gdement

The 6502 (called Sally I presume) only does what your program code tells it to do. It doesn't do anything behind-the-scenes involving graphics. It's not pixel oriented. The display list is a list of every graphical object (sprite) that needs to be drawn on that scanline. Each object is declared in it's own header - a sequence of headers makes up a display list. The information in each header provides a pointer to the graphic data, the horizontal position, width, and what color format to use. You (=Sally) fill in these parameters in a properly formatted data structure. When Maria tries to render a scanline, it will read the information you filled in and render the line RAM. Line RAM is an internal function of the Maria - the 6502 doesn't touch it. There are some Maria registers that you can adjust, controlling things like what screen resolution to use, or to configure the color palette. Those are mapped into the memory space at particular addresses. But nobody touches line RAM - that's maria's internal memory for screen rendering.

whoa... maybe my Genesis is working then. I have an old Genesis which I've been hooking up with a direct RF connection to the TV. I don't have an auto-switchbox anymore, so no way to test that. My picture is way too bright - kind of like it's overexposed. Is that what your symptoms were?

I haven't played the 2600 versions of those games, so I don't know the difference. But there isn't any technical reason why the 2600 would have better sound, it would have to be a programming problem. Really, the 7800 is capable of better sound simply because it has more CPU time available to deal with the sound chip.

I don't buy new games, but I can't imagine why there'd need to be a shortage of optical disc based games. It's not like they cost anything to make. I'd expect the store to be flooded with them, just like they get flooded with new movies. The excess stock could then just be sent back and trashed. Does the game business not work this way? Why not? I remember game shortages in Christmas 1988 (SMB2, Zelda2, and probably others) but the economics were different with cartridges.

Trying to get past Mr. X was pretty hopeless. 158870

Who knew Hogan's Alley could spark such violent thoughts.

Maybe it won't corrode, but I don't think corrosion is the problem. I believe it's metal fatigue that leads to poor contact after enough usage. I'd buy 2 standard connectors instead.

Watching a speedrun really helped. I never realized how helpful the holy water is against those stone fireball launchers. And apparently at the mummies, you don't have to wait until they come to life before jumping up to safety. So if you have enough health to even get there, and you have holy water, then you can't lose. So level 3 isn't so hard anymore. I got stuck at Frankenstein though. It's nearly impossible to beat him with the knife, but I got better at dodging that invincible monkey after a few attempts. Still only good enough to bring Frankie down below half health though - a long way from victory. 110690

Funny... I bought that game on clearance for $20 about 15 years ago. So it hasn't depreciated since then, cool. Another of my favorites that I don't think has been mentioned is Ultima: Exodus. If you enjoy classical style, hard RPG's where you make your own party members, and they can actually -die- then you may enjoy this game. I loved it, but it may have aged poorly depending on your perspective. Most annoying problem is that you need to cast an "Open" spell when opening chests, otherwise you'll constantly get hit with traps.

This game and I have a troubled history. It creates great atmosphere - I was reeled in by how cool this game was. But I soon realized that I should never buy this game, because every time I played it pissed me off. The gameplay mechanics suck. It's like ballet on a tightrope trying to do everything just the right way so you can get through a level without being knocked into a chasm by some floating medusa head. I don't know how anybody could play this game without putting their fist through the TV. Ahem... so anyway, I was doing great until near the end of level 3. I made a minor error and one of the bats got behind me while I was fighting a fireball launching statue thing. I got hit several times while clearing out of that situation, and ended up without enough health to escape the mummies. Having died once, it was increasingly difficult to succeed without the upgraded whip and holy water. I lost all my guys on the mummies. I hope to reach level 4 next time - but I'll post this for now. Sorry for venting, I've never had such a strong love/hate attitude towards any other game. 65240

Do you use VirtualDub? You should be able to export any frame from a captured video as a .BMP file. Other editing programs might have a similar feature. I've noticed that I also get a dark picture when I hook game systems up to my capture card, unless I use an S-Video connection. It seems to make a world of difference when viewing on a computer monitor. Unfortunately that's not an option with the 7800.

Track 4 is still annoying me to death. Track 1 - 1:07:82 Track 2 - 1:06:00 Track 3 - 1:17:00 Track 4 - 1:40:11

I found that JNES works with this game, so I have a new emulator to play with. I wish I had gotten to this earlier. If anybody is still playing, here's my suggestions: - The most important thing in this game is to have plenty of speed when jumping, so use the Turbo in judicious bursts, giving yourself a burst of speed at the appropriate moments. You don't want to land on the uphill side of the next hill. When in straightaways, hold the Turbo as much as you can get away with, but keep enough reserve for whatever jumps are coming up. You should almost never hit a jump without Turbo. - Don't push any buttons before the race starts. This will raise your temperature. When the race starts, use Turbo at least until your temperature reaches normal levels. Before reading it in this thread, I never realized that the little arrows reduce your temperature. That's a very useful tip. If you hit the arrows it helps a great deal with your times. [Edit - I improved these scores below, so don't bother computing from these.] Track 1- 1:09:12 Track 2- 1:12:03 Track 3- 1:17:82 Track 4- 1:37:21 (the other racers are REALLY annoying on this track)

A few years ago I was looking into this, and found repeated mention online that the IBM and Apple 5.25" drives are physically incompatible. There's no way to do a backup with IBM drives.

Welcome to every new gen of games, ever. Not every. The 2600 was revolutionary in it's time, as most people were coming from Pong or even nothing at all. The NES' platform/adventure games were revolutionary compared to the 2600 - and that is the system most people were coming from when the NES came out. Likewise the original Playstation - that was the first generation of consoles that were truly designed for 3D gaming, and had hardware acceleration to make it work. We're still in the Playstation era, nothing revolutionary has happened since then. Maybe HD counts, but I'm not convinced that will be such a big deal.

That's not exactly slow. With that setup, I'd be terribly disappointed if it had degradation. Despite the acronym, I still have a hard time understanding how WINE "Is Not an Emulator". No, it's not a CPU emulator - it's an OS emulator (achieved by emulating WinAPI). Is there some legal or political reason that the developers don't want it to be called an emulator?

My suggestion is to add the times for each track. DNS earns a max time of say 3 minutes. Maybe post an honorable mention for best times on individual tracks.

Is there an emulator that runs on a P3 that can run Excitebike? I've tried FCE and Nester and neither of them work.

Ultima: Exodus - first RPG I ever played. Maybe 6 months earlier, a friend had bought me a starter kit for Dungeons & Dragons. I thought it would make a cool video game, but didn't realize that had already been done. Then Ultima came out on the NES. So yeah, that was very addicting. Nowadays, I don't play NES very often, but the game I most often go back to is probably River City Ransom.

I don't know what that is - but it needs to be played on a NES (or NES clone, like the Yobo or whatever it's called) - scores from versions on other platforms (like GB, GBA, DS, etc.) are not accepted. I'm referring to the NES emulated version of Excitebike that's built in to the Gamecube game "Animal Crossing". There's several other emulated games in AC as well. I don't know if there are any known flaws with the emulation though. I can use a PC emulator if that's preferred.

Is the Animal Crossing version of Excitebike legitimate for this contest?

In Ultima 8, there are some strange evil children that attack you in the wilderness. So you get to bash their heads in. Later, you get a job with some necromancer dude. At your initiation, there's a guy who is lying on a slab, waiting for you to kill him. You get to be MacBeth. He yelps when the knife makes impact.

That's awesome. I've often wished I had a tool like that. Desoldering pin by pin is too hard. === The MARIA chip should be labelled GCC-1702, although I don't have one exposed to check with. I suppose if you're worried, you might consider attaching a heatsink to it. Might be a good idea anyway for the chip's longevity, as it's the most high-strung chip in the machine, and it's not an off-the-shelf part. I think there's a version of Arctic Silver that works as a (permanent) adhesive.

8 posts, and nobody put up a link. Tsk tsk... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_7800

I'd like to suggest that, by rule, whichever game appears highest on the list should always win in a tie. My reasoning is that the higher positioned game has fewer remaining chances to be elected.