pwalters

I just checked back in. As CPUWIZ stated, there was a lot going on that needed sorting before proper attention could be given to getting this game released. I'll work with CPUWIZ to get this cartridge out soon, and I very much appreciate everyone's patience. I'd like the first release to be at a show -- with serial numbers starting at '1', and subsequently I hope to have it readily available to all.

Hey Grendel, glad you joined into the conversation! I didn't know much about the origin of the Leprechaun and Pirates Treasure games. In Tempe, we had a lot of development going on in addition to the Moppet line. One day a few of the games came in and we spent some time looking into it.. My development team, of course, took a good long look at the circuit board, and how it worked, but apart from that we were hands off on those games. I would love to hear more of what you may remember from your end! Paul

The problem they ran into was the production cost of the F8 ROM's. As I recall it was something like $40k to do the smallest run of masked ROM's that supported the F8 banking internally. They didn't want to produce a cartridge with EPROM or OTP, and external circuitry to support the banking. They knew up front the game would need 8k, but they either didn't do much planning or just ran out of money. I remember their head guy complaining about how much we charged to develop the games, and how hard it was to afford it. Being a religious organization, their focus was on 'teaching' the kids who would play the game the basics of these biblical stories. So I would guess the insert would include the story, putting it in the context of Sparrow's belief system. I loved that archived newspaper, scroll down to the next page and you can see ads for a $399 19" color TV, VHS tapes, and a Betamax VCR!

Yes, it's only one player... And to everyone -- thanks so much for your kind words. I'm glad that the work I did over 30 years ago is of interest today! We are looking into the best way to do a proper release of Arkyology like it should have had 30 years ago.... stay tuned

Sounds like you had a blast! I really loved developing games too, and it was a very enjoyable time.

Just an update.. the original founder/owner's name was James Thuney. His last name was pronounced the same as the company's name 'Tuni', but the spelling was different. I think I posted earlier listing his last name as "Tuni" because I never saw it spelled until just recently.

Interesting, thanks for posting this. Looked like Bonnie had trouble getting the board working. It was funny how the reporter asked why the screen was upside down! It looked to me in the video like she removed and then plugged back in the ROM cartridge board without powering down the game. The gaming and gray-market games that I developed at Enter-Tech, Ltd. were: El Grande 5-Card Draw, Jackpot Joker Poker, Reaction, High Rollers, and a Nevada gaming control approved 5-card draw Video Poker that was sold in Las Vegas and other Nevada areas by Casino Coin Company. I was hired originally to make from a board/software that was licensed from a San Diego company (can't remember the name) for El Grande and I was the programmer on all of these games. The first Moppet game, Tugboat, was originally written on the standard El-Grande board, but the graphics just weren't good enough so we developed a daughter board that added graphics capabilities. If you look at a Moppet board you'll see it is a large daughter board that is plugged into the base board. The base is the El Grande board.

One more post on Moppet Video. In the later games we used to put our names and other things embedded in empty ROM space. I just downloaded the Noah's Ark ROM set from one of the MAME repositories and dumped U9.bin, posted below: We also, George, Rick and I put our favorite 'saying' of the time into the ROM. You'll see the three sayings a little after the names. 000006A0 18 FF 43 4F 50 59 52 49 47 48 54 20 31 39 38 33 .ÿCOPYRIGHT 1983 000006B0 2C 20 45 4E 54 45 52 2D 54 45 43 48 2C 20 4C 54 , ENTER-TECH, LT 000006C0 44 2E 50 52 4F 47 52 41 4D 4D 45 44 20 42 59 3A D.PROGRAMMED BY: 000006D0 20 20 50 61 75 6C 20 4D 2E 20 57 61 6C 74 65 72 Paul M. Walter 000006E0 73 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 s 000006F0 20 52 69 63 6B 20 45 2E 20 48 61 72 72 69 73 20 Rick E. Harris 00000700 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 41 A 00000710 6E 64 79 20 53 2E 20 54 65 61 67 75 65 20 20 20 ndy S. Teague 00000720 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 47 65 6F Geo 00000730 72 67 65 20 42 2E 20 48 65 66 6E 65 72 47 52 41 rge B. HefnerGRA 00000740 50 48 49 43 53 20 42 59 3A 20 20 20 20 42 61 72 PHICS BY: Bar 00000750 62 61 72 61 20 4A 2E 20 55 6C 74 69 73 53 54 4F bara J. UltisSTO 00000760 52 59 20 4C 49 4E 45 20 42 59 3A 20 20 52 6F 62 RY LINE BY: Rob 00000770 65 72 74 20 48 61 6D 62 6C 65 74 6F 6E 56 65 72 ert HambletonVer 00000780 73 69 6F 6E 20 32 2E 30 2C 20 4A 75 6E 65 20 32 sion 2.0, June 2 00000790 2C 20 31 39 38 33 FF C5 B9 94 F9 F7 E2 AD FF 5E , 1983ÿŹ”ù÷â.ÿ^ 000007A0 E5 5E AF FF E8 FA F7 B6 E5 5B E7 FD C9 76 EF CE å^¯ÿèú÷¶å[çýÉvïÎ 000007B0 01 FD FF BB 06 7E F7 AD 89 C7 FF FC 81 FE 6F 8F .ýÿ».~÷.‰Çÿü.þo. 000007C0 59 7D EF F7 E7 D0 CF FF A4 9C EB EF 72 F4 9D DD Y}ï÷çÐÏÿ¤œëïrô.Ý 000007D0 D3 F7 FE 9D 3A 8F 7B DA 85 D7 89 BF E9 6F F5 7F Ó÷þ.:.{څ׉¿éoõ. 000007E0 2F 56 2F FE 79 FF 3F FD 63 C0 7B FF 2B 26 F7 FF /V/þyÿ?ýcÀ{ÿ+&÷ÿ 000007F0 07 B0 FF FB CB BD EB FF C3 9E CD 8C 09 E8 7F FF .°ÿû˽ëÿÞ͌.è.ÿ 00000800 E7 B6 55 7F 80 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 54 ç¶U.€ T 00000810 68 65 72 65 20 61 72 65 20 32 20 74 79 70 65 73 here are 2 types 00000820 20 6F 66 20 70 65 6F 70 6C 65 20 69 6E 20 74 68 of people in th 00000830 65 20 77 6F 72 6C 64 3B 20 74 68 6F 73 65 20 74 e world; those t 00000840 68 61 74 20 64 69 76 69 64 65 20 70 65 6F 70 6C hat divide peopl 00000850 65 20 69 6E 74 6F 20 32 20 67 72 6F 75 70 73 2C e into 2 groups, 00000860 20 61 6E 64 20 74 68 6F 73 65 20 74 68 61 74 20 and those that 00000870 63 61 6E 27 74 20 64 69 76 69 64 65 21 2E 2E 2E can't divide!... 00000880 2E 2E 2E 49 74 27 73 20 68 61 72 64 20 74 6F 20 ...It's hard to 00000890 73 6F 61 72 20 77 69 74 68 20 65 61 67 6C 65 73 soar with eagles 000008A0 2C 20 77 68 65 6E 20 79 6F 75 20 77 6F 72 6B 20 , when you work 000008B0 77 69 74 68 20 74 75 72 6B 65 79 73 21 2E 2E 2E with turkeys!... 000008C0 2E 4C 69 66 65 20 69 73 20 61 6E 20 65 6E 64 6C .Life is an endl 000008D0 65 73 73 20 73 65 72 69 65 73 20 6F 66 20 70 65 ess series of pe 000008E0 72 70 65 74 75 61 6C 20 61 6E 64 20 70 72 6F 67 rpetual and prog 000008F0 72 65 73 73 69 76 65 20 62 75 6D 6D 65 72 73 21 ressive bummers! 00000900 21 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E 2E !.............. We also had our initials in the high-score table as the default names... Offset(h) 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F 000005B0 50 4D 57 41 53 54 52 45 48 42 4A 55 4B 49 44 24 PMWASTREHBJUKID$ As I recall, "KID" was for George.. he used to use that on video games when he'd put in a high score.

Yes, this even on the surface is a stretch of a claim. Atari and Enter-Tech weren't affiliated. Nobody at Atari talked to me while the team and I were developing Tugboat. In the game development business, it's not like we and other companies were sitting around without any ideas waiting for mail from teenagers (not knocking teenagers here, at 20 years old, I was close to teenage when I started there). We had way way more ideas, and requests from customers, than we had time. It wouldn't surprise me if some kids did send Atari a letter describing a game they would like, what would surprise me would be if anybody at Atari actually read such a letter, and it would knock me off my chair if such a letter would make it to engineering for resource allocation.

Haha, they were supposed to be 'turtles' but for how fast they move they must be 'super' turtles! The gator is very nearly un-jumpable -- I've seen it done before but has to be perfect. You have to lure him to one side or the other and then run up a level run over and down on the other side to get away from him.

I recorded a quick preview with audio. This is just a short sample starting on 'Day 3'. The alligators come out on day 3 -- I was trying to avoid the guy at the bottom!

Probably a little. We were all avid gamers and played every game out there. We would always try deconstructing the 'how' for both coin-op and console. It was fun talking through how the software must be organized to do what it did, how it used the available resources, and especially on coin-op how the hardware must be designed whether multi-layer, sprites, character or pixel, and how the audio was generated i.e. one of the popular audio chips like the '8912, or custom built. So we played and talked through most Activision games because they were very good at getting the most out of the 2600's limited hardware. Pitfall and Keystone Kapers were high on our list of 'best' design to make the most of the resources.

Hey thanks, and a big thank you to all for the kind words! We spent a lot of work on the gameplay. At one point I was having a problem with getting the game to be able to display 'Noah' climbing the ladders without throwing off the timing the video loop. Driving home from work late one evening I had a "eureka!" moment and came up with a an indirect pointer to an encoded table method that halved the machine cycles for handling the climbing animations and made them possible. Those were the moments that really made the work fun. Barbara was great. She is a generation older than we were and brought a lot of stability to the table when we were working together. I wrote a program on the Atari 800 computer that simulated the 2600's graphics and let her create the backgrounds and sprite/ball images that would be recreated the same on the 2600. She used that tool to make the graphics for these games. Of note: I may have just located her... I'm trying to confirm now but it looks good!

Thanks. I'm sure it won't get that kind of attention... being a little niche game that nobody knew about. Yes, when I went to make the video, the recording software I used on my PC couldn't pick up the sound. .. I fiddled with it for a while and then just made the video without the audio. Maybe later I can do one with sound.

Here's a quick preview of the Arkyology game play... enjoy!

Maybe... we're talking...

Thanks for posting the detailed info Keith. It tracks with what I recall from my years there. The Moppet games Leprechaun and Pirates Treasure were not developed by us in Tempe. Beezer was a full-sized arcade game that was quite fun to play but also not developed by us. In Tempe, Tom Opfer was my boss, he hired me and he managed the development team. There were three programmers, Me (Paul Walters), George Hefner, and Rick Harris. Barbara Ultis was our graphic designer. There's no mention though of the poker games -- amusement as well as Nevada gaming approved version that we made. It was originally licensed from a California company. Before I started there, Tuni was apparently making 'pirate' i.e. blatant copies and of the poker and selling them. There was a lawsuit (probably independently verifiable) where the settlement entailed Tuni paying the other company to license the software and board. The main reason I was hired was to do this re-write/re-branding of the licensed software. We flew out to San Diego and met with their engineers for a day then came back and went to work. The last game I was working on at the end in '84 was the Popeye game. George and I were programming that one. Rick was doing the Berenstain bears game, with intermittent help from both George and I. Popeye was a 'side-scrolling' game where Popeye had to negotiate obstacles and such while trying to get to Bluto (who had taken Olive Oil in the first scene). Like I said it was 75 to 80 percent done when I left in April 1984, and then it was never finished. <Apologies to all as to how far off topic I got with these posts>

Yeah, we ended up having to edit out some of what we wanted to put into the game because we were running out of space... The cut scenes between days were shortened down to just Noah snoring.. we had bigger plans for it.

<sigh> The internet is a wonderful thing but it's tough to prove something like this I know.. but here's what I remember. There was nobody named 'Steven' who worked on the Moppet games. I personally wrote Tugboat from scratch on the board we used for the 'El Grande' video poker game. That board was limited in graphics and the result was not so good, so we brought in a hardware developer (Cash Olsen was his name) to design the plug-in board that went on top of the poker board to add additional graphics capabilities. We spent a number of very late nights on the board-bring-up and debug of the first prototype, I remember getting home a 1 or 2 in the morning. The other software developers were George Hefner and Rick Harris. I keep in touch with George from time to time but have lost track of Rick. The graphics designer was Barb Ultis. Andrew Teague was a hardware tech who helped out with some programming from time to time too. I wasn't part of any of the marketing or deal making. I had always assumed that 'Moppet Video' was an original name, but it was one that Marketing decided to use and that was that.. Mr. Tuni had a son who was about our age at the time and for a while he tried to work with us on designing game play. Wish I could remember his name. The main thing I remember about him was when I returned to work after my daughter was born in July 1982, came up to me and handed me a cigar! I don't think his name was 'Steve' but since I don't remember it at the moment it's possible. The games that we developed for the Moppet line were in this order: Tugboat, Desert Race, Noah's Ark, Berenstain Bears in Big Paws cave. There was one more that was about 75 to 80 percent done when I left the company in April 1984. The company made a deal to buy circuit boards + the software for the Leprechaun and Pirates Treasure games (maybe this 'Steve' did have something to do with those, I'm not sure honestly) -- these two were in production starting in mid/late 1983. In 1981, the games that they would have been making were the CVS (Century Electronics) boards that were brought to the USA and built/marketed by Tuni at the time. That picture is really interesting, it looks to me exactly like the production facility we had in Tempe, AZ right down to the roof's wooden main support beam structure -- it was layered and varnished to a shine. Here's a link to the Tempe facility address: http://www.bizapedia.com/addresses/1724-W-4TH-ST-TEMPE-AZ-85281.htmlscroll down the page for the Tuni address, or search '1981'. I recognize two of the the guys in that picture, they worked in the Tempe building. I wish I could remember their names, but they weren't in Vancouver. The larger guy at the far end of the row was 'Mark', the closest guy was a car nut and had a souped up 1960's Chevy II he drove to work, we talked about cars a bit. My memory of Tuni was it was headquartered in Oregon... ( http://businessprofiles.com/details/tuni-electro-services-inc/or-151448-19 and http://www.bizapedia.com/people/ARIZONA/TEMPE/PHILLIP-CAPEN.html ) would seem to confirm that but it wouldn't rule out an office in Vancouver. Also in that business listing was "Phillip M Capen". I knew him as Mike Capen. He was the boss in Tempe. When Tuni dropped out and the company became Enter Tech, Ltd, Mike was the president. He was an intense guy, I liked him but tried staying out of his way.. I was only 20 when I started there and 22 when I left, and found Mike a little intimidating. Tom Opfer was the immediate engineering manager. He was the one who hired me into the company. Anybody can claim anything on the internet, but this is what I lived. <edited to make the links work properly..>

Hey CRV, The company was originally "Tuni Electro Services". Tuni was the last name of the company founder/owner. Tuni was based out of Oregon. The video game operation, where I worked, was based in Tempe, AZ and consisted of development, manufacturing, sales and marketing. At one point late in '82 Tuni started running out of money. Missed a payroll and shut down the company for a week or so while the local management regrouped. The local management got funding and bought out Tuni, and named the company Enter-Tech, Ltd.. Enter-Tech Ltd. was owned by E.T. Industries. The employees were issued stock in E.T. Industries based on how long they had worked for the company. E.T. Marketing was on-site in Tempe, AZ and was dedicated to the marketing of the products. I'm not sure exactly why the marketing branch was a different company, but we shared offices. E.T. Industries made odd things roughly based on entertainment such as the large water-slides found at amusement parks. I'm not sure if they still exist but I don't think they do. if they did, I'd like to find out if my stock has gone up any on the past 30+ years There were 3 programmers including me, and one graphics artist. There was a hardware tech who helped out on the programming tasks from time to time as well. We had an arrangement with Century Electronics out of the UK. We did some development work on their arcade boards and software and made them work for the US market. We had our own line of 'gaming' i.e. video poker for both 'amusement' (read gray-market), and also had a Nevada approved video poker machine. We made our own coin-op arcade line of products under the name 'Moppet Video' and we did 2600 development as well.

Well, out of curiosity last week I stumbled on the "Moppet Video" games that are listed here: http://ggdb.com/ByManufacturer.aspx?c=Coin-Op&s=Arcade&m=Moppet+Videoand a few other places. I found that there is a following for them because they are fairly rare. I was the main developer on most of those coin-op games. It made me a little nostalgic so I searched for Arkyology to see if there was any mention of it and found it here.... so here I am...

Yes, we worked with Unitronics and made three games for the "Unitronics Expander" ( http://www.atarihq.com/museum/2678/expander.html) btw: That second picture is actually me holding the joystick! It was taken at the 1983 CES in Las Vegas for a last-minute flyer. The three games pictured are "Treasure Hunt", "Dazzler", and "Those Little Buggers" ( I *REALLY* hated that name).

I know I'm replying to a very old post, but I just stumbled on this forum and thought I'd give a little insight into these two games.. Arkyology and David and Goliath. Back in 1982 - 1984 I worked for Enter-Tech Ltd. We developed video games, coin-op, cartridge, and gambling as well. We developed a few games for the Atari 2600. We had the contract to develop Arkyology, and David and Goliath for the 2600 back in 1983. I and my co-worker George Hefner were the programmers on the Arkyology project. My co-worker Rick Harris was the lead on the David and Goliath project, Andy Teague helped. Barb Ultis did the graphics for both games. The games required a cartridge board that handled ROM banking. The final games fit inside 8k bytes. Arkyology was finished and ready for release, I don't think David and Goliath was ever finished. Arkyology was about Noah's ark. The player controlled 'Noah' and the goal was to feed the animals on the Ark. The game showed three floors separated by ladders that contained animal stalls. Each level had two parts. First was to run around and open all of the animal stalls, the second was to 'feed' each of the animals. Of course, there were obstacles. There were birds flying past, alligators running on the floors, and a couple others if I remember right. Each level sped up with more obstacles. David and Goliath was about David. First he was a shepherd and the goals was to herd the sheep. Ultimately David was to meet and fight Goliath. David and Goliath was never finished as the company who contracted us ran out of money and couldn't pay (as I recall). btw: I have a game rom of Arkyology... probably the only one still in existence.