Jack-Ass Tramiel

This reminds of Level 2 of Lucky Wander Boy.

Great summation on the overall state and near-future of the gaming console industry. I think the best thing to do would be for a third-party hardware developer to revive the 2600 as a $20 mini console device. For example, it would be a control pad with a card reader -- you buy a pack of collector cards that are the size of credit cards. You swipe them and the game loads up on the mini console, and you play it through your TV. The cards would have the original 2600 cartridge box art and basic gameplay instructions printed on them. What does everybody think of this idea?

I predict the Yar ship will appear. Maybe some of the Space Invaders. A character from Adventure -- perhaps the bat.

Sheesh, how disturbingly racist this comic would be perceived today, though that wasn't the intent originally. And the "BIG GAME HUNTERS" page scan: "Ride the wild joystick!" ????? WTF????! And, incidentally, that cartoon illustration of the happy man holding the giant pencil...can we say "phallic much"?

Well Infogrames/Atari should take the websites using the Atari name on a case-by-case basis. If it is clearly a fan site dedicated to the classic Atari, they should leave it alone. If it's a site capitalizing by selling copyrighted or trademarked stuff (i.e. unauthorized T-shirts with the Fuji logo), then they will probably have to stop that. They should acknowledge on their site and official PR that they recognize and appreciate the Internet fanbase for the classic Atari. Their aim is to establish and re-enforce the trademark and name for the current video-gaming generation and technologies. I think this is perhaps why the Fuji logo is slightly different (apart from updating it with a modern look). As for the hardware, didn't they (or was it Hasbro) release the specs to all the Atari game console and computer hardware to the public a few years ago? I could see a revived version of a 2600, but in a radically different form. For example, it could be in the size of a control pad which you hook up to a TV set. Instead of cartridges, it has a card reader and you swipe plastic cards through it to load a game. You can buy a deck of these game cards, or they're given away as freebies. This 2600 could be a $19 throwaway type of product. I doubt that Infogrames/Atari would produce such a unit. Another company could do it, and license the ROMs from Infogrames/Atari.

How bizarre. Infogrames probably needs to come up with an official policy regarding the history and rights pertaining to the prior incarnations of "Atari". My suggestions: They should openly acknowledge on their site and literature that the company they are now is not the same classic Atari, but that they are very proud to carry on the name and tradition. Secondly, they should officially release all the software/code produced by Warner Atari and Tramiel Atari that they now technically own to the public domain -- these probably wouldn't include games like Pac-Man, due to licensing issues, though. Still, such a move would immediately put the new Atari in a good light within the gaming community. That alone would be great PR for them -- for example, if they released the entire Atari 2600 catalog of non-licensed games they fully own the rights to. As for the licensed games, perhaps Atari 2.0 could state that they're willing to release the classic Atari game console versions to the public, but it's up to the original license owners of these games -- like Dig Dug, Kangaroo, Vanguard, etc. -- to give the final blessing. This may have to be a case-by-case effort on the part of classic Atari fans to petition the license owners of these games.

The levels are stored by various levels of indirection. There are a lot of low-byte-only tables which point at different areas in the ROM where little parts of the graphics data is stored. And the offsets to those tables are loaded from other tables. Quite complicated... Therefore it won't be easy to hack the level layout (if possible at all). And even if you are able to change the graphics I am quite sure that the gameplay has also to be adjusted. Yes, this is pretty much what I suspected when I examined the disassembly. I came to a same (though not as technically detailed) conclusion. In layman's terms, I figured that the layout was "scrambled" and spread throughout the code, done this way in order to save on memory usage. I'm glad you've confirmed this, putting any doubts I had to rest.

Well here are at least the covers for every issue: http://retrogames-r-us.tripod.com/Atari/Web/

What would you see if you could reach Stage III of Lucky Wander Boy? Heh.

I've had the damnedest time trying to read the DK disassembly of the ROM. Specifically, I'm not sure where the game level data is located. But my guess is that the programmer did some clever tricks in order to store the layouts. If I could figure out where the layouts are located, then maybe I could attempt to hack the levels. Would anybody here know how to read the disassembly? If somebody could direct me to where they think (or know for certain) where the game level layout data is located, then maybe I could do something with it and attempt to create the levels that are roughly based on the two other levels of the arcade version.

http://www.luckywanderboy.com/ Site has an excerpt from the novel, which chronicles the protagonist's efforts to cure his grandmother's cancer by playing Microsurgeon.

Sorry, but there is no DK hack. That picture of the cement factory is a proof-of-concept that I put together with a paint program. From that picture, I attempted to redo the rivet level to look like my cement factory test. But, as I detailed in my post above, I concluded that this is impossible to do. I was also going to redo the first board to make it resemble the jumping jackhammer screen. Instead of moving elevators, the platforms would be stationary. The barrels would be changed to springs that would not bounce but, instead, rain down from random points as they move across from the left to right of the girder below Kong. Unfortunately, I concluded that the first level, too, would be impossible to modify. I'd like to hear from somebody who has also tried to hack the level layouts of Donkey Kong, and who could either confirm or refute my conclusions. (I hope that I am wrong because, after all, then I could create my hack.) To date, I have neither come across a level hack of Donkey Kong or somebody, like me, who has tried to modify the level design.

Highly recommended. This novel deals with classic videogaming as its main theme, and there are even elaborate, philosophical examinations into Atari 2600 games (including Adventure), and classic gaming culture. There's even a scene set at the site where those Atari cartridges were buried in a landfill! I'm a rather tough critic, but this definitely is the most profound work of fiction based on video games that I've ever read. The freaky ending made me go "WHOA". Lucky Wander Boy, author D.B. Weiss. Came out last month, and it's only in softcover format for $13.

A year ago I attempted to hack the rivet level into an approximation of the cement factory level. (See below.) Unfortunately, upon studying the code, I discovered that the rivet level could not be altered much. Floors #2 to #5 are the same -- the code stores the information for one floor (specifically, half of it), then simply replicates it four times -- and mirrors it -- to create the multiple floors.

Translation: "It's not a bug -- it's a feature of the game!"

Why does there always seem to be nary a mention of the fact that this was the Planet of the Apes game? And why was it renamed anyway? Was this done so at the request of the original programmer, and to avoid trademark issues with 20th Century Fox?

How about "Adventure Redux"? Also, is it possible to change the player-character into something else? Like a mini-knight fig?

David, I'm assuming that the cube's sections don't actually move, correct? It's just the colors themselves that shift. This is kind of neat, but I never understood the point of any of these virtual versions of Rubik's Cube, other than for Atari hoping to capitalize on this sensation. A real Cube would cost less than a 2600 cartridge, after all. Perhaps if you could set the colors of the virtual cube to match the ones on a real cube, and then have the program solve the puzzle for you step-by-step. That could be cool.

Oh, yeah, and the game sounds should be the same ones from the original Adventure. Hope you can use my suggestions. I think this is a uber-cool mod project.

If you intend to fully recreate Adventure in 3D with your mod... I suggest then that the player model should be a hovering cube. And set the in-game "camera" in the third-person perspective. Maybe you could also take the original AI code directly from the original Adventure to script out the actions of the dragons and other enemies. All of this seems like it could be completely do-able -- using Q3 to build a version of Adventure that plays exactly like the original 2600 version but everything is in glorious 3D. That would rock. As for moving the bridges, would doing this as a weapon mod work? You find a "gun" which you can use to cross over from one side to another? I'm not familiar with how weapon mods work with Q3.

Cynicism and insults are ugly message board traits that I rarely ever find here at AtariAge. It's refreshing and one reason why I enjoy coming to this site. I don't know if Alex and Albert do any major editing of these boards, but, for some reason, I doubt they have to. There's just something about the old school Atari culture, combined with the colorful design of this site, I think, which lends to the pleasant atmosphere here. With that in mind, I'm not really sure what to think of these guys and what they are doing and or want to do. Using an analogy, it's like people coming up with ideas for novels or movies and asking others to write/produce them. (That might work in Hollywood, if you're already a super-producer, but this is another topic of discussion.) So I have some genuinely friendly and constructive advice to give: Somebody once pointed out that ideas are like ***holes (<--my own censorship) -- everybody has them. Thus, ideas onto themselves aren't really worth much. It's whether you can execute them that matters. Do you have the ability, or access to the means, to execute your ideas? If the answer is no, then your ideas are worthless.

So will this be released as a ROM, or is it not technically possible to play this on an emu?

I'm curious as to how adding the voices was done technically. Can the ROM be played on an emulator, or do the carts contain a special chip to play back the audio?

On a separate but related note, the layout of this overlay always bugged me. Why didn't they arrange the buttons in a neat cross-hair pattern, instead of the boring "first five buttons on the keypad" arrangment? For example, put Gal Map in the center, then have the button above be Fore View, the button below be Hyperwarp, the button to the left be Computer On/Off and the button to the right Shields On/Off. Then the rest of the layout should have been prettied up with some cool graphics that make the keypad look like the control panel of a star fighter cockpit. There were many instances in the design of the Atari 2600 (from Atari, not from those like Activision) games that made me conclude that most of these programmers were not artists, did not have artistic design skills, nor had interest whatsoever in executing design sense. (Look at the graphics to Galaxian, Mario Bros. and Pac-Man.) Star Raiders' keypad layout to me is just another frustrating example of a "eh, whatever" design sensibility. J-AT

I was thinking about this the other day. Could Star Castle be brought to the 2600? Would it be difficult to program? I think this would be a cool one to see brought to the 2600. Hope somebody out there who's looking for ideas for their next 2600 homebrew considers this.