without having to spin it around a half-dozen times to move the car across the screen. Here's a pretty decent video of another arcade cabinet in action:

Here's a YouTube video showing the first couple of rounds of Turbo Arcade (be sure to watch at 60fps):

Not gonna wear the little green hot pants.

Update: 5-21-21: "Not a SuperCharger Game" revealed as Champ Games' Turbo Arcade on ZeroPage Homebrew. And it was "Not a SuperCharger Game" because, well... a Turbo is not the same thing as a SuperCharger. (As an aside, I've been dropping some hints in my Status Updates now for a couple of months. In hindsight, they're probably pretty obvious.)

Glad you enjoy them! Of course I'll keep them coming, as long as there are games being developed that are being kept under wraps. Wrong one. "Historical Documentary" was the second game we were considering doing alongside Turbo Arcade, before sanity kicked in and we decided Turbo was enough. But the other one is still in the list... so someday...

Yep - I also found it while typing up the above post (here's the specific post). That's the original, un-fixed prototype. To make it work in Stella, you may need to change the controller to Joystick. I think it defaults to Paddles, which do not work.