Jack Spencer Jr

Haven't read any Lucasfilm press releases, eh? As for my email, Basic Fun still has not replied. I guess they're wise to us.

Let's face it, every game on the 2600 is abstract. Some are just more abstract than others. Pitfall, for example, is less abstract than most. He's a guy and he runs along the ground. He can jump over stuff and climb down the ladders and all that. Combat had two tanks driving around shooting each other. Reactor, OTOH has this thing pushing other things... it's pretty abstract.

Skelly, BTW, has a web page here.

That and at least one of the forums I also frequent don't like you doing that, so I'm used to using photobucket instead.

Two letters: ET I emailed the company, too. telling them that I like the idea, but talk of the shoddy quality coupled with the price point the unit sells for, I'm not going to be picking it it.

Wow. It's kind of funny how that is. A few years ago, on this very forum, maybe, I had posted how Joust was an amazing translation of the arcade game and how the programmers outdid themselves. Just goes to show, different people.

Personally, I found the mother ship to be boring. I was much more interested in getting to the next wave of demons to see the next demon design.

I think you may be refering to Radarlock, which is very close to Afterburner (I found it similar to the NES Top Gun cart as that's what I was familiar with) but released in the red box IIUC. It is a good game. Not sure how well it would work as Space Harrier, but impressive 3D on the 2600 is doubly impressive in my book. Thanks. It was a brief bit of work. If I can get the gameplay elements worked on, it would be that much more of an accomplishment for me.

Well, Moonsweeper is a pretty cool game in the first place. Mad props to the programmer at Imagic that cobbled this one up. The Atari 2600 is an amazing machine when you see the stuff some people had managed to squeeze out of it. (I believe the guy who designed the hardware was shocked when he saw the Night Driver game in action. The system was designed for Combat and Air Sea Battle and little else.) Moonsweeper is impressive because it is one of the few 3-D perspective games for the 2600 and it is one of the more successful ones. Technically, it is a simple vertical shooter, no different from, say, Space invaders or Galaxian. However some primative scrolling and background effects fool the eye into thinking it is 3-D. And by background effects, I naturally mean the planet surface with the alternating dark/light colors giving a sense of forward movement. This effect immediately brought Space Harrier to my mind. However, the limitations of the hardware make it impossible to impliment the flying effect. The Harrier is stuck moving back and forth along the bottom of the screen. We'll just have to live with it. This is mostly just a cosmetic hack instead of a deeper, gameplay altering hack If possible, it would be great to alter the gameplay to better reflect the arcade game. But a cosmetic hack is a good start. It is challenging trying to get the 2600 to mimic the graphics of the arcade game and mapping it onto the play elements. I am rather proud of the robot lander that skids around on the surface. My previous design looked too blocky but then I deleted two pixels, one under each wing, and it was a dramatic improvement. If I ever get to the point of altering the play code, I would do a couple things. Like start on the planet surface. In fact, keep the surface present throughout the game, like the arcade. I would probably turn the space phase into a boss stage, but this will be a tricky item for a total newbie like myself. Upon reflection, I am thinking of calling this hack Moon Harrier in honor of the hacked game it's based on. Anyway, here are some screen shots.

I was going to post screen shots, but photobucket appears to be down. Not that it matters, really. It's a pretty simple hack tuning the ship into a little man, the tower thingies into pillars (which need work) and the UFO into a robot thing from Space Harrier. I still need to hack the grafic of several of the other elements and, if I had the talent and know how to do it, alter the gameplay a bit, possibly turning the sun/space segment into a boss stage, while keeping the ground. But stuff like that is beyond my abilities. At least at this point, anyway. Anyway. comments welcomed.

This is a little hack of Imagic's Moonsweeper into Space Harrier. It still needs work, but it doesn't look too shabby. sharrier.bin

I'm kind of surprised that Chopper Command wasn't mentioned yet.

Y'all forgot Star Castle.

Well, the resolution of the 2600 did not lend it well to games like Dig Dug, Mr Do or Thunderground with the "carve a maze" deal. It's much easier than in the arcade to wind up with a totally clean screen because of that. Not to say that the efforts aren't impressive in spite of this. What some programmers managed to eek out of the 2600 is nothing short of amazing.

I like 2600 Superman, too. It's a lot like Adventure, yet different It's kind of a shame that Gottlieb didn't get the Superman liscence nor produce the retooled game concept Argus. It also had the invulnerable hero thing going on and probably would have been a hit if it was a Superman game.