DZ-Jay

You forgot one option: [ ] Yes [ ] No [ ] Maybe [X] It already is!

By the way, Revival gave D2K a 9/10 and IntelligentVision's DK Arcade an 8/10, so Carol's playing with the big boys, yay! Congrats to Carl as well for an excellent port. dZ.

Well, I guess I just don't believe in the "impossible scale" to rate games. In my view, awarding a 10 to a game, or anything for that matter, means that it is the best of its class, not necessarily "perfection." What is the point of rating Intellivision games in a scale of 1 to 10 if none of them ever get a ten--that elusive perfect game that does not exist? Then it just means that you have a scale from 1 to 9. Say you have an educational game vs. an RPG, would you rate them on the same scale, relative to each other? I don't think people would reasonably believe that the RPG one is "worse" if it got a lower score--just that perhaps it is not the best RPG game. I'm not arguing that Carol deserves a 10 or a 9 or anything--not at all. Carol deserves exactly what the people who play it believes is fair. I am very happy and proud that it got reviewed at all, and I value criticism highly. I just don't agree with scales that include unachievable values, whether it's game reviews, dating services, or even school grades.

Snowflakes will regenerate, if you are on your last life, or if you lost two lives on the same screen. Also, pick up presents when the ghost stops to look around. If he is moving, he will immediately run towards you, but if he is standing still, he will never know you picked up a present. The ghost runs for a bit and stops every so often. Once you get the hang of it, it becomes easier, but the game is a bit hard at first. The coolest thing, in my opinion at least, is that you get a cool intermission sequence every two levels, and a new screen. 8.5 is very good too. I wonder what you would consider a 10, and which existing Intellivision games would deserve that score. I'm just curious to know what Christmas Carol is being compared to. When I read a review like Revival's that says so many good things about the game, praising it to no end, but then gives it an 8 out of 10 score, I would like to know what I could have done to have it deserve, say, a 9.5, if not a 10. I will certainly continue making games. However, I'm not aiming for awards, great reviews, or to fill a niche genre that people feel was missing in the Intellivision library. I'm designing the games I would have loved to play when I was a kid, back when I dreamt of becoming a game programmer. These are games designed by the 9-year-old in me. dZ.

Ooh! Space Taxi on the C=64 was awesome!

How old are they? I've heard from others that kids of 6 or 8 years old love the Snowman, and wait in anticipation for the "howl." (Someone told me that, while he was playing, his kid or nephew would announce "Watch out! Here comes the Snowman!" when he hard the howl.) I've also heard from at least one person who told me that a 3 or 4 year old got scared by the Snowman. I guess it's scary for very small children. Sorry about that, but he is evil, after all. dZ.

Track balls are exactly upside-down mice. The inputs are directly correlated to a 4 way joystick in that both only have 2 signals, for the x and y axes. When the mouse (or trackball moves) all its doing is rolling one of two wheels: one for the x axis and the other for the y axis. Diagonal is just both wheels moving, activating both signals. dZ.

Pretty much. The main difference between the D1K stand-alone and the one in D2K is that, the former follows the Japanese arcade level ordering, and the latter follows the American ordering. In the American arcade, you play the first two levels a couple of times before moving to the third screen, and so on. You only get the fourth screen if you advance very far. In The Japanese version, all four screens are played consecutively. That's it. If you're used to playing the Donkey Kong in the USA, you'll be used to the way it goes in D2K game 1. dZ.

Oh, and don't forget the Practice Menu! It allows you to play any of the first 7 levels at any difficulty to hone your skills. dZ.

I have a copy. It has about 55 pages. It has also a review of D2K. It has a very cool interview with Howard Scott Warshaw, of ET and Yar's revenge fame (and infamity). It has sections on ColecoVision, NES, Atari, MSX, SNK. Apparently, it also includes an exclusive game for the NEC Super CD-ROM 2. I think it's awesome. dZ. P.S. Other than my game being showcased in it, I have no affiliation with the publisher. I just think its an awesome magazine (and my game is showcased in it).

Not really. The first level is the easiest one, and they all have the Snowman. The game AI is "rules based," so of you learn the basic rules and patterns, it is easy to beat. Liduario perhaps can post some hints? By the way, here are some tips.

And yet another Christmas Carol thread derailed... DOH!

Actually, without box, overlays, and manual, it'll be an A- release.

Haven't you noticed? His job is to excite us with new games and Intellivision stuff! -dZ.

How it's done is that the Intellivision supports multiple ROM "banks" and allows switching between them. Only one bank can be active at a time, but each one represents the entire memory space available to a game at a time. Keep in mind that ROM boards nowadays can have a TON of code because memory is rather cheap--as opposed to how it was in the days when 8-bit dinosaurs roamed the Earth. You can then load up multiple games into different blocks of ROM and create a menu that switches to the bank of the selected game. The menu, of course, would have to be in its own bank. Back in the Mattel days, it was expensive enough to get a single 8K ROM chip onto a cartridge, and even harder to make interesting games that fit within that space, that it was virtually impossible to use this feature for retail games. However, I believe that the demo cartridges used this feature. By the way, "ROM" in this context means the Read Only Memory where the games are stored in the cartridge, not the game file in your computer, that people typically call a "ROM." This is how the CC3 works as well. -dZ.

I guess that's fine for the OCD collectors that must have every variant of everything for the Intellivision, but some of us buy games to play them. I may be in the minority in this particular forum, but I personally do not get a copy of every single game released just "because." To what is William comparing the sales of Minehunter, to D2K? I can't imagine there being such a large base to sample from, when his business just started recently. Perhaps Minehunter sets the actual baseline of a general release of a game that is not related to a franchise that has been famous for 30 years. I doubt it, though. Perhaps it's just not that popular a game and others will do much better. I'm sure William will soon find out the size of his actual market once he releases the rest of his roster for 2013. Some of those games are highly anticipated. dZ.

I'm guessing that not every game attracts customers as D2K did. This is perfectly understandable. dZ.

Thanks for the bio. I hadn't heard of Hove Bovver before, but I had heard of Llama Soft, Gridrunner, and Attack of the Mutant Camels. I can't wait for Groovy's version of Hover Bovver!

Is there no need to debounce and filter the ECS keyboard signal prior to decoding?

Who's Minter?

I believe he is. But it is only the cartridge board--don't expect it to come full of ROMs.

I'm sorry, is it supposed to be in Color Square mode? I see it as before, in regular GRAM tiles. Never mind. I forgot to hit the action button. DOH! Looking good! -dZ.

I just watched the C=64 video. I don't remember ever playing the game--even though I had a rather extensive C=64 game library of questionable origins. Nonetheless, it looks like an awesome game! I can't wait to see how it plays on the Intellivision. -dZ.

I don't know about Batari Basic, but I'm actively working on P-Machiney 2.0, which should facilitate the development of most games. It will include an object-oriented and event-driven game engine, specialized input decoders, a sprite and graphics driver, and a fully-featured game development framework. Moreover, it will be fully documented and include at least one sample game. It'll be a while, though. It's a big project. I don't expect to have anything to show until at least the end of the year. dZ.

As long as we get some very cool and original Groovy games, I say take all the time you need. dZ.