MaximRecoil
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Posts posted by MaximRecoil
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Interesting. Is that the arcade or the SNES version of Super Punch Out? and is it emulated or ported? I would pay money for a perfectly emulated arcade version of Super Punch Out and/or Punch Out, as MAME has audio issues with those games; as well as other Nintendo arcade games.(2) They use classic games to get you to buy current games. If you buy Fight Night Night Round II you get Super Punchout. They make money off the classic games. -
I always wondered why you had to push the cart down? I got my first VCR NES back in 89 new, and I played it for years and never had problems with it, untill about 95, when one of my friends asked why I didn't push the carts down.Well, heck, I knew the thing fit in there kind of funny, but being me, I never read the instructions to anything, and like a dum bass I started pushing it down like it was supposed to, supposedly. It wasn't long befor I started getting the screen problems, and when I tried going back to my old way, it didn't work anymore.
I'm thinking that when they were shipped, the connectors were tight enough to work without pushing it down. But when you start pushing it down, it bends them out of shape...or into their supposed to be this way shape which prevents them from working while up as easily, or at all, and due to bending stuff when you push it down, it's not long befor it breaks.
I don't know if how I played mine kept it working for 6 years flawlessly, or if it finely broke for a legit reason. Because it broke, not because I changed what I did to it. But I know when it comes to the VCR style NES's, I have a tendancy to not push the game down first time I try them, if it works that way, it'll work probably forever.
That's interesting. When the NES first became available in around here in the mid-80's, a lot of "early adopters" thought they'd gotten a defective system because they simply slid the cartridge in and fired it up without pushing the tray down. My cousin got a NES about a week after the ads for them first showed up on TV and he was on the verge of taking it back to the store before it occurred to him to push the tray down. I've never seen a NES with its original 72-pin connector work without pushing the tray down, even when brand new. What year did you buy yours? Maybe they tightened things up a bit somewhere along the line?
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The PC10 and VS. hardware used different GPU's than the NES, with different color pallettes and they did output RGB, rather than composite like the stock NES units:Heh.PlayChoice 10 and Vs System are funny examples, as the NES generates chroma and luma signals internally. Their "native" display signal is s-video, and it's being converted to RGB on the board in exactly the same way it would if you ran the s-video signals into a TV. All comes down to who has the better comb filter(of course, as a stock NES tops out at composite video, the arcade boards start with an advantage, since there's only one filter instead of 2).
* NTSC version, named RP2C02, runs at 5.37MHz and outputs composite video* PAL version, named RP2C07, runs at 5.32MHz and outputs composite video
* PlayChoice-10 version, named RP2C03, runs at 5.37MHz and outputs RGB video (at NTSC frequencies)
* Nintendo Vs. Series versions, named RP2C04 and RP2C05, run at 5.37MHz and output RGB video (at NTSC frequencies) using irregular palettes
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I brought up arcade machines because they use a standard TV tube, but have the same fundamental connection (RGB) as a PC does to its monitor. You blamed the "jaggies" on the connection, rather than the PC monitor. I used an apples to apples comparison; i.e. same connection but TV vs PC to show that this was wrong.We're discussing arcades now?
Like I said, the scanlines are part of the whole effect. It is the reason that the prominent scanlines are there; which makes the picture look so much different; i.e. the lack of the fine pitch of a PC monitor.If you can't see the scanlines, they're meaningless.I've tried many fake scanlines and I always end up shutting them off. Some of the RGB triad settings in MAME look OK but it just doesn't look like a TV/Arcade monitor.
Like I said, the best way to see the difference is to compare an emulator on a PC monitor to the same game in the arcade. The RGB connections are the same but the arcade looks so much better. This is even possible to do with certain console games, such as Nintendo's PC10 and VS. hardware running slightly modified NES console games through RGB into an arcade monitor (TV).
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This is an old thread I know, but I have been gone for quite a while. So you made futher modifications to SIDeluxe? That is awesome. Do you have the ROM posted anywhere? or can you post it here?Taking your suggestion, I did NTSC/PAL palette selection instead for SIdeluxe. -
Not necessarily; well, there is always at least a one time "hook the system up". I haven't used a "game switch" on any system since about 1985.On the other hand, you have to flip the game switch, or hook the system up.
The programmers assume a range anyway; not a precise figure; neither is a precise figure necessary. A PC monitor shows everything, which was clearly not intended.TV overscan area varies quite a bit. You will never find a set that exactly matches the overscan assumed by a given software title.
Not at all. Play Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter II (or any arcade game you care to play) in the arcade, then play it in MAME on your PC. The difference is huge in terms of the noticeable stair-stepping and whatnot. The arcade monitors which are typically standard TV's minus a tuner + a different chassis, in an arcade machine display a picture with much smoother edges along with a lot other qualities that are hard to put into words, scanlines being one of them. The difference is not in the connector since both a PC monitor and arcade machine monitors use RGB+H/V sync connections for the video signal, which is far better than S-video. PC monitors simply have far too fine of a pitch to make low resolution games look right.That's the fault of the connector more than anything, if you have a good TV.Move to s-video, and things get a lot sharper.
They are part of the overall effect, whether you are close enough to make them out or not. Emulated scanlines look bad IMO.Well, they're usually emulated as an option. And if you see them on the TV, you're usually sitting too close(I don't see them). -
I use both emulation and the real hardware. I like emulation because I can try out most any game. I like the hardware because everything is exactly the way it is suppose to be; plus you have cool stuff. There is a lot of nostalgia associated with that stuff for me, the console itself, the cartridges, the controllers; everything. A few other points:
- Classic consoles tended to be silent while PC's tend not to be.
- Classic consoles boot up instantly; PC's do not.
- You never have to mess around with stuff trying to figure out which key is assigned to what function. For example, the difficulty switch on an Atari is simply, the difficulty switch; it is not hidden in a menu somewhere or assigned to some random key on a keyboard.
- Classic games are low resolution; classic TV's are low resolution and can display the games' resolution natively and fullscreen, while keeping the overscan areas of the game right where they are supposed to be; i.e. offscreen; they are a perfect match and the one was specifically designed to work with the other. Barring special hardware and/or software, a typical PC's video card can not output those "weird" resolutions so you get either artifact-laced hardware stretching if you want fullscreen or the exact resolution, but smaller than your screen with black borders all around it. Plus, the PC monitor's high resolution capabilities make edges which appear smooth on a TV, look sharp and jagged. Plus, where are the scan lines?
BTW, Coke and Pepsi taste nothing alike.
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They still sell console TV's today! I can't remember what brand, but I think it's RCA. I was at work one day and we were looking on their website and they had shown a console. It might have been Magnavox, but unfortunately they are re-doing their website. I just remember it's a model we carry at Circuit City where I work.I found this:
http://www.800stereo.com/prods/rca-g36710.html
But I don't remember the one I saw looking like that. It was a 2004 model and it had darker wood around it with those intricate designs carved in it if I remember correct.
Zenith still makes them; a 25" and a 27". I would love to have one of those. That's how I played my Atari 2600, 7800 and ColecoVision when I was a kid, sitting or laying on the floor in front of an old RCA 25" console TV. It was awesome.
I don't know if anyone other than Zenith still makes console TV's with a traditional style of cabinet or not.
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Nope...how the switch behaves is up to the software...the routine that deals with the B&W switch would be written to behave like the select and reset switches do - so that the mode is toggled regardless of the console that it's played on. What this would cost is 1 bit in ram memory to keep track of the toggle status.That's interesting. Too bad Activision didn't think of that for Starmaster. As it is, it is pretty much unplayable on a 7800. Speaking of which, is the B&W switch currently assigned a function in your 4K Space Invaders Deluxe game? If not, what about making it go into B&W (real B&W that is, not black, white and shades of grey like you would get simply by playing it on a B&W TV) and losing the UFO effects like the original arcade Space Invaders for an instant 2-in-1 cartridge?
...or have 1 difficulty switch handle the UFO's for both players and the other switch handle "suicide" mode (similar to how the switches in SI deluxe work). I dunno what Sadistroid's changes involved, but it should be possible.The original cartridge had to appeal to a wide variety of potential customers, including little kids so I think that is why you could turn UFO's on and off. Something like this would be a specialty thing, specifically aiming to look and feel more like the arcade version. I really can't imagine anyone who likes Asteroids wanting to turn off the UFO's. If you were to go the 2 switch route having changes apply equally to both players, how about the left switch for speed of the rocks and the right switch for angle of trajectory? That would give you 4 variations right there; fast and slow normal angles and fast and slow "Jentzsch angles".
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I looks like they credited the wrong Asteroids hack to Thomas Jentzsch. Both his description of it and the screen shot indicate that he was playing Franklin Cruz's hack.
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It's the player up's number - 1 or 2. This would be a definate help to differentiate the players if all color is removed (the binary above has no way of indicating which player is up).
I see. I didn't think of that and I didn't play it on 2 player mode. Come to think of it, I haven't played 2600 Asteroids 2 player since 1985.
An alternate hack idea would be just to place the no-color mode selectable from the B&W switch.
That would be interesting except that it wouldn't work so good on 7800's unless you have replaced the pause button with a toggle switch.
Another thing I thought of would be to have the UFO's always on (who wants to play Asteroids without them anyway?) and have the difficulty switch select between normal rock trajectory angles and Thomas Jentzsch's angles; if that is feasible. Or; have the UFO's and Jentzsch angles always on and have the difficulty switch select between normal speed for the rocks and Sadistroids speed.
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Wow, nice label. It didn't take you long you whip that up. I don't think we have the perfect hack to go with that label yet though. My suggestion (for what it is worth) would be to use an all-white version of Thomas Jentzsch's "Sadistroids" because of the arcade-like trajectory angles of the rocks and the little ships indicating how many lives you have left instead of the big number (his version actually has a "1" to the right of the little ships that never seems to change, not sure what that is for). The speed of the rocks should be brought down to normal to give it a more arcade-like difficulty curve. I think that would be an excellent arcade port of Asteroids for the 2600.
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Don't you mean phosphor green?
I was just going to say that. Reminds me of the old phosphor green monitors like the 8088's that were at my high school used.
BTW, that all white Asteroids is awesome and thanks for the information on how to do it as well. Now I have another game that I need to get onto a cartridge. I guess I'd better start looking for an EPROM burner which would probably be cheaper in the long run than having other people do one-offs for me all the time.
I wonder why Atari didn't make it like that in the first place. I never once looked at Asteroids in the arcade and thought to myself, "You know what this game needs is a little random Rainbow Brite™ color..."
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I know nothing about hacking games but how hard would it be to get rid of all the color in this and/or this Asteroids hack and make everything, including the score display, white in order to look more like the arcade version? Is this something that could be done in a couple of minutes with the right tools and/or knowledge or would it be a pain? If it is easy to do, could someone do it and post the .bin?
BTW, to Thomas Jentzsch, I especially like your version which has allowed the greater angles of movement for the asteroids like in the arcade version. However, in the arcade, the speeds at which they moved were randomized. i.e. some of them moved at fast, medium, and slow speeds. Yours all seem to move at one speed; fast (which is certainly in keeping with the name that you chose for the hack). How hard would it be to make a version where the rocks would move at either fast, medium or slow speeds randomly when you shoot them, and still have the arcade-like trajectory angles?
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One more thing; feeding the solder is important. With practice you can do it in one quick, smooth motion. Remember that you have a hole to fill plus you have to add enough to form the cone shaped fillet going halfway up the post so it takes more solder than what it might look like it needs. A lot of people get poor results because they are trying to "dab" it with solder and they aren't leaving their iron on the pad and post which results in "goose poop". You plant your iron down against the pad and the post and leave it planted while you feed in the solder from the opposite side continuously until you have the cone fillet.
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I just posted on this subject on another thread:
When through-hole soldering, you press the iron tip to both the post and the pad and hold it there for a couple of seconds (with a hot iron and small PCB components it will heat up pretty much instantly) then feed the solder wire from the opposite side of the post and pad that your iron is pressed against. The solder will flow very smoothly right into the hole. Keep feeding solder until it fills the hole and forms a cone shape about halfway up the post. The shape of the cone should have curved-in sides. If the cone has bulging sides, you did it wrong (usually not enough heat or you didn't feed the solder right) although it is still usually adequate. Where I worked we built PCB's for complex fire alarm systems to be used in hospitals and such. This was classified as "life saving equipment" and as such, they were extremely fussy about the soldering.
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Flux core solder is the easiest. "Cheap solder" without flux works as well as anything as long as you flux properly. The most important things in soldering is enough heat and clean surfaces to solder to. When through-hole soldering, you press the iron tip to both the post and the pad and hold it there for a couple of seconds (with a hot iron and small PCB components it will heat up pretty much instantly) then feed the solder wire from the opposite side of the post and pad that your iron is pressed against. The solder will flow very smoothly right into the hole. Keep feeding solder until it fills the hole and forms a cone shape about halfway up the post. The shape of the cone should have curved-in sides. If the cone has bulging sides, you did it wrong (usually not enough heat or you didn't feed the solder right) although it is still usually adequate. Where I worked we built PCB's for complex fire alarm systems to be used in hospitals and such. This was classified as "life saving equipment" and as such, they were extremely fussy about the soldering.I find that using the cheap solder is what my problem was. With flux and the right solder it sticks good.. with the cheap solder it just didn't work good. -
I got an Atari 7800 on Christmas Eve but it was specifically a Christmas present, though it might as well have been. My mother who lives about 45 minutes away had been given the thing last summer from a co-worker who figured that some of the kids that frequent my mother's house might be interested in playing it. Well, one of the kids looked at it I guess and told her it was missing something to hook it up so she just forgot about it. She never told me that she had it since she didn't know I was interested in old game consoles.
My nephew who lives across the driveway comes over here a lot to play games and knows I like the old stuff. So he was at my mother's house and saw the 7800 and told me about it. I called her up and told her I wanted it. I was worried that it mught be missing the power supply with the proprietary connector but it wasn't missing anything to hook it up other than the RCA cable that comes with them to go from the console to the RF switchbox. It actually had a pair of standard A/V cables in the box that would have worked but apparently the kid who looked at it at my mother's house didn't know that. I use a RG6 coax cable with a F-Type to RCA adapter on one end for most old consoles anyway so this wasn't an issue.
It played 2600 games perfectly but there were problems with it going B&W on 7800 games which I have since fixed (as discussed in another thread I made on the subject) so it is all working great now for everything though the pair of ProLines are pretty well shot (they still work fine, they are just sloppy from lots of use). I am currently using a Sega Genesis controller for 2600 games and 7800 games that only use 1 button and making due with the functional but well-worn ProLines for the games that use 2 buttons.
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Since it is only 4K, I am 100% sure, someone around here, will be able to make a cart for you.Is there anyone who can make that cartridge along with labels just like the ones they used to sell here at Atariage? Or does anyone have an extra copy of one they bought here that they want to sell? Since it is your game, do you have any extras on a cart with the nice label to sell?
I know, but since memory and graphic objects are very limited for the 2600, IMO those 3 shots are a good compromise. Else you would probably run out of memory and the shots would flicker quite hefty.Ahh, I never thought about that. Thanks for pointing it out.
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The binary can be burned to an eprom chip and played from a real cartridge...as well as being playable through all 2600 emulators and hardware loading devicesYeah, I was playing it in an emulator and it worked great. Is there anyone who offers the service of putting games on cartridges and possibly, can make custom labels? I wish this site could still do that. There are a lot of great hacks on here that I would like to have on cartridge and I don't have an eeprom burner.
BTW the right difficulty switch toggles the double-shots...you can set it on A for a more challenging gameExcellent. I was thinking that might be the case but I'm not sure how to access the difficulty switches in MESS .89 so I couldn't check it out when I was playing it last night.
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That has got to be the best version of Space Invaders I have ever played. It plays very similar to the original 1980 Atari one using the two shots in the air at a time - power on while holding reset trick (which was excellent in its own right) with much improved graphics and sounds. I actually do not like the arcade versions or Space Invaders or Space Invaders Deluxe because of too many annoying things diluting the fun, such as the one shot in the air at a time thing, the way your fire is cancelled out by enemy fire it they cross paths, and the high number of shots required to fire through your own barriers. It is frustrating and slow paced.
For me, 99.9% of the time, If there is an arcade version and a console port, the arcade version is superior in graphics, sound and entertainment value. Space Invaders is one of those rare exceptions in that I have always preferred the Atari 2600 version and this one of yours is an improvement on that. Excellent job.
So this is an 8K game? Can it be put on a regular Atari cartridge and played in a regular Atari 2600?
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(other than Cuttle Cart type solutionsIt IS Supercharger friendly.
I don't have one of those either. I would like to get one of those cartidges like Albert mentioned earlier in this old thread:
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Old thread but; what happened to the Missile Command TB cartridge that you could buy from this site? Is it still available? If not, is there any other way to get the game onto a cartridge (other than Cuttle Cart type solutions)?
Also, this game would be more arcade-like if someone could get rid of the 3 shots in the air limit too. The arcade had no such limit and if you wanted to use up all your shots in just a few seconds with rapid fire and have none left to shoot down the remaining incoming missiles, well that was your choice, lol.
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Well you were right (or maybe not?). I did find a bad solder fillet but it was on the cartridge connector pins:
I resoldered that bad fillet and it works perfectly now, color every time no matter how I put in the cartridge. The bad fillet on the cartridge connector; wouldn't that have the exact same effect as if one of the cartridge's PCB connectors was not making a good contact with one of the console's external cartridge connector pins?
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in Classic Console Discussion
Posted
There was a known audio issue with Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out. The audio would get a staticky hum from time to time. This was still true as of about 6 to 8 months ago because I asked about it on the mame.net forum and I also asked if there were any plans to fix it. I don't remember their exact response but it was something to the effect of; considering how much of a problem it was to write the Nintendo audio core (or something like that? I think they used the word "core" anyway; I don't know much about MAME development) the first time, they didn't expect anyone would be rewriting it any time soon.
Anyway, I just now tried it briefly in one of the latest versions of MAME (0.97) and while it did have some audio glitches when you first started the game; I played until the first Super Macho Man and didn't hear any of the staticky hum; which is awesome. Maybe someone did rewrite whatever it was that the moderator at mame.net claimed that no one would want to rewrite?