CatPix
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Posts posted by CatPix
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17 minutes ago, carlsson said:You can imagine those Pong-on-a-chip as early forerunners to System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions, i.e. the entire game including input and output is integrated into one chip on the cartridge, rather than just a ROM that is read by a CPU in the console. A couple times I have mentioned that it should be possible to create homebrews for the PC-50x and similar series, perhaps using an Arduino or some other SoC solution that implements everything about the game on its own. Could provide much higher resolution and advanced games, not sure if you get colour or are limited to B&W depending on the chip pinout.
PC-50* consoles relies on colouring chips to provide colors (I see a reference to AY-3-8515) The chip being integrated into the console, you'd be limited to the colors it offers (about 8?).
Still yep, technically since the console it just providing I/O, you could easily plug anything on it
The only limitations would be the coloring chip, one button action, and of course, being in SD resolution.
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Yes, and are quite common. One was found in the US too but the US release is extremely rare.
12 hours ago, stupus said:I have heard of the creatronic pc5xx version but its not even listed places like the old computer.com
I guess thats the mega duck people?
Most likely. I need to dig out more about them.
They are know for having released a series "Creatronic Bi-Bip" Pong console, and about nothing gaming-wise until the Mega Duck. I found a watch for sale now....
This make me suspect that Creatronic was just a "Label brand" from another manfacturer; Given they bothered to have everything relabeled in French, some kind of "upmarket" brand maybe?
I strongly suspect ITMC, the company that would later create the "Yeno" brand (this one is proven easily : I have the warranty card for the Yeno Super Cassette Vision and the return adress is "ITMC").
Unfortunately I haven't found any document yet, but in the small world of cheap video game, I only see ITMC/Yeno being "powerful" enough in France in 1993 to team up with Videojet and the NL-based Timlex to release a clone console.
To stay in topic, ITMC was a large purveyor of PC-50* based systems here
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I looked a bit and there's about no picture of that cart, so have mine ^^ It's a totally "French" version. Most of the time the boxes were in French and English.
And as you can see, no extra joystick connectors...
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No, this system is based on Pong chips. If you open one, the console has literally no brains, nothing, just the required parts to power the system and display the video signal over RF.
All the brains are on the cartridge, which is goign to be a Pong-on-a-chip game, a self contained game (unlike the Telstar Arcade or the Microvision, those chips are not microprocessor with a built-in game, it's all done by logic gates); more infos here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-50x_Family
Now, given that the system is just a support, it's not impossible technically for someone to have made carts with a CPU, video out and such to make more powerful games, but given that those Black Point machines seesm to be clones/rebadging of the Radofin TeleSport machines (which are different from the 1292 and 1392 machines) those are certainly just PC-50* machines.
Edit : I have the cart for the tank game for Creatronic console, so it is not unique. However, the Tank cart and the "6 games-fundamental" carts are amongst the rarest and hardest to find so it's no surprise you never saw it in the wild. This version with built-in joysticks ports is probably even more rare, the versions I saw used the console sticks.
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The BK have minimal graphic capabilities. It's not text based-only so you can make regular games on it.
There are two modes, Low-res and High res : 512×256, monochrome and 256*256 with 4 pseudo-colors. I never found a precise info on the amount of RAM it has, but base machine has 32 Ko of RAM, and only 16 Ko are available, so you can assume that the display has about 16 Ko of RAM.
Aside from being able to fidle with every pixel separately and color it as you wish, it has (as far as I understand it) no support for anything, no scrolling, no hardware sprite support.
For the 4 colors, it is in fact 4 levels of grays that get colored by the RGB output; the "4 colors" being then Red, Blue, Green and White.
A later evolution of the BK series is the BK 11 which feature a slightly more advanced video display, mostly by adding a series of colored pages (which, kinda like CGA works, in fact offers 4 palettes that users can't choose. Being less common there's less games and programs on it)
Here are more examples of games developped or ported on the BK :
(this one feature reasonnably smooth sprite scrolling and a lot of dithering to feature more colors, quite impressive)
(Nice, typical hacker intro and menu at the beginning
)
A prto of Exolon, a famous 8-bits game - quite interesting to compare with other machines :
Original BK have only a ZX Spectrum-like beeper for sound. Adding other chips was common, especially for post 1991 games. Covox were easy to make, but other favorite were VI53 chips ( a clone of the Intel timer chip used in PC for the PC speaker... except that this chip in PC is used to generate clock frequencies - on the BK and the Vector 06C, as well as the TIA MC1 arcade, all three output are used for sound, providing a rather flexible 3 oscillator sound chip) and AY-3-8912 chips.
Adding RAM was also always done, so most BK games won't run on a "raw" machine.
And have a demo using Covox 😛
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Yep. 10 buttons to select the games, 1 button analog non-centering joysticks, difficulty switches. Definitively a PC-50* based system. The carts looks like regular PC-50* carts too, with a different label.
It's funny we were discussign this about the 1292 system, but the first one pictured use the same shell than the Radofin Pong systems (and looks clsoe to the 1292 design, too) :
Well! Look at what the Telesport IV looks like :
Looks like Black Point was renamed Radofin consoles....
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Neat
I guess the "1980" date commonly seen for the European release is an average . It also may depend how you consider sale figures; does a system that was released for December 1979 count for 1979 (when talking on a general scale of influence) or more 1980? In France the 2600 was delayed up to 1981 (a side result being that no 6 switch variants of the SECAM 2600 are know to exist, and probably never existed).
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Going off-topic a bit, but at least for Europe, the success of the Videopac is easily explained by several factors :
- lack of serious competition : the Videopac was released in Europe in 1978/79. The main opponent, the Atari 2600, was released in 1980, the Intellivision in 1981 or 82.
- local manufacturing : the Videopac systems (maybe not all of them. It seems early ones were shipped from the US) were manufactured in France and in the Netherland; as such they didn't suffered from extra taxes, costly shipping, etc.
- better knowledge of the local market and better network. Philips being a major electronics seller in Europe since decades, they had a huge network and a deep knowledge of their markets. It was easy for them to put their name and weight in balance to market the Videopac, as opposed to Atari. (Funnily mirroring how things happened in the USA with Atari and Magnavox)
- "standard" : Videopac were sold under several brands in different countries. Usually those were just Philips brands but at least Brandt (part of Thomson ) sold the Videopac too; it made the Videopac appears as a largely adopted standard of video games. (Most likely, this is the reason why Philips would abandon their in-house designed computers to sell MSX standard computers.)
We will probably never know why Philips didn't released the Signetics systems under their own name. My best guess is that Philips wanted to cash on the Odyssey name, and they probably figured that they could produce games more quickly for more-know Intel chips than for Signetic chips. The influence of Ralph Baer might have played a role too; also, if the system was ready for production, it was also more clever for Philips to release the Odyssey2 in the USA in 1978 than delaying a potential Signetic game machine back to 1979 or 1980, with Atari already filling the US market, and Mattel intending to step in too.
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Well from the game listing, it seems that Interton was the most interested in the system, so I can't see as impossible that Interton approached Philips to get the system upgraded with a newer video chip. (when was the 2637 designed?)
As I said, Bowling and another game common on both systems are clearly designed with the non-centering joysticks of the Radofin. Of course, it's not far-fetched to imagine that prototype of the Interton also had non-centered sticks and the decision to make them auto-centered came too late to reprogram the few games not optimized for it.
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I strongly suspect that people mentionning 1974 for Interton are mixing up the VC 4000 and the Video-2000; the Video 2000 is a discrete-based system using carts containing either jumpers or logic gates (If you're thinking that it sounds like what Ralph Baer wanted to do with the Odyssey, you'd be right, it's exactly the same kind of tech. Given that Germany saw the release of the "ITT Odyssee" in 1973, it's not even hard to argue Interton at least knew the design would work).
As for the confusion, I've seen the Video 2000 name used for the VC-4000, and vice versa. The confusion probably came from the earliest ages of Internet.
The Video-2000 's release date appears to be 1975. 1975 or 1976, both dates appears reasonnable for such a "simple" system.
Also, good information on the chip's specific release date. Now we have a strong argument to date those systems later than the mentionned dates.
On Radofin's side, their Pong system used the same general design, and a similar name, which might also cause confusion :
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Interestingly, I found a scan of a French magazine from November/December, 1982. The Radofin is annonced as "just arrived on the market". No mention of the anteriority of the system elsewhere, but the writers didn't paid much attention to the system. The late date may just be due to the need to convert the console to SECAM, which, from the console I own, called for a board redesign, the (RGB?) to SECAM conversion being done with a bunch of discrete components unlike PAL one which was made by an IC.
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You can see that even as "new" the system was sold cheaper than the aging "Philips" (Videopac/Odissey2) and Atari (2600). Amusingly, the Prestige is a variant of the Arcadia 2001, the "evolved" version of the "Signetic system" with a more powerful graphic chip! (it's amusing that also the "Video System" get two stars and the Prestige only one for "sound", since it's the very same sound chip... but to be fair, the testers most likely expected "more" from the more advanced-looking system and gave a note accordingly)
This doesn't help much about finding the earliest possible release date... but we can also tell that at least the 1292 was still sold as of Christmas 1982.
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I look for clues often but unfortunately, both companies have been closed - and apparently, Radofin was so unimportant that no one even bothered buying the name. Yes, you can use the name Radofin as you see fit, no one is currently holding the rights for it.
Finding clues about who worked there it though. One programmer for the Interton VC 4000 posted here on AtariAge; I'l trying to find the topic back; if you can contact him he might have informations on the company or remember other people from the company.
Contacting Philips is almost certainly a lost cause, they are very silent about their past and I heard they are very uncaring about keeping archives on projects that did not made a reasonnable success.
What we can say is that adapters can sometime be found to play games from one system to another, that people have made such adapters, they dumped and compared ROM from Radofin and Interton games and most are 100% identical and work on both systems.
It also seems that the Radofin is probably closer to the original design than the Interton : one big difference between the two systems is that the Radofin have non-centering joysticks, unlike the Interton.
And several games were programmed with non-centered joystick in mind; Bowling for example plays very easily on the Radofin system, but it near impossible on the Interton because positionning the bowling ball is not at the "zero" of the joystick, so placing it and hitting it become a struggle on the Interton (especially with the Interton's very strong springs).
The Interton machine was however certainly more succesfull since several games only appears on the Interton; some of those games bear mention of a programmer in Hong Kong :
https://tcrf.net/Shoot_Out_(Interton_VC_4000)
It also prove that Interton was still active as of 1981 to promote the system.
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Neat! This photo makes me realize I never opened the joystick of my Yeno French export model. This logo is really intricate when you know that no one but a few people would ever see it...
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I was mostly referring to Russia about the scrap value for computers, because they had factories churning enough computers to actually have stockpiles of them and the shock therapy in Russia was quite terrible.
I mentionned somewhere that Comecon countries got things going a bit different, so It's no surprise it didn't happened to you that way
We're talking about dozens of countries after all. And from my talk with Russians people, it was different even within Russia : finding Elektronika or MSX KYBT (from schools) computers for sale or discarded was obviously more common around Moscow or St Petersburg than around most cities that didn't received any computer at all during the Soviet era.
I was just trying to give a general idea of how things happened, but if we wanna go in detail, it would take several paragraphs for each countries of the former Eastern Block, and probably a few just for the biggest Soviet cities.
And if you have more memories I would be glad to hear them
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Note that this is only from what I gathered, I'm not Russian. I just have a fondness for Russian culture (pre and post Soviet era included) so it was only natural I would get interested into the gaming culture in the Soviet Union.
Also I haven't mentionned the Comecon countries much because each country had their own little internal culture; Yugoslavia had many contact with the West, games were smuggled from the West to East (mostly ZX spectrum games). East Germany made an Amstrad CPC clone in 1990 but it was mere month before everything fell apart so it had no impact on anything.
In several Eastern countries (at least Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Poland) around 1990, games would be shared all over the countries from the West and internally... on FM radios. Yes. gamers would set up FM emitters and broadcast the data tapes over FM for gamers to record it (and/or directly load in on theitr computers I assume).
Something I forgot to mention was that those arcade machines and computers were rare. Most gamers in Eastern countries that got to play on computers before 1992 would have played games in computer clubs, very rarely owning their own computers.
After the Iron Wall fell, however, those Soviet/locally made systems would be utterly outdated or unattractive, as for example Atari would sell their aging 8 bits line in Eastern Europe (which explain the current situation you might have seen if you're into Atari 8 bits : that most software and hardware development is made in Poland and Czech Republic) so companies and administration would dump those computers out, and unsold stocks would be sold at literal scrap value, which explain why most games you can see in those videos bear dates of 1992 to 1994 : it is when those computers became "common" for everybody, before they were quickly replaced by either consoles (usually Famiclones) or aging but "better" (and non-Soviet
) Western computers.
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The Soviet Union never produced any console system beside a very rare ZX-Spectrum cart based system, of which apparently less that 1000 units were produced in 1991, the ALF :
Only 3 are know to exist to this day.
The Dendy was released in 1992, it's a RUSSIAN product, not a Soviet one. And they were relabeled "Genius" Korean/Taiwanese consoles (rumors has it that the Genius board and chips were designed by LG).
The remarquable feat is that it was marketed as a "genuine" product, with Dendy having their magazine and even a TV show, until the company capsized around 1996.
The Soviet Union produced handhled consoles, LCD-based games, clones of Game&Watch but also your typical "brick games" and similar systems (most likely copied from Taiwan products.)
They produced TV consoles but never anything more advanced than Pong games.
G&W "Egg" clone, with custom graphics from the fabulous Soviet Cartoon "Nu Pogodi" (seriously, give it a watch, it's a kind of Tom&Jerry; there is little spoken text so you don't miss much, and it's absolutely devoid of any propaganda - if anything the hero, Volk (Wolf) is a troublemaker! )
About propaganda : there was none.
The reason is simple : the earliest arcade games from the Soviet Union were electromechanical, so, no text, no display. Later arcade games were based on either early computers, with a few indigenous designs (PC-8000 clones, a Japanese computer, in the FOTON cabs, later replaced with ZX Spectrum boards - that make the ZX Spectrum the only architecture that has been a computer, an arcade and a video game system
) and the TIA-MC1 home-made arcade system.
The older designed games were very basic, similar to the likes of Space Invaders, they couldn't display text (well technically they could, but ROM size was an issue, especially in the Soviet Union).
The TIA MC-1 games display text, a common staple of Soviet games (often seen on home-made games for computers) but it's usually just a background story.
Usually, propaganda was avoided in Soviet production unless it was a commissionned work, because most writers feared that a political change (and the 80's were rife with political changes) would bring unwanted attention on their work and themselves. For example, after Stalin's death, many works were heavily censored to remove the most glaring allusions to Stalin, and their authors, even if it was commissionned work, were shunned and removed from their position.
The arcade games reflect that : the games are very generic or based on traditionnal folk tales.
"The humpbacked horse"
The Snow Queen (yes, it's not even a Soviet tale
)
Fishing cat :
S.O.S
The bulk of Soviet gaming was on computers, I don't need to name the ZX spectrum clones
Many were home-made, but there were a few factory-made machines :
But also, one of the few available computers was the Elektronika BK series. It is based on the PDP-11, and is compatible - so yes, Soviet gamers literally played on miniature mainframes
A lesser know machine, but a great one, is the Vector 06C :
Designed by two University teacher, it's probably the most gaming-oriented machien designed in the Soviet Union, being slightlty more powerful than a MSX1 computer.
For propaganda in home games, it's noteworthy that the ONLY game ever published by the Soviet Union is Tetris
each and every other game made before 1992 in Soviet Union was home-programmed.
It mean that if you find a propaganda-heavy game on computer from Russia, then it's only the programmer expressing himself, not a State-programmed propaganda work.
But from what I've seen, Soviet teenagers programming games had little interesting in propaganda - games are usually clones of Western games, so you even have a lot of games featuring US soldiers fighting the Soviet Union or just... featuring the US as the heroes
Elektronika BK game :
Vector 06C games (some of the being port of MSX games)
As for the original question, some gamers in EAstern Europe did enjoyed the Atari 2600 : travel to Western countries was possible under condition and there were no restrictions on what you could buy and bring back. It was especially true of Yugoslavia, and several upper-class families would travel to Austria and bring back Western products, and I had a testimony of someone's parents acquiring an Atari 2600
tho it was not a clone but an original Atari system.
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I looked high and low and there doesn't seems to be any NTSC version of the system - which make sense since all clues point out for the system to have been designed originally by Philips - so it make sense that the system use PAL-compatibles values from the get go.
RAM was included on several game carts, with amount of about "1Kb" which is probably bits and not octets, so 256 octets.:
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I've read several times that this machine was exported to Europe, and aside from one or two testimonies (but none as direct owner, more akin to "I remember seeing it in magazines") never found any proof, not as single ad or anything.
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Neat! I guess, given the cabling and the fact it's hardwired, that the SCV use direct contact, à la Atari with two buttons? Is that compatible with any standard? Atari, MSX two-buttons maybe?
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I agree
But ultimately, the feel I got from the few people that program for it (e5frog) is that, a bit like the Odyssey2/Videopac, the way the video display is made on the Channel F heavily prevents many "classic" graphic tricks to be done and as such, mean that if you can make more complex games with beefier ROM and add RAM on the carts, you still would be working within what you can see today with the regular games and the few homebrew.
Even if the 2600 had been shelved in 1980, homebrewers would have found and showcased the tricks of the 2600 hardware (the most simple exemple being displaying the supposedly unique ball several time, a trick used to make the vines in Pitfall) and we would still have the mindblowing games we got today. Except games like Pitfall would be homebrews and not commercial releases
This being said, the small pool of Channel F programmers mean that many tricks may be there but aren't discovered because of the unique hardware that not every programmer can investigate properly.
One could think at how the Amstrad CPC was considered as a fancy ZX Spectrum until the 2010's when people really got under the hood and unleashed crazy, C64-scrolling-smooth demos and games.
So who knows...
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I would like to say "both" but realistically, the Channel F was only capable of doing to much before tapping into the maximum it could do without slapping extra RAM and chips in the carts, and that wouldn't help the limited display.
It is sad however that it's often forgotten for the fact it does offer a pause button (many sites still credit the Atari 5200 for it) and having a four-button action joystick (Pull up push down, twist right and left).
But let's face it, being the first doesn't make you the best. It did what it could, but homebrews, as impressive as they are, use RAM and they probably showcase that the system has very little marging for improvement.
The Astrocade could have done so much better if it had been properly marketed and held by a strong name - Bally - instead of being abandonned merely a year after the actual release.
And of course, not being terribly unreliable
The BASIC cart could have (and did, on a limited scale) allowed for cheaper games and homebrew games, while Bally could have pushed a higher end line system by releasing the RAM expansion and allow to unleash the high resolution mode of the video chip.
Even with the limitation of said chip, with the RAM and ROM prices decreasing, the Astrocade could have remained relevant at least up until the NES came out.
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You may wanna try here :
The ComputerSpiel Museum in Berlin
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And I bet it's so cheap coarse woodgrain sandpaper no less.
I could admit someone providing fine grain sandpaper (wet 2000 grains sandpaper for car work use) but even that is not a good idea on long term.
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On 12/29/2020 at 10:10 PM, roots.genoa said:Pac-Land was released for the PC Engine, but even the arcade original is not that pretty, and it would make a lot more sense if it was the Famicom version since most clones are based on the Famicom... That being said, it was also released on several computers (MSX, C64, etc.) that can use cartridges. Maybe it was a consolized X68000? 🤯
Did that ever existed? the 68k computers were extremely expensive by the early 90's, cloning them would still make them quite costly given the hardware installed inside. I can't hardly see a clone console manufacturer going for a 68k clone without advertising it heavily (in the vein of the Laser 128 hinting at Apple II compatibility) If I had to bet on a consolized computer, I'm more go with MSX (to have the required graphics). There was one "official" consolized version, and being made of generic parts (for the MSX1) it would be easier to make a console clone of. MSX 1 support 2 buttons joysticks as well.
I don't see impossible that Zemmix consoles were cloned; and Zemmix existed covering all the MSX standards so we could see "PC-Engine" levels of graphics with a consolized MSX2.
(tho I think it's a dubious option at best.)
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Stone age (caveman) games: where did they come from, where did they go, and what are your favorites?
in Classic Console Discussion
Posted
My two cents on the caveman topic :
"caveman" has alot of clichés attached to it. Brutish, stone/woob club yelding big muscles small brains man, with usually a bend, crooked figure; they can fight to get food or any bauble that give power for the tribe; they can fight other cavemen, or feral animals, or DINOSAURS (with or withour Cadillacs). Cavemen makes for ideal generic video games heroes : they are generic, so no royalties! They have a huge (mostly imaginary) lore. They can appears in realistic or very toony setups. Making them collect food (as in Prehistorik Man ) can be part of the goal and not just for points (in Prehistorik Man, the food reserves were stolen, so you collecting fruits and food around the level is.. well, it's scoring alright, but it's also part of the story, which is a neat touch). You can give them superpowers or use deities in games without angering most religions since those would be invented or generic ones.
I think the reason they dissapeared is that, as the consoles expanded, the limited scope of their actions became apparent and didn't made for fun games compared to other "generic heroes" that could get more advanced weapons, more varied environments, etc...
Interestingly enough we could see cavemen again : survival games are picking up, and with the power of modern machines, a full simulation of survival as a caveman would be interesting enough even with the "less varied" environment.