Mind Master

Asteroids was first. I remember playing 2600 Asteroids while waiting and waiting for Pac Man to come out.

Here's a challenge for a homebrew wiz out there: bring some Odyssey2 games to the 2600! Perhaps such as... 2600 KC Munchkin 2600 Quest for the Rings Feel free to improve the original games where needed...(i.e. give the changelings and invisible man something interesting to do in Quest for the Rings...)

2600 Pac Man was a clear case of forgetting customer needs. Call it Pac Man, get it out the door, and they'll buy it, right? Well, we did buy it, but we didn't buy much afterwards. Atari made a lot of money on Pac Man and took a big step towards destroying the industry at the same time. Management short-sightedness. Pac Man + E.T. + zillions of incredibly bad games by dozens of companies = unhappy customers looking for a better entertainment value for the dollar. I can see how if you'd never seen arcade Pac Man you'd like the home version. But you've got to meet customer expectations, and by the time Atari did meet them with Ms. Pac Man it was too late...we were on to other things. 2600 Pac Man came out a few years later than much better arcade ports such as Space Invaders/Missile Command/Asteroids. I gotta see this new "Pac Man Arcade" for the 2600...

I think its a testament to what a great game Adventure is that I can even ask the following question with a straight face: What do the dragons do when they're off screen and not guarding anything? I always had the feeling that things were "happening" off-screen while playing adventure, unlike almost every other videogame in existence. Most games just create the screen you're looking at, but Adventure creates an entire world of action that you happen to view one screen at a time. I've been very disappointed in the years since that no similar game has been produced (Haunted House is about as close as we came, but I consider HH to be less varied and interesting than Adventure). So what do the dragons do off-screen? Do they coast along or just sit and wait? After you escape a dragon, how does it "decide" which direction to move next? Only in Adventure...

I'd like to see a Haunted House hack that does the following: - With the scepter in hand, you can destroy the tarantulas - but as soon as the ghost touches you, all the tarantulas return might want to include the bat in this along with the tarantulas - but might not because the bat is needed to redistribute items to keep the game moving.

I forgot to mention Swordquest anything. What a complete disaster. And I had been thinking they were making sequels to "adventure". I have a copy of Fireworld that a friend gave me way back when. To my knowledge that was the only cartridge among all the ones the neighborhood kids had that became a free gift given away. I can hardly believe Atari made a goof of that magnitude. It's actually unplayable without the comic book (and probably with).

Here's Mind Master's list (no particular order): -Pac Man. The most feverishly anticipated game ever turns out to be a fun-free, colorless boredom fest. Couldn't they at least have had the fruit instead of that square "vitamin"? And did they really think Pac Man was eating "video wafers" like the manual says? -Defender. A close second to Pac Man in terms of disappointment. A graphics disaster and not much in the way of sound, either. Ship vanishes when you fire - not good. More fun than Pac Man, but still a major letdown. -Killer Satellites (Starpath). Maybe with the Supercharger the 2600 can handle Defender! Turns out this one's less fun than Atari's Defender above. Was this ever playtested? Why are there triangles everywhere? -Level 6 of Escape from the Mind Master. The grand finale turns out to be a boring grid maze with no monsters, obstacles, or anything. Did Starpath have a deadline to meet? Your thoughts?

I guess from exploring some of the links above that the Stella Gets A New Brain CD is no longer available - Hozer Video was the last place you could get it and that's closed.

The Starpath tapes are in good condition and I doubt they're worn out from overuse. They haven't been stored next to any obvious magnetic field producing equipment. My main question is this: does anybody have original Starpath tapes that still work? Also, where can I find info about this Starpath CD - is it commercially available?

Some Adventure modifications I'd like to see... - background music - different sound effects for each dragon - a flapping sound for the bat - improved background graphics These changes are cosmetic. The game is so fundamentally sound that I wouldn't recommend tampering with the gameplay, except just for kicks.

This is message numero uno for me on these boards. Hello all. I'm sure this has been asked before, but here goes... Why don't my old Starpath tapes work? Does this happen to everybody or can some people still get these 20-plus year old tapes to work? If so, how?