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somebooks

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Posts posted by somebooks

  8. Posted

    12 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

    BTW: Circus Convoy seems to be are really good game. Maybe we should discus more about that.

    Yeah! An original game with that kind of gameplay, and depth, and those graphics! With story aspects as well. Gives me a similar feeling to the first time i played Keystone Kapers and realized every level had more and more stuff, or in Pitfall 2 when i first realized you could go dooooown. Excited to see how they’ll build on the character mythology from one game to the next too.
     

    They also figured out a fun, clever way of exploring the nostalgia of the old games without solely relying on that.

    • Like 5

  9. Posted

    I'm not really an expert, but I'm up late at night avoiding the work i should be doing so I'll give this a shot!

    41 minutes ago, Captain Jack said:

     

    Because it has "32 pitch values" this means it can play 32 different "notes" correct?

     

    Yes, that's right.

    43 minutes ago, Captain Jack said:

    If it has "two channels of one-bit sound" why do games like Pitfall 2 have music? I heard about extra chips?

    Yes, Pitfall 2 had a custom chip called the DPC so it could do fancier audio.

    45 minutes ago, Captain Jack said:

    Later on in the Wikipedia Article for the TIA it states that the Atari can generate "pulse and noise output" is that any similar to the pulse and noise channels the NES has? (I'm guessing so). 

    Not sure about NES, but yeah, the 2600 can do different tones (pure tone, square wave, white noise etc).  I think there are 16 of them... though some of them may be duplicates? Uh... maybe someone else can step in and explain that in more detail. I'm still learning this stuff.

    Anyway, you can also change the volume.

     

    So it's... two channels, each with registers for volume (values 0-15), pitch (values 0-31), and tone (values 0-15). That's basically what you're working with, audio wise.

    50 minutes ago, Captain Jack said:

    And lastly, why are is so much of the music found in Atari games completely out of tune? 

    The available pitches just don't perfectly align with the notes on a keyboard. So people do the best they can with what they have (except for Pitfall 2, which can do more).

  10. Posted

    Hopefully Audacity's existence leads to more people discovering the mind-blowing modern 2600 homebrew scene... in turn leading to more people making more games, and on and on. These message boards kept me sane through the pandemic.

     

    I remember when I discovered this scene, and started telling my friends "it's incredible! people are making the best games ever made for the system RIGHT NOW! on cartridges and everything!"... i was personally hesitant to use the word "homebrew" myself because it just didn't feel like it illustrated the high quality level of games that are being made. So although I've come to really like the word -- almost carries an "artisan/hand-crafted" kind of connotation to me now -- and although any game that's released for a system without paying royalties is probably technically "homebrew"...  I definitely understand their aversion to the word.

    • Like 7

  11. Posted

    Don’t know if this counts, but in “The Adventures of Willy Beamish” on Sega CD, Willy has a “Nintari” in his room where you can play a game called Monster Squad Super Space K’noidtrix... which is basically a mashup of a few older games (breakout/arkanoid/tetris/etc).

  12. Posted

    I sometimes feel like 2600 games are more like poems -- like haikus even. Very specific limitations, and within those limitations people find amazing ways to surprise you and to push the creative boundaries beyond the expectations of the form... and certain players/readers can appreciate that, and sometimes even find their own meaning in the simplicity of it all.

     

    While a lot of modern games are more like novels. More story, more character, more words. Which can be great too.

     

    But there's this beautiful elegance to the actual code of early games, which you can feel on the screen, just as there is weight and meaning in every word chosen, every punctuation mark, and every bit of negative space on the page of a poem. You can sit for an entire afternoon -- sometimes a lifetime -- pondering, revisiting, and finding deeper meaning in a single poem... just as you can spend an entire afternoon -- or an entire lifetime -- playing Mr. Do! again and again, discovering new strategies, attempting higher scores, and then someday finally realizing after 30+ years that his name is obviously pronounced "mr. doh" not "mr. doo" because "do re mi fa so la ti do" ugh so stupid why didn't anyone ever correct me?

     

    Anyway, I love a lot of modern games, but I've never talked to / shouted at / laughed with an AI opponent as much as the one in Alan Miller's Basketball. I think its a more personal experience to be interacting directly with the code and hardware like that.

     

    • Like 2
    • Thanks 1

  13. Posted

    I always played Pac-Man in black-and-white mode. The graphics looked crisper on my TV, and the ghosts just looked more... ghostly... rather than flickery. I remember sometimes switching it to color mode for fun and being like "whoa! look at all those colors!" -- I was pretty young so in my memory I can almost TASTE those colors -- but I'd switch back to black-and-white mode when it was time to get serious.

  15. Posted

    (I've been lurking on here for a while now, but this is first time posting on the forums. Hello!)

     

    I don't know why I suddenly felt compelled, but I thought today I would advocate for Sky Skipper a little bit. It doesn't get a lot of attention, and while it may not be the best game in the word, I DO think it's a lot more fun than most people realize! Especially for those who don't have (or read) the manual.

     

    So here are a couple very important tips:

     

    FIRST: You CAN refill your fuel tanks (and also score way more points) if you catch only one of each type of animal consecutively. One cat, one turtle, one rabbit, one duck... then back around the course again. It doesn't have to be that specific order, but just limit yourself to getting only one of each animal before snagging another of the same type. This is essentially the point of the game -- to collect 3 sets of all 4 different animals per level. Or rather, to balance the risk vs reward of doing so. This core aspect of the game isn't perfectly obvious even if you DO have the manual, but its practically unknowable without it.

     

    SECOND: Play Game 3! Game 1 & 2 are both a grind in my opinion -- the plane is way too slow. Game 3 speeds up the plane and makes it a lot more fun and challenging.

     

    That's all! Hopefully this'll help somebody out there have a little more fun with Sky Skipper.

    • Like 4
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