jaybird3rd

I've preordered one of MEtalGuy66's new MIO boards and am interested in getting a Warp+ OS 32-in-1 upgrade from Atarimax, and I have a question. As I understand it, the MIO configuration menu can be accessed by holding down SELECT on powerup or by pressing SELECT+RESET, but the 32-in-1 uses these same key combinations for its menu and for cold-boots (respectively). What would happen if I attempted to use both the MIO and the 32-in-1 in the same 130XE? Would one device take priority over the other? Would I be able to access the 32-in-1 menu without unplugging the MIO by leaving the MIO switched off?

Here are a few items on my "holy grail" list: An Atari 1450XLD An Atari 1090 Peripheral Expansion Box A TI 99/8 An Entex AdventureVision A Cromemco C-10 (a funny old CP/M system that I like but have never seen on eBay) A Lambda PC8300 (an ZX81 clone that I had a lot of fun with as a kid) An Intellivision Entertainment Computer System A complete Coleco Adam system

I was just thinking the same thing, but no, I haven't heard anything. It would be just like Infogrames' Atari to let the opportunity slip by, too; they've got to focus all their energy and development money on the next great "Marc Ecko" game, you know.

Actually, the ColecoVision could be considered a distant relative of the 99/4A: Coleco used a lot of TI silicon in the ColecoVision, and I believe its video and sound chips were direct descendants of the ones used in the 99/4A. Coleco also had the good sense to use a mainstream CPU like the Z80, which is what TI probably should have chosen for the 99/4A.

Heyyy ... nice! I also saw somebody on eBay not long ago who was selling a 99/4A that had been modified to be some sort of light synth machine and was used as part of a live performance. It looked nice but was a bit outside my price range. It's so great to know people are still finding creative things to do with the 99/4A. It was my first computer and I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for it. I'd also put in a good word for Tex*In Treasures; I've bought from them several times and have always received excellent service.

That's been the biggest criticism of 2600 Battlezone. It looked a lot different from the coin-op version, and Ed Rotberg (developer of the coin-op) considers it the worst of all the home ports of Battlezone, but I find it's a fun game in its own right. Even better, it works in my 7800 where Robot Tank does not. An interesting fact about 2600 Battlezone: it was not programmed at Atari, but by GCC in Massachusetts. Steve Woita was working on a version of Battlezone at the same time that attempted to replicate the vectorized look of the arcade, but the GCC version was finished first and Atari chose it over the one being developed by their own programmers. It would be interesting to see how the Atari version would have come out had it been completed.

Hmmm ... didn't realize it had come out that late. The Pac-Man cartridge has a 1981 copyright date on it, so I figured that was the year it was released. Guess I should have looked that up.

Not without modifying the console. Here is a link to a site with instructions on how to build an adapter for Atari Jaguar controllers, which (aside for being limited to eight directions) will give you all of the features of the Intellivision controller in a more comfortable package.

Yup, the baloons were done with playfield. I've been playing this game a lot lately via the Jakks Atari Paddle, and I happen to think it's one of the best paddle games that Atari released. An interesting variation of the Breakout concept, and a lot of fun.

I'd say the seller is the LUCKY one here,$900.00 + and possibly the new owner if he/she decides to sell it later for even more!for an INTV game,holy s$%t !!!,I always tell my neices and nephews to keep their toys,never know what they'll be worth later. Spiker and Stadium Mud Buggies are the last two Intellivision games released by INTV and are quite rare, but $900 for any Intellivision game is ridiculous. Auctions like that make me hope (more than I already do!) that the BSRs follow through on their plans to release new Intellivision cartridges; Keith Robinson mentioned once in an interview that they might make new copies of Spiker and Stadium Mud Buggies as well.

I've never thought of trying it, but it could be done. It's been a while since I've seen the inside of a 7800 joypad so I don't remember if you can rotate/move the switches around, but you can certainly cut and splice the wires from the joystick cable. The joypad probably wouldn't be very comfortable to use upside-down, but then again, it isn't too comfortable right-side up either.

Was Berzerk even a finished product at that time (it and E.T. both have 1982 copyright dates)? Pac-Man had come out the previous year and Atari had already been criticized for it, and I can't imagine that anyone would have wanted to see a copy of one of Atari's most disappointing games with E.T. graphics. Come to think of it, a graphics/sound hack of any existing game would have been at least as poorly-received as the final E.T. game was; if HSW had gone that route, we might all be sitting here today complaining that E.T. was a quick hack instead of something original like everyone wanted. HSW was in a tough situation, and I think I can understand his reasoning. The tight deadline meant that he had to borrow a lot of code from another game; there wasn't time to develop and debug a whole new game from scratch. Starting with someone else's game would have meant becoming familiar with someone else's code (assuming he even had access to it) and all of its limitations and bugs and quirks, and then finding a way to change it into something different, and there might not have been enough time for that either. So he had to use one of his own games, and of the two he had done, Raiders was the most appropriate one for retasking with the E.T. license (and was a game that Spielberg had already seen and liked and signed off on). It must have been the most logical choice at the time, and as I've said, it almost worked: with a little more tweaking and playtesting, E.T. would have been a much better game (if not everyone's cup of tea). I'm starting to think that E.T. and Pac-Man deserve their own subforum(s).

I believe that Gamestop is still selling them for $4.99 each. I just recently bought six more of them.

There have been too many people (inside and outside of Atari) who have confirmed the six-week timeframe over the years for it to have been a made-up story by HSW. The Activision group and the Blue Sky Rangers at Mattel, for example, have said that they were aware of the rushed development of E.T. at the time it was happening.

It could be done, but there's a bit more circuitry in an NES controller than a 7800 controller (which needs nothing inside the joystick but wires and a pair of resistors). If you wish to do it without adding buttons, you could connect the pair of action buttons on one side of the RSI stick to the NES's "A" and "B" inputs and the other pair to "Start" and "Select". One way to do it (if you're handy with a soldering iron) would be to take an NES controller apart, move its circuit board into the RSI stick, and simply connect the RSI button/directional switches directly to the contacts on the circuit board. If you don't want to gut an NES controller, you could also use a Flashback 1 joystick as a "donor," since they're really just NES controllers inside.

I voted $30, but thinking about it a bit, I realize that a little more might be necessary if new shells and boards must be used. Recycling NOS cartridges is a pain (I've done it a few times myself), but it is one way of keeping costs down, and I'm sure that O'Shea's has more than enough carts in stock to keep 7800 homebrewers supplied for quite some time. I actually wouldn't have a problem paying around $35, give or take POKEY.

They're probably exactly the same. The mechanism was manufactured by Alps and put into an Atari case for the 1020, and I'm certain that Commodore used the same mech in their own version.

Wow! My hat's off to you; that's some very nice-looking work. Your label certainly looks nicer than the attempts I've made to create a label for my 7800 RSI sticks. Speaking of which, I just ordered another batch of sticks (the first I've bought in a while), and I was struck again at how nice they really are for little hobbyist projects like this. There's lots of room inside, everything is easy to rewire, and there's a lot of surface area for adding more buttons and other controls as you've done with yours.

I understand that there was a tooling problem with the first run of DTV units that they made, but I'm sure this has been corrected in subsequent batches. I've never had a problem with mine; the joystick actually reminds me of the old TAC-2 stick. However, I also haven't played mine a whole lot (I'm not a C64 guy and the Atari 800 versions of the games in the DTV sound better to me despite all the ranting and raving about how much better the SID sounds), so maybe those who get more use out of their units are seeing problems I've avoided.

"C64 flashback"? I assume you're referring to the C64 DTV 15-in-1 stick from Mammoth Games. $10 is a little cheaper than what I paid for mine a few months ago (around $15), but the price hasn't come down as much as some NOAC-based offerings I've seen that were actually released later.

Agreed. Pac-Man and E.T. are mistakenly called the worst games on the 2600 (over and over and over again by mindless Internet parrots), but as I've said before, they should really be considered among the most disappointing games. That disappointment had even more to do with overhyped marketing and unrealistic consumer expectations than it did with the flaws in their implementation. Most of the problems with both games can be fixed with only a little bit of tweaking and a few subtle changes, but since it's a lot easier to criticize them and their authors, that's all anyone seems to do. Regarding the original question, I think it would be difficult to use E.T. graphics in Atari Pac-Man because the E.T. game used single-line resolution while Pac-Man did not (which accounts for its blockiness). It could be done, of course, but the sprites would have to be redrawn and they might not look enough like the originals to be effective. It might be more interesting to substitute the graphics in 20th Century Fox's "Alien" game, which was originally programmed by Doug Neubauer as a Pac-Man clone before it had the Alien license (inappropriately) applied to it.

I'd much prefer to see someone correct some of the flaws of E.T. that HSW didn't have time to remedy, such as the placement of the holes. Contrary to popular belief, E.T. isn't anywhere near the worst game for the 2600 (anyone who says that has never played Froggo Karate or Raquetball or Lost Luggage or any number of other REAL stinkers), but it could be made a lot better with some bugfixes.

Curt has several pictures of at least one prototype keyboard on his site. They show the keyboard itself, as well as the SIO and audio ports on the back of the unit. I'd love to see this keyboard project happen (and would be one of the first ones in line to get one), but with everything else Curt has on his plate, it would probably be best to consider it cancelled until we hear differently from him.

The Intellivision's graphics were superior to the 2600's graphics when it was initially released. Over time, developers learned to use the simplicity and open-endedness of the 2600's graphics to create better visuals and close the gap, but many of those "tricks" did not apply to the Intellivision because its design was not nearly as flexible. On the other hand, developers eventually learned to overcome the Intellivision's limitations too (see Commando and Deep Pockets for latter-day examples of this), and its more sophisticated graphics hardware gave Mattel a head start in Europe because the games did not have to be reprogrammed or modified for PAL. Speaking of Intellivision graphics, has anyone produced a composite mod kit for the Intellivision? I built this modification for my Intellivision II a while ago, and although it works, I'm getting a lot of interference on the screen and would love to find another option.

First of all, welcome to AtariAge! Most 400/800 games will play just fine on the XL/XE series, but as you may know, there are a few of them (Fort Apocalypse may be one) that will not work because of some operating system changes that were made with the later machines. There are "translators" which load the 800 OS into RAM and allow incompatible software to run on an XL/XE, but I don't know of a way to use them with cartridge software. You may be interested in obtaining a disk-based copy of Fort Apocalypse instead (you can download a diskette image at AtariMania); if you find that it doesn't work on the 800XL by itself, you can use it with a translator.