tkarner

I had the same dilemma recently. I ordered Astro Blaster. It just looked like it has a bit more depth than Astro Fighter.

I have Super Skateboardin. Works fine. All other 7800 titles work fine. Harmony Cart works fine. Starpath 2600 games don't work but until now that was my only issue. I'm guessing it's a bad cart. I got it on ebay. Seller said it was "tested". Maybe they just saw the title screen and thought it was ok. I requested a return/refund. Hopefully won't have any issues with that.

Are there any known compatibility issues with this game and certain 7800 consoles? I just got a copy (the Absolute 7800 version, not the Activision 2600 version) and it doesn't want to work. It powers up fine and displays the Atari logo. Then it correctly displays the game title screen. But upon hitting Select or Reset the game seems to crash, the screen displays gibberish. I thoroughly cleaned the contacts to no avail. I think I got a broken cartridge. Too bad too, externally it's in excellent condition.

Ok, thanks. I was just wondering if sunlight or oxygen were the catalysts.

If one was to open a NIB, shrinkwrapped Activision box, would the cart label exhibit actiplaque? And if not, how long would it take after opening before the label started to deteriorate?

What about Space Firebird ? A bit obscure but so were Astro Fighter, Astro Blaster and Moon Cresta and they made it to the 7800

I'm not looking for a fortune. A new Adventure Plus is what, $20, $25? I'd take that.

I have an interesting cartridge here. It's an Atari Age homebrew cartridge with a label error. It contains the Adventure Plus ROM but it has a Pac Man Arcade Label. Several years ago I ordered some homebrews from Atari Age and received this error cartridge. Instead of exchanging the cartridge, Albert simply sent me the correct Adventure Plus labels, which I never applied. So for sale is a cartridge that looks like Pac Man Arcade but plays Adventure Plus. The unused Adventure Plus replacement labels are also included. If interested, make an offer.

Late to the party on this one but I like it. It's like Minesweeper meets Dig Dug meets HERO. Next time someone bad mouths bB games, show them Mine Dig. Question on the green/yellow/red warning system - does that include diagonals? For example, if you're one diagonal away from a bomb will that show as red? Or is it yellow? You're one grid space away from the bomb but it's two moves so it's not precisely clear to me what the warnings mean.

Gorf Time Pilot Phoenix Galaxian

So I'm thinking of getting a custom cart made of a 2600 Galaxian hack I made a few years ago. I'd like everyone's input on the label. I've come up with two designs. The first is a silver label influenced by 7800 Galaga. The second, I went in a different direction. It's a picture label with campy comic style art work. In case you're wondering, that art work was the box art on the Commodore 64 floppy disk version of Galaxian. If anyone is interested in the game bin file, I posted it back around 2010 but I'll attach a copy here too. There are many good hacks of Galaxian floating around but this one is my favorite. But I'm probably biased. GalaxianTK.bin

There's one on ebay right now with a buy-it-now of $199.95. Does the red label add such a premium or is the seller, how to say this politely... Optimistic?

If I'm not mistaken there are two A8 versions Dig Dug; the 1982 original (in a brown label cartridge) and a later version (gray label cartridge). Is one considered better than the other? And how do they compare with the 7800 version?

It's a PAL game so you have to select Europe or ALL as the region when searching. http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=1637

Ok, Frogger hack version 3. I kept Kevin's changes to the frogs, turtles and logs. Then I modeled the cars, bulldozer and snake after the Atari 800 John Harris version (as much as was possible with monochrome sprites that are only 7 bits tall). Have fun playing any of these or use them as a guide to hack your own... FroggerTK-KM.bin

That works too. Your frogs, turtles and bulldozer all look really good. Though I might revert back to an all solid truck, if for no other reason then I don't recall any other Frogger version where it had stripes. Maybe if I have some time I'll come back to this and try to do something about the cars, using the arcade or the Atari 800 versions for ideas. But that might be hard with just monochrome sprites. I don't want to spend too much time on this since we already have the excellent Starpath version anyway.

http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=1640

Kjmann's multicarts are AtariMax carts. He just programs them for you. I have one and I like it. I'm considering getting a second. If you're into the 8 bit scene and have all the equipment, you can save some money and make your own using the AtariMax blanks. But if you're a more casual 8 bit user like me then Kjmann's multicarts are great. I have an XEGS without a keyboard and without a disk drive that I use as a purely cartridge based game console. The multicart allows me to play rare games, prototypes (Super Pac Man, Jr Pac Man, Berzerk), and the disk versions of games (which were often better than the cartridge versions, like John Harris' Frogger). How it works is that once you purchase the multicart, Kjmann will email you a long list of roms. You pick about 50 or so (this is where Atarimania.com was very helpful to me) and he'll try to fit as many of them on the cart as he can. I did have one problem but Kjmann was very helpful resolving it. Initially, many of the games on my multicart crashed while loading. The problem stemmed from my lack of keyboard. Even though the games themselves only required a joystick to play, they failed to load without a keyboard attached. Kjmann helped me identify two pins on the keyboard connector that when shorted with a jumper trick the XEGS into thinking a keyboard is connected. All the games now load fine. But if you have a keyboard or any other model 8 bit then you won't have this problem.

No no, here's your box art...

I'd like to do a quick hackomatic job on Donkey Kong, if possible, to make the first level girders red like the arcade instead of the current purple/pink. Anyone know which byte defines the level one girder color? Or is it more complicated than that? Thanks.

At the risk of sounding like one of those guys, "I can't program but wouldn't it be great if..." Well, I had some ideas I thought I'd just throw out there: 1) Choplifter for the 2600. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Has anyone ever given that a try? 2) Hacking Fatal Run (2600 or 7800) into something that plays like Out Run. Thoughts/comments?

I found this relevant link: http://www.atari7800.org/7800list.htm

A couple bits of advice for the publisher... Proofread. The Jinks article has a couple of typos. The one that stands out most is when you talk about "ball psychics". Is that anything like ball physics? And what's up with all the digitized babe pictures? I'm certainly no prude. If they contribute something to the story then I have no problem but they seem completely gratuitous to me. Consider this, when someone with my avatar complains about gratuitous digitized babes then you know you've gone too far.

Planet Smashers - Right button cloaks your ship Motor Psycho - Right button jumps

I found a couple of videos on youtube showing Super Pac Man on the 7800: and the 5200/8-bit: As I suspected, the visuals are better on the 7800 but the sound is better on the 8-bit. Still, I think I'll put the 7800 homebrews of both Super Pac Man and Jr. Pac Man on my shopping list even though I already have the 8-bit versions.