Simon

May 6, 2003

I created a two-button joystick over 10 years ago, because playing "Turrican" on a Commodore 64 was quite uncomfortable as you had to use Space-bar for the different weapons besides the normal gun.

I simply took a Competition Pro and used a second joystick cable from a broken joystick. I wired the second button of the Competition Pro to the fire-wires of the second cable.

This worked with many games, as most routines on the Commodore 64 checked the Space-bar like the joystick-fire of port 1. This means that you could either press Space or Fire in Port 1 as they were wired by Commodore as being the same. My joystick used the fire-button instead of the normal Space-bar. :-)

BTW: The directions of joystick in port 1 can often be 'emulated' on the C=64 keyboard with the keys "<-", "1", "2" and "CTRL" if I remember correct. This depends on the way how each program checks the inputs...

The joystick still works today... Quality lasts! ;-)

Simon

April 29, 2003

Virtua Fighter 2 for the Saturn was of course much better. I think that SEGA just wanted to make some bucks with the MegaDrive/Genesis version as Saturn sales weren't as high and VF2 was quite popular.

From a collector's point of view, I like my boxed mint copy. From a gamer's point of view I don't.

IIRC VF2 was one of the biggest games for the GEN/MD, as it contained 32 MBit of ROM. At the moment I only remember "Duke Nukem 3D" for the Genesis being the same size.

Simon

April 29, 2003

Hey, I've got one of these cables. I sent away for it not long after I bought Zero Tolerance (great game by the way!). I just dug it up, I had forgoten about it for the last ten years untill I saw this topic.

Cool! I wanna have, wanna have...

...although it is probably technically possible, there are no plans to do so because:
1. Lack of emulator support would make it difficult to program & debug.

2. I would need 2 TVs, 2 VCSs and 2 Superchargers

3. No market because few people would have the required environment

Well, I think that my plans to create a two-player Battleships would work quite well. As the game is roundbased, you could emulate the inputs from the second console with a joystick or keyboard-controller when the game requests input. The link wouldn't have to exchange much data, just positions of the grid and the result of the fire, that sould be emulatable with a joystick. :-)

I'm not thinking about a market as I'm satisfied if the game works for me. I think that if there is a game that supports a link between two 2600, all the real fans would be interested. Creating the link-cable should be a minor problem as you just have to gender-change one side of a joypad-extension cable.

I'm still seraching for a plan showing the wiring of the "Zero Tolerance" cable. I'd expect that at least two pins are cross-wired...

Greetings,

Simon

April 28, 2003

Hi,

I got a "X-Man" cartridge for my collection. The game is in a Spectravideo case and the board says Spectravideo too.

The strange things are:

- The cart doesn't contain any label (see picture) and appears as if it never had labels.

- The case doesn't contain the letters "Spectravideo" on the back of the cartridge as other Spectravideo games have.

Does anybody have a similar cartridge? Has the game been available as labeled and as unlabeled cartridge?

Thanks!

Simon

April 28, 2003

Sounds cool. So people wouldn't even need to build their own cable for Erics Skeleton sequel project!

Well, I didn't know that Eric was working on such thing. The cable for the Genesis was sold some years ago directly through the publisher of the game (Technopop/Accolade).

At first I'd like to get the original cable for "Zero Tolerance" for my collection of Genesis/MegaDrive games.

According to that I was thinking about connecting two Atari VCS together with that cable and create a game of "Battleships" for them. I think that it would really be fun, to play a round of "Battleships" against each other...

Simon

April 28, 2003

Hi,

I just read about the link-cable for the game "Zero Tolerance (Genesis)" and wanted to know if somebody here owns such a cable and could post a picture of it. In addition I'd like to know if there was a packaging for the cable.

The cable connects two Sega Genesis by linking the joystick-ports 2 together. How was the cable wired?

Thanks!

Simon

April 25, 2003

Hi,

thank you very much for all your reactions.

Any chance that some of the C64's audio track might make it into the 2600 version?

Yes. As mentioned above, the game-music of the C=64 version has already been converted by Paul Slocum and it sounds excellent. I asked him about creating the music, as he did very good 2600 tunes in the past (Mr. Roboto, Marble Craze, ...) and a conversion of Aztec Challenge without the music would not have been acceptable.

I will also publish a soundtrack-CD with six versions of the Aztec-Challenge music. The tracklist of the small-CD (21 minutes CD-R) looks like this:

1. Aztec Challenge (Main Theme) by Paul Norman

2. A-VCS-tec Challenge performed by Paul Slocum

3. Aztec Challenge performed by Press Play On Tape

4. Aztec Challenge performed by Peter Connelly

5. Aztec Challenge performed by Reyn Ouwehand

6. Aztec Challenge (live at Baxter’s Gallery, London) performed by Press Play On Tape

I already got the permissions of all the musicians to use their tunes for my project and I really like the sound of all the tracks.

Best regards,

Simon

April 24, 2003

Hi,

just to let you know that I'm still working on this project, I show two screenshots of the current version. The game will be 8kb. The music by Paul Slocum is complete now.

The introduction-sequence is complete now and looks like this:

The game-screen is much more colorful now (shading of sky and earth) and the game is playable. The spears fly smooth at different speeds, the collission detection works and "Next Level" and "Game Over" screens are included aswell.

I will continue the programming by designing the levels and implementing different objects. As there is still some space left, I'm currently thinking about converting another level of the C=64 version. We'll see.

Best regards,

Simon

April 15, 2003

You can always join us if you want.

No need for that, as I simply don't believe him. I don't have any problems with him and he doesn't owe me something, but I decided some months ago already that I'll not trade with him again.

Best regards,

Simon

April 15, 2003

BTW: How did you find that? What keywords did you use when searching?

I searched for "subotage entertainment" as he gave me that c/o-address for the shipment of his copy of my game "Mental Kombat". He later stated that he never got the game, but that's another sad story about this guy.

Good luck!

Simon

April 15, 2003

Hi,

I'm not having problems with Fish concerning Thrust, but I try to help you guys in finding him. And so I checked the net...

He is working for this company: http://www.subotage.de/

The "contact" page there lists his eMail-address at work as [email protected]

The phone no. at work is: +49 30 44312495

Some of his collegues at work are:

Karin - [email protected]

Alex - [email protected]

Yaneq - [email protected]

Martin - [email protected]

Asking them about him or his private telephone-no. may lead to a direct contact.

Good luck and best regards,

Simon

March 26, 2003

I think it would be more interesting and effective to have a thread where we list what's NOT wrong with 2600 Pac-Man.

I'll start:

Pac-Man is yellow.

Uh... OK... anyone else?

This only applies for the NTSC-version, as there is no real "Yellow" on the PAL-palette of the VCS unfortunately.

So on a PAL-console not even that feature is correct.

Simon

February 10, 2003

Finally somebody credits Paul, most excellent.

I was waiting for his name all the time.

And he is getting better and better...

And as he's getting better and better: he is working on the tune for my game "A-VCS-tec Challenge". The music so far (work is still in progress) is great!

My favorite musics on the 2600 are:

- Mr. Roboto (Paul Slocum)

- A-VCS-tec Challenge (Paul Slocum)

- Merlin's Walls (Ebivision)

Hmmm, only new tunes...

Simon

February 4, 2003

Hi,

beneath the development of the new 2600 game I started thinking about releasing a special edition of the cart. As the music was one of the most remembered facts about Aztec Challenge I thought that a Soundtrack CD would be cool.

PAUL NORMAN, creator of the original music and PRESS PLAY ON TAPE (the C=64 revival band) both agreed to let me publish their tracks on my CD, so it will at least feature these tracks:

01 Original Version (P. Norman)

02 Atari 2600 Version (P. Slocum)

03 Studio Version (PPOT)

04 Live at The Party 2000 (PPOT)

I'm very happy about this right now... :-)

Simon

January 22, 2003

As for the thickness of material that can be printed, we can run some pretty thick paper through our printer, but I doubt anything approaching a normal Atari "box" paper stock. I haven't done any experiments yet, but I'd have to look at the documentation first. We can print in sheets up to 12" x 18", plenty large enough for a normal size box to then be cut and folded.

At first I thought that the printing is the biggest problem about producing boxes, but it isn't! If you have good looking prints you have to cut them (a lot of work) and FOLD them manually. I tried folding the thick paper of the Mental Kombat boxes myself, but it looked awful. So I asked the professional print office about cutting, folding and glueing the box automatically. That increased the price even more, but I think that the result looks great.

Don't underestimate the problem of cutting and folding the boxes...

Simon

January 21, 2003

My take on it is that no matter what, a modern game shouldn't go above $50.00,- period. I made an exception and bought Mental Combat for $60.00 + and I am super disappointed with the box it came in because it's like paper.

Sorry, but my game is priced at 49 USD/EUR, the rest was postage. In the meantime I came to know more games priced around 45 or 50 USD (remakes like "Combat 2" aswell as homebrews like "Space Instigators Special Edition"). The additional postage makes them as expensive as my game.

The cardboard used to print the boxes was the thickest paper available to print digitally. Using offset-printing would have meant even higher costs. I don't think that "it's like paper", I think that it can be compared to the quality of the SALU-boxes (Acid Drop for example). I liked to have that kind of box much more than having no box at all.

I don't expect to produce printed boxes on my new game; well maybe a single one only for me.

Simon

January 16, 2003

@Simon--
Was this sweatshop worker ever paid? j/k

Of course she was! I tried to convince her with a private copy of my game, but she wanted money for her work.

And because of the massive work she had with producing those 200 headbands (and the very expensive printing of the cardboard-gameboxes), the special edition of Mental Kombat is that expensive. I'm sorry for that, but the boxes and the headbands make the game something very special I think and I'm still not sorry for having produced them.

Due to the high price, I still have around 25 copies of the special edition left. I hope that there are still some more collectors to order the pack...

January 16, 2003

I only ask this as one particular aspect of Simon Quernhorst's Mental Kombat that I really liked was using a console switch (colour/bw) to actually run the game in either TV format, sort of like having a universal cart! I think that this is one of the cleverest innovations I've encountered & if (a BIG if!) I ever managed to produce a game I'd really like to be able to add this function in.

Thank you, Osmeroid. :-)

I wanted to implement PAL/NTSC compatibility from the beginning on. When I started VCS programming I hoped that there would be a PAL/NTSC-register inside the machine, just like in a C=64, but there wasn't. So I had to use a console switch for that purpose.

On C=64 you can read a constant register and can check whether a PAL or NTSC machine is used. Back in the days when C=64-games were imported they needed to be fixed to work properly on PAL or NTSC and that fix was mostly installed with checking that register. Nevertheless not everyone seemed to know, as I remember a crack of "Grand Prix Circuit" where you had to push either "P" for PAL or "N" for NTSC mode.

Simon

January 14, 2003

what about legend of kage?
itd be great fun and a beautiful game

I can't believe that there is someone else besides me out there who likes "Legend of Kage".

It was one of my first original games for the C=64 back in the days (1986). Nowadays my collection contains the complete copies of C=64 Tape, C=64 Disk and NES. Has it been released for other home-systems aswell?

January 14, 2003

:?: And what kind of Commodore 64 prototype did you want to sell? I might be interested.

Simon

January 14, 2003

I know how to play the game Yahtzee .. but how do you play this 2600 game? How do you select dice?

Try using your joystick.

IIRC: Push the joystick up to reach the dice selection, left/right to move to wanted dice and Fire to select/unselect dice.

BTW: Why does the second screenshot at http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.ht...areLabelID=1032 show a sixth dice at the very left border of the screen? I don't remember seeing that when playing the game.

Simon

January 13, 2003

If you use both player objects here, then you can't display spear-throwers on the same line. But IIRC the original Aztec Challenge also displayed them only above the player and the spears seemed to come out of nowhere. Right?

The original game only displays the spear-throwers between the pyramid and the running person. I think that they are only on the same horizontal line when the player is jumping. As my jumps will be animated a bit different, I think that I'll keep the spear-throwers limited to the area between pyramid and maximum height of the jump.

I think that there is enough place to show them and that the effect of running towards the building will look good enough then.

Simon

January 13, 2003

I guess that you may get a non-flickering display by showing the spear throwers on alternate horizontal positions, either left or right of the player.

For the spear, I'd consider using the ball (if you want to keep it black).. the size will probably have to shrink, anyway.

I look forward to seeing the progress on the game!

Thank you.

I'm not quite sure about the spear-throwers right now, but I will only accept a non-flicker-solution.

At the moment I think that I keep using P0 for the spear and P1 for the player as I want to use difficulty-features as spear-speed and spear-width and the width is easiest to solve with a player-sprite instead of ball/missile.

Simon

January 10, 2003

From looking at the screenshots I'm curious now, why you are not using both sprites for the player. It could look either more detailed or more colorful then. Or are you going to display the spear-throwers with it?

I'm not quite sure how it will look finally, but I intend to show the spear-throwers as multiple copies of P0/P1. Currently the spear is P0 and the player is P1, while I may use a missile in future versions.

I thought about interlaced sprites for "multicolor" already, but that needs double the ROM-space for the animation-sprites. I'm not sure if I'll use that. I like the sprite quite much right now.

As I only like the first and seventh level of "Aztec Challenge" I'm still thinking about working on a level 7 conversion aswell, but this is just a very little thought right now...

We'll see.

Simon

January 10, 2003

Just to let you know: the screenshots shown are not to be seen in the available binary. The binary is version 005 and only shows a steady screen and plays a preview of the music while the screenshots are from version 024. So don't waste your time searching...

I'm going to publish a new binary as soon as the control and animation of the player-sprite is complete (running, crouching, jumping).

Simon

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