Atari 7800 - make the case

[Atari 7800 - make the case]

The real reason to have a 7800? Two words and a number: Cuttle... Cart... 2

[Flashback 2 review]

Thrust was the homebrew that ended up being replaced by Battlezone

 

It's an unfortunate shame, but on the bright side Battlezone gets a do-over from the stunningly poorly ported FB1 version.

 

Makes me wonder, since there likely were at least a few people who bought the first Flashback and assumed that games on there accurately relflected their original 2600/7800 incarnations... How many will buy a Flashback 2 and go "Hey, they changed these games! Some of them got a LOT better!"

[Atari 7800 - make the case]

'cause all the kewl kids have one!

[New COLECO - Head To Head dedicated system]

The big problem here would be that the majority of games people remember the Colecovision for were licensed from other sources. I doubt Nintendo is too interested in a Coleco stand alone with Donkey Kong, Just like Namco and Jakks probably wouldn't let a 2600/5200/7800 standalone with Ms. Pac-Man see the light of day.

[Weird Food Fight instant replay bug?]

I've usually found that instant replays are more likely when you come very close to getting hit by chefs or food during the course of the level.

[Joust, better than the arcade!]

Gotta admit the floating eggs bugged me. The motion-hampered pterodactyl I kinda preferred though, since in the arcade the pterry made things a LOT tougher.

 

Good thing I got a 7800!

[Just bought a Flashback 2! They're at Walmart!]

um... W00T!!1

[7800: Asteroids - VE (Vector Edition)]

I believe arcade and 2600 Asteroids pop the player back in when rocks are far enough aay from the center to give time to react (most of the time ) 7800 Asteroids just pops you in as flashing/invincible until you move (or wait too long). Probably take a lot of work to change that (a certain level of intelligence/code would have to be added to determine when it's safe to respawn the player)

 

I wonder if it's easier to hack 7800 Asteroids into Space duel or Asteroids Deluxe? I'd guess Deluxe, since ther'e less overall to add or change. (splitting snowflake-things, and ship shields. the code to animate the rocks is already there)

[Music in 2600 Games]

I thought the one-channel music used in Pengo and Moon Patrol (which could be turned on or off via difficulty switch) was a fairly decent compromise way to have background music without hobbling sound FX.Dig Dug does a pretty good job too, though usually music is killed when another sound kicks in (but it fit the pattern of the arcade game more or less, so no big deal there)

[CD>i movies?]

I think they are a slightly different standard than plain VCDs, so they work on some, but not necessarily all things that play VCDs. I remember the MPEG modules for the Commodore CDTV and CD32 were tweaked a bit so they could play the Philips CD-i movies in addition to standard Video CDs.

[Another Hack Idea]

Interesting idea. In some cases (Like the Nintendo Game ports) I'd be happy just to see someone try to hack the audio to be less crapful, pokey chip or not.

[7800: Asteroids - VE (Vector Edition)]

looks nifty (haven't played it yet though)

 

It'd be nice when the color issue is sorted out to set up white and a couple grays for some anti-aliasing on the vector lines. Looking forward to seeing where this goes, having loved all the various 7800 Pac-incarnations.

 

Now all we need is 7800 Asteroids Deluxe and Space Duel. Can't let the 2600 (or FB2) get ahead no can we?

[Atari Paddle Games ONE DOLLAR!]

Never saw the paddles going that cheap (sold out before the heavy clearances), but I'd be willing to get five or more at a buck each. The Atari paddle set is one of the better of the "NES on a chip trying to look like something else" TV games.

[Show me your CD32 / PC-FX Collection!]

No photos, but I have about 36 CD-32 games, and a few stray CDTV titles.

[Flashback 2 Reviews]

Lunar Lander looks about as good as I could have possibly expected. A vector-like landscape would've taken some pretty heavy programming gymnastics with missiles/ball to come anywahere close to the back of the box picture.

 

Too bad there's no video. Screenshots only tell a small part of the story, especially on 2600 games. Guess I'll just have to buy an FB2 to find out.

[Amiga 500 / 1200]

If you're talking about Amiga disk files (.adf) and similar, there are Amiga programs that can write them back to floppy disk as they were originally.

 

Aside from the kickstart/OS, there are no "roms" on the Amiga, just disks and files.

[Flashback 2 Reviews]

The reviewer seems to be under the impression the 2600 hardware is producing the menus.

 

Seems a little off that you need to turn the system off and on to get back to the menu (even if that's how a real 2600 works). A simple button to reset/reboot the system would've done nicely.

[Any update on the Flashback 2.0?]

need to check the threads for a better answer, but...

 

New 2600 Ports of Atari Arcade games - Lunar Lander, Asteroids Deluxe, Space Duel

 

New "sequels" to classic 2600 games - Adventure 2, Haunted House 2, Yar's Return

 

Releases of Homebrews/Variations - Atari Climber (Climber 5?), 'Vector' Asteroids.

 

Don't take my poorly-researched answer as gospel though.

[Namco Ms Pac II - the best TV game yet?]

I got the wired Ms. Pac stick, which is quite nice (the Pac-Man stick, which is just OK). A bit hard to justify buying it again at an inflated price just for the wireless gimmick, especially since the closest thing to a new game on there is New Rally X.

[Jr Pac scores..]

Jr. Pac Man totally kicks my ass whenever I play it, and playing with fewer ghosts feels like cheating to me.

[wolf 3d for jag?]

If I remember right, ID software did the Jag ports of both Wolfenstein 3D and DOOM. They're both quite good IMO. Wolf3D exceeded the PC game in some ways, and DOOM compromised a bit to fit the hardware and cartridge.

[Boing2600! update]

Just to add to the Amiga history.

 

The original Amiga version was also programmed in Amiga Basic (which I think was interpreted as opossed to compiled0 and did realtime calculations.

885639[/snapback]

 

Considering the original Boing Ball demo was a demonstration for CES, before Amiga was with Commodore, before the custom chips were commited to silicon, I have some strong doubts about that. It's possible the final version with control and multitasking and whatnot was written in Amiga Basic though.

 

FWIW, the rotation of the ball (in the Amiga version) is done using color cycling.

[Any update on the Flashback 2.0?]

With Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, and Space Duel, if Thrust was tossed in too, that would be four games with the same basic control scheme (five if Gravitar was in there too )

 

Just an observation, not saying it ain't a shame Thrust didn't make it.

[Taito Arcade -> Atari 2600 port]

Lupin III?? Is that like the "Cliff Hanger" laserdisc game??

[Close to what Atari could have done?]

Honestly, I think Coleco and Gary Kitchen did a pretty good job squeezing a graphically recogniable DK out of 4K. The playfield is about as good as it can get, and the only realistic improvement would be changing colors for scanlines that re primarily ladders. Even the sprites are pretty good (except for Kong hisself) for accuracy compared to other games available at the same time. I tried to improve the sprites a bit when I did my DK hack. (same sprite graphics as my mockup pics, slightly different colors on Mario and Pauline.)

 

Biggest things that hobbled 2600 DK (at the time, and in my opinion) was its 4K size and tfact that it was designed to avoid sprite flicker by only allowing one barrel or fireball per floor, which made the game a bit too easy.