MaximRecoil

Karateka is a game that I always remember being better to control on keyboard than joystick. I just tried the Apple ][ version on an emulator. It seemed ridiculously easy; that is, until a gate came down and crushed me instantly as I was walking through. I don't know how far along I was at that point, because it was my first time playing, but none of the opponents were even remotely difficult (the attacking birds weren't difficult either, and unlike the 7800 version, you can actually hit them). I was using a gamepad, and the controls were crappy, but not nearly as crappy as the Atari 7800 version. It was tedious; it seems to take a long time to get anywhere, even though I was running in between every fight that showed cut scenes of the enemy running. That falling gate thing was cheap as the day is long. It is one of those things that would only ever get someone the very first time they encounter it. I'd spent like 15 or 20 minutes fighting maybe a dozen or more extremely easy opponents and then bam, the game is over.

Normally the picture quality is the same for me between the OEM RF switch and an RG6 coax with RCA adapter. However, with the coax + adapter, sometimes I see brief interference (it just lasts a second or so and then it goes back to normal). That doesn't happen when I use the OEM RF switch. With that said, I normally use my front-loader with AV cables, which has great picture quality and interference isn't an issue anyway.

According to the Karateka manual: So I tried it with the switch to the right, and beat the game that way too. I didn't notice much, if any, difference in difficulty. Also, I walked, rather than ran, in to save the princess again, on the off chance that the harder difficulty switch setting would enable the "bad ending" that is present in other versions of this game, but of course it didn't. Someone made a comment on the Apple ][ YouTube video that showed the "bad ending"; something to the effect of: If the princess can drop you with one hit after you've defeated all of the guards and Akuma himself, why can't she drop Akuma herself?

Maybe it isn't just my imagination. According to the Best Electronics folks, the Atari RF switches have RF interference suppressing circuitry in them, and I would assume that this applies to any TV/Game RF switch. Here is an excerpt in the context of using an RF switch vs. using an RCA-to-F adapter:

Okay, I just played through this game again and I walked, rather than ran, in to save the princess. Just as I suspected, it changes nothing. This is a very lazy port: http://youtu.be/3KpkHdLWbbA Also, even though the NES pad is far better than the Pro-Line joystick, it still isn't ideal for this game; i.e., your hands still get tired from constantly holding the D-pad and buttons down. A NES Advantage-style controller would be pretty good. One with an 8-way Nintendo arcade joystick (like from a PC-10 or VS. system machine) would be perfect, because of its light spring and clearly defined diagonals in the restrictor (I use the northeast diagonal [high kick to the head] constantly in this game). You could effortlessly hold a diagonal position for a long time. I have several Nintendo arcade joysticks around here, but they are from Punch-Out machines, thus they have 4-way restrictors; so I'd need to buy one of these:

I don't know, I've never thought to try it. I never knew about the "bad ending" in other Karateka games until I saw it on the Apple ][ version on YouTube recently, because the 7800 version is the only version I've ever played. I would be shocked if anything different happens given how stripped down the 7800 port is, but I can try it when I get the chance.

Is this the latest version and do you consider it finished?

In a way I suppose. When I was a kid in the late '80s, I really wanted to know what happened if you beat the game, which I found out 7 years ago when I figured out how to beat it on an emulator. But beating it on an emulator just isn't the same thing, so it was still awesome to beat the game on the real hardware today. I wondered for years if it was even possible to beat this game. Yeah, the worst thing about this game is the godawful controls. There is a lag of about a second or two between your joystick input and something happening on screen, and your kicks and punches come in bursts of 5, and then your man takes a break to catch his breath I guess, before he'll do another 5. The walking is horrible too because of the semi automated nature of it with not much user control over where you stop. Strangely, it is an addicting game for me though, despite it being so annoying. I played it countless times as a kid, determined to beat it (which I never did back then of course), even though my hands would ache from those miserable Pro-Line joysticks (and this game amplifies the effects of those joysticks because of having to constantly hold buttons in and the joystick in certain positions). In any event, I beat it again a few minutes ago, and this time I was ready with my camera. Here is the entire last fight: http://youtu.be/ODktLc-rM04

There are no standard cartridge schemes that support 48k at $4000-$FFFF and POKEY. The only way it will work in MESS is if the emulator supports the XM module or the XBOARD. It will work in ProSystem13 because it doesn't emulate the hardware precisely and allows me to read ROM and write POKEY at the same memory locations. It works perfectly for me in MESS, though I'm using a really old version from 2003 (MESS 0.74b).

I made this thread over 7 years ago. At the time, I didn't have the actual Karateka cartridge, so I could only play on an emulator. I bought a Karateka cartridge soon after I made this thread because I wanted to beat the game on the real hardware, but I only had a pair of worn out Pro-Line joysticks for my 7800 that barely worked, and were painful to use with this game. I'd always intended to modify a NES gamepad to work with the 7800, but I never got around to it, and I forgot about Karateka. While searching through my old posts here the other day, I came across this thread. I saw that my old video I'd made is still attached, so I downloaded it and watched it. This reminded me that I still need to beat Karateka for real. So I dusted off the old Atari 7800 and Karateka cartridge, and tried to play with a Sega Genesis controller. Unfortunately that doesn't work, because Karateka is a 2-button game. So I tried the Pro-Line joystick (I'd forgotten how miserable those are), which was hopeless. So I looked for a tutorial for the NES-to-7800 gamepad mod and a little while later I had a decent controller for my 7800. So just a few minutes ago, I beat Karateka on the real hardware for the first time ever. It is harder than on the emulator I was using years ago (MESS 0.74b if I remember right) because Akuma and his bird don't always follow the same pattern like on the emulator. So it took several tries but I did it. I paused it and then videotaped the ending: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUEViE-zMrI

What do you plan to do for an amplifier and accessible volume control?

That's awesome. Can you post it? I would like to have something like that made into a cartridge to play on real hardware.

"Era" refers to a time period. The "8-bit era" as it is commonly used is synonymous with the "NES era" and refers to the "third generation" consoles time period. I bolded the part where you've again repeated something I've already pointed out. The Atari 2600 and ColecoVision were not part of the "8-bit era" for the same reason that the Intellivision was not part of the "16-bit era".

Why did you type "nah" and then follow it with a statement that agrees with what I already said?

I was going to make a thread like this, and then I saw this old thread. Did anything ever come of this? Has anyone made a Pong game for the Atari 2600 that looks like the 1972 arcade version?

I wouldn't bet on that, there's many who think it refers to the NES/SMS era exclusively and that earlier consoles were "4-bit". The current Smithsonian Video Game Art exhibit isn't helping the issue. I've always considered the so-called "8-bit era" to refer to the NES/SMS era exclusively, and not because I think that earlier consoles were "4-bit". It is because there was no such thing as an "8-bit era" until the so-called "16-bit" era began with the Sega Genesis, and "16-bit" was the marketer's way of distinguishing their console from, and denoting its technical superiority to, its competition at the time, mainly the "8-bit" NES. The fact that the e.g. Atari 2600 and ColecoVision had 8-bit CPUs is irrelevant to the so-called "8-bit era" in the same way that the Intellivision's 16-bit CPU is irrelevant to the so-called "16-bit era". "8-bit" and "16-bit" as they were popularly used were just marketing terms anyway. While they do have legitimate technical definitions, they are meaningless as a measure of a system's graphical, memory, processing, and audio capabilities. Marketing and popular usage defined the terms, and that definition does not include e.g. Atari 2600 and ColecoVision. It goes something like this: First generation - Atari 2600, Intellivision (marketers hadn't discovered "bits" yet) Second generation - Atari 5200, ColecoVision (marketers hadn't discovered "bits" yet) Third generation - NES, SMS (retroactively dubbed "8-bit era" because ...) Fourth generation - SNES, Sega Genesis (... marketers discover "bits", "16" = superior, "8" = inferior)

I know your post is a joke, but it seems to be rooted in a common misconception; i.e., that a vertical monitor is different than a horizontal monitor. In reality, there is no such thing as a "sideways TV tube". Horizontal monitors become vertical monitors when you turn them on their side. For example, the Electrohome G07 which is mounted horizontally in e.g. a Missile Command cabinet is the exact same monitor that is mounted vertically in e.g. a Pac-Man cabinet. The Sanyo 20-EZV and 20-Z2AW (most commonly used in Nintendo machines) has a frame that was intended for vertical mounting (such as in a Donkey Kong machine), but that didn't stop Nintendo from mounting them horizontally in e.g. Punch-Out, Popeye, Mario Bros., VS. system, PC-10 machines.

I never heard anyone call the NES anything other than "Nintendo" in its day. When the SNES came out, I never heard anyone call it anything other than "Super Nintendo"; and the NES was then called "original Nintendo" or "regular Nintendo" if clarification was needed (in all cases I'm talking about real life, not TV commercials). I still call them "Nintendo" and "Super Nintendo" when speaking, and how I choose to clarify "Nintendo" when necessary, depends on who I'm speaking to. When typing I use the "NES" and "SNES" abbreviations, in the same way that I often type "lbs." but I always say "pounds", rather than "libs". Some abbreviations roll off the tongue when spoken, and are almost universally used (such as FBI, USA, IRS, etc.), and the same applies to some acronyms, sometimes even to the point of becoming ordinary words in their own right despite their acronym origins (such as radar and laser). "NES" and "SNES" don't roll off the tongue for me, not when said as an abbreviation (e.g. N-E-S, S-N-E-S) nor when said as an acronym (e.g. Ness, Sness, Es-ness).

Thanks. Yes, that's what I was using before when I needed to use RF, such as with an NES toploader, or Atari 7800 (an RG-6 coax cable with an F-to-RCA adapter), but it was annoying because it was so inflexible/cumbersome. I also have an RCA-to-F adapter that I can use with the typically more flexible RCA cables, but I actually wanted to get the switch working again, mainly for the sake of it being an original part. Also, it seems that the NES-003 switch is less affected by occasional interference than the cables with adapters are (otherwise the picture quality is the same). This might be due to whatever is happening on that little PCB, or it might be my imagination; but either way, this RF switch works perfectly now, and its wire to the console is thin and flexible, and it of course allows you to hook up an antenna to the TV without removing the switch, which an ordinary cable + F-to-RCA adapter doesn't do by default (you'd need to add a splitter).

The NES-003 RF switch works great when it is new, but over time, it tends to become flaky. The reason for this is the type of coax cable / F connector combination that they decided to use when they made it. They didn't use a solid-core coax cable, so the F connector has a little center pin that presses against the stranded wire in the center of the coax cable. That's right, it just presses against it to make contact; i.e., the F connector's center pin is not soldered nor crimped to the stranded center conductor of the coax cable. So over time, the F connector's center pin and the coax cable's center conductor can start to become separated, in which case, your RF switch starts having intermittent problems (i.e., sometimes you'll get good video/audio and sometimes you'll get fuzzy/staticky video/audio). Wiggling the RF switch and its coax cable around will help at first, but does more harm than good in the long run. Eventually the switch will completely fail to work most of the time. The better quality coax cables that are intended to carry RF signals and be terminated with F connectors (like cable companies use) have a solid copper center conductor. This eliminates the need for a center pin on the F connector, because the coax cable's center conductor is sturdy enough to act as the center pin. As a bonus, this completely eliminates the potential for the eventual flakiness that I described above. The only drawback is that coax cable with a solid center conductor is far less flexible than coax with a stranded center conductor. In the case of an RF switch, this is irrelevant however, because it is only a short section of cable, thus it doesn't need to be very flexible. RG-6 coax is what the cable companies normally use, but it is too thick overall for this application (it wouldn't fit through the hole in the plastic housing). I used some coax cable that is about halfway between the thickness of RG-6 and the original coax that Nintendo used. I don't know what it is specifically; it was just a short section of coax that I had laying around. It is good quality, has a solid copper center conductor, and it [just barely] fit through the hole in the RF switch's plastic housing; so it was ideal for this application. First I removed the plastic housing (4 small screws), and then I desoldered the original coax cable from the PCB (3 solder joints). The original coax cable has a small metal connector with 2 legs crimped to it's ground/shield and insulation, and both of those legs are soldered to the PCB (ground). One of the solder points here is redundant of course, as they are both part of the same connector and both go to ground. The center conductor is soldered to the PCB as well. Next, after removing the coax cable from the PCB, I used a small screw driver to pry open the crimps on the 2-legged connector, and I removed said connector. This connector needs to be reused, but not in exactly the same manner that it was used on the original coax cable. The front crimp area of the connector is too small to be of any use here, because the replacement coax cable is much thicker. So I cut the connector in half, which resulted in a one legged connector with the larger of the two crimp areas; i.e., the crimp area that was crimped to the outer insulation of the original coax cable. I then crimped it to the replacement coax cable's shield-covered inner insulation so that I could solder it to the PCB. The solid center conductor was too thick to fit in the pad for it on the PCB, so I filed the center conductor down until it was small enough to fit in the hole, and bent it over at a right angle. Now both the center conductor and the crimped on connector could be soldered into the proper pads on the PCB. It now works perfectly, and should continue to do so indefinitely. Here are some pictures:

So you had to use a jumper wire? I wonder why that site sells batteries with the wrong type of tabs welded to them. The Sanyo CR2032-T14-1 has the right type of tabs, and is only $1.94. I ordered 3 of them a few years ago and replaced the batteries in a Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and Super Punch-Out cartridge. They are a drop-in replacement, and you simply solder them to the PCB the same as the original batteries were installed. I made a thread about this here a few years ago.

512 x 448 @ 60 Hz isn't possible for Popeye. That resolution would require at least a medium resolution monitor (25 kHz), or possibly a high resolution monitor (31 kHz). However, Popeye used a standard resolution monitor (15 kHz), i.e., the same Sanyo EZ monitors (or sometimes a Sharp equivalent) that Nintendo used in e.g., Donkey Kong, Punch-Out, and all their other arcade machines. 512 x 448 @ 60 Hz will not under any circumstances sync to a standard resolution monitor. However, 512 x 448 @ 30 Hz will sync to a standard resolution monitor, and that's exactly what Nintendo did with Popeye; i.e. Popeye is interlaced. Bally Midway did the same thing with some of their games, e.g. Tapper. To put it in terms that the current HDTV crowd tends to recognize these days, Popeye was roughly 480i while most arcade games of the time were roughly 240p. Both 480i and 240p are "standard definition" resolutions, both require the same horizontal scanning frequency, and a standard resolution TV or monitor can sync to either.

Nothing wrong with that. That means it is working like a standard card edge connector, which is what Nintendo should have used in the first place rather than that ridiculous pseudo-ZIF contraption. I use new 72-pin connectors in my NESs, and they are all tight enough to work without pushing the cartridge down (but they are not too tight; no tighter than a typical card edge connecter like you will find in most any other cartridge-based console). I prefer it that way, and it saves the connector pins from excessive flexing like happens when you push the cartridge down; and they all have worked 100% since I replaced the connectors (and disabled the lockout chip) about 6 years ago.

I already said as much: I have an Ikari Warriors machine and know how to play the game properly. I can also beat the game on one quarter, on TG settings, with a score that beats the TG record by over 100,000 points. My post about the top-fire joysticks had a specific context; i.e., hypothesizing about what could improve the controls of Ikari Warriors on a console. Getting an LS-30's rotary function to work with the Atari 7800 and the 7800 port of Ikari Warriors would be next to impossible. And it doesn't matter if the Happ top-fire joysticks suck, as I never even mentioned them specifically. I said: BTW, LS-30s are nothing to write home about either. Their rotary function works great, but their 8-way joystick function, and general ergonomics of the handle, leave much to be desired.

Which one(s) would be the most work? Am I right that it would be number 10?