Nostalgic

The name "Euchre," from what the folks at Activision told me, is trademarked. (I guess some other company put out a Euchre game at some point and called it "Euchre.") Activision couldn't include the game under that name. I was asked to come up with an alternative name. I suggested "Video Euchre" to go along with the fine Atari tradition of "Video" plus something else, like "Video Checkers" and "Video Chess."

Oh no! I was certainly impressed by your work on the label; it's unfortunate that it didn't make it in there. I'm sorry to hear about that. Hopefully it'll make its way into the PC and/or Mac versions. (I still don't have my copies, so I can't see for myself. *pout* )

Kodansha's Furigana Japanese Dictionary says that kiseki is "a miracle." My Canon Wordtank gives alternate definitions: a locus, pyroxene, the death roll (really!). I couldn't find arumana in either one. It may not be one word, but two; "aru" means "certain" or "unspecified" when it modifies a noun. (aru daigaku = a certain university) However, the only definition I found for mana is "a Chinese character", so I'm not sure that two words makes sense either. I'm just a slightly-beyond-beginning student of Japanese. This is the best I can do.

Between the Hozer version and the AtariAge version, when I last got a count Euchre was approaching 40 sales. I didn't expect it to fly off the (virtual) store shelves as it is a bit of a niche product. The group of Atari homebrew buyers is small enough, but when you reduce the group to those who enjoy card games, and then reduce again to those who have heard of a game played in a specific region of the U.S., there isn't much of an audience left. I'm just glad that there are people out there enjoying my game. Who knows, perhaps its inclusion in Activision Anthology will drum up more interest...

I received my patch yesterday (or was it two days ago?). I'm very impressed! It looks nice and the inclusion of the letter is a nice touch. Kudos to all who were involved!

Did VGR drop off into the electronic ether? I remember his site being gone for a while. I never did get my T-shirt and I think I was the second or third person to solve level 5 and submit the code. Oh well.

I'm also stuck on the word search, having found 16 games out of the 26. I didn't find any diagonals yet. I was actually worried because I found very few horizontal and a lot of vertical. I don't know if that's because that's how the puzzle was arranged or if I just can't find words that are horizontal because they're too obvious. This is an enjoyable contest, even if the potential ROI (a $25 prize) is a lot less than the time I put into it. It's the challenge that makes it worthwhile. Thank you, Room 34, for establishing this contest! (I noticed that you seem very fond of one particular game in this word search... )

I would add Q*bert's Qubes (rarity 9) to the list. It's quite a good game, both technically and in the fun factor. I've never seen the arcade game to make a comparison, but on it's own it is very enjoyable. Though not nearly as rare, The Official Frogger (rarity 6) is very impressive, and kudos to you if you can find it on cassette rather than the Stella Gets a New Brain collection.

I thought that the GBA version was the first one to be released. It may just be a bad assumption, but the first press releases and articles that were mentioned here were both about the GBA version, so I thought it natural it would come out first. Also, does the "dolG" status depend on how many copies the stores buy or how many copies that consumers buy?

Then count me as the last post... for a few minutes, at least.

Won't we able to better comment on it once its released for testing? I'm eager to see this game in action. I'm glad you've returned to working on it!

Yup, and a great chance to attract more people to our great hobby. Not only that, it's also like putting a message in a bottle and seeing where it lands. I'll be curious to see what far-flung parts of the world start playing Euchre - as a card game, not a video game. Maybe it will gain popularity outside the Midwest U.S.!

Go to the Stella archives, enter "Big Dig" (with no quotes) in the Search field, then press Enter. This should give you plenty of results.

Search for the name "Big Dig" in the Stella archives. The work-in-progress is by Christopher Tumber.

I also vote for having Kablamo! finished first. Get it off your plate so that you can breathe a little easier. Plus, I have a certain fondness for card games.

My vote would be for a game similar to Boulder Dash, but different enough so that there'd be no problems with First Star. I'm not a fan of fighting games, so I doubt I'd go for Fu Kung. The DDR game - DiscoTech was the last name I am aware of - would also be good. I think it would be interesting to see some 8-bit computer games ported backward to the 2600, as was done with Qb. How about Xagon? In addition, there's plenty of Analog and Antic magazine games that could get the cloning treatment. I'd love to have some of the Tom Hudson/Kyle Peacock collaborations, like Fire Bug, available again. Of course, additional card games are always welcome.

When I was a kid, my Atari 800 XL was hooked up to a TV in the basement. The arrangement was unfortunately directly underneath a leaky toilet in my parents' bathroom. One day the darn thing left a gusher of water all over the computer. It didn't work... or so we thought. My parents bought me a 130 XE to replace it. However, I discovered about a month later that the 800 XL still worked! The only permanent damage was to the Reset button, which had to be pressed in a certain way to make it work. (Come to think of it, my 2600 also has a reset switch problem...) Anyhow, the moral of this story is that Atari parts survive!

I tried out Backfire in the Stella emulator on Linux. Between the small window size, small bullet size, and playing with the keyboard, I didn't do all that well. However, I'll echo the other sentiments here - this game is both enjoyable and challenging. I do want the opportunity to try to get more than a handful of points and settle into the "game rhythm" that lets a game go well. I'll also agree with Big Player on having the cannon you are currently controlling marked in some fashion. It would be a great help. I did have one annoyance, which I'm not sure is a bug or a feature. Right after destroying an enemy plane, if the barriers shift and your gun is right beneath or above it, either your shot continues through the plane, bounces, and destroys your gun right away, or the game still thinks the trigger is pressed and fires again, straight into the barrier. In short, it's easy to lose a gun right when the barriers change. Thanks for bringing Backfire to us!

You could safely say that all of the card and some of the board games include randomness. This gives you: 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe, Othello, Video Checkers, Video Chess (maybe - if the computer has a couple of moves of equal value) Backgammon, Bridge, Casino, Codebreaker (when the computer generates the code), Euchre , Poker Squares/Solitaire (will it ever be released?) Ms. Pac-Man has randomness. After you pass the banana round, the fruit you get is randomly selected. It appears that in Warlords, the direction in which the ball goes at the very start is random.

I mentioned it in the attached thread, but for the convenience of the readers, I'll mention it again here: The 256 comes from 16 games * 4 speeds * 4 visibility levels.

Thanks for the story, Ken! I laughed out loud at first. Then I realized what a sad state of affairs it is that people representing the "new" Atari have no concept of the history behind the name Infogrames is now using. *sigh*

The first two Final Fantasy games were recently released for the PS1 as "Final Fantasy Origins." I've been feeling a little "nostalgic" (pardon the pun) for my days as an old-school Ultima fan. I haven't played any FF except the first Legend for the original Game Boy. To anyone who's tried out FF Origins - is it worthwhile?

I'm also a big fan of the older games in the Ultima series (look at my avatar ). To see such a thing for the 2600 is very, very exciting. It does indeed flicker a bit in XStella for Linux, but not terribly so, I think because of the color choices and small sprites. I certainly don't mind single-color figures, white grass, and so on. I managed fine playing the first four Ultimas on my 130XE. In some ways I think more "iconic" rather than "realistic" graphics helps you get into the game more - your imagination has more opportunities to fill in the details. As a technical achievement, this is very impressive. But what about the plot? Part of what made Ultima - particularly IV, V, and VI - special was its storyline. You weren't just there to crawl through dungeons and collect treasure. You were there to learn about and aspire to virtues, to remove the ruler who corrupted them, and to eventually heal relations with a strange new race. This depth is probably out of the realm of a 2600 game... but then again, people thought an RPG would be, and here is one being started. Paul, what kind of story and interaction with characters are you planning? Anyway, I am really looking forward to seeing more. Great work!

Definitely Testcart... I haven't scored any points at all! Seriously, it's Marble Craze for me. Level 6 is the best I've managed to do, even starting at level 5 with all my lives intact. Losing the walls just does me in... I wouldn't say that only reaching level 2 in Oystron is that bad considering you spend a lot of time on each level. Making it that far means you've survived for a while! (I've only made it to level 2 myself, so I might be biased...)

As far as I can remember, it did.