CharlieChaplin

Er well, you may have not seen the follow-ups, like the (unofficial) "Empire strikes back" (a clone of Jeff Minters Attack of the Mutant Camels) and "Star Wars: Return of the Jedi". These Starwars versions do really suck !! Compared to them, "Starwars - the arcade game" is really good. But I have to say, that I did not play the Domark/Zeppelin version for quite a while. But as far as I remember, it was much slower than the PB version... -Andreas.

Well, maybe you did not know, but the disk version of Winter Olympiad 1988 was available in the US on disk, it was named Winter Challenge !! Thanks to some german importers, I do have this disk version !! Besides, Karate International or International Karate was available in Europe as disk and tape by system 3; in the US there was only a disk version by Epyx, named World Karate championships (which is the same as Karate Int.!). Quite often the tape versions were shortened, for example the tape version of Int. Karate is missing one or two backgrounds. But there were also tape versions of 48k-64k games and multi-load games with endless loading time, like Gauntlet (available as a 2-sided tape from KIXX), Nightmares (by Mastertronic, like Gauntlet it was a real nightmare to load this game from standard tape) and many others that took forever to load or quite often resulted in an Error 143 (please load again!)... -Andreas magenheimer. P.S.: As 5,25" disks are becoming more and more rare, the user of real A8 hardware has to search for alternatives. Maybe with some bad luck, he will end up with the cassette (MC - Music Cassette, developed by Philips in the late 60s or early 70s) again. They are still available everywhere...

Well, I have a hand-written list of multiload cassettes at home. it contains approx. 250 titles, where 70% did work fine with Howfen-DOs and the remaining 30% did not. As you may know, Howfen DOs is a nice utility to convert single-stage and multi-stage tapes to disk. Alas, Howfen therefore uses its own format (like most british menus did). Believe me, I have no motivation to type in this list again. Most of these cassettes were not available in the US (as tapes, they had disk versions!), they were sold in Europe (mainly UK and Germany)... Thats because in Europe data-recorders (or tape-recorders, like the 1010, the XC-11 and the XC-12 plus many clones) were very common. So, if you are searching for a tape to disk transfer utility ask a European. From most germans you will get a so-called C:-Simulator (or other transfer utilities / copiers), whereas from most brits you will get a british menu (like Howfen-DOs, Multiboot, Alphaload, K-Boot, etc.) version... greetings, Andreas Magenheimer. P.S.: In eastern europe tapes are also very common, but they mostly use so-called turbo-tapes (up to 9600 Baud)...

Well Nir, you can use the Jeff Potter program GIFncode to convert a gr. 8, gr. 9 or gr. 15 (greyscale only!) uncompressed/62 sectors and/or a gr. 15 compressed (koala/micro-illustrator) into GIF format. Then use any program you like to upload this GIF file to the PC. To convert the GIF file back to the A8 you may use the Jeff Potter programs Apacview (gr. 9, gr. 9+11 and R,G,B) or JView (Gr.8, gr.9, Gr. 15 and Gr 8,9,15 RGB). All these programs use RAM under the OS however... I guess Photoshop (or a similar program) can read GIF 87a ?!? greetings, Andreas Magenheimer. P.S.: E-Mail me, if you need the mentioned programs... ( amp#abbuc*de )

Well, I have various disks with Gr.7, Gr. 8 , Gr. 9, Gr. 15 and Gr. 9+11 (256 colors) painting programs. Some are files, some are complete disks (with more than one file). I also have lots of utilities to enhance gr. 15 pictures (INT, ILP, XLP, MAX, GED, CIN, etc.). If interested, send an e-mail to: amp#abbuc*de greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

Well, to play MC on the Atari with a trackball, press Control+T and plug-in your trackball into port 1. Newer XL/XE versions can also be played with a ST mouse using the same keypress... -Andreas.

Well, I think in the late 80`s the original Starwars Cartridge by Parker Bros. was not available anymore. So Domark did a remake - in my eyes a stupid and extremely slow remake. Luckily I have the original Parker Bros. cartridge which is much better... I guess that the Domark (and thus also the Zeppelin version) uses a higher graphics resolution and thats why their remake is so slow... -Andreas Magenheimer.

So, in the future we will have trouble again with the Superfly game-name and length, just as we had in the past. Remember Montezuma`s Revenge ? Whenever you talk about it you have to add some details (the older 32k-48k version or the newer 16k version). Afaik it is the same with Snokie (16k tape version, 48k disk version) and many other Atari games... But alright, maybe you like different versions which all have the same name - I don`t... -Andreas.

Aha, so there will be a completely new game ?!? Better change the name then, otherwise we will always have to add some specifics like Superfly/1k and Superfly/enhanced version, when talking about that game... -Andreas.

Well, as you can see, Watership Down was long before Matrix. so they might have quoted / stolen that phrase from there. Or is there any other movie or book, where this phrase "follow the white rabbit" appeared first ?!? Alice in Wonderland maybe ?!? greetings, Andreas.

Well, I know the 1k game "Superfly". It is a nice little game but mostly in 2 colors (if you do not count the helicopter). so, if you combine the picture with this game (or the game with the picture) one might assume loading/playing an extremely colourfull game. When loading is done then, one is surely disappointed... Besides, why should one load 8-10 kbytes, if the game itself is just 1k in length ?! maybe we can also add / append a 320k sample sound to the game ?!? And a 16 Megabyte animation extro of course (not to mention a 1 Megabyte Game Over animation)... this somehow reminds me of todays computer and console games: they give you 5 DVD`s, where only 1 DVD (or less) is for the game and all the rest is for movie- and/or animation sequences... Ok, don`t take this critic too hard, I like the game as a stand-alone, as well as the picture. I have only the opinion, that they do not fit together... greetings, Andreas.

Well, maybe you did not know, there are two versions of Capture the Flag: 1) the phantastic 3D version by Sirius 2) the simple 2D type-in listing by Antic or Analog Both are named "Capture the Flag" and do have the same gameplay (except that the 3D version is much much better in my eyes)... -Andreas.

Hey Dracon, I guess that great Othello game is "Super Reversion", published in Analog magazine (somewhere in issues 60-69) and covered dozens of times in other magazines... greetings, Andreas.

Well, I have that "Dark Horse" game in my collection, the other games maybe also. E-mail me, when interested (amp#abbuc*de)... My favorite Basic games?!? Well, I love the arcade-like games "Schatzhoehle" (treasure cavern) by Peter Bluemer, a type in listing from Happy Computer magazine; the Joust-clone "Straussenkampf" by Oliver Cyranka and "Hugojagd XL" by Stefan Dorndorf; My favorite economy games in Basic are "Safryland", "Santa Paravia" and "Fuerstentum" (here in Germany all well-known as "Kaiser" clones, allthough some of them are much older than Kaiser)... greetings, Andreas.

Hmmm, some small info about CIN?!? Well, it was done by a (former?) member of APC (Atari Programming Champions). Thus CIN means Champions INterlace. It uses a combination of Gr. 15 and Gr. 11, thus 4x16 or 16x4 colors, or to be more exact 16 colors in 4 brightnesses. So every line of a picture can have up to 64 colors, whereas the whole screen can have up to 128 colors. But since Gr. 15 has a resolution of 160x192 and Gr. 11 only 80x192 there are always some areas in the picture that look rather blocky. More info about CIN can be found in the CIN 1.2 description, written by the author himself. If you are interested in a copy of the CIN viewers/colorizers (vers. 1.1 and 1.2), as well as the description and many CIN pix, simply send me an e-mail: amp#abbuc*de greetings, Andreas. P.S.: Ofcourse CIN uses the full CPU power/time, thus the pix cannot be used in games (only as title pictures)...

Alas, CIN vers. 1.2 is buggy, it does not save uncompressed CIN pix correct (should be 132 sectors, not 123 sectors). So use it only to load+save compressed CIN (*.CCI) pix. Therefore use version 1.1 to load+save uncompressed CIN pix... -Andreas.

Well, this is the CIN pic. I refered to in another reply. It is nice, but alas buggy !! It has only 123 sectors in length, whereas uncompressed CIN pix should always have a length of 132 sectors. Result: When you try to load the picture with CINview 1.1 or 1.2 you get an Error $88 (136)... and then the screen displays garbage... So, greetings to the author of this picture, please save it again with the correct length... -Andreas.

Hmmm, "Follow the White Rabbit!" - where do I know this from ?!? Ah yes, memory serves me, it is from the animated movie Watership Down... Anyway, Basix is a very funny demo, job well done Raster ! greetings, Andreas Magenheimer. P.S.: Watership Down is an animated movie from 1982 or 1983 or so... (here in Germany known as: Watership Down / Unten am Fluss)

Well, the Forever 5 software image also contains one CIN picture. Alas, it is buggy: it has only 123 sectors, whereas uncompressed CIN pix have a length of 132 sectors. I think I know why this happened: CIN 1.1 allows only uncompressed pix, loads and saves 132 sectors; CIN 1.2 allows compressed pix as well, saves and loads compressed pix correct, loads uncompressed pix correct, but does not save uncompressed pix correct - it saves them with 123 instead of 132 sectors... The funny thing is, that as long as the picture is in memory one can easily load version 1.1 and save the picture in uncompressed format and then load version 1.2 and save in compressed format (or the other way around). But, if the picture is not in memory, loading an uncompressed CIN picture with only 123 sectors results in an error ($88 or 136) and then displays garbage. Of course, since I got this CIN picture from the Forever5 disk, it was not in memory but had to be loaded from disk and thus appeared as garbage. The only solution I had then, was loading the CIN / Gr. 15+11 picture as an interlaced Gr. 9+11 pic. via Apacview. This way I could guess at last what the picture should have looked like (because of its much lower resolution then)... maybe someone can contact the author (who has the original picture) and tell him to save the CIN pic again with version 1.1 uncompressed or version 1.2 compressed... greetings, Andreas.

Well, the funny thing is, that if you wanna boot Gauntlet only, you have to boot without Basic. If you wanna boot/load the Deeper Dungeons, you have to boot Gauntlet with Basic first and then insert the Deeper Dungeon disk(since the Deeper Dungeon disk contains a patch program, written in Atari basic)... maybe that was your problem ?!? -Andreas.

Well, I think that Chris Thompson (hopefully the lead singer of Manfred Mann`s Earth Band, not just someone with the same name) did some music for Atari in the 90s - for Atari Jaguar. Afaik, he did the music for Hoverstrike CD (Unconquered lands; recorded as audio tracks, so one can listen to them with any CD player)... Nowadays you also find many pop, rock and hip hop bands that mention Atari in their music videos (with Pong, Pacman, etc.). Not to forget the many films and series at tv and cinema where Atari is mentioned... I also remember that Atari often had "musical guests" at their big shows in Germany in the early 80s (groups like Fleetwood Mac and others). They did not sing anything Atari related, but boy that was pretty cool then, visiting an Atari show and listening to some great rock or pop groups... -Andreas.

Well, Atari itself (as a daughter of Time-Warner or Warner Bros.) did record several Vinyl Singles and LP`s. I have two Vinyl singles at home, they are "Pacman Fieber" (german version of Pacman Fever!) and "Space Invaders". From a friend (Sijmen Schouten, author of MyIDE) I got several audio CD`s with approx. 20-26 Vinyl singles, he recorded. Alas, I only have an old PC at home, that cannot burn CD`s (how to do that under MS DOS 6.22 and a 240MB harddisk?) nor MP3`s... So, I cannot send any copies via Internet... -Andreas.

Well, at least "Scramble" is available as an Atari Vinyl Single (those strange black things for the phonogram with 45 RpM), Super Cobra is not... -Andreas.

Well, I owned both the disk and tape version of Karate International (or International Karate), well known as World Karate Championships in America. The versions I had were produced by System 3 and sold by various companies and vendors. the Cheats "ADZM", Break Key and such all worked in both versions. Alas, the tape version had only 3 scenarios per side (3 on side a, 3 on side b, thats six scenarios overall). Think the disk version had 7 scenarios/backgrounds... -Andreas. P.S.: There are also cracked versions of the game, if it is a bootdisk, then it is most likely the disk version, wheras if it is a disk-file, then it is most likely one of the tape versions (side a or b)...

Wow, the page loads as fast as my atari tape recorder. It is only missing the typical "beeeep, beeep" sound... -Andreas.