RetroFiends

Perhaps I'm the odd one out here, but I for one am pleased to know there won't be a breath timer. I swear whenever I play Sonic and the drowning music starts my blood pressure goes through the roof. Although to be the devil's advocate, do you have no variables you could temporarily borrow for the timer or is the game that packed?

I could never tell what the heck I was doing in solaris, I'll have to read this. Thanks

That's funny, I was just thinking about how cool a port of Angry Birds for the Atari would be. I'm not a big Angry Birds fan by any means but it'd certainly be an awesome demake. I mean, Human Cannonball on the 2600 is already half way there.

You may not be able to smooth scroll the playfield diagonally but you could update the playfield every so many frames to give the illusion of scrolling. Think of it like the red and white strips on the road in pole position. It's not a practical solution but I think an isometric port of zaxxon is technically feasible...

The heavy sixer is a liquidatable asset that I can sell off if the going gets tough. I cannot legally liquidate a female companion.

When I was younger and had expendable income it was pretty bad. We're talking like several hundreds of dollars on games every couple of weeks. My friends were all saving up for cars and whatnot, but not me. It took a long time to train myself to show some sort of restraint.

+1 for all the Jr. Love. It really doesn't get enough credit. I didn't even realize these were necromanced. But hey, the threads are new to me

The Vader Model is definitely my first, followed by the Sears Telegames heavy sixer. It would be the other way around, but having "telegames" written on it knocks it down a point for me and I don't know why. The Vader one looks mean, and the Telegames has that awesome weird wood pattern thing going on.

When I was a kid I would collect but nowadays with budgets, bills, and all that poop stuff I tend to only buy games when I explicitly intend to play them. Which is still too damn often and too damn expensive. But it gives me stuff to write about. If I don't like a game enough to keep playing it, I'll usually sell it if it's worth anything or give it away to someone who will appreciate it. Another concern is that I just don't have the shelf space like I used to. I recently acquired just under a hundred atari games and they completely took over a shelf. :S If I had the finances to seriously collect, though, I would. Collecting soothes an urge that I have for one reason or another.

I had a friend who was also into retro games as a kid. That was maybe 2002? He had two Atari 2600's and I don't remember what I traded him for it now, but it didn't cost me much. This was before ebay fever was in full bloom and you could find this stuff everywhere offline. Anyway, I had that VCS and maybe 10 games and I fell in love. I even had an older TV with the screws to go with it so I didn't need an adapter. (That TV eventually died, sad days) I didn't ever really go crazy with collecting for it. I'd pick up a stray game here and there every year or so, since emulation was so convenient (and free). Because the 2600 is so "arcade", for lack of a better term, a majority of the games are so replayable that I still don't get bored of the games I had back then. Fast forward to earlier this month, I started programming a 2600 homebrew, and I decided to pick up a 7800 for testing and general use. I won an auction for a working 7800 lot for a nice price... and now I have something like a hundred cartridges all working except for a Spider Fighter cart. And now My Atari Collection is beginning to rival my steam collection... I think I just got hooked. God help this poor soul when my harmony cart arrives.

I refuse to feel embarrassed by any game I like. Take note: I genuinely enjoy pac-man on the 2600.

The real question is how lesser animals could possibly NOT be drawn toward Phoenix on 2600.

To be clear, a one dimensional body would be invisible to the human eye if it existed and would not ever exist IRL. 1 dimensional objects can only exist in n+1 dimension space (it would have to exist in or on something such as a 2D plane where you plot points on a line. If you wanna get really anal about it, two dimensional bodies also do not exist except in Star Trek The Next Generation. So by this logic, Desert Bus 2600 has glorious 3D graphics.

Yeah, I just checked out the wikipedia page for it and it turns out only the Flashback 2 was an Atari-On-A-Chip. Flashback 1, hilariously enough, was literally a Nintendo-on-a-Chip and so they were actually NES ports. That's incredibly weird and backwards. I haven't tried the FB1 yet, but now I'm curious to do so.

On the C64X, the owner of those rights died, and (apparently) the only people who have the means to use that brand at the moment is some odd italian company called Amibyte, of which I've had personal dealings with and aren't exactly what I'd call reputable. I won't get into those details too much right now, but all I can say is that it's sad that the last remnants of Commodore this side of the century are now in an even worse position than ever. IIRC The Flashback 1-3 all ran on real Hardware (the Atari equivalent of Nintendo on a Chip. A simple mod allows to add a real cartridge slot) So the game's aren't being emulated. This is NOT the case with the 4, it doesn't use real hardware and is emulated, games are "optimized" etc.

Gat Dang that's some big wood.

Wait... if bB fills up the remaining scanlines how is it bouncing between 311 and 312? As for the game itself, I like it. I haven't played a ton of snake in my time but it seems to get everything right from what I remember My high score is currently 22... I'm pretty bad, haha. Edit: Out of curiosity, if you press the opposite direction that you're going is it supposed to register as a turn? (aka death)

Those boxes look so delicious that if I get a hold of them I might actually consume them.

Although I'm not a huge fan of the Flashback since it doesn't have a (built in) cartridge slot the console is still a neat commodity. The fact that it sold pretty well (enough to have 3 revisions or so) is evidence that it is at least somewhat relevant to a sizable demographic. According to this article http://www.escapistm...ist-Interview.2 the flashback 2 alone sold 860,000 Flashback 2's, which aint a bad number as far as a TV game goes and one that uses intellectual properties nearly 3 decades old. Definitely not my cup of tea as I'll always prefer real hardware but it shows that Atari STILL means something to people. If only Atari had the capital to break back into the consumer electronics scene with new hardware...

I think a lot of what makes the 2600 so appealing is that it's pretty much "grandfathered" in by now. The 2600 is more than just a console, it's a symbol of video gaming. I'd be willing to bet 20$ that more people recognize the 2600 joystick on sight than any current political leader's face in the world right now. Some things to say: - It had the longest (official and probably unnofficial) lifespan of any console. - Massive library of games; almost killed the industry but now we can go back to it and almost always find something new. - 2600's are generally reliable even 36 years later. - Simplicity at it's finest. Four directions and one button. Instant gratification as well. - Atari 2600 is a great conversation starter. People come in, see the console and you're likely to get one of two responses: "Oh wow! Is that an Atari?" or "Oh wow! Does that thing still work?" Additionally, Atari was a master of branding. You aren't just playing a video game console, you're playing Atari. It's the little details, like the emblem on the plugs of controllers, the cartridge is angled to point towards you instead of the ceiling. Bold, confident fonts on packaging. Even later model designs like the Atari 2600 JR had strong traits, like the rainbow strip on the stainless steel (I assume stainless steel anyway) and a sleek textured black surface in a time where computer electronics were an ugly grey or tan color. Of course, I'd being totally unfair by saying it's the "coolest". That's nostalgia talking. To the average, non-retro gamer, Atari is mostly a novelty. It's only really relevant by it's history and it's fans.

Definitely interested but an actual purchase from me is subject to how fat my wallet is upon release I wanted to write about it for my website but I see the rom isn't available, so I'll just write a little tidbit on there that it exists and hopefully that'll help drive a little more interest for the game Edit: Made a post about it to my website. If there's anything else you'd like mentioned about the game I'll be happy to amend it.

Awesome! I'll definitely give the temps a go then when I get to that point, it would save me the hassle of having to use a dedicated variable when they'll only be used for a single frame in the first place. Of course, if that doesn't work out for some reason, there's always the unused playfield variables for storage which I am currently not doing anything with. Update: Although the system is a bit rudimentary atm and I still need to patch bits and pieces here and there for special teleports, doors etc the new system is working thanks to your guys' help. Also, bank 1 now has 2335 bytes of ROM space left, from a very scary 400-something bytes left that I had before, a couple hundred more will be freed up once I tidy some things, remove now unnecessary lines of codes and whatnot.

It makes more sense to me in this latest example that the hierarchy of "if room >" is now in the opposite order. Another question, though. In your example, you make use of temp. Is that a valid variable? The guide touches on temp variables but those are all denoted temp1 - temp6 and they need to be reserved or something to that matter. Can I seriously just say "temp = room" and call it a day or is this just for example purposes? Although it's not neccessary, it would be nice to not have to use another variable from a-z. I haven't gotten around to plugging all of this in yet, I've just been sort of working this problem out in my head while I rearrange some code and rename stuff to accommodate this new system, otherwise I'd just plug this all in and see how it works .

Thanks, SeaGtGruff. This helps me understand. So, to be clear, in this example on room goto _00 _01 _02 _03 _04 _05 _06 _07 _08 _09 temp = room - 10 : on temp goto _10 _11 _12 _13 _14 _15 _16 _17 _18 _19 temp = room - 20 : on temp goto _20 _21 _22 _23 _24 _25 _26 _27 _29 _29 You aren't actually subtracting 10 or 20 from the room but rather are denoting the starting point of that line? This is one of the things that was confusing me in the initial example of: y = x - 4 : if y < 4 then on y goto 500 600 700 800 y = x - 8 : if y < 4 then on y goto 900 1000 1100 1200 I was sitting here trying to figure out how the hell subtracting 8 from x would give you the start of the next line. It's starting to make sense now. And yeah, I definitely don't want to list a hundred labels even if I could. For one, it isn't very "human" feeling, and it isn't as immediately understandable as having 10 lines with 10 labels to help reinforce the image of a grid. Although, I hope the costs of having 10 lines isn't much (even though it's faaaar better than the 30 or so I have now with more rooms to come.) Edit: Wait, wait, you ARE subtracting from x, hence the use of y so as to not dirty the x variable. Also hence the reason why each row has to subtract the amount needed to come back to the original amount of labels available. And since it skips down the line if y is not less than four the next line acts as if if x was less than 4 and thus uses the new line of labels. I understand now, thanks again! Er, care to elaborate?

Okay, I understand that on x goto LabelA LabelB LabelC is the same thing as if x = 0 then LabelA if x = 1 then LabelB if x = 2 then LabelC What I don't understand is how you can possibly split these up with the example given on RT website: y = x - 4 : if y < 4 then on y goto 500 600 700 800 y = x - 8 : if y < 4 then on y goto 900 1000 1100 1200 If "on goto" is strictly ordinal, how does it know whether to differentiate between line 1 and line 2? Sorry if this seems dumb, but I'm just not getting it. Explain it to me like I'm 5, seriously. Now, as for why I think I need this. In my game, I have a large number of screens within a "persistent" world. (Think of Secret Quest to get an idea.) When you reach the edge of the screen, my system checked which screen you were on, where you are and reset your position to the new coodrinates. This all works, of course, but it's an incredibly convoluted system and it takes up a ridiculous amount of space now that I'm approaching about 30 rooms. Additionally, it's messy when you have to have potentially a few lines of code for each room just to check if you can go into another room. So, I finally stopped being lazy and tried to make this system easier by introducing an array of sorts. I've allowed myself a 10x10 grid now to hold the game. So instead of thinking of room data as a strictly linear fashion (Where before I might have been in room 20 that would now be room 2 - 0.) This way I could save myself a lot of hassle by just doing +- 10 to go up or down a screen or +- 1 to go left or right. This would save about 30 needlessly heavy lines. So, that said, since "on goto" is ordinal, I'm confused as to how I would tie that into everything. If I have on room goto _00 _01 _02 _03 _04 _05 _06 _07 _08 _09 And then I add 10 to room to go down to the second row of the 10x10 grid, how does on room goto _10 _11 _12 _13 _14 _15 _16 _17 _18 _19 even happen? Is there a better way to do this than on goto, am I making things more complicated than it needs to be? (Like, does it remember that "room" has all of these values before _10 to check for since they were previously called?) This wouldn't be an issue at all, I suppose, if I stayed under the (what, 45?) label limit, but I want to future proof myself a little, here. Edit: I suppose what I'm ultimately asking is how splitting "on goto" works in addition to why it works the way it does.