Robot2600

Upload new version fixing that score bug. Thanks StanJr. It's interesting, I wonder if you can play forever? Highest level? Highest score? Edit: CrazyChris, I'm using visual batari basic. I'm planning on releasing the source code too, but it will be a long time.

Posted a new binary. Rename the old file to Hacker_Face_v10. Hacker_Face.bin will always be up-to-date. -ERROR sound doesn't loop forever. -I optimized a bunch of the code, so I had extra rom space that I used to expand (almost double) the story. The ending is level 33.

This game always intrigued me, and I never understood the mechanics. A few days ago, I read the manual and beat the game with a couple hours. It's a very early roguelike with plenty of great qualities and features. I watched E.T. as a kid, and I guess I liked it okay but I'm not a fan. I like this game way more than the movie. I'm also sure this is old news to most people. But there is a romhacked "fixed" version (praised by HSW himself). You should play this version, can get at: http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/ These programmers do an amazing job. I want to be clear that the game isn't just "okay," that it's actually amazing. If you look around Atari blogs, the general consensus is that "it wasn't that bad actually," or the focus in own the video game "crash." Or it's buggy, or whatever. Plenty of games have bugs/glitches: gamers love these things most of the time. However, I liked the colors, collision, and most of the bugs. The only feature I wanted was to fix the bug that automatically dumped you into a hole when moving east from the city and west from the forest. They made it so easy to just hex edit the change I wanted and nothing else. They made reading about romhacking the game very interesting. I couldn't stop reading the posts, just to get some insight in asm, atari hacking, and the game. Definitely a must read, even if you don't really give a shit about E.T. Then, after playing some more I realized that the "bug" only makes the game a little more challenging and might have even been intended. So now I'm back to playing the original game. Unexpected adventure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8bR4xsNgIA If you want to get real into it, you have to start reading Random Terrain's posts on the game... http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-et.html http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-et-tips.html End with conspiracy theories ravings: Level 4 in the original Legend of Zelda is, in my opinion, a reference to E.T. (which I suspect Miyamoto played and enjoyed). It's always been clear than Zelda was heavily inspired by Adventure, so this makes some sense (i.e. the devs were playing every adventure console game they could get their hands on). Thinking about this some more, even the underground screens that give you items in Zelda are a lot like the pits in E.T... Zelda's warp whistle is also similar to the warp arrows. Both heros are green and explore forests, fields, and ancient buildings. Both feature secrets everywhere (a feature more like Rogue than Adventure). Nintendo has never been about randomization, probably because they know it creates games that can be played forever. Nintendo wants you to keep buying the re-hashes instead of selling you the formula. This game is better than Jurassic Park.

Thanks for the feedback, Gray Defender! Glad you like the game. In response to your questions: -Smiley will leave her last graffiti after hacking through level 16. You can keep playing for score after this, but it's the "ending." Levels 17+ are different, but I won't spoil it -Data missiles sticking into the walls is a feature. You can shoot one in front of a Tipula to buy some time. It will destroy itself on the missile and you can go crazy picking up data pills for a few seconds. -I'll definitely implement a sound loop for the end of the game in a future update (1-3 weeks). I admit I like the "flatline" sound, but I get it... In response to ColecoGamer's question: -I don't have any plans for a physical cart release at this time. However, I think it would be awesome... Also some screenshots:

7-4-2017 NEW FILE Hacker Face is a cyberpunk game for the Atari VCS. You are SMILEY PUNK, the elite HACKER FACE. Use your 2600 to access the virtual reality matrix and steal data files from powerful megacorps. This is the first release. The game is fully playable & complete. I'd love to hear what you think. Future changes are possible based on feedback. The manual provides more in-depth information, story & background. 7/3/2017 - 1.1 -ERROR sound no longer loops forever -optimized code -expanded story (Levels 1-32) 7/4/2017 - 1.2 -fixed bug with new game score DOWNLOADS: 7/4/2017 Hacker_Face.bin 7/1/2017 hacker_face_manual.txt 7/3/2017 - Hacker_Face_v11.bin 7/1/2017 - Hacker_Face_v10.bin

Thanks to everyone, this is exactly the info I needed. Looks like I'll be able to change Space Invaders up a bit, and with some work create a Hotline Miami-themed hack.

I don't have much experience hacking Atari roms, but I'd like to do some palette changes on a few games. I've done this on the NES before, but I'm lost on the 2600. I'm not sure if Stella can do this or not, but basically I just want to change the 4 colors in Space Invaders. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've been looking through the hacking utilities and documents for the 2600 and I haven't found anything specifically for palette swapping, probably because it's such a basic thing. But, hey, I gotta start somewhere.

Just got set up so that I can stream to twitch, and I'm streaming lots of NES and roguelikes. Sometimes I let DF run in the background and play NES or atari in the foreground. Nothing like The Legend of Dwarf Zelda Fortress! Come check it out if you are bored or want some background NES noise. It's just twitch.tv/Robot2600. Playing Ninja Gaiden now, but I'm on 5-2 and its a pain. Id be happy to take some requests for games to play in this thread.

I recommend Super Meat Boy and The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures, both titles reward some practice while remaining difficult as hell. Any other platformers than can live up to the old-school intensity of these games?

I know the XBOX and PSP things were different cases, just demonstrating the power that the big companies have over retailers. Wal-Mart could have sold a fifty dollar PSP like they did with the GBA, but they didn't. However, I think paying off 3rd parties is probably the easier route for them. They don't need the game to be an exclusive. They just need the game to be an exclusive for about 6 months or through Christma, when the majority of their sales take place.

Similar PSP things happened when the Vita came out. PSP consoles vanished overnight.

Legally I don't think so. You can decide who makes what software for whatever. That said, what happens "behind closed doors" is anyone's guess. I don't think billionaire CEOs care too much about following the law, as long as they don't get caught. TheLoon hit it on the head, these companies will do anything to have everything their own way

Retromags does have Nintendo Power 1-127. I'm sure in a decade it'll be fine. Also, there used to be a Nintendo Power Index site but I can't find it anymore. I believe it still exists, Google just buried it for me or something. It's an old site, black on white, basically just lists the games covered in Nintendo Power in alphabetical order so you can go look up the correct issue. Also had the tips sections covered. EDIT: Just found http://www.angelfire.com/games2/nintendo99/nintendo_power_index.html It looks like the old site was hosted by Duke, and they shut it down (probably the student no longer goes there and they purged his site). It's a non-formatted version but it's better than nothing. I'm gonna try to find the old site using wayback and back up his index for real. 2nd Edit: Wayback has nothing. The old indeax was www.math.duke.edu/~mjenista/np_index started in 2007

The bridge ate my boomerang. Kinda stuck at the moment, just got the candle, can't find the 3rd Goonie.

No NES clones use emulation. Like you say, it's just a tiny NES. Emulation would mean running some sort of OS and running an NES emulator on it like FCEU or something. Nothing does that. NES ports have often done that. The VC games run inside Nintendo's emulator, which is pretty accurate as far as I can tell. Those pre-programmed multi-games (that look like n64 controllers) are running an emulator. It's probably some small custom linux OS with a simple frontend (list of all 64000 games) to load the roms and play them in whatever pirated emulator they use. They don't use carts though.

I've always been familiar with Goonies II, but for the longest time I've just ignored it. Not sure why, but it's always been easy to overlook. If I wanted a platformer, I'd play Mega man, if I wanted an adventure I'd play Zelda, Metroid, or Legacy of the Wizard (Or Ultima: Exodus). Plus the title always made it seem like I was missing something (I never played Goonies 1). Who wants to start playing the second game in a series? Last night I thought it would be fun to give the game a try and start to put in some serious playing Goonies II... and I remembered that not only had a played the game years ago, but I had loved it. I was pretty young (4-5?) so I didn't get very far. My cousin and neighbor did most of the playing. Even though I've booted the cart up every now and then, I never got to the cave areas which, for some reason, really jogged my memory. Rocking out to the Good Enough song in 8-Bit is pretty fun, too bad the rest of the music is somewhat more generic. I've seen theg ame compared to Friday the 13th, and the "inside" music is definitely similar. Any other fans of the game? Anyone have some cool stories about playing this in the '80s and '90s? Anyone played it since then? I've rescued 2 Goonies this morning, looking for the 3rd now. Not using any guides--at least the game has a map, that's pretty cool.

My guess is Doom. And yes, it's just a guess.

I'd rather play Contra 4 on my Wii xD

Especially lesser-known titles. I'm a huge fan of Ninja Warriors, and it's not talked about much. Awesome beat-em-up on a 2-D instead of 2.5d plain.

I still can't decide. I'm pretty good at 3, but I suck at 4. I think my DS's d-pad is kinda messed up it never did diagonals easily, but anyway its just hard as hell. I can barely beat the first stage in 4, but I like the idea of playing a difficult platformer on my DS lite.

Which is best? The classic SNES platformer, or the excellent DS sequel? For me it's a tough call, and I'm going to go play each game for a bit before I make my final call.

Overall that's a nice review, well written and organized. I don't really agree with some things you said, but still well written. You seem to be somewhat lukewarm toward the game in general, which seems strange considering you had the guts to finish it. I just don't get the sentiment behind lines like "It’s not the best game out there, but it’s a fun experience." To me this sounds like a criticism, but why would we expect this game to be the best game out there? That seems to be an unrealistically high expectation. In terms of its genre "tough-as-nails platformer" it's definitely at the top of its class and deserves to be compared to Super Meat Boy and the like. Ok I get that you are using a figure of speech, but still. And the disappearing platforms in this game are actually in time to the music, making them much, much, much more fair than the ones from Mega Man. I love the magnetic blocks! My point: If I just read your review, I really wouldn't buy the game. Again, I really don't think the difficulty is all that hard. 30 lives and tons of checkpoints are the equivalent of save states. Plus infinite continues! Plus, if anyone finds the game that hard they can play on easy. And I paid 15 bucks for the game to support more Nerd games and movies. 15 bucks seems pretty fair, especially when it goes on sale for like 6.50 sometimes. I could see how someone on a budget might want to spent these 15 bucks on something that had a little more content, like Super Meat Boy, but really for old school fans this is a must and 15 is way better than the 30-60 you need to pay for most 3D games. One final observation, the game is not "8-Bit." It's in a 16-Bit style. Maybe I should let this one go a the distinction isn't that important. Ian, I'm sorry for criticizing your review, I hope you have tough skin and don't care too much. I get that most of this is just opinion vs opinion, so I'm here offering my 2 cents. You just kinda sounds like you don't like the game is all, which is fine and I have no desire to change your mind since you obviously played the game and know what you are talking about. The last level might be a nightmare, but its still nothing compared to Mega Man 9 the first time through. I'm just saying everyone says "I love retro games" or "I love Nintendo Hard" but then people find games like this almost too hard. You think Mega Man doesn't require you to memorize everything in that game? Or Castlevania? This game looks like its hard, and maybe it is difficult but it's also incredibly FAIR! Power-UPs, lives, secrets, beer, and checkpoints are EVERYWHERE. Overall I'd put the difficulty about on par with Mega Man 3...MM2 has some rough parts at the end which AVGNA never reaches (like getting stuck on the wall-cannon boss).

It's just about the $$$$ for Nintendo. The NES can create ridiculous things.

"Dungeon" is also a great homebrew that really feels like an early PC RPG, making it the only game that can really say that on the system.