Ben_Larson

I don't know if this has been very well publicized outside of the Stella list, but I'm pretty close to completion on my 4K VCS game 'Incoming'. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's a game I started way back in 2001 - didn't work on for about a year at one point - and finally got around to finishing up. What it is, is a 1 or 2 player Sabotage / Scorched Earth - type shooting game, with dynamic, randomly-generated terrain. I'm attaching the latest beta version (beta 3) of the ROM to this post for all who want to try it out or give feedback. It *has* been tested on real hardware (it's NTSC only at this point, BTW) and works fine. However, I think right now I'm the only person who has really tested it very much, and I was hoping to get some more feedback before finishing it. One thing you will want to keep in mind is that the left and right difficulty switches, in combination, select the terrain roughness in the game - so if you play it on an emulator, all you will get is flat terrain initially until you change the difficulty switches. Anyway, enjoy. FYI...I'm already at work on another game. Hopefully this one will not take 3 years to complete... Ben incoming1.0beta3.zip

Ok I got it. How about the famous speech of John F. Kennedy giving the challenge to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade, except with the original audio dubbed over so that he is *instead* challenging to port the Paris Hilton sex tape to the Atari 2600 by the end of the decade. Then cut to the Paris Hilton sex tape, of course...

With computers, you end up paying like 10 times as much for a doubling in performance when you get really close to bleeding edge technology. With that said, there's no reason to ever pay $3000 for a decent gaming computer. You can easily put one together yourself consisting of older technology for probably $300-$350 (minus monitor) that would still outpeform any of the 3 console systems out right now... Ben

Yea, well...that's just like...your opinion...man (bonus if anyone can name the movie that's from... )

Yea Metroid Prime should definitely be at the top of your list. Like Xot said, it is pretty much like the old-school Metroids, only in 3d. Super Monkey Ball is very addictive and challenging, and comes with a lot of good party games as well. Rogue Leader is probably the best Star Wars videogame ever (except maybe for the new one for GC). You literally get to re-enact the battle of Endor at the end of the game pretty much just as it happens in ROTJ, and it's pretty awesome. Animal Crossing is ok as something to kill time with, but me and my friend (who both own it) got bored after several months of playing it. Pikmin is pretty fun and original, but too easy in my opinion. I am, however interested in the sequel. I would also concur that Ikaruga looks awesome...if you're a fan of old-school 2d shoot-em-ups like Gradius and 1943. I've heard it's *extremely* hard, too, so I plan to get that sometime soon and find out for myself. Ben

Yea I hear this new game from Nintendo that comes in a gold cartridge is supposed to mix arcade action with RPG elements... Ben

I think it's part herd mentality, part kiddy image. Nintendo definitely can't do much about the first part, but continuing to release games that look cartoony and don't push the Gamecube's hardware isn't helping with the second part. True, young gamers obsession with realism and violence might be a passing fad, but from a business standpoint it doesn't really make sense to NOT jump on the bandwagon. In many ways it seems a lot like Atari in the mid-late 80s: Unwillingness to accept that the rules have changed and instead trying to convince gamers that they really want something that they don't actually want... Ben

Metroid was always about atmosphere, not action. The original probably had some of the best suspension of disbelief of any video game I ever played simply because, after a while, it actually felt like you were deep in some forlorn alien planet, forgotten by everyone, with no hope of escape. With that said, I don't understand how someone can compare MP to Halo. Like someone else said before, it's like trying to compare the original Metroid games to Contra...

The 7800 version of Choplifter is a port from the Apple II version. Maybe you were expecting a port of the arcade version like the Master System had. Compared to the Apple II version I think the 7800 version is pretty good though... Ben

I don't think the problem is that girls don't like video games. They like video games - they're just not as fanatical about the whole thing like guys are. Kinda like something else... Yea I just went there...

Jack Black is the biggest attention whore in Hollywood today, IMO. Is it really so hard to believe that he would make something up like this? None of these kids in any of these commercials look remotely like Jack Black...

I've seen garbled graphics on a 2600. I have an Enduro cart which is kinda dirty- I was playing it the other day and the bottom part of the screen started jumping from left to right, then the graphics went completely FUBAR and the top part of the screen started looking scrambled, like watching a scrambled cable TV picture. Then I turned it off, cleaned if off some more, popped it back in and everything was fine... Ben

You could always do what my friend's sister's ex-husband did: When your Playstation dies, buy a new one, put the old one in the new box, and return it to the store and claim it's the one you just bought and that it doesn't work - thereby getting a new Playstation for free and screwing Sony. Personally I also dislike Sony. Bought a Discman about a year and a half ago and the thing lasted less than a year before it died. Ben

Anyone seen this article on BBC regarding the state of the videogame industry? (Sorry if it's already been posted): http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3185663.stm I have a feeling what's going to happen is that developers are indeed going to have to consolidate in the near future due to skyrocketing development costs. That's probably going to mean fewer innovative designs in new games. As if the situation wasn't bad enough already... ...but that's just my opinion. Ben

If backgrounds changed color randomly and players had the ability to toggle what color they wanted to be at any given time, I think this would be a pretty cool game. As it stands right now I think it would be too easy to keep track of where the other player is at....just my own opinion though. Of course there might be some serious confusion as to who is who if both people are the same color... Ben

Thomas, I just played 1.06 for the first time and I think it's perfect...I wouldn't change anything else at this point. Besides, if you keep changing little details eventually you're going to go mad. I don't know if anyone else has mentioned this yet, but I also really like the touch of how the helicopter blades spin faster when you're ascending. As far as names, I was thinking 'Lost Choplifter' would be pretty funny...or 'Choplifter meets Vanguard'. Ben

I think I'd have to at least partially disagree with that. The 7800's resolution is only 160x200 whereas the NES is 256x224. Yes there is a 320x200 high-resolution mode, but as far as I can tell from the games I've played, it can only be used for certain sprites or rows on the screen... I agree though that the main problem was lack of larger games. Ben

Bump n' Jump was one of my favorite Atari 2600 games when I was younger but sadly I sold at a yard sale many years ago. I need to get another copy of it here at some point. Anyway...obviously the graphics aren't up to par with the arcade version, but the gameplay is basically the same (i.e. very addictive) and as I recall some of the boards were quite challenging...I think I'd give it an 8/10 overall.

No good sports games? Blasphemy I tell you... What about Activision Ice Hockey and Realsports Volleyball?? Ben

I'd have to agree with Andrew that his Chronocolor stuff (i.e. the Duke Nukem 'intro screen') is probably the most impressive thing I've seen on a 2600. Too bad we're relegated to displaying only static scenes with it because of the 2600's limited RAM capability, though...

Wait a sec...300 bytes for the whole 80x80 map? That's at least 8:1 compression by my calculations... Fractal generated on the fly, right? Ben

Paul, Are you using a run length encoding compression algorithm for the map? Ben

Guys - I just added a new version to the website which fixes a couple bugs and adds the ability to change terrain roughness. As always, your feedback is appreciated on the game (and kind of necessary for it to ever get past the beta testing stage ). Ben

Actually it's spelled 'aluminum' in America...so it is pronounced how it's spelled. http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=aluminum Ben

Yes...actually if you look at the specs, the only place that the NES really out-paced the 7800 was in screen resolution. As far as addressible ROM space, I believe both systems can do 64K at a time. And they both have 4K of RAM. Bottom line is that Atari just didn't have the vision to take advantage of the 7800's ROM capabilities (which was more than 10 times what the 2600 was capable of), and create the really epic, jaw-dropping games like Super Mario, Zelda, and Metroid. I mean, when the NES came out it had probably the best initial release of games of any system ever, IMO. Those games were at another whole level compared to everything else out there...and there was no way Atari could've made up that much ground at that point.