Raiu

I'd just like to add my "wow"s to the pile. This looks absolutely amazing, and, except for the control difficulties, feels right. I'm looking forward to the finished product. -DS-

Unless there's a public record of them explicitly releasing it to the public, the copyright on DK/2600 should expire around 2077 (Coleco version) and 2082 (Atari version). That's 95 years (standard corporate copyright duration for published works) from 1987. 1012004[/snapback] True. But Nintendo still doesn't own the copyright on that code, because Nintendo didn't write the code. Coleco owned and probably still owns the copyright on that specific game code. -DS-

.. have you tried www.atariage.com? -DS-

The problem there is that your list doesn't in any way correspond to the original poster's games. I think you're talking about different (albeit similar) systems. -DS- (Edit: oops, left a game off of the second list)

There were also two different Tron arcade games, but neither one has an Atari counterpart. The one most people remember is just called Tron: http://klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=10204 The other is Discs of Tron: http://klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=&game_id=7594 As you can see, despite the similarity in the names between Discs Of Tron and Tron Deadly Discs, they're not the same game. -DS-

As for the cartridges.... Well, this article always comes to mind: http://www.theta-g.com/rec/atari/ CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs are, in many ways, a big step forward, just because they can hold so much data. But the fact that they can so easily be rendered unusable, sometimes by the smallest scratches, means that ones manufactured right now aren't going to be usable in five years, unless their owners take really good care of them. A lot of PS1 games are unplayable now for that reason. And the consoles aren't much better, since moving parts wear out. Now might be a good time to stock up on PS1 and PS2 games, because working copies may be rarer than Swordquest Airworld in ten years -DS

The other one is the South American release. -DS-

Namco had nothing to do with Ms. Pac-Man (or Jr. Pac-Man, or Pac-Man Plus, or Baby Pac-Man). GCC showed their Crazy Otto design to Midway to stave off a lawsuit like Atari hit them with, and it was Midway who said "Instead of a hack, why not make us a sequel?", and so they had GCC turn Crazy Otto into Ms. Pac-man. Namco had no idea any of this was happening. GCC also hacked Pac-man into Jr. Pac-Man, but they were not a part of Baby Pac-Man. (And GCC sued Midway for using their idea of a "Pac-Man family" without them). Midway and GCC eventually gave/sold all the Pac-hacks to Namco to prevent still more lawsuits, but Midway's unauthorized sequels were the main reason for Namco and Midway breaking off relations. It was a lawsuit-happy time. So GCC made both the arcade Ms. Pac-Man and the Atari 2600 port - that might be why the game is so true to the arcade (within Atari 2600 limitations, of course) -DS-

There's a search box on every page. Just type "Mario Bros" into the box, change the "System" drop-down to 5200, and hit Search. -DS-

I always considered "Classic Gaming" like "Classic Rock" - referring to an era. Even though it's been over 20 years, stuff from the 1980's is still not and never will be Classic Rock. Stuff they're playing on the radio right now will never be Classic Rock. The Beatles are Classic Rock. Led Zeppelin is Classic Rock. Jimi Hendrix is Classic Rock. Eminem is not Classic Rock. The Hooters is not Classic Rock. Duran Duran is not Classic Rock. Similarly, to me, Atari 2600 is Classic Gaming. Colecovision is Classic Gaming. Intellivision is Classic Gaming. NES is not Classic Gaming. SNES is not Classic Gaming. Certainly the Dreamcast (a current-generation console) is not Classic Gaming. (Mind, you, I don't think those consoles are bad, by any stretch of the imagination, they just aren't what I think of when I think of Classic games) I'm guessing I'm in the minority with that view, though. -DS-

Completeness, of course. The Instrumental and the "Unplugged" versions are the only two of Buckner and Garcia's Pac-Man Fever songs I don't have. After that, I can start looking for MP3s of the *Foreign* versions.... -DS-

... I didn't even know there *was* an instrumental version of Pac-Man Fever. Must... find.. it... -DS

I was in 6th grade when I heard the song for the first time. I was *immediately* entranced. I annoyed my local rock radio station (WMMR, 93.3) by asking them to play it all the time. I recorded it off the radio (along with Jobs Rolling Papers ads that also used Pac-Man sound effects). My brother bought the album (on casette), and I just about wore it out. Then he lent it to a not-really-a-friend, who never gave it back. A decade later, another of my brother's friends dubbed his record onto tape, and I got to hear those old songs again. Still loved them. And now I have all the songs (original versions AND the CD versions) as MP3 files. So, yes, you could say I like the album. (I even have MP3s of most songs from R. Cade and the Video Victims' similar "Victims of the Video" album) -DS-

Interest in show is now zero. I missed PhillyClassic 1. I really loved PhillyClassic 2, 3, and 4. I wasn't really all that thrilled with it last year, since the new consoles seemed to be dominating the floor (and a few of the regular vendors, like the Big Table O' Handhelds, weren't there). Don't get me wrong, I like new games, but if I want to be surrounded by nothing but hype for new games, I'll go to Electronics Botique or Gamestop, not take a special 800-mile trip up to Philadelphia. (Heck, last year, a good portion of the floor was GIVEN to Electronics Botique and Gamestop) With the announcement that you're no longer even TRYING to put on the show I actually want to go to, and that even MORE of the floorspace is going to be filled with things other than the classic games I go to the show for (and things other than games in general - I mean, did you even look at the show you let them mix PhillyClassic with? How to avoid credit card fraud and how to find a good home contractor?), I have no interest in attending. Do you really expect people who supported Philly Classic in the past to support a show whose primary purpose is (according to NBC10's description of the event) to keep kids from having furniture fall on them and getting on the DO NOT CALL list? I can't speak for everyone, but I can speak for myself: until you or someone else brings back PhillyClassic, a convention by classic gamers for classic gamers, don't expect me there. -DS-

I almost always played every game variation, especially when the variations were non-trivial. Maze Craze, for example, is a completely different game with Capture or Wounds (I never liked the variations where the robbers "kill" you). Two-player games are great with Blockade. Unfortunatly, many Atari games *did* have only trivial game variations (score required to get extra lives, for example), so I stuck with the basic game more frequently with those. -DS-

The Kool-Aid Man bug sounds like what happens on a lot of very-late model 2600 jrs, so it's probably not an "emulation" problem. -DS-

Here, let me explain it another way: Yes, the explosion graphic is obviously just Evil Otto in inverse. However, the game does not create it by simply inverting the Evil Otto graphic on the fly. It is a deliberately-created separate image that just happens to look like Evil Otto in inverse. -DS-

As a kid, I saw it as an arrow, but I'm sure it's supposed to be a sword facing to the right... mainly becuase the dragons are all facing left. As a true hero, you wouldn't stab them in the back, would you? -DS-

LOL And where are you getting your figures from? I suggest doing some brief research..... here's a good place to start. http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=66637 925100[/snapback] I read that topic. I don't see how it relates to my point. The point is that E.T. sold a lot of copies (three million copies, to be exact), which is why the game is so common today. The problem is that Atari produced eight million E.T. cartridges, far more than any other game they'd ever made. On top of that, they paid $21 million for the license to use E.T. in the first place, so they already started out in the hole. Let me use simple math: If you make a hundred copies of a game, and sell 99 of them, then that's a hit. If you make a million copies of a game, and sell 99 of them, then that's a colossal failure. Atari did the latter when they should have done the former. They created more E.T. carts than consoles that had been sold since the Atari debuted in 1977. That's why the game failed so spectacularly. Even if it had been the greatest game in the world, Atari couldn't possibly have sold enough with a run of eight million cartridges to make a profit. If the game had had a normal production run (which is, what, one to two million copies?), it wouldn't be so infamous today. In fact, it would have been a spectactular success, even with a subpar game. Atari basically put all their money on a single horse, then shot that horse in three of its legs (by paying way too much for the license, giving HSW only five weeks to make the game, and then making way too many copies). Though, for the record, I don't believe the landfill story. It makes absolutely no sense from a financial perspective (the cost of transporting millions upon millions of cartridges from California to New Mexico, the cost of digging a hole big enough to hold them all (a hole over 64,000 cubic feet in size, assuming they're burying just neatly-stacked carts, and not the boxes), the cost of getting enough cement to cover that hole, and then the cost of going back and manufacturing millions upon millions of new cartridge casings to replace the ones they just needlessly destroyed). If the story said they dumped all the bare E.T. chips without casings, then *maybe* I could understand it, but not if full carts were destroyed. -DS- Edited after measuring an Atari cart and calculating just how much space five million of them would take up.

Anything by Mythicon. Fire Fly, Star Fox (not to be confused with the Nintendo series of the same name) and Sorcerer were just plain awful. Much worse than Pac-Man, which was merely a horribly inaccurate but still quite playable (and even fun) translation of the arcade game, and E.T., which was rather complex (and really would have benefitted from another month or two of playtesting) but hardly as bad as its reputation suggests. -DS-

It just annoys me because E.T., while not the greatest game in the world, is not as bad as its reputation suggests. It failed because Atari overproduced it to the point of absurdity. Had Atari made a normal production run, it would have been considered a hit game. (It still wouldn't have been considered one of the greats, but it wouldn't have gone down in infamy the way it did). Another part of it is that the kids (like me) who played it way back when had the advantage of the instruction booklet and the tip sheet that came with the game. The 12-year-olds playing it today just downloaded a ROM somewhere, and the game is complex enough (with no on-screen explanations like they're used to) to be confusing at first glance (for example, what do all those funny arrows and question marks and yelling e's at the top of the screen mean?), so that, combined with its reputation, makes them hate it immediately. -DS-

Gregory DG just linked to the entire list of known paddle games. Anything on top of that would be redundant. -DS-

No, as I said, the gold key uses the SAME initialization values as the other non-key non-chalice objects. That's 29 possibilities, not 18. I don't know where he got 18 from, though there are a few possibilities. (It was probably that he didn't have the code in front of him, and it'd been years since he'd worked on the game, so his memory was a little off) There's 18 different possible locations for the black key, 22 locations for the white key, 8 for the chalice, and 29 for everything else, including the gold key. I think the reason for seemingly few combinations of items is the nature of the random number generator of the 2600 hardware, not the game code. -DS-

The essential question: Will there be Pokemon Puzzle League again this year? Tetris Attack or Panel de Pon will do. -DS-

Unlike Pac-Man Plus, Ms. Pac-Man Plus was a bootleg. The fruit went through walls because they still entered at the same points as in the non-hacked version, even though the hack moved the tunnels. Similarly, the ghosts slowed down when they were near the original tunnel location, not when they got near the hacked tunnels. In other words, it wasn't a very well-done hack. -DS-