Giles N

It may take some time. I think I just stumbled across by coming by accident to crush a blinking ice-block and saw the Snow-bee numbers on top of screen decreased.

I love it.

I think the analog controller makes for a very positively unique experience with Pole Position (which festured a highly sensitive wheel in the arcade), Star Wars, Resque on Fractalus and Missile Command. Unfortunately, it makes more typical arcade-gamers (often 2D games), more difficult, as you have to move the stick quite some space to have it go from say left to right. And in some games instant turning is needed. Atari should have produced two standard-sticks, to use with different games. Buts its cool for 3D or aiming and puzzle games.

I will try to get hold on Zaxxon some day. Is it a game you can complete, like Moon Patrol?

Again, I may be like 30+ years after other people here as to classic atari-console game-mastery, but found out: In Pengo, the standard way of taking down a Snow-bee is to push an ice-block on it. The second way is to push the wall of the gamefield when Snow-bees are close to it. It knocks them out for 4 seconds or so, so you can just walk over them to take them. The third way is to push 3 diamond-blocks in a vertical or horizontal line, which give a huge bonus and knocks out all Snow-bees on screen for 4-5 seconds. Walk over as many as possible to take them out. Now I discovered a fourth way. To complete a level (called bird), you must take out a set number of Snow-bees. There are limits as to how many are on screen at-once. And here is the trick: as soon as one Snow-bee is out, several ice-blocks begins to blink in the color of the Snow-bees on that level. If you are quick and destroys the flashig ice-block before the Snow-bee spawns, you actually get one more on the counter of how many are taken out. So you can take out Snow-bees (before they come out to chase you), by destroying the flashing ice-block when they are about to emerge from these. In two of images provided you’ll see a destroyed color-flashing ice-block and in the next image the Snow-bee-count decreased from 4 to 3. Good gaming!

My first 7800 was PAL (as I live in Europe). I bought it to check out stuff I ‘missed out’ as a kid in the 8-bit era. Started with an SMS and some classics there. SMS was actually a success in Europe and South-America. Then I got a NES and some of the classics that Nintendo haven’t provided reiterations of on their modern consoles. Then I thought: what was before that? Was it any earlier system that had any good-looking and playable titles (which I connected with). So I bought a 5200 since it had Star Wars, Pengo, Pole Position and Robotron, all which I remember to played as quite young. And I think the average quality of 5200 games, despite a small catalogue, has a high quality. Then I wondered what Atari did to compete with NES and SMS, so I got an Atari 7800. Many cool games there. But some where easy to obtain ntsc and others easy to obtain PAL, so imported a ntsc. So I’ve got one selection of PAL games and one selection of NTSC games (with overlaps as I have sometimes just bought bundles or lots out there). Fatal Run and Motor Psycho was not difficult to get on PAL. Both are good. Motor Psycho is not as smooth as SMS Hang On, but festures a road with lots of ups and downs and variations of curves and obstacles, while Hang On has a flat landscape. Fatal Run runs smooth, works well. Different from Road Blaster, but overall works and plays well. Well-made road with curves and uphill and downhill, as a you close in to the town where you’ll deliver the anti-radiation meds, the horizon background changes from mountains or hills to a city. Not quite the 9,5/10 of say Ninja Golf, but a solid 8/10 for both.

I don’t think you’ll find RPGs on the 5200 game list. There are games on it that can be finished, but the most common sort of game is arcade/pick-up-and-play. — Fatal Run is also for the 7800 if its the car-shooter game.

See ^above. I think many of these could be nice additions (of course, not the titles already available on both 8-bit and 5200), if put on 5200 carts and reworked or reprogrammed or whatever to be used on the 5200 console.

I will throw in Ballblazer, Countermeasure, Galaxian and Zone Ranger and Joust (a good port), somewhere out there. Don’t know where. I haven’t really tested Space Dungeon as I don’t have good way of using two sticks.

Yeah, I wondered if I was going to extend it to 30 or 40. I’ve not seen the games you mentioned. I wondered how many atari400/800 games that has been successfully ported to the 5200. If the hardware is quite similar, one should think many of them would easily ported... ...but heck, what do I know...

What is your top 10 list of Atari 400 or 800 games that you would want to see ported to the 5200? Please rank from top to bottom, or just mention 10 that you would like to see as fully working cartridges available for the 5200 system.

What does it mean to provide or send a ‘binary’ for a reproduction cart? Ha - sorry for being so out-of-the-game, but just don’t know. Since I’ve spent some money on some of these games, I could really need some back-up carts of favourites or hard-to-get-games. But what is sending or providimg a binary for the reproduction carts?

(I started a thread under 5200 programming on the issue of converting 400 or 800 games to 5200 cartridges. You can also input stuff there if you know about these issues, or have opinions on which games should make it onto the 5200. But you can also discuss that here, since this is about favourite games).

And you can get that on cartridge to run in a proffessional-quality manner?

Is it considered easy or difficult to reprogram games for the Atari 400 or 800 as to run with professional quality on a 5200 system? Are there big differences in 1) hardware 2) program language? I’m very ‘layman’ as to programming and hardware. If its possible, please, describe or explain in quite straightforward or common terminology.

So, how many games from the atari400 or 800 (I’m not familiar with these and their hardware/set-up, could be professionally (as to quality), be ported through binaries(?) or reprogramming onto 5200 carts? In your view?

What sort of (classic) games do you like?

When will this thing be released?

So which are your top 10-20 favourite 5200 games?

Anyone who knows what the cart-reproduction-service do?

I browsed through all officially released colecovision games on YouTube. Seems to be some overlap of titles. But I could not see any driving games looking as good as Pole Position (which has a ‘paralaxing’ speedway as you move from right to left), and no Resque on Fractalus (which is massively impressive for a 82-84 system). Star Wars seemed better on music (and gameplay on tiefighter section), but less colourful than the 5200 version. Frogger 2 seemed to have better grfx on 5200. Saw no actual Pac-Man games there (did I browse to fast?)

Ok, thanks for the verification about Ms Pac Man. It looks splendid even today as this nails the Pac Man-look as to be just a few pixels away from the arcade classic. I have thread about which 5200 games means most to you, under the 5200-forum. You could put in some thoughts about centipede and other 5200 games there too, if you feel like. I don’t have the trackball at all. I have two refurbished org.controllers and one modded-for-atari-5200 neo-geo-stick. Centipede for the 5200 is good for this time (82-84). I see Centipede is a classic, but not one I played on a coin-op as a kid. Nice to have it though. Haven’t gotten to play 2P on it yet. Persuaded my bro to join me 2P on Double Dragon and Rampage. On Rampage we got through all 132 cities. Hilarious comments, story, concept. Very crisp gameplay.

And Centipede and Ms Pac Man are among the best 8-bit ports aren’t they?

I don’t know. I’m awaiting my PAL ‘Impossible Mission’ in the mail. I was absolutely dreadful at it in dem ol’ days as a kid... Interested in how they ported it though...