Mr SQL

Good point Tom; I think the majority of apps in the app stores could have been done in the browser though so why not put web pages in there too?

You're welcome Mark, I hope it adds to the gaming experience! I'm working on SCROLLANOID, the sequel to BREAKANOID but unfortunately it won't have an Official Atari Manual unless Atari has another Pong Party. It was great fun, I hope they do!!!

BREAKANOID may be one of the few (perhaps the only?) new VCS releases that has an Official Atari game Manual - I would like to share it with Atari fans and discuss! Having an Official Atari game Manual is really cool and I'm curious if there are any other homebrews or new releases, perhaps on one of the Flashback consoles that have one? Here is the Official Atari game Manual used by Nolan Bushnell and The Champions of Pong : BREAKANOID_Official_Atari_Manual.pdf In addition to instructions, it covers the Atari Pong INDIE Developer Challenge and BREAKANOID testing guidelines for team Atari as well as setup instructions for installing a 2600 virtual machine on windows (Stella!) which is the platform where Nolan and The Champions of Pong played BREAKANOID. BREAKANOID was the only entry in Atari's massive Pong Party to use a virtual machine for the Atari VCS Hardware. Nolan enjoyed it immensely and is sending me an engraved commemorative plaque for my office signed by him and The Champions of Pong, I will post a pic when I receive it; this is awesome - I think every programmer wants one of these!!! For anyone interested, the VGC has a BREAKANOID review and all four games in the series are available here for $20 and come with a Level Editor for Windows that allows you to design new BREAKANOID games, and the rights to put one version on cart.

Great thread topic - interesting observation that there are plenty of fantastic ports but not too many originals! Seaweed Assult is a very original and interesting VCS game, Marble Maze is too though it may be influenced by Marble Madness it is different enough and the awesome sound track is also certainly innovative. I think this observation extends even further when we look at modern consoles; what's really new? Modern Halo was a port of Commando

7800 Emucoder, the 7800 and the 2600 sound increasingly like the C128 and the C64; the C128 having trouble with some C64 games and having sound that is "different and washed out" like the colours you pointed out made many wish for a C64 instead. It would be interesting to see screenshots comparing game colours on the 7800, the 2600, the Gemini and Intellivision add-on clones, and the different models from the heavy sixer through the Jr. Did your Jr's colours differ under RF before the mod?

It's all in the wrists

I was in a users club when I was a kid so I had access to an immense library of software which of course we all copied. Users groups were basically for sharing software and getting information on hardware mods and programming. Back in the day BBS connectivity facilitated further sharing too but I would point out none of this kept me or any of my friends from buying plenty of new software either - you know the carts, the new releases, the stuff you just had to have. Sharing/Piracy just increased diversity by providing you with a far more expansive range of software titles than you would otherwise maintain.

How do you plan to support the 2600 paddle games?

Yes, Kasparov After passing the Turing test IBM refused to provide any evidence to support their outrageous claims of building an artificial neural network.

Tin_Lunchbox, the support team was networked to Deep Blue just like the Turk above. They were supposed to just tweak it between games; clearly they couldn't resist tweaking it during the game with helpful input and were positioned to do exactly that. The guy inside the Turk looks like he's sitting there too but looking at the design no one would believe he's not participating - Deep Blue has the same design but we are to believe they used the honour system despite that Kasparov was able to identify the points in the game where humans assisted the machine. Then we have IBM's tales of the fantastic breakthrough milestones to contend with - the ideas you pointed out of "recognising various personal stratagems and defenses" in Chess is descriptive of a learning neural network which is what made it such an outrageous claim! It's clear IBM did create a neural network but their actions and the evidence all point back to the design. Here's some Deep Blue techno babble from IBM claiming the Deep Blue technology has now been reassembled and expanded to take it to the next level by Winning at Jeapordy! But that sounds like Google and not the neural network (artificial or otherwise) that beat Kasparov.

LOL Loon, you crack me up! IBM actually made outrageous claims tanamount to having invented a neural network. In all fairness the Turk chess machine invented in 1770 did contain a neural network and as Deep Blue appears to be an upgraded networked version of the Turk it would include multiple neural networks running in parallel http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk Another possiblity is that IBM had genuinely created an artificial neural network but then dismantled it (after the stock soared) so they could send it hurtling forward in time to one day run the Enterprise thereby turning Kirk into a Dunsel; I'm going with that one

#1 is a more useful reference format for developers; I think that makes it better

ccc, that's pretty good but I would think a dedicated unit could do better than that even for the timeframe, and also that the O2's native hardware is sufficient for a decent port like it's competitors (192 bytes of RAM vs 128 on the Atari and just 64 on the Fairchild). Having played VCS Chess I'm tremendously impressed with the engine (perhaps 1400?) ; indeed it's got better game play than many other 4k Chess programs such as the Colour Chess cartridge for the CoCo. Chessmaster 2000 on the PC and the C64 from the 80's is awesome and will beat most Chess engines today; that engine is indeed close to a 2000 ranking, perhaps 1900. Later editions (chessmaster 3000 and beyond) did not improve much upon it. And while we're at it Deep Blue is over rated and morphed into a modern day multiplayer networked version of the Turk; It lost to the PC chess games Fritz in 1995 despite running on a mainframe so the 1989 match against Kasparov was obviously a joke. Then in the late 90's, it seems to me IBM either paid Kasparov to throw the match the third time around or just plain cheated - Kasparov felt there were a bevy of high ranking human opponents assisting the machine and asked for a rematch and to see previous games deep blue had played to analyse for signs of human intervention - IBM responded by immediately dismantling Deep Blue

James, good point about the CoCo; it could access ROM at double speed but has the external logic to slow down for RAM access; it also had logic to access RAM at double speed but this simply took over the VDG's turn (no display) since the RAM was already running at double speed so as to allow the multiplexer to alternate RAM access between the CPU/VDG with no wait states. I'm not sure how the GIME in the CC3 kept the display solid during double speed RAM access without 4X overclocking the RAM; perhaps that was the solution since the parts were all rated for greater speed by then.

RT, it might be helpful to start with one of the Tiny BASIC manuals; IMO bB is closest to this implementation. Here's a link to one of the Tiny BASIC manuals: http://users.telenet.be/kim1-6502/tinybasic/tbum.html And some background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_BASIC

Seems the O2 hardware could have handled a chess port on it's own, surprised they went that route. Anyone have any idea why??

Wow, awesome demo Sdw! Great soundtrack too Are you doing that trick to double the rez?

Keatah, were there any software based solutions that preempted the need to install extra hardware to get lowercase on the Apple II? The CoCo had the same limitations but word processing packages like Telewriter utilised the powerful processor to create multiple software driven 51, 64 and 85 column text modes graphically with the first two being quite legible. I like all the retro machines but it seems to me the Apple II is better compared to the Commodore PET than the C64; I remember loading Sace Invaders from the built in tape deck on my PET and the sound was quite melodious compared to Apple Invaders. The PET clearly wins on sound but I think the Apple II might edge it out on graphics performance. IMO the C64 and the A8 are such fantastic 8-bit machines you could almost compare them to the Amiga and the ST in terms of what they can do; the stock Apple II is not even close and the trouble with expanding it is that only the stock machine matters as the target platform for the software base.

Metal Jesus, seeing you cramped over a tiny imperfect replica of a Vectrex looks uncomfortable, seems like a compromise on retro gaming fun. How did you find the experience compared? Made me think of this SNL skit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Q-BH8j06pM

LOL Raskar! Sounds like this 7800 has too much sang-froid Perhaps put a small resistor inline with the video signal or better yet a rheostat (adjustable one) to tone it down to spec.

James, that's pretty cool you transposed the routine from the William Tell demo! that was one of the first demo's to get four voice sound out of the CoCo. I'm curious what was the Z-80 machine with the DAC you ported it to? I haven't programmed Pokey but the TIA and SID hardware facillitate in game music and sound effects easily whereas the same via the DAC usually pauses the game action as a result of the wait states.

Trem, here is a page with a link to a program that will convert .BIN files to WAV so you can load them through the casette port: http://www.coco3.com/community/2010/04/coco-bin-to-wav-help/ One of the free emulator packages has a utility for pulling whatever game .BIN file you select out of a .dsk image; you will need to do that before you can turn it into a WAV; there are also a lot of direct .BIN files floating around you can use the toWAV utility on Canyon Climber is a great cart! I remember getting that one when it first came out

potatohead, nice implementation of Mega-Bug on the Apple! Did Bjork code that one too? Yes the CoCo had no wait state thanks to the SAM managing the VDG; IMO a 6502 in a CoCo would not be powerful enough to manipulate the DAC to create the four voice music and digitised speech in the CoCo as this pushes even the 6809. Perhaps if you added a SID chip or Pokey; I notice complex sound is missing on the apple version.

I think coding Mega-Bug for the c64 or the A8 would be easier to write than the CoCo version; the CoCo had neither sprites nor dedicated sound chip so the CPU had a lot more work to do. Beyond wait states, the advanced sound and graphics chips in the C64 and A8 offload a lot of work from the CPU. On the other hand, if Rybags could put a 6502 in the CoCo it wouldn't have enough power for a Mega-Bug game Despite the slightly slower clock speed the 6809 is about 3 times as powerful as the 6502 so it can do things in software that would otherwise require dedicated hardware.

James, Canyon Climber is another great game! Bjork is a fantastic programmer, I didn't know he was working on the mega-bug port for the Z-80 too but IMO whatever memory mangement scheme the TREK used for the VDG is suspect here, not the CPU: The Synchronous Address Multiplexor (SAM) chip feeds the VDG instead of allowing the VDG to directly access memory; this is crucial because although the VDG has this functionality it forces a wait state on the CPU - with SAM interleaving the access this never happens. Without SAM, I suspect the NEC Trek like the Imagination Machine incurred performance limitations from wait states unless their custom solutions were commensurate.