Andromeda Stardust

Wow. 100 posts lighter. Back to shooting space bugs! 👾🛸

My Arcade uses the NES ROM. I wasn't sure did someone publish patterns for the NES version? Patterns are much harder that it appears. You gotta round the corners with perfect execution. Hesitate a single frame and the ghosts desync pretty quickly. For me e cherry pattern falls apart around e upper left pellet. I gotta cut left and immediately cut right while eating both ghosts. The timing of the ghost chomp throws me off because it is midway through a corner cut, then hitting right before Pacman eats the 400 ghost. I suck at memorizing. And I'll prolly just use the Namco collection on my switch for practice since I can save state at the beginning stage. There's no rack advance on the Numskull arcade machines unlike players bitd could train that way by manually advancing the stage for practice. In general getting good at Pacman is great practice for Ms Pacman. my Pacman cab has the 3 lives firmware and the numskull logo tells me the dump is good. No glitching...

Honestly let's all get back to zapping space bugs, and stop worrying so much what the inside of the cart looks like.

It certainly appears that way based upon the pic. They spare no attention to detail on these.

I don't truly understand the apeal of Track and Field or Dragon's Lair, though they obviously have their fans or Numskull wouldn't produce them. And yeah the six button fighters need a proper ful scale array. To be playable. That said, the tiny joysticks and trackballs work nearly as well as the real thing. The quarter arcades have better controls than the 1up machines honestly. I shouldn't have to upgrade the joystick, butyons, and apply laquer to the overlays because 1up cheaped out. My secret desire is for a Donkey Kong cab with selectable US/Japan stage order, but that won't happen. I swear, if Nintendo makes a labo arcade cab for the switch tablet, I'm gonna vomit in my mouth a bit. An aftermarket switch arcade cab with digital stick and butyons would be cool.

I accept your challenge. Perfect score for 1st intermission is 30,000. https://nrchapman.com/pacman/cherry.html https://nrchapman.com/pacman/strawberry.html Is that "expert gameplay" enough for you? I plan to achieve this on the Quarter Arcade. I gotta start practicing! 🕹️ EDIT: Stage 255 / Killscreen on Quarter Arcade Pacman would be truly worthy of some special achievement, but I don't have the patience to do that.

Ha, I love how you compare the $12.95 - $20 Tiny Arcade rubbish to the $150-$180 Numbskull and $120-$150 Replicade cabs. I am working on memorizing the pattern for the cherry stage. Would that be proof enough if I successfully execute it? These Quarter arcade cabs are actually much higher quality than the 1UP arcade stuff. I had to gut the 1UP machines to put decent arcade sticks and buttons in them, and paint lacquer on the marquee so that the print doesn't rub off. Real arcade vinyl doesn't do that. After my experience with the 1up machine, given the scale of the upright cabs, I'd rather just have my Quarter Arcade. The Replicade spinner on tempest could use some work admittedly. The trackball on Centipede is very nice. I have scored over 100k on Tempest and 30k on Centipede. And I am by no means a competitive player. Quarter Arcade is still the only licensed device that I am aware that has the actual Ms Pacman ROM, unless you want to buy a commercial Pacman Galaga Cab ($3000 new), or the 30-in-1 Home Arcade machine for around the same price. The Ms Pacman ROM has some royalty issues with ex GCC members. It appears Numbskull paid the royalties to use the Ms Pacman ROM right before GCC sold them to Atgames. And we all know Atgames have a lovely track record for quality. Don't expect a 1UP arcade machine or any other quality device featuring the real Ms Pacman ROM any time soon, or any home Namco console collection or plug and play, at least since Game Cube 50th Anniversary Namco Museum, GBA Ms Pacman Collection, or the 2004 Ms Pacman plug and play. I think I may have fixed it. If the Numbskull logo doesn't show up upon boot, you may have a bad dump. The updater goes up to 8%, then the USB insert sound plays and it jumps to 99%. It is important not to touch it at this stage. You have to wait a few minutes for the updater to tell you it's finished before you disconnect it.

I got a question for you gurus. I bought the Pacman edition Numbskull Quarter arcade from geekstore.us (yes, it is still in stock there), number 06731/10000. Out of the box, it had the 5 lives / 15000 pts variant 1.30_5 firmware. Apparently they did update it before it shipped. I have played it considerably over the past week or so. Recently as of this evening, I installed the 1.30_3 firmware on it, and the numbskull logo splash screen does not appear on the screen when I boot it. This is in line with one of the reviewers who did an extensive review and also noted the splash screen was absent after upgrading the v1.30_3 firmware. I have encountered an odd bug as well, about a half dozen times so far, typically it appears on the cherry or strawberry stage during play but could presumably happen anywhere. The controls seize up and do not respond intermittently for about 5 seconds or so. This is more than enough to kill a run. I have been practicing getting a perfect pattern on the Cherry stage using a pattern, and execution can be a bit tricky. So far I've got about half of the board memorized, but I've been hit by the mysterious input bug about 3 or 4 times now and it ruins me every time. I may revert to the 5 lives version (which was already preinstalled) if this bug keeps surfacing. @negative1, you have made it abundantly clear that you do not find any merit besides shelf collectiblity on these mini arcade machines, and that is fine. Is it necessary to voice this opinion on every single post in the thread? I have played my replicate centipede and Tempest more times than you could count. Ditto for the Knumbskull Pacman and Ms Pacman (and Gagaga whenever it decides to get here). If the machine is accurate enough that I can run patterns (input bugs aside), that gets a pass in my book...

Nobody is "doping" the consoles. During a console's lifetime, various exploits are discovered to take advantage of the hardware, sometimes in ways that were unintended when the consoles were created. Atari 2600, for instance, was literally built to specs for playing Pong and Tanks. The second round of games developed exploits which continued throughout the console's lifetime. The definition of a game cart is you plug it into a stock system and it plays. Absolutely no modifications to stock hardware are necessary to run the game. Overclocking the cpu or adding ram, sprite registers etc in the console that did not exist prior are examples of steroids or doping. Because a game developed on said modified system will fail on stock hardware, it is not a 2600 game. Full stop. You can cram literally anything into a game cart and it is still a legit game if it runs on a stock system. I have no idea why you consider melody carts to be not true games because they don't use period technology. Pitfall II DCP used technology that was nonexistent in 1977. Ditto for super ram, bankswapping, and every other exploit applied to games released later on the system.

"Game of the Year" competitions and the like take in multiple factors beyond fun factor and playability, such as graphics, sales or popularity, etc. Like on modern consoles not only big budget games get sales and accolades, doesn't mean that small budget indie games cannot be equally fun. So for instance comparing 32kb arm releases to 6502 4k rom only releases. One sets up a display engine which takes a "let's stuff as many things as possible onscreen at once approach." The ARM processor handles all the logic and generates code via a display kernel that tosses all the garbage onscreen every frame. The assembly approach just takes what the hardware allows and manipulates the objects in code. The Batari Basic approach just lets people write high level code and compile it to asm using built in kernels. All methods are capable of producing fun games. Seems original game concepts developed from scratch apply better within the hardware constraints and arcade ports deemed impossible back in the day fair better with arm code. So can the hardware purists and the hardware exploiters just get along and make whatever games they want, while the gamers and collectors pick some stuff from pile 1 and pile 2 based on their own merits and not the underlying technology or favorite developer. A turd game is a turd game. A gem is a gem. So go nuts. Feel free to slap a cray II supercomputer on an fpga, cram it in a cart, and use it to play frogger or something on the atari.

This, this, this! Games are meant to be fun. If you have fun and get enjoyment out of playing it doesn't matter what kind of technology is crammed in the cart. And it doesn't matter if I'm playing Mario Odyssey or Breath of the Wild on my Nintendo Switch, or Assembloids or Poodle/Aeomeba Jump on my Atari. 1977 vs 2017 technology. Both hook up and display fine on my 4k tcl TV. The Atari is a special place in history and homebrews make it timeless. The technology behind the game isn't the issue. We are playing brand new fun games on a 42 year old console. The 6502 purists can go sit down. Don't play any new games period, unless they were developed on ticker tape and eprom burners. Did the old hat devs have modern emulators and illegal opcodes? Nope. So can the graphic fans likewise sit down. If you value fancy graphics over gameplay on an Atari game, why are you even here? Go sell your old crap to someone who will enjoy it, and get a Switch or PS4.

Interesting spin. I personally loved the old 128 byte RAM PONG which consisted of a loader that pumped the game into the RAM before disconnecting the ROM. You can pull the cart out even! 😂 I would love to see someone do this for the NES. That would be impossible though since the transparent color is always active, rendering all character sprites and background sprites invisible. Bus stuffing the ppu to change the background color might work though... 🙄

I am not buying any two player fighter in a micro-arcade form factor. No way those will be playable at any skill level with six buttons crammed into a space hardly bigger than my thumb, doubly so for two player cabs. The quarter arcade stuff is top teir, closely followed by replicade. Sticking to 1-2 buttons plus joystick, they play great. Even replicade's centipede trackball and tempest spinner are golden. But I cannot fathom playing a six-button array of tiny pea shooters... 😝 With new two player bubble bobble machine by quarter arcade (likely fine for single player), or the replicade street fighter ii cabs with dual six button arrays, I can't fathom two people sharing those units, comfortable or otherwise.

The audio in this port is epic!📣🙉

😭

I love me some fan fiction! 😈

I agree wholeheartedly with your entire post, except for this one statement. 😆

Aarrrg! You ninja quoted me while I was editing the post. The Numbskull cabinets by far are the slickest looking and largest of all the mini arcades, and each one is absolutely authentic. I have Pac and Ms Pac, with Galaga on the way. I am concerned they don't have to get Ms Pacman pulled due to AtGames licensing. My understanding was that Numbskull secured the license in the 11th hour right before GCC signed them over to Atgames. So it may be the only "quality" product we see with authentic arcade ROMs for a while. BUY THE MS PACMAN QUARTERCADE, NOW, BEFORE IT'S GONE FOLKS. DITTO FOR PACMAN. Mine is #6731 / 10000 The 2004 TV Games port is actually the closest matching the real arcade (they ported the original code from Pacman and Ms pacman to display portrait mode on standard def TVs, and play nearly identically, except patterns don't work anymore in pacman due to subtle nuances) - I also have the 30th anniversary version crammed into a cigar box.

My arcade is currently the only "legal" way to play ms pacman? Ha! 🤣 Quarter Arcade is currently the only legal licensee of the arcade ROM afaik, unless you buy a $3000 Ms Pacman Galaga cab direct from Namco or one of their botique 30-in-1 home arcade models. None of the 1up or My Arcade stuff has the original Ms Pacman ROM AFAIK. GCC sued Namco/Bandai for back royalties on the Class of '81 cabs mid 2000s and settled out of court. That's why we haven't seen Ms Pacman reissued since the Museum collections and TV plug-n-play until very recently. The MyArcade and basic fun stuff have either Namco NES ROMs or newly programmed ports which are exempt from the deal because they don't reuse the code from GCC. Didn't they help program the superior-in-every-way Tengen ROM as well? Nevermind Namco in the Japanese homeland never wanted to achknowlege Ms Pacman's existence despite it's cash cow status in the west, likely due to Xenophobia since it was western developed. Now I hear through the grapevine the rights on the arcade ROM have been sold to Atgames. Not sure how I feel about that with their less than stellar Quality Assurance record...

Can you do Galaga '88 🚀🚀🚀

And FPGA implementation of the Cray II would be feasible I think. No need to spend 18 million and require a small nuclear reactor to power it. It would probably fit inside an XM module if not a cart.

It's not unlike comparing the 3.59Mhz 65C02 in the SNES to the 94Mhz MIPS in the N64. I do not think we will ever see a bigger gap in processing power in a single generation. Though the slower cpu in the snes held it's own against the 7Mhz 6502 in the turbografx and the 10mhz genesisquite well, even in carts without the enhancement chips. I think comparisons between the Cray 2 supercomputor and the ARM inside the cartridge are moot though. Has any gsme programmed thus far actually bottlenecked the ARM? There are some extremely restrictive limits the TIA and 6507 continue to impose.

If the N8 is causing corruption, it is likely a flashcart issue. The cart should playable on an NES, Famicom, AVS, or NT Mini. If the everdrive causes corruption, it's the mapper driver?

Pretty much this. The ARM tech breathed so much new life into homebrews. Now even more people are programming the old way compared to ten years ago I think. More people making games period, regardless of method.

To be fair, whether we put the logo on the box or not, people will discriminate. Nobody is buying these retail, so the box print is irrelevant. The AA store clearly identifies which games have melody enhancement, and which bankswitching scheme they use. So we know when a game uses ASM, BB, or ARM code based upon the description, as well as the ROM size and if the game features additional RAM. I would not be open to categorize games based upon type, though there is a section for AtariVox games, these included 2600 and 7800 games with any bankswitching type, because they are compatible with a specific peripheral marketed by AtariAge. Currently there are sections for homebrews, hacks, repros, and non-games (test carts, demos, and music generators), and hardware mods and accessories. We do not need to subdivide the homebrew catagory further. If we create a special section in the store for "advanced" homebrews versus "vanilla" homebrews, it would discriminate against the ASM and BB games. And BB is really just a compiler that encodes to 6502 ASM, so an ASM programmer could literally do anything BB could do an a whole lot more. There's a lot of flavors. While many back in the day games were poop on a stick, suffice to say many AA homebrews are above and beyond the quality of vintage releases. Pacman, ET anyone? Name one of those turds in the AA shop. You can't.