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FYI - on the screens like this with the gaps in the top/bottom, if you go off screen and just leave the joystick alone the ship will continue on off screen and rack up a big score.

Yes, the speech is really impressive. I can't take credit for that. Eckhard Stolberg wrote the routine/utils originally. You can check it out here: https://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/199702/msg00018.html It's been almost a decade since I used that, but as best I recall I simply loaded the .wav up in CoolEdit and downsampled it until I got it as low as I could go and still sound ok. The 'Prepare for battle!' is actually a MAME wav file from Space Fury.

That time of the year again. For those in the US, ignore all the political nonsense going on, have a beer and hot dog and play a quick round of this. Happy 4th!

As far as AtariAge homebrew goes, go to the store and sort by most popular. That gives you a pretty good idea. Roms are available for most of it with a little searching. BTW, love z26 (works great in CentOS).

That's true. But there is a growing subset who doesn't. Back in the day, if you made bB games you were told a lot of the time "bB games suck! You should make asm games". I have a feeling it won't be long until we start seeing "Vanilla asm/bB games suck! You should be using DPC+", etc. I've already had one or two comment shot my way that if I ever do a Dungeon 3, it needs to be DPC+, 64k, etc. Not knocking anybody else or their games. They're great. But the scene is changing.

The game has been out long enough that a few people are coming across the Easter Egg on their own and asking questions, so I thought I would try to explain it in detail. Get the mistletoe and go to the other megalithic structure (not the grove where you start). If you move into it, you will teleport to <somewhere else>. You may notice the mistletoe did not make the journey with you. You have misused the power of the mistletoe and are now trapped in an infinite realm with no way back home. Your only recourse is to try and survive for as long as you can. Meanwhile, back in the forest the dark faeries would have found the mistletoe laying on the ground where you disappeared from and returned it to the Temple of the Crow. After your inevitable death, cycle through the playable characters and you will find a 4th character (from the dark realm). He also wants the mistletoe. Not to restore nature in this realm, but to return home (he was sucked through when you opened the portal). Therefore he needs to pass through the other megalith after getting the mistletoe to win the game. Healing at the grove doesn't work for him because he is not aware of the Old Gods, who in turn will not bless an unbeliever.

Dungeon 2 works on hardware, Stella, & z26. It does not work on the Atari Flashback Portable (which is known to use a sketchy emulator). You might want to try it. If it works, you at least know you haven't gone down the wrong path they have. You can get the rom here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/261370-dungeon-ii-solstice/ You may also want to try some of the other roms that don't work on the AFP (the ones that aren't controller related). If the original works, then you know you're on the right track. http://atariage.com/forums/topic/259166-flashback-portable-needed-controller-hacks/

Looks like CBS showed Trog a few times in the '73-'74 timeframe. That sort of fits. It also has a courtroom scene, but the creature isn't present in court. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066492/ http://epguides.com/CBSLateMovie/

The only thing I can recall that fits the description is Skullduggery: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066384/

After hockey was ruled out, and I saw the time frame was relatively short, I figured it was something he had worked on before. So Galagon: https://archive.org/details/msdos_CHAMP_Galagon_1997

Something from Midway? Possibly from '81?

James from ZPH let me know his setup was losing sync during the speech routine, which by necessity jumps way up on scanlines used (Quadrun does the same thing). CRT's should be fine and a lot of the newer TV's too (mine run it without issue). But as resolutions get higher and TV's become more finicky, I figured I'd put a speechless version up as well (added to the first post). The gameplay is the same. The 4k version has the speech sample, the 2k does not. Originally the game was a 2k entry in a mini game compo anyway. Just want to clarify something I was asked recently. Killing the Midgard Serpent and the Rainbow Bridge color cycling doesn't mean you've won. It just means you've cleared that round. Hitting fire starts the next round. It is just a chance to for you to rest for a minute. Also, I have no plan to put this on cart. This was used as a basis for Scott's "Army of Darkness" hack a while back, so the game has already seen a cart release.

The hockey game he's referenced before? Go Canes BTW.

https://alienbill.com/2600/101/docs/stella.html#NUSIZ

Out of curiosity, I tried several of my games. Anything written in bB fails immediately. Even the really old versions. My asm stuff works but has the usual issues. Bifröst displays and plays (attached if you want to see). It has collision detection and NUSIZ issues as expected. It also has positioning issues as seen in Dungeon II. That could be a byproduct of not processing things like the NUSIZ and sound commands. The cycles that would have been used for that don't get used. Or there could be a flaw in the HMOVE emulation. Don't know. Even throwing money at it, I doubt you'll be able to find a programmer to get the issues ironed out. It's most likely going to require somebody who really knows the in and outs of writing a 2600 emulator. Only a handful of those guys are around and they are busy with their own projects. 2600 rom bifrost_20181104.bin Jag rom vvcs-bifrost.rom

I've pretty much confirmed it doesn't process NUSIZ. I removed all the NUSIZ commands from my 2600 rom and the game world displays identical (see attached) to what we see on the Jaguar. d2(wNUSIZ turned off for comparison to VirtualVCS).bin NUSIZ is used in a lot of programs. So that would mean for example no 3 enemy planes in Combat. The bomber would only be normal sized. Pretty much any Space Invader type game would be messed up. Etc. So between that, the insane speed things get run at, collision detection issues, flicker issues, etc. I would be shocked if you find more then a few that work good enough to be called playable. Everything pretty much needs to be turn based (board games, etc). I've tried, but can't get the text to display any better than what we have in that last rom you posted. Move it a pixel closer to each other and you get the squished mess. It also moves things at the top of the screen too close to each other depending on the layout (whenever the initial placement of the sprite is not on the left). This of course doesn't happen in Stella, z26, or on hardware, so I'm not sure what all the differences are, but it is obviously doing things differently and the overall timing is off.

v2.1.3 in Linux. I imagine the vast bulk of the games are going to be pretty much unplayable.

I downloaded Virtual Jaguar and gave it a go. Played as all the different characters. Won a game or two. So display issues aside it seems to work ok. The display is heavily timing dependent, and the emulator timing seems a little off. I may be able to tweak things and get it looking more or less correct (except for the missing sprite copies). It will probably take a lot of trial and error though. Since I don't want to bug you every time, I just want to verify that you are just copy/pasting into the existing binary at those specific locations? Are you using a regular hex editor or is there something written specifically for the Jaguar?

None. I just changed the relative placement of P0 and P1 on those scanlines. Like I said, it looks weird, but you can read it. Based on what I've read in this thread about things not be resized or duplicated, I'm assuming the emulator doesn't support NUSIZ. So there's not really anything we can do about the missing graphics.

It's great that it works as much as it does, however not being able to see the menu and stats hurts the playability a lot. Since the upper half of the screen seems ok (no garbage or overlaying of sprites), I have redone the lower half with the same spacing. Hopefully everything will now be readable, if a little weird looking (ex."Ca st"). The missing replicated sprites on the map can be chalked up to fog of war or whatever. Anyway, if you get time, you may want to see if this works better. d2_jag1.bin

If you haven't tried it already, Dungeon II may work. It is 4k and being turn based it doesn't use collision detection. I do some odd stuff with the display which is apparently what causes it to not work on the portable, but if you're looking for stuff to try it may work. You can get the rom here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/261370-dungeon-ii-solstice/ EDIT: For whatever reason, the link goes to where it is supposed to then redirects to a different thread entirely. (Al - forum issue)

Agreed. Don't let it get you down. Keep doing what you do. I foresee this cycle playing out the same next year for a lot of these categories. It may be closer, but one title will mostly sweep. And it will always be an arcade port.

I'm just glad D2 was able to place or show in every category it was nominated for in the face of competition with more RAM/ROM. I've played John's stuff since the '90s, so there's no shame in getting utterly crushed by Mappy. Nothing but respect. If you look at the last batch of games released in the store and sort by most popular, that sort of showed how things were going to fall out. I had a feeling packaging would be close and come down to Dave and Nathan. I knew it would be close. Congrats Nathan! There were some oddities with the overall process I thought. For example, Space Game wins Best bB, but isn't in the nominees for Best Homebrew? I know everybody loved the Best WIP category and thought it was the most competitve, etc. It seems a little unfair to me to compare games at varying stages of completion. I am curious, assuming some of these games aren't completed by the end of next year will they be eligible for Best WIP again? The same with some of the games that were finished this year but not released on cart yet. Do they get another go, or are they limited to Best Packaging? <Spike Lee mode>Grumble Grumble DPC+ Grumble Grumble</Spike Lee Mode> J/K

I like the idea of a playfield editor, but it is kind of klunky as is. You might want to debounce the fire button so the player can't just hold it down. Make them hit fire each time they place something. Makes it easier to get the layout you want. If you walk around with the fire button pressed at the moment, you get all kinds of unintended designs. Sometimes on the wrong side of the screen. If it were me, I'd lock the players to their side of the screen in the editor. I don't want the other guy coming over messing up my great design.

If I hit the other player and just continue to hold the fire button down I clobber them when they respawn. So, bam, bam, bam, game over. You may want to randomize the location where the defeated player is respawned or keep the other player from firing until the defeated player is respawned. Are you supposed to be able to go on the other players side of the screen in the editor?