Feralstorm

This was inspired by the fact that for the longest time, I had no proper 7800 two-button controllers for my 7800, which locked me out of at least some of the 7800 library. It also occured to me that many 7800 folks either don't have controllers in good working order, may not have the skill or patience or money to modify a Sega or Nintendo controller, or buy a better one, or just plain like a certain 2600 controller best for most things. Now for the pitch - Are there any (or is anyone interested in producing) hacks of 7800 games which require two-button controllers that modify the control scheme to work with one-button/2600 controllers? I was frustrated to find out that Klax required a two-button stick to get going, but the game itself doesn't require two buttons to play. Obviously it's impractical to change a game that needs two separate buttons, but there's gotta be a few out there that can get by with one button (like Klax), either by changing the second button input to a possibly unused joystick position, or folding functions together the way games like Xevious do. Just a thought. I'm betting more people than just me might appreciate it.

Pengo Zookeeper Gauntlet Kangaroo And more!! OK, I'd love to see someone TRY a vector-ish Battlezone or even I, Robot, just to see if it's even possible. Actually, I'd love to see a 7800 Battlezone have two modes, "Arcade-style" and "2600-style" (both graphics and gameplay-wise)

That's usually been my experience, The Instant replays seem to be most likely if you come close to touching the chefs and/or thrown food.

They don't seem to adversely affect the performance of the stick much (makes the feel a bit "mushier" if enough tabs break), and since the tabs take stress with normal operation, you'd need epoxy or better glue to keep them from snapping off again in no time - so it may not be worth repairing them. Buy more FB2s for spare sticks.

People have speculated on porting NES games to the 2600, including SMB. It's pretty much a given that the 7800 could not do an exact copy of Super Mario, but the point of porting, especially in the world of early consoles, is to work around the limitations, modifying gameplay and graphic elements where necessary, and exploit the system's strengths where applicable. I still believe someone will eventually make Super Mario for the 2600 (not just a Smurfs hack) if only to try it, though it may bear only a vague resemblance to the original.

The answer is... maybe.

The competitive downside of the Jaguar hardware seems to be that more emphasis was paid to 2D and 2.5D power, as opposed to 3D polygon stuff. It would be neat to see what could be done on the top end of both Jag genres

I must be a lot rougher on FB2 Joysticks than a lot of people. I've busted at least two of them. It usually starts with little plastic tabs breaking off inside the stick base and rattling around. On one the stick snapped off at the attachment point, as mentioned above.

I don't know for sure, but I'd guess the ship looks like that because a missile was used to create it instead of a player. If that's the case, it would be tough to make the ship look like much of anything, at least not like your mockup. Just making assumptions from experience, but it looks like 1 player was used for flying things, another was used for ground objects, and the two missiles used for the ship and the bombsight, as well as the shots After all, if they used a player, why even bother with the weird flicker-tent shape when they could've just made a reasonably good 8-pixel wide ship?

Since , similar to the Flasskback 2, the C-64 stick is a modernised recreation of the original hardware, i'd assume it does.

Haven't looked yet, but it probably looks just like 7800 Ms. Pac Man, with the sprites from PacManPlus's other hacks. check out the threads for "Ms. Pac Attack" or "Pac-Man" or others in this forum. Screenshots are in there somewhere.

I'm to blame for asking the question. I love playing Pac-Man and Ms. Pac on the 7800 (through the CC2, along with the other great Pac-hacks), and it was just a little sad to go from those cute Bakasama-ghosts back to the slab-ghosts when I wanted to play Ms. Pac-Man. Thanks much all around for making the effort. I've messed around with minor bit-hacking on some 2600 games. Perhaps I should see what. if anything, I can do to a 7800 game. I like Dig Dug, but those sprites look a little clumsy at times.

Thankyew.

Sorry to re-bump, but is there a simple graphic hack of Ms Pac-Man out there anywhere (same ol' Ms. Pac, but with the improved sprite graphics) ?

Probably only if you didn't mind a version of Zaxxon with point-obstacles istead of walls It would have to be a pretty extensive hack to switch from "hop around on the ground and collect stuff" to "always flying and hitting fuel tanks to survive" I wouldn't bet on that altitude gauge or diagonal playfield being possible - at least not on a hack of DF Would be closer to arcade Zaxxon than Coleco Zaxxon though, most likely.

The show producers had to get examples of 100 different toys for their celebs to mess with. They probably just went with the path of least resistance. Like that lame digital sound See'n'Say instead of the old pull-string version. Was kind of interesting that one of the gameplay screens that appeared in the Atari segment was of that unreleased except-on FB2 "Wizard" prototype.

"subjective" True enough on the lack of meaning behind it all. Said right at the start of the show that YOU will disagree with the ranking. It was web-poll based I believe. On the upside, Atari beat out Nintendo, which makes sense froma historical perspective if nothing else. On the downside, Transformers ranked in the 40s.

Why's this in the 7800 hacks section?

No problem with disliking the Jag or its controller (I likes 'em myself, but it's easy to see why someone wouldn't), or even including it on a bad controller list, but would you rank it as #1 worst? "WEE-OOO WEE-OOO! Uh-oh! Here come the hyperbole police!" </Stan Smith>

Definitely NOT the worst controller ever, though I will say the Jag Pro-controller was much nicer.

I seem to remember hearing one or both sides of the track were made using the ball. It stands to reason the center stripe was done with the missile for the oncoming car player(s). presumably the oncoming cars were not multicolor so they wouldn't affect the colors of the road stripes as well ... or laziness.

Let's hear it for Honkey Ding, the great (really) white ape!

Are you modifying the assembly and re-compiling, or are you using a bit-hacker to modify the binary directly? I do the latter for the hacks I've done, and there's a limit to what can be done with that method

For what little it's worth, I could see Major Havoc done on the 2600 (or at least the inside-base bits) using a variation of the kernel for Thrust. From a purely graphical standpoint, Coleco DK is pretty decent, and becomes more arcade-close with some judicious hacking. The main flaws are, as I see it, NOT a lack of multicolored bits, but a bigger than 4K size to allow for more than two screens, and more complex sprite behavior, so you might have to deal with more than one barrel or fireball at a time.

I seem to remember the "many faces" reviewer saying the Parker Brothers Frogger didn't have the 'second snake' (which I assume means the snake that wanders on the big floating log), but it does. haven't noticed a 'second snake' on the Starpath Frogger, but I find it a little tougher than the PB version - is there one or not?