Jetboot Jack

Too many fonts - the "Atari 8bit By" line looks crude IMHO - that typeface is not used anywhere in the game... sTeVE

Really like the concept, a lovely mashup of games! But visually it looks like a type in game from Antic back in the day... sTeVE

Bloody hell that is totally excellent - what a superb job!! sTeVE

I see where you are going - anything but the PCE CD soundtrack for Y's just sounds wrong IMHO - the SMS version is horrid... sTeVE

That Trantor Demo is hokum - they are not sprites, just animations with some scrolling - no masking or anything... sTeVE

Homebrew - nasty home-brew. sTeVE

Superb! One of my favourite NES tunes - that is an awesome conversion!! sTeVE

Exactly the technique we used on Shadow of the Beast! sTeVE

Got mine, excellent read! sTeVE

Good grief that's a blast from the past - somewhere in my loft I have my original ST/7800 devkit software from Atari with MADMAC on the disks - version 1.05 from memory, both for 68K and 6502 I *think*... sTeVE

That is awesome, Michael is a dear friend, we worked together at EA in the early 00's making rather spiffing LOTR games! He is a genuinely lovely chap, with boundless enthusiasm! sTeVE P.S. It's Vaughn Bode not Vaught Bode

Well I took a look - I had a few of the unprotected retail discs given to me in the U.K. to support disc owners. Although I am unsure how widespread this was - as the company I worked for did distribution too... So far I have only uncovered a couple of flippy discs, one disc has NYC and Alley Cat, the other Speedace and Zybex. Supplied unprotected for me to copy for tape purchasers... I will continue to look for the others - I know there were more US Gold ones (I got them when the Americana label was live) where the Synapse games went to die in the UK. There we also others from U.K. Publishers - I had Draconus and Cosmic Pirates at one point... I will test them as they've been untouched in boxes for around 20 years! sTeVE

That is great!

It's been a while, but in my loft I have/had copies of the disk that Zeppelin gave to retailers to "copy" for users who bought the tape, but wanted a disc version - for this and Draconus. I will try and dig, em out... sTeVE

I've finished it! I really enjoyed the read, my only suggestion would be a bit of a buff on the "games" - it really needs screen shots with each game and the text does not always pull out the "what's really special" about the game from an Atari 800 point of view. sTeVE

This is awesome!!! sTeVE

If you follow those Trebor threads you can see lots of effort has gone into those palettes - there are many of each, with a range of values to look at... For A8 I favour the PAM palette - "277NTSC" sTeVE

That was not my point, I am aware of different systems electronics, my point was weak reds and odd PAL colours are not a property of PAL or NTSC, but A8 design... sTeVE

I've been using some of the wonderful palette's developed by Trebor for 2600/5200/7800 and A8 - http://atariage.com/forums/topic/218439-pam-finally-gets-some-clothes/ - in my quest for emulated Atari perfection :-) sTeVE

To be fair it's not PAL's color gamut that is at fault but Atari's output of it's PAL video signal - PAL has a good bandwidth for color and removes hue errors, also chroma errors are not present in PAL outputs.... Take a look at machines developed for PAL rather than converted to PAL, or later machines like the ST and the AMIGA to see what I mean - proper reds... sTeVE

Emkay, I am still utterly confused - you seem rather bent on making this thread about the impossibility of this being a good version of the game with good sound. From what I have seen Bosconian is shaping up to be an exemplary game for the little Atari and from what I know of the audio abilities of the system I expect there to be equally great sound - the samples are already awesome!! This is an Atari forum celebrating our collective enthusiasm for this old computer - lighten up, this is gonna be great! sTeVE

I'm confused - the MSX has one 3 voice AY chip - a very limited chip in my experience of having to actually use them in games. How does the A8 need 2 pokeys to come near that? Getting a solid rendition of the game audio on Pokey is totally practical IMHO; either as a conversion from the WSG original or based on the MSX conversion... sTeVE P.S. The conversion is looking absolutely fantastic by the way, a really great piece of work!!

Indeed - the chip was sold from 1978 (it's in their catalog of that year) - hence it's inclusion in the Intellivision etc - and is still in various forms in production - quite a feat... But that it is less powerful than Pokey does mean we have "expectations" :-) sTeVE

I'm about halfway through the book - enjoying it very much! sTeVE

I think Zylon Bane is saying that the early members of the AY sound chip family (and variants such as the YM2149) as used in many home micros and consoles that favoured off the shelf components like the INTV/ST/MSX/ZX Spectrum etc is not a very powerful sound ship. And less flexible than Pokey in many ways - so perhaps getting great Bosconian audio should be possible given the AY powered MSX version is quite good albeit the usual tinny AY... As someone who has had to support AY/YM chips in various games, I gotta say I think in the right hands they can do pretty good audio, but it's always "thin" - on the GRADIUS arcade machine dual chips sound kinda neat as do Konami SCC enhanced carts - but they are not anything like AY... sTeVE P.S. The AY chip was designed in 1978 - so Pokey is pretty much a contemporary...