Eckhard Stolberg

Ok, thanks for the desriptions. Now I'm really envious. And I was so proud before, when I found boxed copies of Missile Control and Surfer's Paradise. Any chance that you could read out the ROMs of the three other games, even if it only were to do some screenshots with an emulator in order to turn me from envious to jealous? And of course that would allow us to compare the games with all the pirates. Treasure below sure sounds like something I have seen before. If only I could remember the name of that cart ... Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Actually the game is based on a board game called Rush Hour. Since it has a pretty simple setup Brian created a version of it for the VCS. But since he was new at VCS programming he only managed to fit 26 levels into his first version. Thomas liked the game so much, that he decided to program a new version from scratch just to see how many levels he could fit in. His version ended up with 600 levels. Thomas asked Brians approval before he released his version and Brian didn't mind. So the only thing that Brian could take credit for on Thomas' version is that he was the one who started Thomas' interest in the game. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Starpath games should be detected automatically. There is no need for any command line switches. You just have to make sure that the binary is 8448 bytes long for single load games, or a multitude of this for the multi-load games. Multi-load games need to be concatenated into one single file per game. If you have a game with three loads for example you would type on the DOS command line prompt: "copy /b load1.bin+load2.bin+load3.bin mload.bin" Then you should be able to play mload.bin under z26. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg [ 07-31-2001: Message edited by: Eckhard Stolberg ]

Aha, I see. They really seem to be different games then. So how does Steeplechase by Video Gems play and how does it look like? And do you have Treasure Below too? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I'm convinced that Lady Bug is real. Just look at the screenshots in Digital Press. The DP guys have such a long experience with reviewing VCS games and they have contacts with so many of the old VCS programmers, that they sure would be able to come up with faked screenshots that the VCS would actually be able to generate, if they really wanted to fool us. The fact that the screenshots of Lady Bug are obviously so much beyond the VCS's capabilities can only mean that the DP guys are forced to hide the real truth. It's all a big conspiracy, I'm telling you. Trust no one, especially not me. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Sears' Steeplechase is a four player game with horizontal splitscreen. It's a horseracing game which is controlled with the paddles. If you have a screenshot of Video Gems' Steeplechase, maybe you can post it here, so that we can compare it? BTW, how did you get the screenshot, if you don't have the game? Were there any catalogs included with the other Video Gems games? BTW, good luck with your experiments on the cartridge reader. I'm sure you'll notice how safe and easy to use it really is. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

None of us is running Linux, so we don't have any plans to port z26 to it, but the source code for z26 is available from the link mentioned above. It's released under the GPL too, so if you wanted to port it to Linux yourself, we couldn't stop you, even if we wanted to. But if you really are brave enough to attempt messing around with this code, it would be nice, if you contacted John Saeger first, since you would need to make a lot of changes that probably should be coordinated with him. But be warned, the current source code consists mostly of 16-bit DOS assembler code in MASM format plus some additional 16-bit DOS C code in Turbo C format. Porting that mess to anything sure would be ugly. We are always talking about how nice it would be, if the code were written in nicely portable 32-bit C, but so far we were always too scared to even think about making this change. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Just in case anyone still cares, we have improved the compatibility in z26, and now it should be possible to access the secret kingdom in Mountain King with it. I don't have a cartridge version of this game, so I can't say if the secret kingdom really is the same, but it matches the description on the cheat sites pretty well. Also the cheat sites mention that plugging in a keyboard controller allows you to make certain ladders appear and disappear. The Booster Grip controller uses the same inputs, and since it is active in z26 by default, you can get the same effect with the buttons assigned for Booster Grip. Oh, and one thing that the z26 FAQ forgot to mention, we are now automatically detecting Holey Moley as a keypad game. So everyone who always wondered how to play this game might want to have another try now. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg p.s. you can get the most recent version of z26 here. [ 07-28-2001: Message edited by: Eckhard Stolberg ]

Speaking of the RealSports series, my silver label version of "Football - RealSports Soccer" says trademark of Taito America Corp. Anyone know why that is? Is there a RealSports arcade game by Taito that Atari licensed or something? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I think Jens Klöpfel from Gamereset had a copy of Steeplechase by Video Gems for a short while. IIRC he told me that the game is just the same as the Sears version. You might want to ask him for more details. BTW Marco, since Mission Survive seems to be an original game that hasn't been dumped yet, and since you are probably still looking for a safe game to test your cart reader with, maybe you would like to practice a bit with this Video Gems title before you dare to take out your prototypes again. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg [ 07-27-2001: Message edited by: Eckhard Stolberg ]

quote: Originally posted by san-d-2000: I have Mission survive, it´s a Moon Patrol kind of clone. OK, thanks. So, is it really an original game, or is it a copy of something else, like their Steplechase game? Could you please describe the game a bit more? How does it look like? Thanks, Eckhard Stolberg

I don't know about the NTSC 7800, but the reason why Kool Aide Man doesn't work with the PAL 2600 and 7800 seems to be the positioning of the score counter. This game accesses the positioning registers repeatedly in a way that according to the Stella programmers guide might result in "random" positions. On NTSC consoles everything seems to work fine, but on all my PAL consoles the sprites are positioned partly on top of each other, which constandly triggers the collision detection. This results in the game being totally unplayable. The emulators also suffer from this, which is why we added a special cheat routine in z26 for this game, that forces the correct position for the score display. As for Decathlon, Robot Tank and Space Shuttle, I think Activision later released versions with different bankswitchting formats that would work on the 7800 too. At least I have a PAL Decathlon by HES like that, and the ROM image of Space Shuttle NTSC also uses a different BS format than my old PAL picture label version. If there is someone out there who has a cart reader 7800 and the picture label versions of these three games as well as the text label versions, it would be nice, if he could compare the ROM images to see if they are really different. Thanks, Eckhard Stolberg

I have scans of the award stickers for two of the Video Gems games on the picture section of my website, in case anyone wants to see them. BTW Marco, as you also seem to have Mission Survive, can you please describe it's gameplay? I have never seen this game, not even as a ROM image. Thanks, Eckhard Stolberg

In my opinion both the proline joysticks and the joypads are too uncomfortable for longer playing sessions. If you are really interested in any of the two-button games for the 7800, you would be better off finding a two-button controller for any other system and modify it to work with the 7800. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

In their online store they only offer the generic "training" shirt without any sponsor logos. So without finding someone to check out their fan store in Lyon, you are probably out of luck. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Sorry, but I don't have the nessessary equipment to create internet video streams. 3sat used to have the whole show as real video on their Neues homepage, but I'm not sure if it still is up. BTW, in case you don't get 3sat, but you can get ZDF, the "Generation PONG" show will be shown there tonight at 2.00 cet too. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

This sounds like "Mad TV" by Rainbow Arts. I know that there were versions for the PC and the Amiga. I'm not sure about a ST version, but is seems likely that they made one. In this game you saw the TV building from a side view and had to walk from office to office to be able to enter all the settings. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

quote: Originally posted by Tempest: Actually I just talked to Marc about his prototype collection and I must say that I'm jealous. That's probably why he's going to be on TV twice this week again showing his collection, while you are not. OK, it's only a short scene and he is only talking about his arcade games, but it's still fun to watch, if you haven't seen it already. Tonight at 21.00 cet and saturday at 14.00 cet 3SAT is going to rerun the "Generation PONG - a short history of computer gaming" episode of their computer show "NEUES ... Spezial". I think 3SAT is only in the cable of Austria, Germany and Switzerland, but the rest of Europe might be able to pick it up on Satelite. I thought I'd mention this, just in case anyone missed the show the other five or so times it was on already. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

To add one more programmer to that list: Peter Pachla ported Jinks to the 7800 in 1989. I think he still might remember the other programmers at US Gold working on the 7800. You can contact him through his homepage. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

I really appreciate your corrections, because that's the only way I can improve my foreign language skills. But after you noticed how bad my English was, you probably should have known better than to expect me to find the sarcasm in your statement when I'm not even able to find the correct meaning of all the words. But you are right about the financing. What I meant to point out was just that Warner-Atari probably wasn't taking more interrest in Amiga Inc. than Tramiel-Atari did, which is how I understood your first comment. The loan to Amiga Inc. seems to be more of a favour to a some former Atari employees rather than a planned 'investment' in the technology. And since you were so kind to correct my spelling errors, I can't let this chance pass to help you to improve your spelling too. Before you go to pay a voodoo priest to course the 'Tremiel' family for ruining Atari, you might want to look up the spelling of their name. You wouldn't want some innocent people to get hurt, would you? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Sorry, I still don't fully understand the problem. What you are saying is that with your old OS you were able to dump all the 2600 and 7800 games you ever tried, but now that you are using Win2K, you can still dump all 2600 games and very small 7800 games fine, but all 7800 games that are larger than 16K would time-out? Is that correct? Maybe it's some Win2K system interrupt or your printer driver that is interfering. Did you set the priority for your command line prompt to the highest possible level? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Do you mean that Activision games are the only ones that you can get to transfer any data at all, or are Activision games the only ones that cause timeout problems? What about smaller games with only 4K or so? And what about smaller 7800 games that don't use bankswitching? If you use a cable with badly shielded wires, like from an old joystick cable, I think there could be problems with overspeaking when the transfer direction changes quickly a couple of times, as it happens when 7800CTRL tells the 7800 to switch banks on a game. Were you able to transfer the games in question with your old setup? BTW, did you just change your OS, or did you buy a whole new computer? Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Actually I think it has more to do with the fact that when the processor reads the startin address when you are frying the VCS, only some bits on the start address are accidently inverted at a time. This would allow for only a couple of states that the game might go to, and some of those might be almost the same, as the code left out in one case might have no affect on the outcome of the frying. But I still think being able to tweak the results by hand in a debugger would be better than a fixed frying feature. If you find a funny result you can try to get the most out of it by changing the RAM or moving the start address by a couple of bytes untill you get an even better result. For example if you start Pitfall at address $1180, Pitfall Harry will hang in the air and you can hover him from screen to screen. But if you mess up the RAM in a certain way before, you can get other results like Harry swinging on a tree without there being a vine. That way you'd know exactly how to reproduce that effect if you wanted to see it again. Afterall no matter how much more probable some states are in frying, they still are somewhat random and you might not be able to reproduce them again. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

Sorry, I don't know. I don't use Windows 2000 and don't know anyone who uses 7800CTRL with it either. If all connections are alright and the 7800 is working properly then it must be a problem with the parallel port. The timeout error occurs when 7800CTRL can't get a proper response from the 7800. Maybe you just need to specifically allow printer port access for DOS programs under Win2K? Or if you switched to a completely new computer, it might be good to check the different printer port settings in the BIOS. Maybe the current setting is causing some problems with the 7800? BTW, If you want an answer from me personally, it would be better if you contacted me via email instead of via this board. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

While I also don't see Atari doing a stationary game system, I think a portable system might be possible when their experiments with smartphone gaming are successfull. With the upcomming UMTS transmission standard everyone is trying to find a sellable use for those PDA/mobile phone hybrids. If a mobile phone company like Motorola designs a a handheld game system with phone functions instead, and a UMTS company sponsors it's distribution, like they currently do with normal mobile phones if you sign a long term contract, I could see the need for a good content provider. Infogrames apparently has some video game rights to franchises like the Looney Tunes, the Peanuts, the Smurfs and Asterix, which could be used to carter to the children's market. And with the Atari games and all their other companies that did games for the 8-bit homecomputers they could have a big enough lineup to support a portable gaming system. And their Atari name could be used on the unit itself, as it probably would have a better reputation for games than any of the mobile phone companies. So if it turns out that people are willing to pay for pay-per-play gaming, I could see a device that is aimed specifically at that market a viable option. And then Atari might be good candidate for the name of the system. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg