TailChao

Maybe, but I have enough e-waste at the moment. Unless it's being reverse engineered or actually used, it's gotta go. I tried ramming the cartridge in and it didn't fit. By this point our budget for legacy ports was exhausted and I canceled all further research. Ah, hope you've got two controllers to go with it! Most of the game's complexity is in how it handles physics, especially for the boxes - and just picking one of the issues we had in that category is pretty difficult. There were a bunch of problems with solidity around the vertical wrapping border, anything that could pick up or "consume" a box like the Metal Cavern's pipes required numerous of edge cases, all the doors and sliders too, it goes on... I think my favorite bug was a defect in the Steel Simian (Metal Cavern's Cooperative Boss). Any time a box is dispensed from a pipe it transitions between object types and whether or not it can collide with the stage geometry, the pipes usually check for a two-tile window before completely dispensing a box to ensure this can happen safely - if not, the box reverses direction and heads back up the pipe. There's numerous situations where one of these tiles can suddenly become solid - either due to another box being placed there or (in this case) the players closing one of the doors / valves - and the box object will detect it's been rammed into the stage geometry and break itself. There's a one frame window during that fight where you can close a valve right as a box is being dispensed - and it'll break. The Steel Simian has a special case for this - he shrugs and resets the map. But that special case was broken. So during testing we hit the one frame edge case and the boss got stuck in the "what?!" pose until the stage was manually reset.

New list of most recently played cartridges, sorted and clearable.

Pretty much, yes. It depends upon the product, but (like most things) print materials need high volumes to drop in price. With ours we tried to match the silver color of Atari's 7800 boxes, which also mandated volume. Thicker cardstock, yadda yadda. Basically if you're doing a run of 600 - 1200 units it's far easier to get better packaging and print materials than 100. But of course, you then need to move all those.

Nope, you're right! Kangaroo is all good.

Having the game behave in 50Hz is a given, but having it behave well is always better. I think we did okay with Rikki & Vikki's PAL support - the cutscenes all have separate timing for 50Hz, and the audio mixing adjustments cover everything outside of the Peritel units. I'm not sure if supporting the Peritel's mixing is actually feasible, it's so botched - but I would have liked full retiming for PAL. But yes, like the additional langues these are all would have been nice things rather than what was deemed necessary and we could afford. If only I had an Astrocade. ... Nah, I don't need an Astrocade.

This looks great - but won't actually display in 320B. Both palettes you have access to (P0Cx, P4Cx) have restrictions with colors use, specifically regarding where PxC1 can be placed. PxC2 and PxC3 can be used arbitrarily, but PxC1 will be drawn if and only if it's next to PxC2 or PxC3 on a two pixel boundary. This is why Rikki & Vikki has so much thatching in game and particularly during the introduction sequence's panels. You effectively get two "anywhere" colors and one "sometimes" color per palette. Considering the ease in adding expansion audio, there's pretty much limitless options outside of time investment and unit cost.

Reminder, this is the last day of 's Autumn Sale. Maybe, but I do not feel this price would have been reasonable compared to similar postmortem releases on other consoles (NES, Genesis, etc). Honestly, as a customer I would have bought the Humble Bundle / Standalone version. ...yet the box didn't include an expired fruit roll up - too bad. In my experience, the majority of the effort is spent just getting someone to try a game - my own or otherwise. Once they start you'll know if they're actually going to enjoy (and likely complete) it within the first five minutes. Ah, thanks for the demo! I've been seeing the game show up at a quite few expos and conventions, with similar reactions - all of them outside of the United States. If anything it's encouraged me to invest more resources in localization if another game happens.

That's your reward for ordering it before Thanksgiving. Just a reminder that the Autumn Sale will end on December 3rd. If the posts above weren't enough of a hint, Rikki & Vikki is on sale for the Dutly Discounted price of one dollar. That's two players for the price of one - and less than a penny per stage.

Here's the full set of percussion patches I made several years back. I don't think all of them were included with HandyMusic's demo songs, and they could probably be adapted to other drivers. All of them are one channel and intended for use with the SASS "sfx" command. Standard Set : Snare waveform $D5 volume 80 -12 frequency 248 { rest 4 noteoff end } Kick waveform $20D5 volume 75 -8 frequency 208 { rest 4 noteoff end } HiHat_Closed waveform $D4 volume 75 -9 frequency 4 { rest 3 noteoff end } HiHat_Open waveform $D4 volume 75 -8 frequency 4 { rest 7 noteoff end } Clap waveform $D5 volume 80 -12 frequency 224 { rest 4 noteoff end } Bass_Drum waveform $20D5 volume 75 -5 frequency 260 4 { rest 4 noteoff end } Triangle waveform $C6 volume 75 -8 frequency 4 { rest 7 noteoff end } Note the "Triangle" definition refers the instrument and not the waveform. It's similar to the metallic ting used in Wario Land and Link's Awakening on the GameBoy which uses a short period LFSR cycle. Capcom Triangle Slide : Capcom_Trislide waveform $2040 frequency 0 16 volume 33 -1 tuning 22.0 { rest 3 volume 29 0 noteoff volume 29 -3 rest 8 end } Reminiscent of Sega Master System / Game Gear : Sega_HiHat waveform $D4 volume 60 -7 frequency 140 { rest 1 noteoff end } Sega_Snare waveform $D4 volume 60 -7 frequency 260 { rest 4 noteoff end } Sega_Kick waveform $D4 volume 70 -8 frequency 300 { rest 2 noteoff end } Punchier Stuff : Punchy_BassDrum waveform $EE volume 75 -8 frequency 16 { loop 2 rest 1 frequency 500 waveform $2040 rest 1 frequency 8 waveform $EE endloop rest 1 noteoff end } Punchy_Snare waveform $EE volume 75 -8 frequency 220 { loop 3 rest 1 frequency 240 waveform $C6 rest 1 frequency 200 waveform $EE endloop rest 1 noteoff end }

Unfortunately I can't get the international prices any lower, but yes - one perk of the Windows version is that digital shipping is much more affordable. Also, reminder for anyone who ordered the Atari 7800 version recently or is planning on ordering it soon : your copies may take a few days to ship out due to the holiday season. You'll get a tracking number through PayPal when the game is on its way.

My ears are burning. This was why I was asked to add the detection, yes. Considering it wasn't made public until now (a decade later), it did what was intended. I used to use this exact problem when interviewing programmers who claimed they "knew graphics".

Hahaha, I had no idea! Edit : ...and yep - right there on the eBay item listing. Guess this is the brand I'll recommend to customers now.

Getting some light vibes of Susumu Matsushita's work for Hudson Soft. As always, really cool to see this sort of stylization in the 160x modes. Might have just enough bandwidth to pan a background under the logo. (also where's MANMAN?)

Thanks, everyone. It's appreciated. If anything, whatever's next will have to be way better! Well, the point of doing Rikki & Vikki for the Atari 7800 was the hardware's effects on the visual design - not sales. The chance of making enough profit to feed an actual staff on cartridge sales alone, even on a popular old console, is very slim. For something like the GameBoy I'd rather do a completely different game that caters to that platform's strengths and brings something new to the library. Luckily you can pick up Donkey Kong '94 or Mole Mania instead. That way I don't have to shove any more cash into a furnace. Both of these were big influences on Rikki & Vikki's design and come highly recommended.

No worries, I can see you want more games for a platform you're fond of - and that's great! Unfortunately, I can't make any promises that I'll create them because of how this one turned out. Luckily there's lots of other developers who are working with the 7800! Thanks, and likewise.

I am not interested in pursing anything at this time or further discussing the matter. To be 100% clear, again : if we were to "make a win-win deal" this would have had to happen over half a year ago. It did not, and I am no longer willing to put an ancient pile of transistors in front of my own well being. I understand you're enthusiastic about the 7800, but please understand that when I say "it is not happening" it means "it is not happening" - period. Zaku was a title for the Atari Lynx which was published by Super Fighter Team in 2009. I was also the lead on that project.

I'd rather not make assumptions about why the game wasn't supported. It could have simply been forgotten among other products - and at this point it's irrelevant. To be 100% clear : I do not feel it was or is AtariAge's responsibility to promote or feature any game in their store, ours was no exception.

Glad to hear copies are arriving safely. Haha, well it's his prerogative regarding what is and isn't featured. Zaku wasn't sold or heavily promoted through AtariAge, either - and technically we're selling a competing product, so no hard feelings. I'm not leaving game development entirely, but rather won't be investing as much time in it. I was able to pursue Rikki & Vikki because the scope of the project was small enough that it could be shipped without relying on external funding, and the mechanics were unique enough to justify the investment. That combination is extremely rare. I have a lot of difficulty looking back at Zaku, some of the content was added when I was 14 - 15 and had zero experience. So I can't say whether or not the price is worth it, haha. Definitely, and it's appreciated! Watching streamers play the game (popular or not) has actually been one of the best parts of this project. You can see what works and doesn't for a variety of players, a perfect focus test where you're not in the room. There's a lot of things I would design differently now based upon these observations.

These numbers are available a few pages back. It's a single cartridge which works in both regions. I offered and there was no interest.

Got it, thanks! I'm committed to using the BupChip we designed for Rikki & Vikki, but would like to add facilities for interfacing with other sound chips in the next generation mapper design I'm doing. Will add the SN and AY to the list.

Thanks I don't know of any measurably large Atari community outside of this one, so we'll go with that. Based upon where sales and chatter were coming from, I'm under the impression that most of it was from outside the usual AtariAge gang. People who either had no experience with the 7800, or had one but weren't actively using it (i.e. weren't buying homebrews from the AtariAge store). Not that there was zero interest here, far from it, just the majority of discussion and sales were outside. This was somewhat desired, since it wasn't possible to fund another game based just upon the cartridge sales - we needed to move units on Steam.

Were there any synthesizer families you were specifically interested in (OPLL, AY, etc.) or just anything goes?

Unfortunately no, the only thing I'm looking into is employment. I'll continue to maintain the 7800 and Windows versions, but that'll probably be the extent of it.

I can think of two reasons for this... If you were lowering the EXTMEN pin, this disables Maria entirely - allowing an external device to drive her Y/C outputs. The signal amplitude strong enough to mess with the video - running it through a small capacitor and resistor (as the TIA and Cartridge Audio are) may have helped. Definitely, and that's a pretty neat way to use it. The expansion port isn't very good for actual... uh, expansion of the hardware's capabilities. However, it does allow hijacking its video and audio output. You can effectively shut off the whole 7800 with EXTMEN, RDY, and OSCDIS and use it as a glorified switchbox. So if you want to combine a 7800 and 5200 into one nasty package, that's a way to do it. Although I'm partial to what's available in the cartridge slot .

Just a reminder for anyone concerned about audio mixing with A/V modifications and the different variations of the 7800 hardware - the game supports two sound effects volumes and has a knob for adjusting the music volume. Check out the Troubleshooting section of the F.A.Q. for details and a link to 8-Bit Guy's demonstration. The only consoles which have documented issues with expansion audio are the Peritel 7800s. Or 8-Track Expansion Deck. Our only target for another port would have been the Nintendo Switch, which is a much better fit for the title than smartphones. Again, the game has been out for nearly a year and we've not been able to get enough interest or support to continue. There is no reason to further invest in something which is, despite our best efforts, unable to generate sales. There was little interest from news sites in covering the game, it was not a product people wanted to buy, this is not happening.