Scott Stilphen

That's new to me! The manual doesn't mention that (even says the TV type switch isn't used...). It does say there are 2 different modes for each game, "game" and "toy". "Game mode" is for playing with the Vid Kid, and "Toy mode" is for playing w/o it- which doesn't make sense if you have to have the Vid Kid hooked up anyway! Perhaps there's other combinations that unlock the other 2 games?

quote: Originally posted by Marco: ...some have to find every easter egg ever hidden, I'd settle for every Atari one Nevermind, no I wouldn't.....

Boxed, that's probably worth it. It's a pretty hard game to find, especially boxed. In fact, I only recently got a box for my collection last year. $50 is nothing compared to what some other boxed games get - http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?V...item=1331149754

Battlezone also had that 'static' screen effect Sounds: The voice in Quadrun was pretty impressive back then. Haunted House still has some of the best effects IMHO. Yar's Revenge is right up there as well. Graphics: I always like the scrolling rainbow trick. It's "cheap and easy" from a programmer's perspective, but effective (Earthworld, for example). The warp sequence in Solaris is neat. The "hallway" sequence in Earthworld was cool, but Escape from Mindmaster did it one better. And the sunset background in Activision games was certainly that company's 'signature' effect. What about best title screens? Galaxian, Ad. of Tron, Dukes of Hazzard, and Earthworld

Just to add to Thomas' info... If you plug a Driving controller into an Atari 800 and read the values, you get: 15 - "center" (or no direction) 13 - down 12 - down + up 14 - up 1/4 clockwise turn: 15 - 13 - 12 - 14 1/4 counter-clockwise turn: 15 - 14 - 12 - 13 On older versions of Z26 (before it was changed to disallow certain combinations of 2 or more directions) you can see how entering these 'values' make the car (or ship) turn. [ 02-13-2002: Message edited by: Scott Stilphen ]

What happened with this contest? Was a winner ever declared?

Technically, none of the game photos in those early catalogs are screen shots (real screen shots didn't start to appear until the 1982 Rev. F catalog), but the drawings were often very faithful to the actual screen. The artists had to based their drawings on "something", right? Which makes that S.I. picture a real mystery, since a more accurate picture appears in the same catalog, for the S.I. description entry.

Yep, that's the screenshot I was referring to. Btw, you can get all-white asteroids by frying the game

quote: Originally posted by NE146: That's the way the promo pictures originally showed Asteroids right? i.e. with the remaining ships up on the top. Yep. All the early catalog photos showed the reserve ship icons, although they showed 6 icons (the max possible) and the reserve counter at 1 Now I'm wondering if that different screen shot of Space Invaders was really an actual version that existed...

Here's a pic: Very cool. Nice find, Thomas!

The fuji explosion appears before wave 10 though, doesn't it? I've also seen a Pac-Man appear. I decided to quick look through the code and see what other graphics there were. In a 'section' by themselves, I found: a big arrow, pointing up the fuji graphic a Pac-Man the letters "J.T." (for programmer Joe Tung) Since the fuji and Pac-Man appear after hitting a Galaxian, them maybe the others do too. [ 02-11-2002: Message edited by: Scott Stilphen ]

I had a Quest for Quintana Roo cart that had an EPROM soldered onto the board. I'm sure there were other released games that did this also. Marco- I'm not sure what to make of Cubicolor either. Like you said, the cost of making only 50 or 100 ROMs is too much to justify making them. With Donald Duck and other 'protos' that use the epoxy "blob" style boards, I believe these are prototypes in the sense that it was cheaper to make a small run of carts with this method as opposed to making ROM chips. AFAIK, no released games used this method, as it was cheaper to make large #'s of carts with ROMs.

The driving controllers only use the UP and DOWN directions, so you could a 'Y' connector, and plug in a driving controller and a Track & Field controller (this would also someone to make a custom controller), or you could use both joystick ports.

Driving controllers - any driving game (such as Pole Position), and games that allow 360 degree rotation - Omega Race would be cool with that (and more like the arcade set-up), Asteroids (the coin-op Blasteroids used a rotary controller), Tempest, etc.

Take out the Easter egg FYI: The Taiwan pirate cart of Circus Atari (See Saw) was hacked to use a joystick instead of paddles. Are there any other cases like this?

The first 3 games to use that red label style were released in 1986, and were the only ones with B&W pictures- Jr. Pac-Man, Midnight Magic, and Solaris. From 1987-1990, all the games with that label style had color pictures. Some (all?) of the original 3 were re-released with color pictures.

Tempest- that was a prototype he had, not a production cart

That's a new one to me, Stan. I wonder if the bug is related to the score and/or inning...

quote: Originally posted by Albert: And that reminds me, I have a slightly different version of Ghostbusters II that we dumped recently. I know it has a different tune at the beginning, but don't remember what else is different. I'll put it up on the site in the morning before I go to work. Great. Now I'll be able to hack it The music was the only difference that I noticed, as I wasn't able to get very far into the game....

A lot of programmers contributed to games that weren't theirs, especially at Activision and Imagic. I'd just leave it as "Crane wrote 13 games..." I think everyone agrees that he was the best VCS programmer there ever was (and ever will be), so you can kinda surmise that he helped out a great deal with other people's games. Ex. - I think he was the first to create a 6-digit scoring kernel (with Laser Blast), which was widely used in other games, so trying to credit him with a specific number of contributions would probably be impossible

Once you have the 3 pieces of the shovel, when you reach the bottom simply keep pressing down. Btw, if you or anyone else wants a copy of the hacked version I made, just email me.

quote: Originally posted by Albert: I've changed it to read, "David Crane contributed to fourteen games for the Atari 2600." I'm sure he helped out on a lot more than that

I checked the code for both the PAL and NTSC versions, and "WINNER! 100" is in both. Guess someone will have to play 100 levels to confirm.

Larry Kaplan did Kaboom, with help from Crane (helped with the design of the bomber, as well as the 'theme' of the game. I think he also helped with the sounds.)

He did 13 that I know of: Outlaw Slot Machine Canyon Bomber Dragster Fishing Derby Laser Blast Freeway Grand Prix Pitfall Decathlon Pitfall II Ghostbusters Skateboardin' He also did Super Skateboardin' for the 7800