Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

raindog

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    1,718

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by raindog

  4. Posted

    Atari already HAS come back, in the form of that entirely above-board and licensed but terribly botched joystick with the games built in. Like it or not, that's technically an Atari video game system, or as close as we're ever going to see because Atari the company simply doesn't exist anymore. (I bet playing Breakout with a joystick is no more painful than playing Asteroids with the 5200 joystick, so maybe it fits right in with Atari's early 80's product line....)

     

    But the joystick's appearance despite Atari's nonexistence as a company also proves that Infogrames is happy to license the name and some of the game code to people who think they can manufacture the hardware and make enough at it to afford Infogrames' terms, whatever they may be. So if one of us wins big at the lottery, here comes the Atari® 2600boy I guess ;)

     

    Rob

  5. Posted

    I just visited the site of the fellow who is working on an Atari 8-bit version of Space Harrier.

    Could a VERY rough version be possible on the 2600?  I would want to own a copy on cart just as a novelty since that's one of my all-time favorites.  I'm sure it would have to be about as butchered as Zaxxon.

     

    I started messing with that idea a couple years ago, but realized eventually that I liked Ballblazer better and started working on that, which I never finished (the most recent 2 year old demo is at http://www.kudla.org/raindog/games/hspt.zip or in much more optimized form in Cybergoth's latest annual mega-demo.)

     

    It wouldn't have to be as butchered as Zaxxon, but I would say it'd be about as lame compared to the arcade game as, say, the Odyssey2 version of Popeye. i.e. at least it'd be recognizable, if terribly lacking. You could do all right gameplaywise until the first time you wanted to do one of those 3D snakes that come at you ;)

     

    Rob

  6. Posted

    Well, Stella (even in full screen mode) still isn't quite right on with regards to colors, sounds and maybe screen position due to how TV-out cards in computers work. Z26 or PCAE would help on the first two issues but they're not ported to Linux.

     

    I suppose I could make a DOS bootdisk with one of those emulators and the desired game to get a little closer, but.... being able to finally obtain an industrial grade 2600 arcade stick would still be a lot cooler! ;)

     

    Rob

  7. Posted

    One thing I don't understand is how Avon can call them "exclusive" when they're basically available from every direct mail or web company that sells assorted cheap Taiwanese gifty gadgets for thirty- and fortysomethings.

     

    I'll probably pick one up when they hit the bargain bins in another month, though. I know it sucks but if I see one for 10 bucks, no harm done. I could conceivably even play Atari games on my niece's GBA using the TV tuner backplane I gave her for xmas, as one of its much-hyped features is its ability to act as a composite monitor for other videogames ;)

     

    Rob

  8. Posted

    Reactor was always one of my more favorite 2600 games, but probably only because I loved the arcade game and found the 2600 version a nice simplification. I got to play it a few times with a trakball (in joystick mode of course) though I can't remember if that made it better or worse.

     

    There are lots of 2600 games I probably would never play again, but they'd probably be the unmemorable ones whose names I've already forgotten. ;) I have no real desire to play Air/Sea Battle, E.T., the original Atari Pac-Man, or the original Atari Asteroids again though, off the top of my head.

     

    Rob

  10. Posted

    Hmmm, I wonder how I introduced that extra scanline! Serves me right for hand-assembling my code and entering it with a hex editor ;)

     

    I can't promise I'll ever get to fix that bug (since I don't even think there exists a 2600 debugger for Linux and I don't have Windows anymore) and in fact I don't think I can even verify it, but I'm surprised it took anyone this long to find it.

     

    Rob

  11. Posted

    I did a little bit of quasi-retro buying for my niece (Super Mario DX for GBC and Sonic Advance) but being the lone video game nerd in my family guarantees I never get any videogame-related presents :(

     

    But what I did get (from my partner) was a computer upgrade (which didn't arrive before we left to visit the folks, but I'll pick it up on monday) and the big surprise, one of those GPS'es with the "You Are Here" map display. I'm also the gadget freak in the family so this was very impressive to me :)

     

    Of course I also have a new wardrobe ;)

     

    Rob

  12. Posted

    Okay, first off, change "supposedly existing" to "supposedly available" if it makes you feel less angry at my insinuation. ;) The tone of the people who thought he shouldn't do it was very much "don't bother making one, I already have all these joysticks available to me." Well, I haven't even got a set of paddles yet for my 2600 (put an order in at 4jays for a whole array of 2600 controllers but haven't gotten so much as a return email yet, probably due to the holidays.)

     

    Second, I am not in the least a collector, I'm a hacker and player. I don't expect to be able to walk into K-mart and buy anything Atari-related.... but if I can't at least order it online and expect to see it within a few weeks, for my purposes, it really doesn't exist.

     

    Finally, most of the controllers cited as being "arcade joysticks" are plainly not arcade joysticks from the photographs, so I may have been alluding to that at the time, as well. I would much rather use a plain old Atari joystick than a falsely advertised "arcade joystick" made out of substandard or too-small parts.

     

    I don't have patience with collecting (or collectors, really, for that matter) but I do have a bit of disposable income, so bring it on already! Good luck with your parts situation, IceCold.

     

    Rob

  13. Posted

    Well, on my Celeron 400 it takes about 20 seconds to load a 4K ROM, so you may have just needed to wait a little longer. Just tested it on a Duron 800 and sure enough it was about half that time. Loading speed is something I'll need to address later (probably with a rewrite, because it's just slow drawing 32,768 squares in an interpreted language no matter how you slice it :) )

     

    Rob

  14. Posted

    Oops, my bad, the Windows directory is all better now.

     

    Mac users should be able to run the original .tcl script (from the zip file in the "everything else" folder) using a Tcl interpreter. I have no idea which files you would need, but they are most likely among the ones listed at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.p...?group_id=10894 . As for making a standalone Mac binary, that may also be possible but I have no idea how. The tool I used to make these binaries (Freewrap) is Windows/Linux only, it seems.

     

    BTW, in case it wasn't obvious from my original post, Hack-O-Matic is primarily meant for and only been tested on Atari 2600 games. The screen shot depicts "K.C. Invaders" which I did while testing this thing and will not be distributing because there are too many Space Invaders sprite hacks out there already. ;)

     

    Rob

  16. Posted

    Decided to post a little xmas present for the would-be sprite hackers out there. It's called Hack-O-Matic, and it's a very simple (and probably buggy) graphical bitwise file editor written in Tcl.

     

    Basically it lets you do the sort of things you'd normally use showgfx/editgfx for, only with a mouse. Like those tools, it'll probably work on images for any 8-bit system that used 8-pixel-wide 1-color graphics elements, like Odyssey2 and probably Atari 5200 and Colecovision. The Tcl interpreter runs on many platforms but I have also built Windows and Linux binary versions that are totally self-contained. (Haven't tested the Windows version though, no Windows box here.)

     

    It lives at http://www.kudla.org/hackomatic/ and is free software licensed under the GNU GPL. It remains to be seen which I'll regret more, posting this or giving my 8-year-old niece a karaoke machine. No rotten tomatoes please! Merry Xmas!

     

    Rob

  17. Posted

    Ah, OK. Don't know why I always thought of the black and white Gameboy as "a handheld Tetris that takes carts". ;)

     

    As far as the GameGear goes, my pack-in was plain old Columns, but later Sega releases (once they dropped the price) included no pack-in and I think at some point in there it included Sonic. The Majesco rerelease of the Game Gear includes no pack-in (and is apparently incompatible with the Master Gear Converter or whatever it was called that let you play SMS games) so I'll hang onto my original as long as I can ;)

     

    It's still the only handheld on which I can play Mappy (which I had to have imported by some random NYC shop back in the days before the web was even invented), and an awesome conversion of Mappy it is too, on par with the Super Game Boy conversion of Donkey Kong.

     

    Rob

  19. Posted

    Looking at the screenshots, it seems there are places where there are EIGHT color changes on the same scanline (nine, including back to the black background.)

     

    I don't think six would really be all that tough, though till I try coding it I wouldn't know: make both players a different color and the playfield is the third, mirror the playfield and have it be the outer cubes so you have time to change its color, and set up the two players to repeat once and you should have enough time to change their colors since you don't need to reposition them on each scanline. But those diagonal lines kinda shoot my theory down and point to self-modifying code which I wouldn't think you'd have time for without extra RAM in what appears to be a single-line kernel.

     

    Rob

  20. Posted

    The Astrocade was another one that didn't include a cartridge but had 3 built-in games.

     

    As far as I know, every system since the NES - SMS, Atari 7800, Game Gear, Genesis, Gameboy/GBC/GBA, Lynx, SNES, TG16, CD32, 3DO, CDi, Jag, Saturn, PSX/One/2, Game.com, N64, DC, Nuon and the current big 3 - has been available at one time or another in a stripped-down retail box with no pack-in cart or disc. (Although, didn't the Gameboy originally have Tetris built-in?) The INTV-branded Intellivision and Telegames-branded Colecovision clone may have been pack-in-less too.

     

    This includes the 2600jr - Lechmere was selling them in a little retail box for 10 bucks with no pack-ins when they were closing them out in the early 90's, with the remaining games at $1-2 per cart. Surprised Atari didn't make E.T. the pack-in the way they did with Pac-Man, since clearly they weren't concerned about giving new console owners a poor impression. ;)

     

    Rob

  22. Posted

    I get free long distance with my cell phone (as do probably a lot of people nowadays) but it's not going to be me calling that poor guy.

     

    Rob

  23. Posted

    ah. Disappointing, but the guys there are nice and at least if it's a chain it stands a chance of being in the strip mall a little longer.

     

    Their "classic system" category on the web only goes back as far as the NES (and they'll even sell you a console) but they do sell that irritating replica of an Atari joystick with a bunch of badly hacked paddle games built in, and when the guys heard I like Atari the first thing they did was fire up a demo Activision collection disc on the PS2 and let me play Pitfall. So they're at least trying ;)

     

    Rob

  24. Posted

    I haven't completely given up on it as a light gun game.  The light gun concept is cool, but to really be effective, I figured it would have to follow where you are pointing the gun.  It may not be possible given the limitations of the hardware.   But, I do hope to return to some sort of light gun game.

     

    -Billy

     

    You mean follow it onscreen? I don't think I've ever seen a light gun game that did that. You might as well buy a $5 laser pointer and mount it on the light gun itself. ;)

     

    If you meant "prevent the player from scoring big by aiming his gun at a lightbulb" like you could do with the first Odyssey game, that's trickier, but there's no reason you couldn't do the Nintendo thing of "blank the screen for one frame except a white square where the target is, sample the gun's input at the beginning of the frame and the end of the frame to make sure it's not seeing light, sample the gun while the white square is displayed and if it's seeing light, record a hit" on the 2600. You just have an alternate kernel for when the trigger's been depressed.

     

    Rob

  25. Posted

    One night last week I discovered a new store in one of the local strip malls called "Game Stop". Apparently it's a chain of at least two stores, no idea if it's a franchise of a larger entity. But they have actual SNES and Genesis sections and a bin full of (mostly common and overpriced, but I bought a bunch anyway) NES carts. They pretty much don't touch Atari anything but my comp carts from AtariAge of my two hacks had arrived that day and the kids working there were duly impressed at my old-skoolness ;)

     

    I expect I'll start getting my used GBA/GBC games from there instead of half.com whenever I can, because it's nice to have someone around besides EBgames (who are pretty useless in my view.)

     

    Rob

AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...