Crazyace

Boulderdash is interesting - a 10x12 array of sprites for the background. It looks like the sprites are offset a few pixels from the backdrop - so the lores 8x8 BG mode can be used to give a 2nd colour for the diamonds. ( and the bowties as well - but they dont appear in the video ) I dont think it's as powerfull as the 7800 ( apart from the usual sound ) the basic res is slightly higher ( I'd guess 256 clocks per line, given 192 in the same way the 2600/7800 have 160/68 ) but the sprites are single colour only. Takeda-san, Do any of the games flicker, - if 2 colour sprites are in a line? Are there any homebrew games for the SCV?

How do Miner2049er and Boulderdash compare with the 8 bit originals?

That's a nice document - and your site is really cool - it's interesting seeing the older japanese machines

This is how Rtype looks on MSX - so I expect a CV version would be similar... It actually looks really nice in still shots - but the scrolling really ruins it for me. ( I dont actually mind the aliens moving on character boundaries for certain attack waves - it's better than flickering ) Rtype on 7800 would probally look like the C64 version ... - as the sprite resolution matches

I never actually knew that there wasn't a lightgun for the 5200 - it's always been supported in the chipset. It's a cool project

Yep. You want AtariSIO: http://www.horus.at/~hias/atari/ Use the latest development snapshot, not the release (which is 4 years old now!) The USB SIO2PC still isn't supported in Linux, unless things have changed in the past month or so... Thanks, I'll try that.

Anyone use SIO2PC with Linux machines. ( That's the only machine I've got with the serial and par. ports )?

The 7800 actually doesn't come off too badly against the NES version of Donkey Kong either.

If you only want to change one how about this... ldx enable+n ldy which+n stx enam0,y enable can be n entry table with values for turning on/off missile - which is table with values 0/1 selecting which to turn on/off

I think I'll make a version that runs from CD - there are proabally more people with CD's than people with Alpines anyway

Isn't that more a problem with the 'support' rather than the machine itself. It can be more expensive to produce games for the less popular machine .. The 7800 H/W could hold up to the NES though - in some cases ahead, in others behind.

Are you sure about that? I could have sworn I read in an early Atari 400/800 that Centipede required 16K. I remember seeing a picture of it that said "Coming Soon!" and a little * that said "Requires 16K RAM". I remember that because I thought that all 400's came with at least 16K (I didn't know about the initial 8K ones until years later). Tempest You're absolutly correct - I looked at Centipede again and it seems to use ram in the 2nd 8k block... ( I can fill 6k with garbage in the bottom 8k without affecting the game )

It's interesting that the 5200 version of centipede uses a high res screen - the 8 bit version used a character mode which means it runs on machines with 8k

That looks pretty cool - a bit more colourful than the 8 bit version ( I prefer your ghosts )

One nice thing about the yamaha chip was the volume being log based, rather than linear.. Quick work with a scope, and suddenly we had a table to give 8 bit precision sample playback.. ( Could actually get more than 8 bits, but the first ADC in Replay was only 8 bit ) Everything else about it sucked though.... With a maria style chip a blitter wouldn't have been needed as much, it would have been possible to do many things just with sprites..

It seems fashionable to blame the Tramiel's - but they 'saved' Atari in some ways - it was losing so much money under Warner. ( In a dream world, rather than 'relaunch' the 7800 they would have redesigned the maria to use 16 bit wide memory, upped the line ram from 160x5 to 320x5 - and used it in the ST. I'd even have preferred a pokey ( or two ) over the AY chip used )

I'm having fun just playing with the systems, so the code can go out straight away - if someone wants to run with it - or argue about something thats great. ( I still haven't got around to finishing tetris26 or the magical drop cowboy idea on 2600 - and they went up years ago... )

Apart from the lower res display - the 7800 was far better positioned to replicate arcade games with both scrolling multilayer backgrounds and coloured sprites. It's also capable of displaying high res bitmap graphics with restrictions. The NES has a single fixed background and 8 sprites per line ( total of 64 sprites ) but works at a higher resolution ( 256 vs 160 ) so backdrops look more detailed - however changes to the background can only occur during the vblank as the ppu takes almost 100% of the video memory bandwidth. Extra mapper chips would extend the NES graphics capabilities - no add on chips were available for the 7800 ( except for the pokeys ), but they could have been produced.

Yeah - the writing was on the wall when VGA came out..

I'd like R type

According to the small print the games could be 2600 , XE, or 7800 - I think the '25' was aimed at 2600 or XE - as the offer was a 7800 system for 25 dollars ( A bit pointless if you had 25 7800 games )

I've been running it as an 8 bit executable - but it should be simple to make it work on 5200 I'll make a 5200 version in the next day or two

Maybe they expected more games to come out

A few if's there... If Atari had launched the 7800 when, and the 'crash' hadn't happened - I expect that software would have turned up from other VCS publishers. But it's impossible to decide - the only thing that can be commented on now is what could the hardware do, and in that sense the 7800 had way more potential than the CV. Nintendo definitely learned from Atari's mistakes - dont allowed 3rd parties without collecting royalties... manage the release schedule etc.

Yeah it currently scrolls with the joypad ( 8 directions ) while the sprites follow a test path ( The background colour change shows the timing of each softsprite ) It's basically as I have no graphic design ability, so it's easier to work with exact graphics for testing rather than trying to resize sprites and background