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the official Channel F thread!
Mikebloke replied to atari2600land's topic in Classic Console Discussion
Thanks! E5frog has given me some ideas to expand on it, I'll look to do that before I start anything else new. Maybe 🙃. Oh man I would have potentially jumped on that price a few years ago. Hope the person who ended up with my collection is still enjoying it, it's the one game I didn't have (though I only had cart / cart + instructions for the US only games). Still looking for a new console as it's more likely to happen than fixing mine with my capabilities. Shame there is no similar controllers available for pc. Might have to get into hardware after all and create an adapter. -
the official Channel F thread!
Mikebloke replied to atari2600land's topic in Classic Console Discussion
I only ever had chef personally, which is from a technical gameplay perspective a variation of ball with an easier difficulty in the sense that the "balls" in terms of food items only ever went up and down which was easier to manage mentally with one potentially being "held in place" by a cat with a fork to upset your rhythm. After the game and watch series sega did jump on it a bit with their own variation of games which felt like it had a higher pace, things like after burner, sonic the hedgehog and shinobi is the ones I had, but of course doesn't compare to a true hand held like a game boy or game gear. I would probably struggle to capture the pace of after burner on the channel F but might have a go one day! I had a number of pinball games like this as well, and the Tetris style lots-of games-in-one was very common at the time too. Game and watch gallery was a thing that ran from game boy to gba (with a ds version too on limited release) with a number of game and watch games converted over and most with a "modern" graphical variant with mario characters and sometimes new rules (fire for example had different characters that fell at different speeds). If quick and simple games on handheld is your thing, then it's worth checking those out. -
the official Channel F thread!
Mikebloke replied to atari2600land's topic in Classic Console Discussion
Check out https://mikebloke.itch.io/game-no-watch-ball-channel-f for the latest release. I've done most of the intended changes, attract mode now works, 3 ball points work as intended (10 each catch compared to 2 ball 1 point). I've tidied the arm graphics up. This is something of an accomplishment for me, although it's taken me across 5 days instead of my usual 3 to get to the place I usually do with these ports it's the first time I haven't had to reference the F8 assembly manual. I usually have to make constant references to the manual to work out how exactly some assembly opcodes work, whereas this time I've just gone for it and thankfully it has worked. However the code is an absolute mess, I know for sure there is code duplication and I can probably knock out a few hundred lines of code (currently sits at 2037 lines) if I wanted. Branching is an absolute pain and optimising where procedures is could probably help avoid having to branch to a third label just to jmp back so often. I'm a programmer, a games developer, but not an efficient one! Hope people have fun with this one, it's very playable I think. Let me know if there is any other games I should port over, game and watch or not. -
the official Channel F thread!
Mikebloke replied to atari2600land's topic in Classic Console Discussion
Really gutted I didn't get to necro this topic in time, on Monday I started work on a new game, Ball, based on the Game and Watch series. Was due to finish it yesterday but had other stuff to do. https://mikebloke.itch.io/game-no-watch-ball-channel-f Gameplay is done, I just need to tidy up the graphics but essentially it is done. Hoping to finish it tomorrow. Check the page above for instructions on how to play and more details on what I need to finish. Game and watch series is a nice one to work on as placement of objects can nicely go into a look up table rather than worrying about how it moves on the screen to player or other input. The screens also came with red green and blue overlays at times on the LCD panel which means it's a great way of adding to the Fairchild channel F. I'm likely to do a few more of these, open to requests or I might just go in release order. Nintendo please don't cancel me. -
Lists of games for all NTSC consoles (work in progress)
Mikebloke replied to dudeguy's topic in Classic Console Discussion
Sorry only just seen this it's just the Wikipedia list that I took days to edit into the right format for excel to sort, and then colour coded for region. I would need to find it as I lost interest in my own project but if you were really curious I could send it to you. -
Thank you I appreciate your attempts to alleviate fears and attempting to understand. At 35 I'm probably well below the average age of the users on this site, but I'm thinking when I do get to the age of many original atari enjoyers, will I be asking similar questions to them about the history of video game preservation but no longer having the first hand accounts that they had initially preserved here. There is a lot of non-atari related content, research, information and more here because we have congregated here out of habit. Other sites like reddit where you think this stuff might be instead is actually extremely dead and there is more active users talking about certain non atari systems here than anywhere else in the rest of the internet. I have a 2600, 7800 and a jaguar, but 99% of my posts here have nothing to do with atari at all and I only saw this because of a YouTube channel I am subscribed to. This isn't an acquisition specific issue, in fact it's possibly more preserved now than if it wasn't. But it did make me stop and think "is this information anywhere else other than this forum!" The more I think of it, it's probably a thing for concerned users like me to deal with than bothering Albert with an extensive archive save, try not to delete too much for the next decade or so 😛
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Not a homebrew for the PC-50X but I'm thinking of other discussions that may relate to systems. There is one (is it the arcadia?) about the manufacturing of boards in Taiwan and franchising the system for sale in different countries from one of the original staff members. Yes a lot of this stuff is possibly elsewhere too but some of it is probably only here. I'm not talking about preserving things like the fact that I had to use my foot to bend a PC-50X cartridge board so I could capture game footage no one else had ever uploaded before, or the taco thread, but things that might be important enough for people interested in 50-100 years time who might be curious.
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It's fine, I don't expect you to seriously know what atari as a company might do with this forum in 20 years time, but the thing is, many of us will still "be here". There is going to be a lot of gutted people in the future when eventual chopping does happen. I don't honestly expect Albert to give us a data dump of the entire forums either, I think I'll start a thread elsewhere of threads to be preserved off site.
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Thanks for the replies. In relation to number 2, I'm thinking more about systems like the 1292, vectrex, PC-50X, and of course other systems such as the Magnavox odyssey, fairchild channel f, bally astrocade etc. I think it's going to have to be a case of individuals like myself copy pasting everything into an archive system but an official copy dump would have been nice and much easier (for everyone but you) I guess. 3) well atari doesn't own the fairchild channel f yet, and some other copyright upstart has now taken it on in the US (though I don't think anyone has bothered to take it seriously given the 6 of us who probably still have a system and develop for it is all here). 😛
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I haven't been around so this is new news to me. I do have a few questions for @Albert and or @TrogdarRobusto 1) what happens to past and any future rom releases of homebrews here on the forum, does Atari have a policy on who owns such content? Can it be made official and public that any binary / other files that we have uploaded / may upload in the future will be still our property and not owned in anyway by Atari? This isn't just about atari systems, but all of them. 2) while there is no plans to remove non atari related material, this forum is a treasure trove of hundreds of threads about the history of systems both post and pre 2600. Some of the only information of systems development is found on this forum from researchers, some of them are sadly no longer with us and the only thing we have is their posts here preserving their precious research. Is there any plans to officially archive some or all of the forum so that this information is preserved just in case? I don't know if any other users are concerned but I'm worried that some of the only stuff on some systems is here and here only. I think I had a third but I've forgotten. Albert, congratulations and I respect your decision to be taken in house. I think this is further vindication that there is a place for retro gaming as a modern market and no doubt there will be some doors opening for further technical amazing homebrew experiences (or do they count as official now?!). I have had my doubts and I was one of those people who mocked the VCS release along with the other mad ideas like hotels. I'm still pretty critical of those things. But even I would say I'm relatively supportive of recent measures such as the 2600+. For what it's worth I still want to say "good luck" to atari. However the feel of the site will change with time, it's natural. I imagine many of us will migrate and slowly fade away. It's nothing personal, but it will feel different. Again, good luck to all partners involved.
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Nice! Looks impressive.
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the official Channel F thread!
Mikebloke replied to atari2600land's topic in Classic Console Discussion
It'll be me setting it wrong for the signature, I'll fix it next time! -
the official Channel F thread!
Mikebloke replied to atari2600land's topic in Classic Console Discussion
Got round to finishing the game as much as I'm likely to do for now. Hope you enjoy it! subf8.bin INSTRUCTIONS FOR SUBMARINE.docx There is now a "night sea" mode through button 4 on the console which switches the game to black and white - ships only appear when firing (or being hit). I have attempted to adjust the distance to the sides to make it TV able - no way to test this right now unfortunately This means there is a smaller moving / firing area so its not so wide. Manual is now done as well. I've kept the game in 2kb, no real reason to restrict it, its more just an achievement for me and can be cut down more than this, I haven't tried to optimise much, but it could be. I've kept the Escort in the standard 2 player mode, the reasons for this is that in the original Night Sea mode, the Escort is there and appears when the Destroyer fires. While it might be "fun" for the destroyer to not have a indefensible target for the Submarine player to hit on its side, I felt that a 2 ship firing situation gives no real tactical gameplay and a reason I've never been keen on implementing it in etiher this port or the Atari 2600 port I tried to do years ago. Essentially you just end up trying to fire on each other but get to move out the way first. This way, although the Submarine player does have a very obvious advantage (the Escort ship is always predictable route wise, and the Submarine is a smaller ship to hit) it also gives the destroyer a chance to hit the submarine as that player tries to focus on the escort. In tests with my children, the age difference helps even out the Submarine advantage and it is possible to hit the Submarine player fairly often. However, Submarine as a game is always a biased game in favour of one player. Rather than doing the modern thing of "evening" it out to be "fair", I've kept the spirt of the biased game by allowing Submarine player its significant advantage. Any plus version likely have buttons change game elements so it can be more versatile with its options (2600 style), escort on/off, one player or two player mode, hidden ship mode on or off etc. -
Hi everyone I've left this really late, as they have nearly finished but I'm in the process of selling my non-homebrew Videopac and 7800 games. Some of the videopac games are finishing today (sorry) but 7800 stuff is finishing tomorrow / monday. Almost all of these are PAL games btw in relation to 7800, videopac games are all European versions (think I have one US game but its a common one). Go here for the listings https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/acebloke1986 I'm also getting round to selling other consoles gradually, I'll try and be better and warn people beforehand. I have a lot more videopac and 7800 games still to list but they are all the £15 and less category. I'm now in the process of only listing things during seller deals, because the amount of money they take out normally is getting silly for any larger amounts.