Pixelboy

That one looks real nice! But wouldn't the brick walls be somewhat hard to do in 3D?

They're holes. Missiles sometimes rise up from them, and this happens more often in the later levels of the game. In fact, you can see a up-going missile emerging from one of the holes in my mockup. Also keep in mind that the distance between the player's ship and its shadow can vary as the ship rises or dives. The shadow can also move up and down as the ship does when it banks left and right. That's not a bad idea, actually. The walls could be intentionally spaced so that two are never on the screen at once. To give more challenge, the later levels could scroll faster. I don't think I've ever seen two big walls close to one another in the real Zaxxon arcade game, so your theory would work fine.

Here's a 160x192 mockup (stretched 200% horizontally) of how I imagine Zaxxon on the 2600. I know very little about the limits of the hardware, so please forgive any technical impossibilities demonstrated in this mockup. I just whipped this up in about 15 minutes, just to convey my vision of the game. Could a horizontally scrolling game such as this be possible on the 2600? I figure it's possible, looking at some of Activision's games such as Barnstorming and Chopper Command...

It was roughly 330$, if I remember correctly. I should know, since I'm the one who won that item on eBay.

That's quite interesting! If you don't feel like doing the actual game, would you happen to have a mockup you could show us, at least? I suppose you'd do the rolling capsules as simple colored rectangles, and the little critters would have one or two frames of animation...

In other words, you wouldn't release your DK version in cart format. Yeah, that would be prudent. On the other hand, redoing DK would attract even more homebrew attention than even Lady Bug, although I'm sure you'd be hard-pressed to include all four arcade levels. Heck, just having the elevator level (in addition to the girder and rivet level) would be cool enough.

I've got a few suggestions you might want to tackle: - Arkanoid (it would be a dream to play using paddles) - Bubble Bobble (maxing out the number of on-screen objects would be the challenge here) - Moon Cresta (looks like something the 2600 could handle) - Nibbler (can this type of game be done on the 2600? I wonder...) - Zaxxon (a cool side-scroller instead of that poor 3D mess Coleco released) Other (non-arcade) suggestions: - K.C. Munchkin (wouldn't that be sort of ironic? ) - Parsec (a port of the TI99/4A game) But if none of these suggestions interest you, then I say you should go with Donkey Kong, just to show the world what Coleco could have done if they had put more effort into it. That seems like a challenge that's right up your alley, Johnny.

As the title says, I have a quick-and-simple question about SteamRoller for ColecoVision: Do any of you guys know how many carts were produced and sold under the Retrotopia label, back in 2000? I tried to find the answer to this question on the net, but I couldn't find the exact figure. Any help would be appreciated.

Very fine work you did on those overlays, jbanes! This inspired me to do a ColecoVision overlay for Utopia (attached below). I know the game doesn't exist on the CV (not yet anyway), so just for the heck of it, I also made a design mockup of what the actual game could look like. And the joke in all of this: I've never actually played the game! I do have Intellivision Lives for PC, but I never got around to trying Utopia for any lenght of time! I'll get around to it one of these days...

The ghost of Aaron Spelling looms over this thread... (look at the topic number!) Sorry, couldn't resist.

Mega Man. He's my fav.

Have you tried Sky Jaguar? It's a very good game. I haven't tried Yie Ar Kung-Fu and Magical Tree yet, but it's only a matter of time! I've very recently had contacts with opcode concerning Pac-Man Collection and it's coming along VERY nicely. The last hurdle is really to get the manufacturing started, and from what I can gather, it's not that much of a hurdle at this point. Stay tuned, you should be hearing some fresh news from opcode himself within the next couple of months! Now what I'd like to know is whether the AtariAge store will ever carry PkK's homebrews. Those look really nice. I'd like to have some news regarding I.C.E. too...

Hello, and welcome to the boards. Although these forums are mostly dedicated to Atari machines, you'll find lots of ColecoVision fans here (like me), especially in "Classic Gaming General", and also in "Homebrew Discussion". Have fun!

I finished all the work on my custom overlays last Friday, and I thought some of you may like to see the fruits of my labours. I finished them in a hurry after I received word from eColeco that they had found a limited supply of mylar. Feel free to download, distribute, print and use the overlays shown here. All I ask is that they remain unchanged, including the copyright notice on the side tab. Here's the list of attached overlays: - Aquattack - Boulder Dash - CVDrum (as it appears in the instruction booklet of the homebrew cart) - Gateway to Apshai - Miner 2049er - Quest for Quintana Roo

Whoa man, relax and smell the fresh morning air! I only meant that sometimes people who set their goals too high get discouraged along the way. I'm certainly not questioning your skills as a homebrew programmer, but you're proposing to cram a chess game with proper computer AI within 4K of ROM space and only 1K of RAM. I may be "clueless" about CV assembly programming, but I am a computer programmer by profession, and I know enough to tell that you're taking on a pretty big challenge. It's not just about programming the computer opponent's AI, there's also all the logic behind letting the player move his pieces and preventing him/her from performing illegal moves. This is not difficult in itself, but can take up a significant amount of code. And then there's a whole segment of programming dedicated to detecting a check and check-mate situation. Again, nothing extremely difficult, but cramming all that in 4K is going to be tough any way you look at it. Of course, if you're telling me that this 4K limit is not set in stone, then I'm sure you can make it all fit within 32K at the most. I wish you luck in this endeavour. Peace man.

Famous last words, dude...

Perhaps you can start with a checkers program, which is bound to be easier to do in terms of AI programming. Then you can upgrade to chess. Just an idea.

Well, it would be slightly more challenging if the enemies actually shot some kind of projectile at the player. Enemies with more "exotic" flight trajectories would be a welcomed improvement as well. With a little work, perhaps you could even turn this game into a port of Astro Blaster, or a similar arcade game.

Well, anyway, I tried the game with Meka, and it's a very nice game, albeit the easiest space shooter I've ever played. You could rename it "Space Cakewalk".

Well, after trying my best to make progress with this hack, I have to call it quits. The game being very linear (at first anyway), I couldn't find any way to avoid having to enter the room with the Wall Jump Boots, and in order to escape that room, you have to wall-jump your way up a very long shaft, and since I've never been able to perform the wall-jump more than twice in a row, I'm stuck there with no hope of ever getting out. I could practice like crazy and try to master the wall-jump technique, but I'm not about to waste the D-Pad of my PC gamepad, which I bought just a couple of weeks ago, on such an endeavour. I find it funny how the guy behind this hack doesn't offer any way to contact him, other than trying to catch him on some obscure IRC channel. It's like he knew that a lot of people would get stuck in his hack and he made sure few people will bother him about it. I can't help but ask the question: Why spend so much time on a hack that alienates a significant segment of the Metroid fanbase? My final verdict: This hack stinks, despite its overall quality, and I recommend to everyone to avoid it unless you can do wall-jumps in your sleep, which from what I could gather is rather unlikely.

You really should post this in the Homebrew Discussion forum. The way I see it, the ColecoVision Programming sub-forum is for getting answers to programming questions, and it doesn't get a lot of traffic. Finished homebrews are usually announced and released under Homebrew Discussion.

So I'm assuming you've had a look at the AdamEmMam source code. I haven't really looked at it myself, so I don't even know what kind of compiler is recommended. If the code is in C or C++, perhaps Bloodshed's Dev-C++ could be used... EDIT: The page where I found AdamEmMam's source code is called "Borland C++ Builder Page". I guess that answers my question.

I finally got around to trying this "front-end" (if you can call it that). The installation process went smoothly enough, but there's something that just doesn't work in this setup: When I run the "ROMS.BAT" file, all I see in the window in the Zaxxon ROM. Where am I supposed to drag the file??? I tried dragging it to the "COLECO.BAT" file (in another instance of Windows Explorer), and after DosBox initializes, I get the message: Illegal command D:\JUNK\ADAMEM\COLECO\Adamem1\CVEM.EXE The path is correct, aside from some minor uppercase/lowercase differences, so I don't understand why it won't start. In any case, it's a nice effort, but you should take a few notes from AdamEmMam. It runs AdamEm with awful sound output, but at least the interface is friendly and all the emulator configuration options are available at the click of the mouse. If you don't mind the advice, ditch the whole dragging thing, and create a front-end with a GUI like AdamEmMam, but which runs AdamEm via DosBox to improve the sound quality and joystick support. The idea would be for the GUI front-end to create a batch file similar to your "COLECO.BAT", and then to run this batch file when the user presses the "Go!" button (or whatever you want to call that button). Just my two cents.

Hello all. Earlier today I was using my Atarimax 127-in-1 ColecoVision USB cart to test some Adam hardware. Everything was going fine until the USB cart suddently died on me: Not only was I no longer able to select a game in the on-screen menu (I now get a blank screen each time I select a game), but my PC no longer detects the cart when I connect it with the USB cable. A quick talk with classics (the maker of the cart, for those of you who don't know) revealed that the CPU in the cart can sometimes fail, which leads to the symptoms described above. I think I forgot to turn off my Adam before removing the USB cart. classics told me this may not be the actual event that caused the problem, but still, from now on, I'll treat my USB cart like eggs. classics generously offered to repair or replace my damaged USB cart, so everything is peachy. I just wanted to share my experience with the rest of you, because I think people who bought the cart should be aware that they need to take really good care of it.

As a kid, I thought 2600 Pac-Man was pretty lame, but my biggest problem with it wasn't the graphics (I understood that the 2600 couldn't do the arcade game justice at the time). My biggest gripe was the controls: You had to be properly lined up with an intersection in the maze if you wanted to change direction, and that really ticked me off, because the arcade game is a bit more permissive in terms of cutting maze corners.