A Black Falcon
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Posts posted by A Black Falcon
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I just converted the .cof file to a .cdi with Jiffi and then burned it in DiscJuggler (in Windows 10) and ... it works on my Jag CD! Awesome.
As for the game, the concept is really, really cool. I like this kind of racing game a lot and this one looks and plays well. The only issue is that the game is really short, it feels like more of a techdemo than a game. What's here is awesome but it's very easy and I beat all the tracks in both gravity on and gravity off modes in about half an hour. Once you get used to the trick of how the controls work, that you have to let go of the accelerator to keep speeds above the speed you go by holding that button down, the game's easy and fun. So yeah it's short, but this is a little game by one person and having something that's this fun and nice looking on the Jag is awesome. It's always fantastic when Jag homebrews use graphics that actually push the hardware beyond Amiga/Atari ST-level stuff, as far as I've seen so far it's rare for a homebrew to see polygonal 3d like you do here! The tubes look cool and the game moves nicely fast. Oh, the music's great as well.
That said though, it's definitely praise that playing this mostly made me want more -- best time saving (something Tube SE also needs!) to give you more to do in the game; maybe some kind of progression; more obstacles and tougher courses later on; maybe an option for multiple laps in the courses; etc. But anyway, what's here is quite fun, I enjoyed it.
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What happened is people like Best Electronics finally ran out of unsold new old stock Jag CDs a couple of years ago, so now all you have is the resale market... and that retro gaming resale market exploded in value industry-wide last year. The Jag CD was already quite expensive by 2019, and now it's gone well up above where it was then.
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One pretty interesting thing is that the one player and two player modes have entirely different level sets as far as I can tell, it's worth playing both even as one person just to go through the two player versions of the stages.
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On 12/12/2020 at 7:24 PM, Lynxpro said:That could be resolved with a 64K/128K+ board that plugs into the ANTIC socket and then the homebrew programmers decide to a standard mapping address for it. Like the XBoard for the 7800 but much popular due to the sockets on the 5200 mobo. It would be as easy as plugging in a Sofia board.
Wouldn't something that plugs into the expansion port potentially do the job as well? I know I've seen variations on that idea mentioned on this forum a few times. I'd think that ouold get a lot more users than something that requires taking apart the system would. I mean, replacing a socketed chip is not hard since no soldering is involved, but would enough people want to do it?
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If we compare the older, RF-only consoles that I have, I'd say that the Atari 5200, Intellivision (Sears Super Video Arcade), and NES 2 have pretty good RF with minimal interference. The Odyssey 2's is also pretty good, and the Atari 2600 decent, with some stuff on screen but not much. However, the Colecovision and Atari 7800 have bad RF with heavy interference. This 7800 is the worst of them all, but I remember that before it broke back in like 2014 I only used my first 7800 on my CRT, because the HDTV I had at the time couldn't detect its signal at all or something... maybe it was just really bad interference but either way it was unusable on that TV. The Colecovision may have some kind of issues with its RFU port or something (though the system otherwise works great), but the 7800 has no excuse, both of the ones I have had just have bad RF.
3 hours ago, TailChao said:Glad to hear the console (and game) made it back safely.
I'm convinced this is because of the A/V modification's design - specifically the lack of any amplifier for the sound. Both the TIA and Cartridge's Audio are tapped directly and run to the audio jacks. Redesigning and installing a new mod is a bit excessive, but if you have a small amplifier around (even a stereo) try running the audio through that before it hits the TV.
In the long run though, I hope the UAV is revamped with a proper audio path. Especially now that we're seeing more and more 7800 titles with enhanced sound.
Is there a newer mod version that amplifies the audio? Because as much as I like the results in video quality (it looks great!), I would have to call this mod a faulty design if the audio is working as intended. It is clear that it was not designed for cartridge audio properly.
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I'm sorry, but I have to agree with the critics here; I find China Warrior to be a terrible game, and think that it would have been a very bad choice for packin! You want your packin to be a game people hopefully will like playing, which does not describe China Warrior for most, I think. Good graphics do not make a good game and that game is a textbook case showing that fact. Once you get past the huge sprites which do make a good first impression, I find the actual gameplay both boring and awful. In my opinion China Warrior is one of the worst games I own for Turbografx/PC engine, and I have a lot of games for the system now. Pushing this game more than the small amount they did would have been a big mistake, and while NEC were fans of making horrible decisions (seriously, they messed things up pretty badly...) at least they did get that one right.
As for the actual TG16 pack-in, I actually like Keith Courage, it's a good game despite average graphics, but yeah, R-Type would have been a fantastic choice and definitely the best of their pack-in options early on. It's fantastic and shows off the system's power well. Otherwise, Legendary Axe would have been the best early option if they wanted the packin to be a platformer -- it's pretty good, a popular title that is definitely better than Keith Courage overall in both graphics and gameplay.
Now, Bonk. Bonk was a perfect choice for mascot in the US in the '90-'94 timeframe that the TG16 was on the market here, because mascot platformers were THE genre then and Bonk was their mascot platformer. Bonk isn't as amazing as Super Mario World or Sonic the Hedgehog, but it's a solidly good classic platformer that is quite fun to play. Picking Bonk as their mascot was an easy choice and the right one. Bonk's Adventure has good graphics with bright, colorful environments and plenty of visual variety, and while the gameplay is simple it controls very well and the level designs are varied and well made. It's a great platformer in the upper tier for its time. Now, again, yes Bonk is much less innovative or original than those two aforementioned hits from Nintendo and Sega. As much as I do like Hudson's TG16/PCE platformers, I think that they failed to keep up with the way the genre was changing, and instead kept making more NES-styled platformers for years. There is a definite charm to that NES-like style, but it is more dated than the competition. Platformers were never Hudson's strongest genre, I think, and you see that over time. Hudson changed little in Bonk's sequels as a response to the shocks Mario World and particularly Sonic gave to the industry. The TG16 and SNES Bonk games change over time, but where Bonk's Adventure was an A-grade hit, by their last Bonk game that gen, Super Bonk 2 (Japan-only), the series was B-tier. If they were trying, I don't think Hudson succeeded at catching up to Nintendo and Sega's best in the platformer genre. The TG16 Bonk games are probably my favorite Hudson platformers; after that and some of their other TG16/PCE games it's probably Super Bonk (SNES) and Bomberman Hero (N64), plus Bomberman 64 (N64) if you count it even though it has no jumping. Those two games tried for some interesting things, in very different ways, but Hudson seems to have mostly abandoned platformers after that, unfortunately. Too bad.
(In Japan as has been mentioned Bonk, aka PC Genjin, wasn't really the system's mascot, he was just the main character in one of its more prominent games. The mascot platformer wasn't as big of a deal in Japan as it was in the US -- remember, Sonic the Hedgehog was not a phenomenon there like it was here.)
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So after TailChao's successful and very generous repair, my 7800 and Ricki & Vicki are working better than ever now! Even more issues were found when he examined the board than the ones listed earlier in the thread, to repair the solder issue, restore RF audio, replace the broken regulator, replace two capacitors, and replace the TIA socket, since apparently the modder used a cheap socket and the chip was coming out after running for several hours... yeah, quite a lot. It's (almost) all great now, and I've played the game some and it's definitely good and quite impressive looking for the system.
Only one issue remains now, and that is audio volume.So, for normal use with other systems, audio volume on my TV of maybe 20-30% is about right. For the 7800, post-repair, getting video from the S-Video port and audio from the combined composite jack, for games that use the system's internal audio, I need to go up to about 35%. That's still reasonable in other things, if a little loud sometimes.
However, in Ricki & Vicki or Ballblazer, the two games I have with audio chips in the carts? In order to hear the music at anything louder than a barely perceptible to inaudible whisper, I need to turn the TV volume all the way up to about 60%! That's really too loud, audio starts to sound off that high. (Also, the volume buttons on my CRT TV's remote are broken, so I need to adjust volume on the TV itself, which is kind of a hassle -- it has this round dial for both channel and volume and it is hard to change the volume without also changing the channel. This isn't an issue when playing on my HDTV, but retro games do look best on the CRT...)
Oh, and yes, I know about the volume knob inside the R&V cartridge, and turned it up all the way. It didn't help much, max volume is as I described, I need to double TV volume to hear anything. Sound effects are not affected by this problem, they play at the correct volume since they come from the console.
So, I did some testing by hooking up the now-repaired RF jack. Well, the video picture quality from RF is hilariously terrible even beyond my worst expectations (I remember my old 7800 having bad video output, but I don't think it was quite THIS awful...), but the audio is nice and loud in all games and does not suffer from the Ricki & Vicki ultra-quiet-audio problem that the composite jack has. Everything sounds fine at 30-something percent volume.
So, my next step will be to buy an RFU with added audio output jacks, so I can hopefully get the audio from the RF line and video from the S-Video mod. Hopefully that will fix the problem... what a hassle this system is! (I'm sure there is some way to internally mod the system to make this problem better, but this seemed like the simplest solution that should work.)
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13 hours ago, TailChao said:If you're talking about the 78S05, yeah they're pretty great. I frequently use them in my development consoles. The thing is that the original 7805s should still be able to push 5V @ 1.5A - which is a fair amount of wiggle room when the 7800's components shouldn't yank more than 500mA on the 5V rail. Rikki & Vikki's boards don't usually require over 150mA.
Anyway, the regulator was the issue here. Whoever modded the console replaced it with a properly spec'd 7805, but I guess the soldering job was so bad that they cooked its guts or messed it up some other way that it couldn't push over 500mA without the 5V rail sagging.
So that regulator probably failed because the mod was badly installed with awful soldering? Beware ebay indeed. But it is much easier to just buy one there than, say, to find someone here to do a mod for me or something, and I never could install it myself, so I gave it a try... I guess you had to fix the shorts too, I presume?
I should also mention that this mod also didn't do the updated mod that makes the AV port audio not super quiet, so (before sending the system for this check) I needed to like double TV volume in order to hear much of anything. Unfortunate.
Maybe I should have tried to find someone here who could repair and av/s-video mod my other 7800, the one with the failed power button so it won't turn on... that one has the added (useless) bonus of having the expansion port on the back, something this one TailChao has at the moment doesn't. Oh well...
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On 8/30/2020 at 11:28 AM, Leeroy ST said:I don't buy those numbers as Atari themselves and media reports inidicate that made 100,000 in the US because that was all they could actiallu produce at the time.
Then there's the 1 million sales in June 1988 and most of that million would be the US, the center piece of Ataris console business branching off for the "comeback" as they say, even if you low ball that number and unrealistically give the international in 1988 300k that's still 700k in NA and that's low balling the numbers.
This would mean that 216,000 sales would have had to be made in most if not all the first 6 months of 1998 up until the release of that article, which would be MORE THAN HALF of what his numbers say Atari sold for the TOTAL of 1988, even though the last 6 months of 1988 are Ataris BEST SELLING FOR the 7800's life, which doesn't make any sense as that would mean Atari sold LESS the second half of the year.
Yeah, and that's the issue, the 1.1 million number is an interesting guess -- saying "maybe that 3.7 million was actually hardware + software combined, subtract the software number from that for the real hardware number of 1.1 million" -- but yeah, it doesn't make much sense, the resulting numbers are too low.
Looking for a comparison around that amount of sales, the Atari 5200 is said to have sold about a million systems. I know this is only a resale snapshot, but right now there are 65 5200s for sale in the 'video game consoles, north america only' category, and 135 sold in that category. That's 200 total, a distinctly lower number than the 7800 and SMS numbers I mentioned earlier, 361 and 340 respectively. It sure looks to me like the 7800 should have sales in the SMS's range of 1.5 to 2 million, perhaps slightly above the SMS's total here in the US, and not the 5200's one million. The 7800 is more common than the 5200, it clearly sold better. (I like the 5200 more personally, but that's unimportant here...)
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So, after not having a working 7800 for several years after the power button on my old one failed (I can't solder much so I can't replace the switch), I finally got a new one a month ago or so, a s-video modded system from ebay. It works great, except for perhaps not using the updated version of the mod I see mentioned here since audio levels are extremely low when compared to my old console, I need to turn the volume well up. Oh well, that's not a big deal.
There is one problem though, I bought a copy of this game recently and I would say that I'm very glad to get this quite interesting-looking title before copies run out, but... it doesn't work at all, it boots to a black screen and stays that way. This isn't some weird resolution issue, all other carts I have work first try if they are clean, including Tower Toppler. This is my only 7800 homebrew, but the 2600 homebrew games I have work, and all original carts for the 8900 of course. I see mention of this game using a pin on the cart slot that no other game uses, but why would that one pin have a problem while all of the other ones are fine? I can't see in the black plastic cover that covers the cart port pins really so I have no idea how I'd figure out what the problem is here, but I hope it can be figured out, I very much want to play the game...
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On 8/26/2020 at 3:29 PM, mr_me said:What's more legitimate than internal Atari Corp sales reports.
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/144552-happy-25th-7800-sales-figures-attached/
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/144559-atari-7800-game-sales-figures-86-90/
Atari US 7800 console sales:
1986 84,668
1987 404,656
1988 415,690
1989 181,296
1990 31,247
Where did those numbers from? because those aren't the numbers in the thread you linked; I remember those numbers well from when they were revealed, they add up to 3.7 million systems sold in the US, versus about 1.1 million in your numbers here. That's a big difference. 3.7 million always did sound somewhat implausibly high, particularly claiming so many sales in the first year (286,000!) when they hadn't even made that many systems, but where did you get those numbers from? I don't see any hint of them, in the threads you link. If 3.7 million is maybe believable but high, 1.1 million seems too low.
Wait, I got it -- you're subtracting software sales from what was previously reported as hardware sales to get the numbers in your post. Given how those "hardware" sales are higher than the software sales numbers, I get why you might do this, though if this has been discussed somewhere, that those numbers may include hardware + software instead of only hardware, I missed it. That's plausible I guess then, though I am skeptical that the SMS outsold the 7800 in the US...
As for the Master System, the only estimate I've ever seen is that it sold between 1.5 and 2 million systems, which is quite believable and is within the range Sega stuff usually sold here, Genesis excepted.
Modern evidence exists to suggest that the 7800 seems to have outsold the SMS in the US. For example, check ebay... anytime. Now, five years ago, whenever, the results are the same: if you search for "Atari 7800" and "Sega Master System" in the video game consoles category, searching North American listings only, you will see more 7800 listings than SMS listings. Right now, this search gets 153 for the 7800, and 67 for the SMS. If you add sold listings this gets closer, as right now ebay reports 208 sold North America listings for the 7800 versus 273 for the SMS, but even so the 7800 has a higher total, if not by quite as much. This gap in number of systems sold, with the 7800 consistently having higher sales numbers on ebay, has held up for years. I think this is definitely supporting evidence for that the 7800 outsold the SMS.
And I doubt that this gap is because SMS owners are a lot more likely to hold on to their systems, the SMS is definitely not popular here. This lines up with what I've seen in person, too -- I see 7800s used around here quite a bit more often than I do SMSes. Sega released twice as many SMS games as Atari did 7800 games, but with its better name recognition and better-known titles at the time, the 7800 selling better despite this makes sense. For instance, as a somewhat irrelevant aside, I was born in the early '80s, but have absolutely no memory of even hearing about the existence of the Sega Master System during its life. Console gaming was the NES, pretty much. I did know of Atari, though.
Now, regardless of how many actually sold it's clear that most of those 7800 owners mostly played 2600 games on their system and got only a few actual 7800 games, but those are still 7800 systems regardless of which games they were playing on them.
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It's looking great! I'll buy the game for sure, the gameplay looks good and the 5200 trakball is of course amazing. Two little questions though -- for versus mode will there be any display showing how many times each player has won? Also are single matches human vs. human only? Thanks. It's great to see a story mode though, unfortunately I'll mostly have to play the game single player.
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Bah, I figured something was wrong. If the modulator is converting composite to rf, it's weird that rf works with everything, including the half of the games that crash with the composite av cable. That's one strange kind of chip failure there.
... Why is finding a working TI99 so hard? I mean, I know I broke my first two worse accidentally, but neither one ever worked correctly -- the first has an iffy keyboard, and the second a really bad keyboard AND serious display (ram chip?) issues. And now this one works... but only in rf, av is half broken? Bah.
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So, some years ago I got a TI99/4A. I did a thread about it. A while later, however, I stupidly broke it by spilling water on it while it was running.
The water got on my TI99 and Odyssey 2, but the O2 still works mostly fine (probably helped by its non-porous keyboard), while the TI99 had some crazy stuff display on the screen then died. I tried to let it dry out and such but it didn't help, it was dead.
After waiting a while, earlier this year I finally decided I wanted a working TI99 again. However, my first attempt did not go great on that front -- it did get me some interesting games and accessories, but the system itself has a bad chip (probably that RAM chip failure issue?) and keyboard. You can't boot games because a lot of keys don't work, and it has major display problems. It was listed as "untested" which I was skeptical about of course, but the other stuff with it convinced me to get it anyway. So, I now have two broken TI99s.
... Following this I did some highly unadvised things which broke that second console further. Let's just say that now neither of those systems or power supplies work at all. ... yes, I tried the power supply from the water-damaged console on the second system and such. It seems to have broken it too. Whoops... I wouldn't have tried it if the thing worked properly, but it didn't wand I was curious, so... yeah, that was a mistake. Maybe there is someone who could fix this stuff but I definitely cannot. (Both systems and their power supplies are now in the basement, taking up space. I don't want to throw them away though...)
Anyway, none of that is the point here, I have a question I'd appreciate help with. So, a few months ago I tried again, and got a tested and working TI99/4A. And it works, and even has a fully working keyboard! The graphics display correctly as well. Neither of my previous ones had a fully working keyboard, even that first one often had some of the keys not respond sometimes. That's quite nice. However, there is an issue -- so, I have the RFU that came with this system, and also a composite AV cable I had previously bought. (Note: this is a mono AV cable, yellow and white to the TI DIN plug.) And the composite cable works... with some games. With others, though, the screen goes white after about a second and stops functioning. The system is fine,though -- if I turn it off and on it runs normally, unless you have one of those games in and watch them fail to run again. Some games just don't work on AV. However, those same games work fine on the RFU... except of course the image quality isn't as good. This issue is consistent -- with some games this happens every single time, while with others it never does and they can be played normally on composite.
So, is this a problem with the computer, or not? I don't remember having this issue on my first TI99/4A, but it's been long enough that I don't remember for sure. I have done some searching and haven't found anything about this problem. I'm thinking about finally adding to my little TI99 collection by getting a tape drive and maybe the nano-PEB or something, but before I go any farther with that I definitely want to figure out this display issue, I'd much rather use composite than RF if I can.
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In game 1 there is only one dreadnaught; this isn't an endless game, but one with an ending. The other game modes increase the number of dreadnaughts up to 100 in the top one. Well, difficulty 6 is 15, 7 1000... huge spike there! See the manual here on Atari Age. (It's also worth looking at for its awesome cover art. too... )
The Dreadnaught Factor is a pretty good game for the time, it's a nice early scrolling shmup. The first dreadnaught is really easy, but it gets challenging eventually in the harder modes.
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Montezuma's Revenge apparently has nine levels, then once you beat level nine, the last level loops endlessly until you get game over. If that is correct I'd call that effectively a game with an ending, they just had the last stage loop instead of ending it, partially for cart space reasons apparently.
... The original game is great, but for anyone who hasn't played it, the Game Boy/Color sequel/remake Montezuma's Return is really, really good. I like that game a lot.
On 9/18/2019 at 10:56 PM, Giles N said:Yeah, I’d say they count if they go through many set level-layouts and start over at level 1.
Thats a game with beginning and end; it just loops.
So I’d say ‘Vanguard’ is ‘a wrap’ after going through one round of levels and taking the final boss once.
So Vanguard is on my list here.
I found it very playable, but would like to see some light/shadow(depth) to the many ships and objects.
Hmm, are the order of stages in Vanguard the same every time, or does it change?
(As for Super Cobra, I found that game pretty good on 5200. Fun and challenging.)
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I'd say that Super Cobra looping after you reach the end probably should count here.
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52 minutes ago, phoenixdownita said:I'll try.
The N64 had no BIOS to speak of https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/1364/why-is-a-bios-dump-not-required-to-emulate-nintendo-64-games-in-most-modern-emul
The RSP was microprogrammable to begin with
https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/6261/nintendo-64-microcode-format
link to the gory details
http://ultra64.ca/files/documentation/silicon-graphics/SGI_Nintendo_64_RSP_Programmers_Guide.pdf
so CJ comments are smack onto the face of the fact that your statements are no more than technobabble in the way they are written.
Mind you I understand the general sentiment but you need to be factually correct first, this is technology, you can't make this stuff up as you go.
Most N64 games use the default microcode, but a couple of developers convinced Nintendo to allow them access to the custom microcode, to make their own changes to it. The two external developers who are best known for custom microcode are Boss Games (as seen in World Driver Championship and Stunt Racer 64) and Factor 5, as seen in Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine and Star Wars: Battle of Naboo. I'm not sure if Rogue Squadron had custom microcode, probably phillipj was thinking of Battle for Naboo would be my guess. Battle for Naboo is a pretty amazing looking game and one of the best-looking games of the generation.
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That's very impressive then, I thought maybe it "cheats" with added modern hardware like a bunch of 2600 homebrews and such do, but with just a large rom size the Intellivision can get pretty close to the NES, huh. It clearly could do a lot more than lots of the early library shows. The game looks fun, I'd consider getting it if I could.
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I don't have the flashcart of course (and I know that currently they are not available), but the gulf in both graphics and gameplay between the pre-crash Intellivision games I've played and this is huge, this is really, really impressive work... I presume it uses the hardware on the flashcart to do more than an '80s Intellivision game could, but even so it looks pretty great and NES quality.
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14 hours ago, Loafer said:The Atari 2600 with its woodgrain finish is a beauty to behold and the colecovision has a huge footprint but with a purpose so it has a charm its own
obviously you must want to rumble with comments like that! Lol all kidding aside I don’t think the look may have been great but
The Colecovision looks like... I don't know, some industrial product or something? It's kind of amazingly ugly. And then I make it look even worse by not putting controllers in the top, and instead using the trackball to get way better action buttons and a lot more cable length. That leaves half of the case as a pointless pair of holes with cables coming out of them. At least the Atari 5200 has a cover for the pointless, empty controller holder part of its shell. Not so for Coleco.
I got the Colecovision last summer, and recently decided to kind of hide it by putting my NES sideways on top of the controller-holder part of the Colecovision. It actually fits pretty well, and that channel on the bottom of the NES is perfectly placed for letting out the Roller Controller cable.
As for the 2600, sure it has a very iconic look, but I've never been a fan of ridges on consoles -- I think the original PS2 looks awful, with its ridges -- and why do cartridges go in it backwards? Also, the Super Video Arcade has a band of woodgrain across the front as well.
(And yes, the Super Video Arcade has some ridges too, but they're much less prominent.)
14 hours ago, Loafer said:the colecovision was the first console that for the first time had many arcade games that at least played and in many cases looked very similar to their arcade counterpart. Nowadays someone tries the colecovision games, 90% of them you can probably appreciate more by playing the read deal in mame but then that’s missing the point. Somehow someway you have to wear those pink colored glasses when playing the old consoles and look at it from the era these were born in. Programming a game that basically fits in a memory footprint smaller than a couple of typed pages in a word document shouldn’t be ignored
in saying that I’m very much a Coleco fanboy so maybe I wear a couple of thickness of pink sunglasses I dunno. I will say even nostalgia wise there are limits so with that in mind 90% of the Atari 2600 games haven’t aged very well but for some reason the Intellivision and colecovision (and the c64) seem immune to that, as they have just enough detail in their games to be acceptable. The apple 2 is starting to fall into the Atari 2600 realm of few and far between for acceptable to play but those exceptions certainly are worthwhile to play for sure
Yeah, that really is the question, isn't it -- what has more value, original titles or arcade ports? Like, comparing the Colecovison and Intellivision, Coleco probably has somewhat better first-party games on average, but almost none of them are original, they're just ports. Sure, it's nice that the Colecovision has a great version of Mr. Do, good Time Pilot, etc... but exclusives are what matter the most for a platform, more so than ports, and it has almost none of those. Of the 30-something Colecovision games I have, what, maybe one is actually exclusive (Super Action Baseball), I think, and it's a pretty unimpressive game. Back then, having good home ports of games like Donkey Kong, Pepper II, Mr. Do, and the like probably was awesome, sure, but for someone playing it today, beyond the 'it's neat to see a solid version of this game on this hardware' I probably do think exclusives have more weight.
However, if you're talking better ports vs. not as good exclusives that's tougher, as having the better overall games should count for a lot, but having games you can't play elsewhere is very important and a good draw to a console. Kind of tough to decide there. This very much applies to the Jaguar vs. 3DO in terms of game libraries as well of course...
13 hours ago, mr_me said:While it's true that in 1982 all the kids wanted to play arcade games at home, the best home video games at the time were not arcade conversions.
Even if most Atari 2600 games haven't aged well there's still plenty of quality cartridges in its 500+ library. All systems in the eighties have their share of duds. The colecovision is ugly but it's not a beauty contest.
Certainly, the games matter more than how a console looks. Console aesthetics are worth mentioning but don't decide which console is better or worse, other things, like games, controllers, features, etc. do.
Also, yeah, there are some good Atari 2600 games and some bad ones. Some are definitely still fun.
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2 hours ago, wongojack said:To the OP. I appreciate your write-ups, but it kinda seems like you are having a miserable time. You might need to the approach the Intellivision from a different perspective (or something) to get more enjoyment out of playing the games.
Miserable? That's going too far; sure, it's not exactly my favorite system and I'd probably put it in the lower third of my 'how much I like consoles' list, but I've had much worse times with other games, and things I've written.
If you want to talk miserable, the one that was indeed miserable to have to work on, and is indeed why I don't do lists that long all at once anymore, is this one: http://www.blackfalcongames.net/?p=186 I dislike the Playstation so much, that was kind of torture to have to spend so much time playing mostly PS1 games, some of them so bad...
Honestly, this list took a month to finish more because I kept not wanting to start working on it, but once I finally did I had a reasonably good time. Sure, I'm hard on a lot of the games, but some were fun despite their issues, like in this second part Space Battle, Space Spartans, Snafu, Venture, Pinball... maybe a few more (Night Stalker maybe).
Or like, Safecracker? At first I wanted to give up pretty much right away, since navigating is so absurdly difficult. (Safecracker with IntelliVoice would be great by the way... voice for the directions!) But looking up how to play the game, and sticking with it enough to manage to at least complete a safe and get past that, was pretty interesting and well worth my time.
Also the Sears Super Video Arcade is a pretty nice-looking console. It's got a cool classic look. Of the five pre-crash consoles I have (2600 (4-switch), 5200, Colecovision, Intellivision - Super Video Arcade, Odyssey 2) it's one of the best-looking ones, and definitely looks a lot nicer than the 2600, never mind the Colecovision, one of the ugliest systems I own... the 5200 and O2 look nice also, but the Super Video Arcade might be on top, based on just how it looks. ... oh, and I also have a 7800 if that counts, but it's only average looking, and anyway the poor thing broke years ago and I haven't been able to fix it.
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1 hour ago, mr_me said:So you can beat Space Battle consistently at level four? I'd say I can beat it more often than not, but it's still challenging to me. The easier rom has an extra dotted ring at the edge of the radar map while the updated faster rom does not; that's how you can tell which cartridge you have.
What do you mean, an extra dotted ring? On my copy there are the two rings of dots in the center, then three quarters of a ring of dots around the edge; it's missing on the right side for some reason. I presume this means it's the easier version? I hope so, because yeah it's very easy. I just played three games, and it's fun... until you win after like three minutes. I just played the game and did have fun, but won three games out of four on the higher difficulties (hitting the disc and pressing "4", which the manual says is the hardest setting), only losing the first game because I'd forgotten how the somewhat odd controls work and had to look at the manual (I have the manual but not an overlay). I did have only two ships left in the game on the highest setting, but I still did win. But sure, it's fun, it just barely presents any challenge and games only last a couple of minutes.
One thing I forgot to mention in the summary is that I like how the enemy ship explosions will take out other enemies, that's cool. I quite like how that works in UFO! for the O2. That is a very hard game anyway, but it sure helps make this game easier.
Regarding Space Hawk, the game may have been
inspired by Asteroids but you'd be disappointed if that's what you expected. I play Space Hawk by ignoring the bubbles and mostly chase and kill space hawks. I do enjoy the game, however you get so many extra men that I just stop playing once I get to rainbow bubbles.
Intellivision controls have to be specifically programmed to support pressing two action buttons at the same time. Intellivision Defender is one cartridge where you can fire and thrust at the same time by pressing two side action buttons. Can't say I feel the need for or miss that feature in any other cartridge. Ah. In Asteroids though, being able to thrust and fire at the same time is pretty useful...
4 hours ago, popsicle said:Thanks for your detailed reviews. It's neat to see a first impression on these games we grew up playing and knowing so well. Some of them hold up quite well, and some really don't.
In case this wasn't already pointed out, for Tron Deadly Discs you can use both controllers to avoid the simultaneous keypad/disc input block, i.e. left hand controls disc (you call it the 'circle') on left controller and right hand uses keypad on right controller. It sounds messy, but actually is quite liberating and allows you to move and shoot at the same time. Also, you don't have to wait for Tron's disc to go all the way to the edge of the screen. If you tap any keypad button in flight the disc returns to you. This feature is used all the time as you often miss targets. It might be that you are holding the keypad buttons down to launch your disc? Lastly, most seasoned players know how to consistently kill the Recognizer by standing in the correct spot (depending on where the Recognizer enters the screen from) and timing a shot to hit his eye when it is white. This is the key to big points and making the game progress faster, which not only increases the speed of gameplay but introduces different enemies. Give it another try!
Ahh, that's how that works. I did try using both discs, like Microsurgeon, but it didn't work so I thought the game didn't have two controller support. That probably would make the game slightly better. Also, yeah, I probably am holding down the buttons, I guess you shouldn't do that. Still, that the disc can't hurt enemies on the way back is stupid. That reminds me of 2600 Breakout/ Super Breakout, which I find boring and borderline unplayable because the ball only hits one block every time it goes up the screen, it'll just warp right through any other blocks it should bounce off of on the way back...
As for killing the Recognizer, I'm sure there's a trick to it but yeah I haven't figured it out.
4 hours ago, popsicle said:As pointed out above, pushing the disc is the default fastest game speed when starting most Intellivision games from the start up splash screen.
I never had Pinball as a kid, but have really enjoyed playing it now. It actually has three different tables, not two.
There was nothing better than head to head Biplanes in Triple Action once you and your opponent knew how to climb, stall, dive, etc. The other two games are indeed shite.
B-17 Bomber was so great, but lacked a proper progression and ending to make it complete. The slow crawl from England to mainland Europe also was annoying.
Make sure to check out the incredible Stonix homebrew. I don't even like breakout games that much but dammit I'm determined to finish all 100 levels.
What do you mean, progression in B-17 Bomber? Like, some win screen if you destroyed every single enemy base or something? That'd be a crazy hard task... really what I was wishing for was not having it destroy my turrets after like two seconds of missing the enemy fighters, though.
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mr_me: ... You're right about Space Hawk, I'm not sure what I was thinking there when I wrote how the controls work. I've fixed that on my site, but can't edit posts here unfortunately, that's an annoying limitation.
Here's the new second paragraph of the Space Hawk summary. It's mostly the same but I changed the controls part.
Unfortunately, what this game also shows is that it's hard to make a good Asteroids game, and they didn't quite manage it here. The rocks that the Space Hawk is shooting get in the way between you and them, so you will need to choose between shooting the rocks and thus protecting yourself, or trying to fly around to get a shot a the Hawk itself. It's a decent mechanic, but sadly you will only ever face one Space Hawk at a time. This makes for a very simplistic game which feels slow, and slow-paced, even in its highest speed setting. It does get harder as you survive longer, but you're only ever fighting the same Space Hawks, shooting the same things at you, throughout. Once you shoot a Space Hawk enough to kill it, another one will come at you, in an endless loop until you eventually die. That may sound simple, but the game has tricky and somewhat original controls, for good and ill. You aim your astronaut with the disc, thrust with one side button, and fire with the other button. A keypad button uses hyperspace, Asteroids or Defender-style, to randomly warp out of danger, hopefully. The controls work, but are slow. I often wish I could use thrust and fire at the same time, but you really can't, it's one or the other it seems. And having to aim with the disc while using side buttons for thrust feels awkward. With very slow, one-enemy-at-a-time design, Space Hawk looked cool at first glance and I was looking forward to trying it, but I got tired of it very quickly and don't find it very fun. This is another average-at-best Intellivision game with flawed, and somewhat slow, gameplay that is okay, but does not hold up to the better shooting games on other consoles. Space Hawk is not bad, but is not good either. This game is on the Intellivision Flashback unit and in Intellivision Lives! collections.
Also, as I also edited into the summary, yeah the game plays a little faster if you start it with the disc instead of a button, but it still is slow, I think. Part of that is the game design probably, with how there's only ever one enemy and such, not always near you...
Oh, and a harder version of Star Battle would be nice; though that's kind of what Space Spartans is, it is a very easy game.
The water got on my TI99 and Odyssey 2, but the O2 still works mostly fine (probably helped by its non-porous keyboard), while the TI99 had some crazy stuff display on the screen then died. I tried to let it dry out and such but it didn't help, it was dead.
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Apple IIGS disk and hard drive formatting help please!
in Apple II Computers
Posted
I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask this question, but I hope that someone can help...
So, I gave in to childhood memories (kind of) in my most recent addition to my collection when I got an Apple IIGS. I say 'kind of' because I mostly remember the Apple IIe and not the GS, but still, it's an Apple II-line machine. I've got a bunch of stuff for it since but it's been one seriously steep learning curve; this machine is extremely complex and hard to learn in a way that other old computers I have (TI99/4A, C64/128, VIC-20...) aren't. That I am used to PCs and not Macs (I've been a PC user since the early '90s) and this is the first Apple machine I've ever owned doesn't make figuring out how to do anything in the OS any easier, that's for sure.
But I've figured a lot of it out, and really like this machine for the most part. I got lucky and got a working IIGs with the original monitor and a SCSI card for a reasonable price. It is the revision C regular-speed card and not the high speed card, so it's slow, but still, it's really cool to have. It is a ROM 01 system. To that, I ended up getting a SCSI2SD v5.5 card for a hard drive; I know the Compact Flash-based modern cards you can get would be much faster, but this was a bit cheaper and uses much more convenient SD cards. I don't own any Compact Flash anything, I'd need a reader for them and such if I got one of those cards. With external USB power the SCSI2SD works, it's just got really slow transfer speeds when moving files to or from it on the Apple II. Game load times and such are fine though, as expected with how small they are. I also ended up getting a modern 8MB RAM expansion, and have been running GSOS 6.04 on the SCSI2SD. It works and I've tried a bunch of games and such on it, great stuff.
I got a compatible keyboard and mouse for it and they work great. I also replaced the clock/settings battery. Fortunately the old, original one showed no sign of leaking. For disk drives, all I currently have are two 5.25" disk drives, a DuoDisk drive and a solo 5.25" drive, for original Apple II/IIe software running from disk. Both seem to work, though I have some issues that ... may be software and not hardware problems I think? I really don't know, please help. I do want to get a working 3.5" drive for Apple IIGS software but haven't gotten one yet. I will eventually...
So what are the problems I made this thread for? There are two main ones and they are really, really frustrating me.
1) Hard drive partitioning. So, as I said, I have a SCSI2SD 5.5 connected to the IIGS via its original regular speed revision C Apple SCSI card. Note, the SCSI card is in slot 7. I've got an 8GB micro SD card in it, partitioned into four 2GB virtual drives in the SCSI2SD configuration software (on my PC, which is right next to the IIGS). Here's the issue though, what do I need to do to get more partitions on this thing? I know that natively the Apple II only supports two 32MB ProDos partitions per drive. In the GSOS 6.04 Finder, all I can do is reformat existing partitions, or format one partition on a drive. When I added the "fourth" virtual drive to the micro SD card for example, GSOS recognized it and let me put one partition on the drive, either a 32MB ProDOS partition or a 2GB HFS partition. If there's a way in GSOS to do more than one partition, which I very much need, I have absolutely no idea where it is. Is there some tool for this on a disc somewhere? I did find a (Apple IIe or such) drive partitioning tool from Apple that let me create two 32MB partitions per drive, but that's all. I think I heard that on a IIGS there is some way of having more than two 32MB ProDos partitions on the same drive? What does THIS, do you need a High Speed SCSI card or a CFFA3000 (these are now insanely expensive, no thanks) or something? Drive partitioning has me incredibly confused, why does GSOS only let you format ONE partition per drive, that makes no sense. Unless there's a tools disk I'm missing with the key tool on it that works with the regular, not high speed, SCSI card? (There probably is, this system has a million tools disks available online...)
1-A) The other drive partitioning problem I have is with the Apple IIGS and CiderPress on my PC often not recognizing the partitions on the micro SD card. Now, my PC SD card reader sadly broke a few days ago and I haven't bought a new one yet so I can't add files to the IIGS at the moment (I will get a replacement), but managing to get partitions that both the PC and Apple IIGS can both see was really frustrating. Last time I checked, of the partitions on that card, the Apple IIGS currently sees, on "virtual drive" one, two 32MB ProDos partitions. I imagine there's some way to format the rest of it as HFS or more ProDos partitions but as I said if so I have no idea how. The second and third virtual drives have only one 2GB HFS partition each, though I may change this if I can, more ProDos partitions as well as HFS ones would be better (since you can't load 8-bit software from HFS). CiderPress on my PC cannot see the second or third virtual drives AT ALL however so the only way to get software on them is to copy it over excruciatingly slowly, one ProDos partition at a time, on the one non-boot ProDos partition on drive one that CiderPress does see. This is really a pain, why is this? Drive four currently has just one ProDos partition and needs more. I'm not sure if CiderPress can see it or not (again, broken SD reader).
1-B) For one more comment on CiderPress, it's a good program but it sure would be nice if it could format drives with an Apple Partition Map that the computer could recognize! You know, with choices for the size and number of partitions and such. That it can't is seriously annoying and a big pain, honestly... there are ways around this problem, as I have read online, but that'd make it a lot simpler. It took a while to just manage to get a partition on the SD card that the computer could actually see. I had to do a fair amount of research online to get to that point. But anyway, I got that done and it boots fine now. I just don't want to mess up that boot partition, heh...
With how many problems I've had with the 'put files on the SD Card on my PC and then put it into the Apple', I think I'm going to get an ADTPro cable and such just to make the transfer process maybe easier...
But with that
2) Floppy disk drives. So, as I said I have those two 5.25" drives... well three really with how one is a DuoDisk. The solo drive and the first drive in the DuoDisk can both load the handful of legit Apple II disks that I have if you boot the system from the drive. Turn computer on with boot set to boot from the floppy drives first, it'll boot the disk. Okay, that's good. There are glitches in the program in some disks but that could well be issues with the disks themselves, I'm not sure; it's the same on both drives. I don't know what the problem is, but the disks do boot and run. I haven't managed to quit out of any of these disks to a command prompt that allows me to use the "catalog" or "init" commands, when I try from the prompt it just gives an error message, but maybe I just don't have disks that let me do that? I don't know this format well enough to know. But the few legit disks I have do boot on these drives, and you can use the programs.
2-A) However, in GSOS (6.04), I can't manage to get the disk drives to work AT ALL. I can't format disks, can't load these disks or view the files on them, can't do anything. My guess is that the disks are copy protected, and on the Apple II a copy protected disk can't even be VIEWED in the OS? That's got to be it, yes? That's a pretty insanely annoying restriction if true! Legit disks that only function if booted cold but otherwise act like they're blank disks with unknown formatting on them... how strange. Okay though, if that's what it is I get it.
2-B) That's not the main problem, however. Formatting blank disks is. I have a box of IBM formatted blank DS/DD 5.25" disks. I've used them on my PC and, after reformatting them on a Commodore disk drive, on my C128 for Commodore 64 software as well. [I don't have a disk emulator for the Commodore, only an XU1541.) These disks work great on my Commodore 128 and 1541 disk drive. (Yes, I know that I can only use one side of each disk because they only have a notch on one side, these are single-sided drives, and I don't have a disk notcher. I badly need to get one but still have not. But for the Apple this will only matter once I actually figure out why I can't format them at all...) I'm pretty sure that the Apple II uses double density disks, just like the C64/128, so these should be the correct disks.
So why do I get an error message every time that I try to format a disk in GSOS? In the DuoDisk, when I try to format a disk in GSOS in the first drive it fails almost immediately with error "Unknown error: $0008". In the second drive in the DuoDisk it seems to work better, and I get the expected disk drive sounds... until it fails out with "Unknown Error: $00A8" after some time making noises. It does not format the disks. In the solo drive the same thing happens as this one, a fairly quick Unknown Error: $00A8 and it gives up. I think the system is good, it claims to be working in the self-test. These same disks can load stuff if booted straight from the disk. So what in the WORLD is the problem here, this is really an issue... I need to be able to use real disks in order to use an older computer, and you can't do much of that when it won't format them! Of course it won't read formatted disks either, as I mention above, but that could be a copy protection issue? Unless I am missing some file the system needs to make disk drives work correctly in GSOS? I've tried a few games that have a 'format save disk' function and I have no more luck there, it doesn't work. I've seen (quite incorrect) 'the disk is write protected' errors for example. I need help. Is the problem the drives, the disks, the computer? Or am I just missing some critical step?
Lastly, on a related note:
3) How exactly do I add things to the GSOS's Apple menu on the left? System Tools or whatever. And which should I want to add?
On one final note, it sure would be nice if you could make the screen image wider, the borders on this monitor are massive and the monitor really small (this is the official IIGS monitor; it's 12", right). One of the knobs makes the image taller, but you can't make it any wider. Oh well, it's awesome to have the real monitor and that's what's most important by far. That and that as far as I can tell everything works perfectly hardware-wise.
I'm sorry this is so long but I've been thinking about and working on this machine a lot for some weeks now and I'm kind of stuck. I particularly would like any advice with the floppy disk formatting problem.