[Custom Voices for the Intellivoice]

Isn't the software to convert it into IntelliVoice format still highly proprietary? One of the last guarded secrets, to the point that people have begun developing other techniques to play samples, solutions that don't require the custom hardware in the first place.

[What have you PLAYED weekly tracker 2024 (ALL GENERATIONS)]

Stats will have to be delayed until Thursday or the upcoming weekend. I came home after work, didn't feel that well and already slept 4.5 hours before the clock even is 11 PM.

[The Official Playstation Thread]

Lewis Hamilton plays some of his childhood racing games on the PS1.

 

[What have you PLAYED weekly tracker 2024 (ALL GENERATIONS)]

Atari 8-bit:
Pinhead - 8 min.

 

Just above detection limit again, with this variant of Midway's Kick (or Kick-Man) by a 14-15 year old Robert Jaeger, later famous for Montezuma's Revenge.

 

[HSC21 Round 6: PinHead]

Pinhead: 7675 pts

 

Cool game, apparently based on Kick-Man by Midway but with some small differences. It is cute that Robert Jaeger even included Pac-Man in the interlude, except unlike Midway he probably didn't have any rights to the character.

[What have you PLAYED weekly tracker 2024 (ALL GENERATIONS)]

53 minutes ago, TampaBay said:

Sony Playstation

* Pac-Man World 20th Anniversary

You missed an estimated time on that one.

[What have you PLAYED weekly tracker 2024 (ALL GENERATIONS)]

For what it is worth, the following games including Marvel in the title have been tracked:

 

Android - Marvel Snap

Arcade - Marvel vs. Capcom

Dreamcast - Marvel vs. Capcom

Dreamcast - Marvel vs. Capcom 2

Genesis - Marvel Land

NES/Famicom - Marvel's X-Men [aka Uncanny X-Men]

PC Modern - Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series

PS2 - Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

Sega Saturn - Marvel Super Heroes

Sega Saturn - Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter

SNES - Marvel Super Heroes: War of the Gems

Switch - Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order

Xbox 360 - Marvel Super Hero Squad

Xbox One - Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2

Xbox One - Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series

Xbox Series S/X - Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

 

I noticed there is one more entry for Guardians of the Galaxy for the Xbox Series S/X. I suppose those two should be merged, or has there been one Marvel and one non-Marvel game in that franchise?

[What have you PLAYED weekly tracker 2024 (ALL GENERATIONS)]

Week 15 Summary

 

For the week April 8 - 14, we logged 3991 minutes of gaming, playing 70 games (of which 13 new) on a total of 25 systems.

 

Individual Top 20

 

1. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (PS2) - 828 min.
2. Loopz (Atari Lynx) - 390 min.
3. Turmoil (Atari 2600) - 319 min.
4. Urban Strike (Genesis) - 220 min.
5. Another Code ReCollection (Switch) - 185 min.
6. Inkulnati (Xbox Series S/X) - 180 min.
7. Control (Xbox Series S/X) - 165 min.
8. Retro Bowl (Android) - 135 min. (#6)
9. Juno First (Atari 2600) - 100 min.
9. Juno First (Atari 8-bit) - 100 min.
11. Final Fight CD (Sega CD) - 90 min.
12. Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition (Intellivision) - 72 min. (#12)
13. Columns (Sega Master System) - 69 min.
14. Cash Cow DX (Atari VCS) - 60 min.
15. Star Wars Racer (Xbox Series S/X) - 54 min.
16. Bang Bang Racing (PC Modern) - 50 min.
16. Breachway (demo) (PC Modern) - 50 min. (#19)
18. Pac-Land (Atari Lynx) - 45 min.
18. World Heroes Perfect (Neo Geo AES/MVS) - 45 min.
20. Retro Bowl College (Android) - 42 min.

 

Pre-NES Top 10

 

1. Turmoil (Atari 2600) - 319 min. (PN#10)
2. Juno First (Atari 2600) - 100 min.
2. Juno First (Atari 8-bit) - 100 min.
4. Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition (Intellivision) - 72 min. (PN#8)
5. Kaboom! (Atari 2600) - 41 min.
6. Doggone It! (Atari 2600) - 25 min.
7. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 21 min. (PN#1)
8. LadyBug (Atari 2600) - 20 min.
9. River Raid (Atari 8-bit) - 18 min.
10. Alphabet Zoo (ColecoVision) - 15 min.
10. Meooow! 2 (Atari 2600) - 15 min.

 

Systems Top 20

 

1. PS2 (1 game) - 828 min. (#2)
2. Atari 2600 (10 games) - 566 min. (#1)
3. Atari Lynx (2 games) - 435 min. (#10)
4. Xbox Series S/X (3 games) - 399 min.
5. Genesis (3 games) - 248 min.
6. Switch (2 games) - 200 min.
7. Android (3 games) - 187 min. (#6)
8. PC Modern (5 games) - 175 min. (#3)
9. Sega CD (2 games) - 131 min.
10. Atari 8-bit (2 games) - 118 min. (#5)
11. Sega Master System (2 games) - 109 min. (#13)
12. Apple iOS (3 games) - 82 min. (#7)
13. Neo Geo AES/MVS (3 games) - 79 min.
14. SNES (6 games) - 76 min. (#11)
14. NES/Famicom (10 games) - 76 min. (#8)
16. Atari VCS (2 games) - 75 min.
17. Intellivision (1 game) - 72 min. (#9)
18. Nintendo DS (2 games) - 20 min.
18. Handheld/Tabletop (1 game) - 20 min.
18. Game Boy Advance (1 game) - 20 min. (#12)
18. Game Boy (2 games) - 20 min. (#17)

 

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is new to the tracker, straight into first place. Loopz and Turmoil battle for most played Atari game, of which the latter at least takes the pre-NES title. A slight move towards newer formats in the system list again, but the top three are PS2, Atari 2600 and Atari Lynx.

 

No new entries to the 1000, 5000, 10000 Minute Clubs.

[IntyBASIC Tiny Contest 2024!!!]

I just realized that the closing of this contest will coincide with the 60th anniversary of Dartmouth BASIC, as the first version was released on May 1, 1964.

[NEW GAME: Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition]

Has the bin2ecs tool been updated along with the firmware updates, i.e. perhaps Duttroid used an earlier version of the conversion tool on the Mac, and happened to download a more recent version for Windows?

[What have you PLAYED weekly tracker 2024 (ALL GENERATIONS)]

Atari 8-bit:
River Raid - 18 min.

 

SNES:
Cool Spot - 5 min.
Fever Pitch - 8 min.
Nigel Mansell's World Championship - 12 min.
PGA Tour Golf - 29 min.
Super R-Type - 12 min.

 

After another mediocre attempt in the A8 HSC, I went through my list of systems and dug up something I hadn't touched for nearly 6 years, namely the SNES. Part of that was to try the Secret Santa gift from @Armscar Coder in form of PGA Tour Golf. Probably the default is an easy mode where the game automatically selects the most suitable club and perfect aim so you just have to control the strength and hook. There is a lot of pressing the Start button all the time to move to the next screen, and that in some occasions the button layout shifts between when you're on the fairway or green. Playable, but probably not EA Sports' most famous moment, or for that matter Rob Hubbard's as the musician. Leaderboard Golf on the C64 some seven years earlier was probably more impressive. The other SNES games were a bit troublesome to start, possibly due to my console not having been used for 6 years but eventually they all started without issues.

[IntyBASIC Rough Song - G Sis Startup]

Yeah. The raw output from SID2MIDI starts at octave 1, so in order for it to compile at all, I had to replace all 1 with 2. A more proper operation would involve transposing the whole piece to a playable range, but that would take me more than 45 minutes from start to finish. I suppose one could have the program output a MIDI file instead, and then do necessary adjustments in a music program. The question then is how you get from MIDI to a text format, which we have discussed several times before. I believe someone had made a tool that does that, for a certain subset of MIDI files (meaning you can't expect to feed the conversion tool any random MIDI file, only those which have been preprocessed).

[IntyBASIC Rough Song - G Sis Startup]

In the mean time, I made a very rough conversation using SID2MIDI. Most of the notes need lengthening (replacing "-" with "s") and the octaves are all over the place due to we can't use octave 1 on Intellivision. Also there should be a jump somewhere and you might want to shorten the music as this file is 14 kilobytes just the song.

 

 

ggs-ingame.bas ggs-ingame.bin ggs-ingame.cfg

[Accidental dup]

Playing the Intellivision gets your bowels moving faster?

[HSC21 Round 5: River Raid *NEW SEASON 2024*]

Clearly I'm playing in the children's division on this game...

 

Total score: 22530 pts
Bridges 1-4: 5150 pts
First life: 8980 pts
Highest bridge reached: 16

[The Great Giana Sisters for Intellivision Homebrew]

If you buy an AtariAge subscription, you can edit posts for one month. If you kindly ask an administrator, they can enable editing of a single post forever.

[What have you PLAYED weekly tracker 2024 (ALL GENERATIONS)]

Week 14 Summary

 

For the week April 1 - 7, we logged 4180 minutes of gaming, playing 62 games (of which 15 new) on a total of 19 systems.

 

Individual Top 20

 

1. X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse (PS2) - 758 min. (#3)
2. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 482 min. (#8)
3. Cross Force (Atari 2600) - 282 min.
4. Winter Games (Commodore 64) - 261 min.
5. Crossbow (Atari 2600) - 168 min.
6. Retro Bowl (Android) - 155 min. (#7)
7. Gremlins (Atarisoft) (Commodore 64) - 125 min.
8. Red Sea Crossing (Atari 2600) - 104 min. (#2)
9. Laser Hawk (Atari 8-bit) - 100 min.
10. Slinger VR (PC Modern) - 93 min. (#10)
11. Battle Zone (2017) (PC Modern) - 89 min.
12. Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition (Intellivision) - 87 min.
13. Balatro (PC Modern) - 70 min. (#4)
13. Thunder Blade (Sega Master System) - 70 min. (#6)
15. R.C. Pro-Am (NES/Famicom) - 68 min.
16. Alien Cat 2 Enhanced Edition (SNES) - 65 min.
16. Carnival (Atari 8-bit) - 65 min.
16. Eggsaviers Cackleberry Rescue (Atari Lynx) - 65 min.
19. Breachway (demo) (PC Modern) - 60 min.
19. Malzbie's Pinball Collection (PC Modern) - 60 min.

 

Pre-NES Top 10

 

1. Solar Fox (Atari 2600) - 482 min. (PN#2)
2. Cross Force (Atari 2600) - 282 min. (#8)
3. Winter Games (Commodore 64) - 261 min.
4. Crossbow (Atari 2600) - 168 min.
5. Gremlins (Atarisoft) (Commodore 64) - 125 min.
6. Red Sea Crossing (Atari 2600) - 104 min. (PN#1)
7. Laser Hawk (Atari 8-bit) - 100 min.
8. Ghostbusters Ultimate Edition (Intellivision) - 87 min.
9. Carnival (Atari 8-bit) - 65 min.
10. Turmoil (Atari 2600) - 47 min.

 

Systems Top 20

 

1. Atari 2600 (9 games) - 1188 min. (#2)
2. PS2 (1 game) - 758 min.
3. PC Modern (7 games) - 387 min. (#3)
4. Commodore 64 (2 games) - 386 min. (#15)
5. Atari 8-bit (13 games) - 380 min. (#9)
6. Android (2 games) - 165 min. (#4)
7. Apple iOS (6 games) - 146 min. (#7)
8. NES/Famicom (4 games) - 115 min. (#18)
9. Intellivision (2 games) - 114 min. (#21)
10. Atari Lynx (2 games) - 110 min.
11. SNES (2 games) - 95 min.
12. Game Boy Advance (4 games) - 75 min. (#12)
13. Sega Master System (1 game) - 70 min. (#6)
14. Arcade (2 games) - 60 min. (#5)
15. Nintendo 3DS (1 game) - 40 min. (#19)
16. Amiga (1 game) - 35 min. (#12)
17. Game Boy (1 game) - 26 min.
18. Tiger R-Zone (1 game) - 15 min.
18. Nintendo 64 (1 game) - 15 min.

 

While only one of the two X-Men Legends remain on the top list this week, the sequel in the series takes the overall win by a margin of 4.6 hours ahead of a bunch of pre-NES games with Solar Fox as the first runner up. It brings the Atari 2600 as the most played system again, in a week where neither of the Xboxes, PS3/4/5, Switch/Wii are present. If it wasn't for modern PC gaming and the smartphones, the systems list would almost look semi-retro overall.

 

No new entries to the 1000/5000/10000 Minute Clubs, and no, I haven't migrated to either of my two new computers: firstly the desktop which is scheduled to arrive by Thursday (so I can't use it just yet) and secondly a friend of mine sold an affordable laptop that will replace the 10+ year old one I'm sometimes using.

[Jungle hunt + pirate pete predates many future side scrolling platformers]

Why did you start a new thread instead of contribute your findings to one of the existing ones in the same topic?

 

This thread was made four years ago and has a lot of examples of various scrolling games:
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/323090-were-there-scrolling-platformers-before-super-mario-bros-with-decent-graphics/

 

It was referenced in this thread, which was posted less than two weeks ago:
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/363925-when-it-comes-to-platformers-would-super-mario-brothers-be-considered-the-first-true-platformer/

 

[Small, all in one form factor like the Tandy 1000?]

While it doesn't directly answer your question, you might get some ideas to investigate from this thread:
https://forums.atariage.com/topic/269326-were-there-any-other-computers-like-the-tandy-1000-exhx/

 

[What have you PLAYED weekly tracker 2024 (ALL GENERATIONS)]

Atari 8-bit:
River Raid - 10 min.

 

HSC round, though I don't have the motivation to spend a lot of time on it.

 

[HSC21 Round 5: River Raid *NEW SEASON 2024*]

18320 pts, bridge 15 (starting from 1)

[The Atari 3200 System X]

In the other thread, it was mentioned severe issues with sprites that neither could be reused nor overlap. If things like those could not be solved in due time, I have no clue if the hardware was "too good" or not.

 

To succeed in Japan probably is due to other factors than hardware capacity. Epoch was importing the 2600 for a while before releasing their own Cassette Vision.

 

I read about added luminance levels which I suppose means a larger palette, closer to the 8-bit. Combined with more built-in RAM and that the CPU could address more memory without bankswitching sounds a lot like a beefed up 2600.

[The Atari 3200 System X]

Unpopular opinion, but haven't every Atari system from the 2600 to the XEGS (*) been hard to program, compared to what else was on the market? Often far more powerful than the competition once you learned all the intrinsics, but that is a different side to it. Now if this breadboarded design was known to be even more challenging to write games for, it would have been a very steep uphill compared to the upcoming competitors.

 

(*) I imagine the ST line being more straightforward, don't know about the Lynx but again I understand the Jaguar as well as the unreleased Panther were systems for pros.

[Woo! I got a cease and desist letter from Atari!]

I don't follow the general Atari sub-forums, but thought that the "new" Atari was supposed to be a good one, the one that even acquired AtariAge. If they routinely sent automatic C&D letters to every eBay seller offering original Atari games and hardware for sale, we would know about it by now and the forum and Facebook stream would be overfilled with hate against Atari. People like Albert would have his days full of unrelated requests directed at him why this Atari behaves in that way.

 

To make 3rd party peripherals, new games etc, that are labeled such as they seem to be genuine Atari gear is to me a completely different story. You probably can't make your own Ford peripherals and sell them on various sites in a way that it looks like an original manufacture item. But good thing to post a warning how you should name and phrase products. Search engines these days are advanced enough to find your items regardless what you put in the title, so "Atari 2600 Cartridge Stand" isn't as important as it may have been 20 years ago.

[Has anyone written a biography of Jack Tramiel?]

12 minutes ago, Larry said:

Probably the best depiction of him that I've read was in Michael Tomczyk's Home Computer Wars.

Leonard on the other hand insists it is mostly fiction, and that Jack told him even back in the days. The two (Leonard and Michael) take every opportunity to express in public how they see each other.