else

From my other thread on Space War 2000, you probably know I’ve been playing it a lot these past few weeks. I never really spent that much time with it before, so I thought that I finally should. After playing it a bit, I decided what the game really needed was a manual -- so I decided to write one. In the process, I’ve learned quite a bit about the game. Some of it contradictory to what has been previously reported. For example: 1) The difficulty does not seem to “peak” (at least as far as I’ve managed to play). In fact, a new and very deadly enemy first appears at level 15. 2) Open space does not continue on forever -- the arena you are inside is a round ball, and if you go off one side you are transported to the opposite side (I’ve verified this umpteen times, so I’m 100% certain of this). I’ve also uncovered what I believe are a few bugs in the game: 1) The shots needed to destroy one of the enemies on certain settings seem to be wrong. 2) The scoring system for hitting an enemy with the lasers seems to be wrong. Finally, I've put together a level guide, which I think is quite handy. So take a look at the manual that I have written and let me know what you think (I tried to model the format of it after Atari’s Cybermorph manual). Also let me know if you see any errors or omissions.... Space_War_2000.pdf

Turbo was and is one of the shining stars of the Colecovision library -- no doubt about it. It's one of Coleco's games that truly "brought the arcade experience home". The programmer did a first-rate job. It blew me away as a kid in 1984, and I'm sure it helped Coleco sell a TON of systems. I loved the driving controller too. Of course, when I got older and realized that the foot pedal is just a simple on / off switch I was kinda disappointed with it. I also think the steering wheel would have been better to if it had some "weight" to it and automatically returned to the center. When you boil it down, it's really just a larger version of Atari's Driving Controllers. But still, it was a revolutionary product at the time.... There are other games that use the driving controller, such as the Dukes of Hazzard and Bump & Jump. BTW -- stay as far away as possible from Destructor. It's complete garbage, trust me. I was so disappointed when I spent my hard earned paper route money on it as a kid....

Sorry, but I have to respectfully disagree with you. I think SW2K is a better game than a bunch of the Jaguar's released games. I also don't find it to be "buggy as sin" as you say. Yes, it does crash on occasion, but it's not all that often in my experience. I think it's quite a fun and well done game that also provides an excellent challenge on later levels. All the other reviews that I can find gave it pretty darn high marks as well.... Review 1 Review 2 Review 3 Even your original review that you point to seems to rate it pretty highly -- I guess you've changed your mind?

Well, lockups are seem to be pretty random, so maybe you've just had some bad luck with them. As for black holes, they should inflict some damage on you and transport you to a new random location....

Huh? I've done this plenty of times. All you do is die. Is this not the correct behavior? I assumed it was. Have you experienced lockups or something when you do this? Edit: Just tried it again to make sure -- and yep all you do is die. What's wrong with that? To me, if you fly in to the sun you SHOULD die...

Somebody's got a SWEET Virtuality setup for sale on eBay. This is very closely related to the Jaguar's VR system that never got released: VR Head Mounted Display VR Computer System Seems to be going very cheap.....

I've been playing this quite a bit lately and you know what -- it's really quite good and a lot of fun! So why didn't Atari release it? Was the only reason that they were worried it wouldn't hold up well against Battlesphere? If so, that was a very, very bad decision. There's at least half a dozen released Jaguar games that aren't as good as Space War 2000, even in it's present/unfinished state. I think it would have made a very nice addition to the Jaguar's library. It seems like with a *tiny* amount of polishing it would have been finished and ready to go. What a shame. Well, at least we get to play it now I guess. But still, I can't help but think that releasing it would have helped sell a few more Jaguars.....

Easy. Because in sparsely populated places like Oklahoma playing video games was and is one of the few things to do for excitement -- especially in the winter. There's no oceans and beaches go to (or very few anyway). There's no mountains to ski down (or very few anyway). This pretty much goes for all of the Midwest part of the country. And when winter comes and the temperatures really plummet in January and February (like they are doing right now), you're pretty much stuck indoors.... I'm not knocking on the Midwest -- heck I grew up there (Minnesota to be exact) and loved it....

Atari Portfolio Not mine....

Well, kinda sorta. Coleco built an expanded-memory version of the Colecovision to run these games on when they were out promoting the ADAM at consumer-electronics-type shows. The ADAM wasn't ready in time, so they used a mock-up of the ADAM and had these games running on this Colecovision instead, thus fooling the audience in to believing they were seeing an actual ADAM in action....

Atari has been dead for almost 10 years now (since the late 90's). The present Atari really has nothing in common with the old Atari other than the fact that they share the same name.

Does the flight stick add analog control to any games? I thought I had read that Battlesphere included support for analog control, but I've never been too clear on this. Would you also need an older Jaguar that includes the built-in A/D chip to make it all work?.

It doesn't matter what JagMX *wants* -- by putting it up for public auction he has no say in the matter. Time is money, and if someone wants to buy it and take the time to split it all up and auction it off individually then they are entitled to make some money for their effort, imho. I see nothing wrong with that. That's capitalism. When you throw huge auction like this, you can't really expect a total Jaguar-newbie to pony up that amount of money to get an "instant" collection for a system they are unfamiliar with. I guess it's possible, but it seems very unlikely that someone other than a Jaguar die-hard or reseller would be interested in spending that amount....

Wow -- that has to be one of the biggest Jaguar collections ever auctioned off all at once!!! It will be fun to watch.....

The point you're at sounds like the same point I got to and finally gave up when I played this game many years ago. I could never come close either....

Mine are both sealed. I don't have the heart to open them

I have two sets. Both Realsports Football.....

Still not cheap enough for me. From the sound of the reviews, I think they'd have to be giving them away for free before I picked one up. And even then I'm not sure I'd take one....

Yep, definitely means "four players". They named many of their stand-alone pong systems that way too. So you have things like Pong Sports II and Pong Sports IV, which are the same base units only the former includes two controllers while the latter includes four controllers. They weren't very consistent with this naming convention though. For example they had a system named Hockey-Tennis III....

Your thread from 2004 mentions nothing about trying a different Zero5 cart on the same Jaguar or the same Zero5 cart on a different Jaguar. You need to rule out it being either a faulty cart or a faulty Jaguar. Otherwise there's no evidence for a blanket statement that Zero5 has issues on a whole swath of Jaguars....

My guess is you're probably venturing in to uncharted territory with the two player mode for the most part. The number of hard-core Jaguar fans who own this game probably amounts to a handful of people (or maybe a couple of handfuls). So you're starting with a very small number of people. Add to that having to find another hard-core Jaguar fan who wants to sit down and play the game with/against you and you're talking near impossible odds.

Someone who has spent more time with it than me might know the definitive answer, but I don't know if it has a "finish" or not. There seem to be levels that you have to complete -- but they're not even labeled anywhere in the game as levels. For the example, the first level you have to destroy 1 ship, the second level two ships, etc. Between levels you return to the main menu each time. So it makes it seem like you are starting the game over each time, but you really aren't. It's hard to say if there is an actual finish or if the game loops after a number of levels or what... I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's difficult to say if there is a finish or not, because there's no indication of even what level you are on.

I agree. It's too bad Atari didn't finish the game up. It showed a lot of potential.... What I don't understand is the goofy graphics between the levels -- the picture of David Bell, the ship flying out of someone's hands, etc. It seems like if the programmer(s) had just redirected their efforts in to actually finishing the game rather than doing those goofy menus it might have been a completed game. It almost makes me wonder if there's not a more complete version out there that hasn't been found yet -- it seems like it was so close to being done that there has to be.....

Bzzzzzt! The original computer module and some games were released in limited test markets. They are extremely rare and highly sought-after today. Right from the Blue Sky Rangers themselves: Intellivison Computer They occasionally come up for sale on eBay....

A nice theory that will work for practically nobody. Your theory works great if you are only interested in one item at a time on ebay or you are rich and money is no object. In practice, I think just about everybody is tracking many items simultaneously, and you never know which ones you will win and which ones you will lose. So as you lose auctions, that means you have more money to apply to other (simultaneous) auctions. And as you win auctions, that means you have less money to apply to other (simultaneous) auctions. Thus you never really know how much money you have to spend on any given auction until it nears the end and you know the outcomes of other auctions you were also bidding on. And so it goes -- the whole process pushes everyone to bid very near the end of the each and every auction, whether they want to or not! Thus for most people, the effect is NOT the same -- you might think you have only $20 available to spend 2 days prior to the end of it, but you might have $50 to spend 5 seconds prior to the end because you lost out on some other auctions that you were also bidding on.... In summary, the amount you have to spend on any given auction is a continuously varying function (or a very near approximation of one), not a point value that is known way in advance -- and this holds true for all other bidders too. Geez, there's a nice abstract for a mathematical paper to explore on the workings of eBay. Anybody out there in college looking for an idea to write a paper on? You would get to use some calculus and all that good stuff.....