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Bryan

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Everything posted by Bryan

  1. Don't forget the ball. Anyway, I don't want to see people get too worked up over this commonly repeated topic (2nd maybe to ones about ET being the worst game). If it had been any other game license, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. It's just that this was the hottest one known to man at the time so people looking to play the arcade game at home were probably pissed, and people who didn't go to arcades probably weren't. The bigger issue is what Pac-Man implied about the 2600. Was this a still a viable console for arcade gaming or wasn't it? Ms. Pac-Man proved it certainly had some life left in it, but I'm sure Atari drove many gamers into the arms of the competition. I mean a few months later Coleco was showing a console that didn't seem to have these problems.
  2. I'd like to make an image with either the A8 or 5200 ghost logic selectable at the menu screen.
  3. Ah, I just grabbed it from the AA archives and didn't look at it too closely.
  4. Many of the criticisms are just things that a quick hack could have (and has) fixed, and many of them require a more sophisticated game engine. But, customer expectations have to be factored in for the health of your company. Again.. it's not a bad 2600 game, per se. Just off course of what was implied and expected. You never hear people criticizing Ms. Pac-Man this way and that's because it feels right. And that's what makes Pac-Man controversial. And, yes, I have written 2600 programs and appreciate what a pain the ass they are.
  5. Oh, okay. Pretty simple. It will remember the last choice until that Tantalum cap drains.
  6. I'd like to see the mechanism for cycling the games. How long does it remember the last game?
  7. One more thing. This version seems very similar. It has the Atari copyright message, the slow ghosts, and all the 5200 extras:
  8. Hi Kevin, have you ever looked for Joe Helleson who worked at Atari and wrote a lot of Atari software on various machines from the 2600 on up? I'd love to ask him some questions. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/268783-is-there-a-pac-man-5200-to-8bit-conversion/?p=3863648
  9. Just found this old thread. I'd forgotten I was disassembling the 5200 version at one point: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/43934-easter-egg-found-in-5200-pac-man/ So, we have A8/5200 PacMan attributed to Joe Hellesen/James Andreason, although it seems obvious that James started with Joe's program. I wonder if Joe is still around and what he might know about this version.
  10. Weird. I just played it and couldn't make that happen. I'll have a look at the code sometime, though. How many matches were you set to and which castle was the AI playing?
  11. Asteroids actually does flicker. You can see the flicker messing with the video capture here: https://youtu.be/xP1Jtjk5vXY?t=136 It's just that everything flickers at 30Hz, so it's not that noticeable, and it probably won't flicker at all on LCD TVs.
  12. Okay, the ghost behavior is definitely like the A8 cart but it has the 5200's cycling attract mode and intermissions, so this is some kind of hybrid. Plus, this one has the different eating sound which isn't seen again until the Datasoft release. It's only about 14K, while the A8 version is 8K and the 5200 version occupies about 23K out of a 32K cart. Here are the possibilities I see: 1. Someone really went to a lot of trouble to implant most of the 5200 upgrades into the A8 game (all except the improved A.I. and faster speed). 2. Perhaps the original A8 Pac-Man had these features and Atari trimmed them out to make the game 8K, making this a proto. 3. This is an early upgraded 5200 Pac-Man build, making this a proto that was possibly modified to the A8, or not assembled for 5200 hardware. 4. This is somehow related to the Datasoft version. I had pretty much forgotten about this game, but when I have time I really want to do some code forensics. Does anyone have a good copy of the Datasoft version? EDIT: This appears to be a cassette of it?? Pac_Man_US_Gold.zip
  13. For comparison, here are the 5200 and A8 carts. This looks a lot different. pac_carts.zip
  14. I would say I got it somewhere around '83 probably. I think I got my first disk drive in '82 and a few disks from a friend in that year, and then I met someone with more software (& BBS connections) the following year. I seem to recall getting this pretty early on. There was a lot of trading going on in my area. I actually knew the computer store owner who was sending 5200 carts to Glenn, although I didn't know about that at the time (I later directed Kevin Savetz of the Antic podcast to him for an interview). I don't think this is a Glenn conversion though, since Glenn didn't usually make unnecessary changes to the game. It's possible this is a skilled hack/mash up of the A8 and 5200 game. It also may have been leaked from someone with connections. I have no idea, but further comparisons with known versions might shed some light on that. It's possible that the Datasoft eating sound was taken from this version or some version related to this one.
  15. Hmm... this version is odd. It has the improved Datasoft eating sound. It has the full attract mode and animations. The ghost behavior seems like it's the more advanced 5200 version. The copyright is Atari 1982. There's also 4 extra characters on the right side of the maze. It looks like it loads just below $4000 ($3FD0), which would make sense if this started as a 5200 image. PAC5200.XEX
  16. Mountain King is a good one. Always enjoyed the creepy atmosphere.
  17. I found the disk. I'll get the file as soon as I get an SIO2PC setup going.
  18. Because different computers used different pins for things, the colors on the cable aren't always useful. You can easily identify them with a continuity meter. http://www.atarimagazines.com/v6n12/VCRConnection.JPG http://www.atariage.com/forums/uploads/post-119-1053723058_thumb.png
  19. My wife does transcription, and it seems like Canadians are fond of referring to the '20' part of the year as '2'. So, 2012 becomes 'two-twelve'. Is that a thing up there?

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. icemanxp300

      icemanxp300

      Sounds like someone has a case of the Monday's

    3. BigO

      BigO

      I could maybe buy someone saying two oh twelve.

    4. BassGuitari

      BassGuitari

      I'm just glad saying "twenty-" is finally catching on here. "Two-thousand-" drove me nuts; after all, we never said "One-thousand nine hundred-" to describe years in the 20th century. "I was born in one-thousand nine-hundred eighty-five!" NO, motherf@#$er.

  20. Thick bands moving on the screen typically means there's a power supply problem (you're seeing excessive AC noise in the DC output).
  21. It was probably the pack in because they had made something like 12 million of them.
  22. We didn't have the media that exists today. People heard it was coming, trusted Atari to deliver the goods and then tried the game out when they got home. I've got a friend who told me he took it right back to Sears, and there's anecdotal evidence that the return rate was at least somewhat higher than usual. Most people obviously kept it and played it, but I think Atari was tarnishing its image and it helped set the stage for the crash to come.
  23. NTSC and PAL machines have a slightly different system clock (1.79 vs 1.77MHz) and this makes the SIO speed slightly different. It usually isn't a problem, though.
  24. That's because the management structure was inept. Had there been some kind of design meeting, they could have had a project goal and then walked it back as needed. I don't get the idea there was any of that. Tod said the higher-ups didn't have any objections to the game at all.
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