retrocon

Channel F was my very first system. It came out about a year before the 2600. Then I got the Intellivision followed by the Odyssey. The 2600 I didn't get until much later, but all my friends had it so I got to play it all the time as well.

Team Savage is pleased with the progress... I have finished the King's Zoo area, at least more or less a rough draft of it. Check out the screenshot. In it are all six screens layed out in the correct order. Basically the big thing in the center is NOT a football field but rather it's a cage. The dragon will cruise around in there. I will probably remove the bars though so it doesn't look so much like a football stadium, plus it will make for some tricky logic to show the dragon behind the bars. I put in logic to support up to 32 playfield screens and handle horizontal and vertical flipping and I can navigate through the different screens I've created with my trusty Starmaster joystick. My goal is to always have the game in a running state during development and then just add features as desired. This makes for a nice iterative approach. To do this I'll probably work on implementing the player "adventurer" logic next, then code the logic and collision detection so he can cruise around the play area, and then implement the dragon and ai. And then on to the next play area and so on.

Thanks... Team Savage is working hard on this... Here is the first screenshot of the game. It is from an area of the game called the King's Zoo. The lower left corner of the screen is part of a cage that houses the last dragon. This area is composed of 6 screens, actually 2 unique screens that are flipped vertically and horizonally as needed. It's not possible to grab a screenshot of the game yet, so this a snapshot of the game running on actual hardware. Also, the colors are off right now, so ignore them. Please let me know what you think though...

I'm working on a new game based on Atari Adventure. It is tentatively titled Adventure 3: Rescue the Dragon. I have completed the game design and am working on the maps right now. Will try to have some screenshots soon. But I have a quick question. Do you think Atari would care if I used some of the original graphics in the game? I know I probably wouldn't have to change the adventurer from a "square" to a "circle", but I'd really like to use the original dragon and bat graphics if possible. This game would not likely ever be sold so would that make a difference? Would it make a difference if this game were not developed for Atari hardware? Assuming they cared, would it be enough to change the colors?

"Wow! I just read all 18 pages . What an adventure . Neoscott" If worse comes to worse Tempest you should package this thread up as a mini-novella and sell it. It is really quite a riveting read.

Could someone do an mp3 of the soft synth version please?

I liked hunchy and I especially like hunchy II. You have that magical ability to make a game fun to matter how simple it is. good work!!

I can't believe nobody here has mentioned Monkeyshine? I used to play this game for hours. It's a game of tag you play against a bunch of monkeys. And the monkeys move around like just like, uh, real monkeys. They would swing around on bars and chase you across the screen. It was a hoot to watch, much less play I'll tell ya.

How about a double-ender then? [/img]

Wow, this is an amazing thread. Please keep this going. I would be an incredible shame to reject salstadt's work. How often do you get an offer from an artist of his caliber to hand-craft 400+ of pixelly smooth animation? Especially since he is the one that started this whole thread going. I would expect his work to end up being much superior to babalized versions of the original artwork. But... Since there are two kernel versions being built anyway, why not built two complete versions, with two completely separate carts for sale? Of course anyone that has read this thread would have to own both! One could be called Prince of Persia, Authentic Edition (Jentzsch+Babalizer) And the other perhaps Prince of Persia, Retro Edition (vdub_bobby+salstadt). There would be a friendly competition between the two, but with much shared as well. At some point though the two would diverge with one in favor of authenticity and the other in favor of fun and the "Atari Way". Both would be spectacular no doubt, but I can already bet on which one I'd prefer to play! What do you think?

Bias aside, I have reviewed most of the entries here and I think the best would be 'Feeding Frenzy'. It is a familiar phrase, full of excitement and suggestive of great arcade action, yet it applies PERFECTLY to the gameplay of this game. Check out the origin of the phrase if you don't believe me: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/135000.html

I love the changes. The fishie movies much better now. The problem with the game right now is the challenge i think. There are not enough small fish to eat. Sometimes I have waited 2 minutes for a fish. Also, there is not much danger to the player. It is very hard to get killed. I think either the fish need to move faster, need to chase after you or many more fish need to be on the screen. Perhaps just making them much faster, like cars whizing by would be the easiest.

I am looking to buy Electronic Games Magazine issues prior to 1985. For some reason this magazine is one of the most prized memories of my childhood and my mom threw my collection of magazines out before I moved out. Anyway, I want to get as many as I can and I'm starting over, so I'd prefer to buy in quantity. Any complete collections out there? Otherwise, I will buy and single issues or more of decent quality. Must have cover intact and all pages, etc. Thanks. Will pay market price as applicable. I just want them. I'm not looking to negotiate and I can afford to pay. Also, if someone would be able to point me to a dealer that carries these I would be willing to pay for the referral.

Hmm, hard to describe exactly. 1) Swooshing movement of fish through the water. There is inertia when swimming. I would describe it as more like riding a bike than walking. 2) clever animation so the fish appears to be moving through water. Slow gliding turns when the fish reverses direction. There is a guy on this forum that does great 2600 graphics and animations. I bet he could wipe up a wonderful fish animation that would put the flash game to shame. Great movement and physics is what makes Man Falls Down my absolute favorite 2600 game of all time and sets it apart from the competition. I think this fishie game if done right would fit right in the same category. Good luck!

Love this game. Have played the flash version many times. Here are some name ideas: Feeding Frenzy Fishtank Antics What's Eating Nemo? Fish Food And having played other versions of this game, the big improvement I would suggest is to focus on the fishie's movements and try to simulate as best as possible a fish actually moving through water. The movement of the game was always the best part of it. And also the cool swallowing sound when you ate a fish. Good job!

Would it be easy to reverse the level layouts on the y and/or the x axis? Then you could potentially increase the number of levels you offer times 4. Nice game by the way. Tried it out on Z26 last night. Totally brought back memories of the arcade game. I think I only played it a couple times as a kid, but its fun.

My first video game I recall so clearly. I got for Christmas a cocktail pong machine. I want to say Christmas '76 or '77. My dad got it from a friend who owned a bar. Needless to say this game rocked. I don't think any pong really compares to one of these arcade machines. The rugged paddle control, the analog, silky smooth movement of the on-screen ball and paddles. I used to play my sister all day long. I imagine that I was probably the best around at that game. I beat everyone, adults and friends. I mastered the 'edge' hit and could last for hours with a volley. Oh the memories! Wonder whatever happened to that old machine.

Please don't blame the community. The community has been nothing but great here. The answer is pretty simple. I just got sick of debugging, debugging and more debugging. I'm going to work on some more simple projects first and then maybe get back to it later, hopefully.

Well, I have some news finally. I just put up a screenshot of Pitfall running on the simulator. I am at the point where I can starting focusing on the tia again. Right now it is only partially implemented and what is there needs some work at that, but at least I'm making some progress. Games like warring worms and combat render as well, but Pitfall has the most interesting playfield and background graphics I've run into yet. Here's the link: http://www.retroconsole.com/tiki/tiki-inde...Pitfall+Running

Progress is going well. I'm very much in testing mode, trying to sort out the errors so larger programs will run. Minefield, don't worry. I have you added to the waiting list. To those who've offered their services on this product. Thanks very much. Let's see how it goes and maybe I'll be in touch with you soon. To everybody else out there, Merry Christmas!

I have some new screenshots on the site showing the playfield in action. These demos are straight from Andrew's tutorial. http://www.retroconsole.com/tiki/tiki-inde...+Playfield+Demo

Here's the link: http://www.retroconsole.com/tiki/tiki-inde...Program+Running

Just a quick update: I'm excited to announce I have published the first screenshot of the system on the retroconsole website! It is a picture of the hardware running a modified version of Andrew Davie's "My First Kernel" program which displays a set of color bars. Actually it's not really hardware yet, just a vhdl hardware sim that outputs a file with a pixel map that a c# program interperts and displays on my computer. But it's a step forward for sure! Lot's more info about it on the web site if you are interested.

Ok, I have been working on the hardware sim and I was using Andrew Davie's simple kernel from here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27194 But my sim which I thought was correct seemed to be giving some weird results. Then I noticed that on Z26 emulator, it also seemed to display the color bars with some sort of offset. So I rewrote the kernel in a way I thought was correct. When I tested it in Z26, there was no longer any offset. Even better, my sim is now giving me expected results. Could someone please explain what is up with this? Is one more correct than the other or am I just going crazy? Why would the original code clear VBLANK before the 37 scanlines of VBLANK have passed? Here is my newly modified kernel: processor 6502 include "vcs.h" include "macro.h" SEG ORG $F000 Reset StartOfFrame ; Start of vertical blank processing lda #%01000010 sta VBLANK lda #2 sta VSYNC ; 3 scanlines of VSYNCH signal... sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC lda #0 sta VSYNC ; 37 scanlines of vertical blank... sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC lda #0 sta VBLANK ; 192 scanlines of picture... ldx #0 REPEAT 192; scanlines inx stx COLUBK sta WSYNC REPEND lda #%01000010 sta VBLANK ; end of screen - enter blanking ; 30 scanlines of overscan... sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC sta WSYNC jmp StartOfFrame ORG $FFFA .word Reset ; NMI .word Reset ; RESET .word Reset ; IRQ END

Does anyone know of or have any demos that make use of just the playfield and background? Something simple but interesting (to look at) would be best. Source preferred