The Night Phantom
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Posts posted by The Night Phantom
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Best Electronics has the exclusive rights to sell Alfred's Challenge, and Randy Crihfield's Hozer Video sells the rest. (Hozer's Ebivision section doesn't list Allia's Quest yet, but it is available according to the news page.)
[ 10-08-2001: Message edited by: The Night Phantom ]
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I'm with StanJr: an additional wrinkle or two might go far in making the game all the more addictive. Perhaps the additional threats could be activated/deactivated via the game select or difficulty switches. To complement the onscreen action I recommend some driving music and/or sound effects. In any case, this sounds like a fun project. Good luck!
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Originally posted by moycon:I'd have to say Haunted House. The Atmosphere of the game was certainly spooky with the blowing wind and creaking doors. And it was pretty fast paced and challengeing...But ohhhh jeeze those graphics were nothing to write home about!!
...which perhaps is why the graphics were so frequently kept in the dark! Less is more...
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Originally posted by StanJr:So do you have to swap them in between events? How do you do that.
I've never played the game, but that seems to be the idea. Just unplug the joystick and plug in the paddles, or vice versa. You could also use some sort of Y-cable or similar device that allows more than one controller unit to be plugged into a single port at a time.
[ 10-06-2001: Message edited by: The Night Phantom ]
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I'm going to nominate Yars' Revenge for its quasi-abstract techno-expressionistic vision, whatever the heck that means. It's like some kind of nightmarish '80s video angstfest.
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Originally posted by StanJr:I mean its fun and all, but should you have to have an extra controller just for Decathlon?
The conventional wisdom is that you should use the Track & Field controller (from Atari's Track & Field game). Another button-based joystick replacement like the Starplex Deluxe should have the same effect.
According to AtariAge's Decathlon tips, paddle controllers can be used during the running events.
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Parker Brothers' Frogger cartridge is pretty good, but Starpath's Frogger cassette for the Supercharger is even closer to the look and feel of the arcade original.
In my opinion, Space Invaders is actually better on a VCS than in the arcade. Sure, the Atari version has fewer invaders per board, but I feel its colorful graphics and numerous play variations put the home version on top.
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I don't know what happened to it, but the spoof's title is Flesh Gordon. It was to be based on the film of the same name, a pornographic takeoff on the Flash Gordon mythos.
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Although nostalgia certainly fuels a lot of today's Atari mania, firsthand experience of those glorious days is not a prerequisite, as some of our younger friends here attest. Remember that some people are enamoured of antiquities that were already relics when their parents or grandparents were born.
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Originally posted by Jess Ragan:P.S. Would the forum software stop censoring my posts if I just called the unreleased 007 game Octo-vagina from now on?
I'm sure you can say Octopussy if you try hard enough...
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Tonight a friend came over with her sons, ages 12 and 9. When my friend and I were planning the get-together, she suggested watching some of my DVDs, and I counterproposed playing some “antique” video games, since the boys had previously expressed some curiosity about them. I was surprised when they showed up: the nine-year-old kept crying out “video games” with much enthusiasm in anticipation of the experience. After pizza and some other activities, I broke out the 7800 and my VCS cartridges. They loved it! Not once did the graphics deter them from enjoying the games, and they kept poring through my collection in search of more gems. When they left for the evening, they expressed interest in playing more with my antique games soon. And yes, at home they have a PlayStation and their own GameBoy Colors. So, here are two more lads on whom the charms of the classical era are not lost.
Several persons have mentioned that current games have better graphics than the VCS', and (unless I missed it) this claim has gone unchallenged. Clearly the current games have more complex or realistic graphics, but I do not believe these things ipso facto constitute better graphics. Many VCS games' graphics suit their nature and purpose exquisitely.
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I don't recall ever having a video game dream, but many of the dreams recounted here are nonetheless familiar. I too have dreamt of fabulous finds of usually fictitious (or at least slightly wrong) items, but they usually are Star Wars action figures, another collecting passion from the same era that I still indulge in.
Still, I have had one dream that I could liken to being within a video game, though it wasn't about games. When I had this dream I had a clerical job in which I had to do a lot of number crunching regarding payroll and sales. Every week the clerical department had to ready the payroll and several reports on Monday and Tuesday. Unfortunately, it often happened that I would have to stay very late Monday nights and still return early Tuesday. This particular dream occurred on a Monday night or actually a Tuesday morning on which I had returned straight home for about an hour or so of sleep before I had to go back for my Tuesday shift. Naturally I had been doing lots of number crunching that night, and number crunching constituted my dream. My dream was solely numbers and calculations. Now, I don't mean that I was seeing numbers or hearing numbers or any of that. I mean that the dream was purely numeric with no conventional sensory component. A truly digital dream. It was what I imagine the Tron experience would really be like.
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I'd like to amend Atari70s' suggestion about a Supercharger interface by recommending you look into Chad Schell's forthcoming Cuttle Cart (formerly known as the SuperDuperCharger). I'm not sure I'd call it cheap (US$100 plus shipping from the USA), but it expands the Supercharger concept and would permit loading of nearly any Atari 2600 game. You could store the game ROMs in the Supercharger audio format on an audiocassette or CD to play into the Cuttle Cart; or you could store them on floppy, CD-ROM, etc. in a standard binary format and, with the right software, convert a game to the audio format as needed. See the official Cuttle Cart page for more information.
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Originally posted by -^Cro§Bow^-:Not sure why you have problems getting Imagic games to go into the thing. They fit fine in my 7800. Tempest has stated that the only carts he has trouble with..are the Telegames releases I think...or something like that.I just had to push really hard at first to get my Dragon Fire, Cosmic Ark, Trick Shot, and Atlantis carts to get in there. But over time...they seem to fit in quite easily now.
It's possible I could get my Imagic carts in with a little more coaxing, but on several occasions I've tried hard enough that I felt it might be a grave mistake to try any harder. Maybe more than one case design was used? Or maybe there is a difference in the cartridge slots? Or maybe I just need to put my back into it.
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By the way, there is an additional 2600 compatibility issue that no 7800 console solves, and that regards the mapping of the 7800's pause button to the 2600's color/B&W switch. On the 7800, pressing the pause button is equivalent to toggling B&W on, whereas releasing the button is equivalent to toggling back to color. So, the only way to have the 7800 remain in black-and-white (without modifying the console) is to keep the pause button depressed.
Most gamers today (even nostalgic ones) might not lament the lack of black-and-white play, but the color/B&W switch is a dumbswitch which can be assigned other functions if the cartridge is so programmed. Some 2600 carts use the color/B&W position for gameplay functions; in fact, Starmaster is among them. In that game, toggling the color/B&W switch is used to call up the Galactic Chart, according to AtariAge's Starmaster manual.
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Originally posted by -^Cro§Bow^-:If you can get ahold of one of the 84 model 7800s...you won't have a compatibility problem.
I imagine the ROM compatibility problems would go away but the physical compatibility problem with Star Voyager I described would not. By the way, I have the same problem with No Escape!, another Imagic release with the same cartridge case design. Of course, one solution would be to remove the chip from the casing.
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Originally posted by Gunstar:By the way, I'm still not used to all the features of this board, and was wondering how to get the quotes from previous messages?
At the top of each individual post there is a line of icons to the right of the timestamp. Activate the icon resembling a pair of double quotes to quote that post in your reply.
So, how did I manage to quote two posts in a single reply (i.e., this reply)? In two different windows I activated the quotes icons for different posts, then copied and pasted appropriately.
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Originally posted by Gunstar:I know it only plays about 95% of the games, but so far, that's been enough for me. Also, the supercharger is pretty rare isn't it? I don't think most Atari fans have it, so that wouldn't even come into account in many cases.
Nonetheless, it comes into account in my case, and it might come into account in tobias_project's.
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By the way, Star Voyager is the IMAGIC game isn't it? What was the name of that very similiar game put out by Activision?Yes, Star Voyager is an Imagic game. I think the Activision game you have in mind is Starmaster. I've never played the latter, but I enjoy firing up Star Voyager from time to time.
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Originally posted by Gunstar:You know something? I think there is a holder for using two 7800 controllers to play this game, I might be wrong, but just out of coincidence, I was browsing a LOT of online retro stores(vids) and I could almost swear that I saw one on a list, luckily I believe I book marked it as it looked cool. Although, I could be thinking of the 5200 one...
Although the coupler you were thinking of was for 5200 controllers, there is another coupler you can use for 7800 Robotron. It's called the Dual Control Module, and it came with Spy Hunter for the 2600 and is designed for use with stock 2600 joysticks (CX40), which also work on the 7800. The big drawback of using the Dual Control Module for Robotron is that it requires one of the sticks to be oriented at a 90° rotation from the other. (The CX40 is slightly longer along the forward-back axis than along the left-right axis, even though the base may appear perfectly square.) I compensate for this orientation problem by using a "southpaw adaptor" cable which rotates the joystick's directional functions -90°. Best Electronics used to sell the adaptor cables, but I think they may have run out. It's possible you could obviate the need for the cables by using a joystick with a base a tad smaller than the CX40's. Of course, this all assumes you can get your hands on the Dual Control Module in the first place.
In any case, it's difficult for me to say how well this hacked setup works; I'm not at all good at any version of Robotron, couplers or no!
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Originally posted by Gunstar:Hey! Tobias project. I'm just curious, Why by the 2600? Are you starting to seriously collect all things Atari? I'm just asking, because you say your relatively new to the Atari scene, so maybe your not a full-on collector yet and just want to play the games? After all, the 7800 plays 2600 games...
I can't speak for tobias_project, but 7800 compatibility is not 100%. I have one of the later editions sans expansion port, and it refuses to play the ROMs for some 2600 carts, notably the SuperCharger and Robot Tank. I can't play Star Voyager on it either, but I'm not aware of a ROM incompatibility there; rather, the cartridge's case simply won't fit into the console's slot! Accordingly, both a genuine 2600 and the 7800 are essential for gameplay in my home.
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Originally posted by jochta:However, I still have several carts that I assume are PAL (where they were sourced means there should be no reason to assume they are NTSC) with none of these indicators. For example, sometimes a text label Atari carts has no P suffix but the box has a P sticker on it. Other times you can tell as the instructions and/or box have other European languages in/on them.
I'm afraid I must differ regarding the use of languages. Many of my NTSC carts' boxes and/or manuals use five European languages—English, French, German, Spanish, and Italian; these are occasionally accompanied by a sixth, non-European language which I believe to be Japanese. However, it might be that there are certain European languages or combinations of languages that are a dead giveaway of PAL status (like a Basque/Welsh/Romansch box...); but what they would be, I don't know.
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Tough question. Back in the day, my favorite after the VCS would have been the ColecoVision. Like Mindfield, I owned both systems and enjoyed them both...and quite frankly, I had little experience with any others. These days my horizons are broader but I still like the ColecoVision, though I wonder if I should give the edge to my Atari XE Game System (part of the 8-bit line). The graphics are pleasant in that early '80s way and the game library is fairly rich.
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Joel's answers are good but unfairly overlook the original purpose of the SuperCharger, which is to serve as a conduit for games never published in cart form at all but instead on audiocassette. The thirteen titles originally created for the SuperCharger vary in quality but do contain some gems—in particular I enjoy Frogger (not to be confused with Parker Brothers' cart version, the SuperCharger edition is practically arcade-perfect) and Fireball (variations on the Breakout concept). As the Frogger redux attests, the SuperCharger format permits a complexity, especially noticeable in the graphics department, that is difficult to achieve with ordinary VCS carts. In addition, some SuperCharger games are "multi-loaders"; i.e., they can be loaded and played one segment at a time, such as the first-person maze game Escape From the Mindmaster and the RPG Dragonstomper.
Cyberpunks Entertainment has produced an officially licensed CD-ROM which contains all the original SuperCharger games (accessible via an ordinary audio CD player), plus ROM images for later homebrews and lots of other goodies. The CD-ROM is called Stella Gets a New Brain and can be ordered directly from the Cyberpunks Web site. Well worth picking up, in my opinion.
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Originally posted by Nukey Shay:...how about developing some new ideas for games?
There's the rub. These days "Atari" means nostalgia. Of course, it's possible to exploit that nostalgia with new games. One way is to produce sequels to classics; another is to create games with the old flavor (which is what 2600 homebrewers do). But a game like Glover which strays from the popular notion of Atari may dilute the brand instead of extending it. Case in point: although my video game nostalgia extends to many an old Activision classic, seeing that name on a current game means next to nothing to me, as most of Activision's product has no relation to the memories I cherish. Sure, Atari (whether under the aegis of Infogrames, Midway, or someone else) could develop a modern console like the PlayStation 2 or the Xbox; but for the nostalgic gamer (especially the nostalgic gamer generally dissatisfied with today's games), so what? What would make such a console better than the real PlayStation 2 or Xbox without the fuji?
I still hope for wonderful new Atari products, but it's difficult to bring about the future of the past.
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Which game should be ported to ATARI 2600 ?
in Atari 2600
Posted
Be careful what you ask for: I suspect Robotron: 2084 simply cannot be done justice on a 2600.
Back in the day, my major disappointment vis-à-vis games not translated for the VCS was Kick Man, a personal favorite from the arcades. (Well, not really from the arcades in my personal experience: the only Kick Man machine I ever saw was at a local supermarket.)
Another arcade game I wouldn't mind seeing on the ol' VCS is Pac & Pal, one of the more eclectic Pac-Man sequels. So far as I know it's never been ported for any home system.