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Pixelboy

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Posts posted by Pixelboy

  2. Posted

    Where Team Pixelboy is concerned, The Black Onyx, Boxxle, Arcomage and Jewel Panic all have a savegame chip inside the cart. They use what I like to call the "Activision PCB", which is a custom board with bankswitching up to 64K and an EEPROM-based save feature.

     

    • Like 2

  3. Posted

    Happy New Year, ColecoVisionites! :D

     

    May this year bring all of us renewed hope and a gradual (and hopefully hastened) return to normal from the shitty year that was 2020. Good riddance I say!

     

    On a personal level, 2021 will be my last truly "busy" year for ColecoVision homebrewing. But before I get into what will be keeping me busy this year, I'd like to begin this news bulletin with a rather significant announcement!

     


    AN INHERITANCE OF SORTS

     

    As I have explained previously (last August to be exact) I only have enough cartridge shells to manufacture my upcoming Team Pixelboy titles, and so I had decided to cease taking pre-orders for all my previously-released games. I'm still getting occasional requests from ColecoVision fans who want to purchase these games, and I found it rather sad that I could not cater to this demand.

     

    So over the last month or so, I've been setting up a "passing of the guard" for my Team Pixelboy games. Aside from very minor details, everything has been worked out, and so I can now announce that CollectorVision, Opcode Games and the AtariAge Store will be the "second generation publishers" of my past releases. The arrangement goes as follows:

     

    Opcode Games:

    • Bank Panic
    • Circus Charlie
    • Front Line SCE
    • Ghostbusters (SGM)
    • Golgo 13
    • Gulkave
    • King & Balloon (SGM)
    • King's Valley (SGM)
    • Knightmare (SGM)
    • Konami's Ping-Pong
    • Mappy (SGM)
    • Mopiranger
    • Ninja Princess
    • Rally-X (SGM)
    • Secret of the Moai (SGM)
    • Star Force
    • The Goonies (SGM)
    • Thexder (SGM)
    • Track & Field
    • TwinBee (SGM)
    • Wonder Boy

     

    AtariAge Store:

    • The Black Onyx
    • Boxxle
    • Arcomage (SGM)
    • Jewel Panic

     

    CollectorVision:

    • 1942 (SGM)
    • Bomber King (SGM)
    • Booming Boy (SGM)
    • Buck Rogers Super Game (SGM)
    • Caos Begins (SGM)
    • Champion Pro Wrestling (from the budget series)
    • Children of the Night (SGM)
    • C-So!
    • Deep Dungeon Adventure (SGM) (from the budget series)
    • Dragon's Lair (SGM)
    • Flicky
    • Frostbite (from the budget series)
    • Gauntlet (SGM)
    • Ghost (SGM)
    • Girl's Garden
    • Kaboom! (from the budget series)
    • Knight Lore (SGM)
    • Kralizec Tetris (from the budget series)
    • Majikazo (SGM)
    • Mecha-8 (SGM optional)
    • Mecha-9 (SGM optional)
    • Module Man
    • Multiverse
    • Operation Wolf (SGM)
    • Pacar (from the budget series)
    • Princess Quest
    • Prisoner of War (SGM)
    • QBIQS (SGM)
    • Quest for the Golden Chalice
    • Remember The Flag (from the budget series)
    • R-Type (SGM)
    • Spelunker (SGM)
    • Subroc Super Game (SGM)
    • Super Pac-Man (SGM)
    • The Cure
    • The Stone of Wisdom (SGM)
    • Uridium (SGM)
    • Wizard of Wor (SGM)
    • Zaxxon Super Game (SGM)
    • Zombie Incident (SGM)

     

    The list above does not automatically mean that new copies of ALL these games will be manufactured, but the decision to make new copies is officially left to those publishers as presented above. So for example, I have no more boxes of Princess Quest and Quest for the Golden Chalice, so if CollectorVision wants to make more copies, they'll have to print their own boxes, perhaps with new box artwork. Eduardo (of Opcode Games) has stated that he wants to released at least some of these games with his own sets of boxes, and may even make minor software alterations. I have no say (and no responsability) in those matters.

     

    So if there are any titles in the above lists that you're looking to buy, I invite you to contact the attached publishers and make your interests known, so that they know which games are worth making new copies of. I don't know if they'll accept taking official pre-orders immediately, or what kind of price tag they will put on those games, that's entirely up to them.

     

    It should also be noted that, out of respect for the new "owners" of these games, I will not be releasing the ROMs next Christmas for The Cure, 1942, Ghost, Prisoner of War, R-Type, Bomber King, Arcomage and Jewel Panic. This will allow CollectorVision to decide if they want to release some of these ROMs as part of their future "vault offerings".

     


    CONCENTRATING ON THE FUTURE

     

    With my old titles in good hands, I can focus on my upcoming releases. The next batch will of course be the Mystery Man Collection. The boxes, cartridge labels and cartridge shells are ready, and I also finished the manual templates last week so I plan to get the manuals printed in January. That leaves only the electronics, which I am now sure I will be receiving in January, so the nine games of the collection should be ready to ship sometime around the end of February or early March 2021.

     

    However, I should take a moment to issue a small yet important warning: The boxes of the Mystery Man Collection were shipped to me from Germany in the middle of the first months of the pandemic, right when international postal services were the most disrupted. The boxes ended up being shipped by boat instead of by plane, and so they stayed in storage for quite a while. During this extended transit time, the boxes were subject to friction with the padding foam which caused many boxes to have the red ink scraped off slightly along the edges. I attached a picture at the bottom of this post to show what this slight damage looks like. I need to say that I decided not to get those boxes reprinted, and I will ship them as-is. Sorry if this may irritate some people, but we're talking minor scraping, with a few rare instances where the scraping is more noticeable. Such unforeseen problems is what happens in the merry world of homebrewing, and if that's a real issue for anyone, then he should cancel his pre-orders for these games right away, because I'm going ahead with shipping these games with those boxes as soon as I can.

     


    WHEN YOU WISH UPON... AN ASTEROID

     

    In parallel to the Mystery Man Collection, I will also be working on Asteroids. On the software side of things, the game is practically done and works beautifully, but still requires some beta-testing to iron out some minor bugs. The boxes are printed and ready, and so aside from preparing the manual and getting the carts manufactured, the release date will actually depend on our friend doubledown who will be working on churning out many Asteroids Controllers over the first half of the year. So things are looking good for a summer release, but I can't promise anything because the project's timeline is not set in stone yet.

     

    I should mention that I also struck a quick deal with Mystery Man to hack some legacy games so that they work with the Asteroids Controller without needing any keypad input. I believe I've mentioned this before. The games in question are Carnival, Space Fury, Omega Race, Smurf, Cabbage Patch Kids - Adventures in the Park, B.C.'s Quest for Tires, Star Trek and Victory. They will be offered as ROMs only (for a small price) to those who bought an Asteroids Controller. So those people will need an AtariMax cartridge to play them on real hardware.

     

    Oh, and another very special ROM will likely be added to the games listed in the previous paragraph, but I want to keep it as a surprise for release day! ;)

     


    THIS SHIELD BETWEEN US

     

    I'm very happy to make this brand new game announcement, and I added this new game to teampixelboy.com: I'm talking about Star Castle! This game will be designed to work with the Asteroids Controller and also with regular hand controllers, just like Asteroids. Software coding hasn't started yet, but the boxes are already printed, and I'll prepare the manual once software development is far enough along. Coding should start after Mystery Man is done with Asteroids and the legacy game hacks mentioned above, so the game will likely ship during the second half of the year. I expect those with Asteroids Controllers will surely want this game!

     

    A quick note while we're on the subject, just for the sake of full disclosure: The box scraping problem I mentioned on the boxes of the Mystery Man Collection is also present on the boxes of Asteroids and Star Castle, but with the light grey color on those boxes, the scraping is much less noticeable.

     


    HOW ABOUT ANOTHER GAME FOR THE ASTEROIDS CONTROLLER?

     

    Recently, I casually came across a YouTube video that showcased an arcade cabinet of Armor Attack, and as I noticed the button-only controls, I thought that this would be a great game to play with the Asteroids Controller. I very recently found someone who is willing to code the game for me (Mystery Man already has more than enough on his plate) and so I bought a promo flyer of Armor Attack, which I'll be using for the box art. I'll post updates on this new project later this year, as it progresses.

     


    LET US NOT FORGET THE TRADING CARDS

     

    Over the last week (between Christmas and New Year's Day) I was able to get more card templates done for the ColecoVision Trading Card project. I'm currently at 98 front sides done, and I should be able to do at least 25 more this week-end, so I'll have 40 card front sides left to do. I'll be putting some hours into the remaining templates over the next couple of months, as time permits. Once the front sides of the cards are all done, I should be able to make quick work of the back sides, and I'm hoping to get the first series of 165 trading cards printed before next summer.

     


    ALREADY THINKING OF NEXT CHRISTMAS

     

    For the second half of the year, with a release date of Christmas 2021 in mind, I'll be working on finishing Space Shuttle (once and for all!) and I will also try to work with Mystery Man on the one-player-versus-AI mode in Utopia. With everything I have planned ahead, I'm really not sure I'll be able to get any serious work done on Arabian, so that will be a project for 2022 I'm afraid.

     


    This concludes this Team Pixelboy News Bulletin. We now return you to your regular forum activities. :)
     

    box_marks.jpg

    • Like 18
    • Thanks 4

  5. Posted

    My advice would be two-fold:

     

    1) Have her try a few ColecoVision games under emulation, just to see if she likes them. I'd recommend Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Pepper II and Venture. Then show her a "Top 10" YouTube video to let her see at a glance what other good games the console offers.

     

    2) Invest into an AtariMax Ultimate SD Cartridge, so that you can play pretty much all the games on real hardware without the clutter of a large cartridge collection.

     

    Then to seal the deal, let her know that there are actually more homebrew games than legacy commercial games on the system. And many homebrews are available as ROM files, so again, the AtariMax cart comes in handy.

     

    • Like 3
    • Thanks 1

  7. Posted · Edited by Pixelboy

    The "1" at the end of the link is left out of the address, but it seems to work with "=0".

     

    Anyway, I just tried it and it plays pretty well. I like it.  :) 

     

    Have you considered doing a CV version of Mine Storm? That's one Asteroids clone I'd like to see, even if it turns out a little different than the Vectrex version.

     

    Just a thought.  :)

     

  8. Posted

    3 hours ago, TPR said:

    I still think it's amazing to see that in 2020 you can still get over 200 downloads for a ColecoVision game in 24 hours! I just checked the tread from last year and some of those have been downloaded over 500 times!  Thank you for continuing to keep this console alive! 

    Thanks, but I have to wonder if other web sites are linking to those attached ROM files, which may increase the download counts.  :)

     

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    Season's Greetings, ColecoVisionators! :D

     

    I'd like to wish you all some very Happy Holidays, although after the past year, even slightly bad Holidays should still make us go "Bah, still better than the last nine months".

     

    But enough of that, it wouldn't be Christmas morning without some new ColecoVision ROMs from Team Pixelboy, and today's the day! I would like to thank Mystery Man, Arturo Ragozini, Fernando Lopez Ostenero, Antoni Burguera and Armando Perez Abad for allowing me to give out the ROMs attached below.

     

    Also, I would like to share a couple of secret cheats with all you people out there who purchased Bomber King and discovered just how old-school, nail-bittingly, mind-numbingly difficult it is:

     

    1) At any time during the game, press [1] on Player 1's controller and [9] on Player 2's controller simultaneously, and all your items will be maxed out to 99. This doesn't make you invincible however, you do have to remember to press the [0] key in order to use an Energy Tank when your life power is low. But now you'll have 99 Tanks (and 99 of everything else) to tear the levels and bosses to shreds! :evil:

     

    2) Press [3] on Player 1's controller and [7] on Player 2's controller simultaneously, and you'll warp to the next level.

     

    I tried to test these cheats under blueMSX, and I got the first cheat to work, but not the second cheat for some reason. I'm hoping I got these right, if not let me know and I'll investigate further and post updates in this thread.

     

    As a closing note, I would like to mention that roughly 10 people who pre-ordered an Asteroids Controller did not get back to me about their 50$ deposit. All those people have until January 1st 2021 to contact me and pay this deposit in order to lock in their pre-orders. After that date, I will assume that they are not interested in the controller anymore and I will cancel their pre-orders, for both the controller and the pack-in Asteroids game. This deadline is important, because our friend doubledown will want to place his order for the controller enclosures (that's what the 50$ deposit is for) in January.

     

    Please take note that I will post a new Team Pixelboy News Bulletin next Friday (January 1st 2021) with a bunch of interesting news!  :D 

     

    This concludes this Team Pixelboy News Bulletin. We now return you to your regular forum activities. :) 
     

    booming_boy_cv_sgm.rom champion_pro_wrestling_cv.rom gauntlet_cv_sgm.rom multiverse_cv.rom qbiqs_cv_sgm.rom uridium_cv_sgm.rom

    • Like 37
    • Thanks 14

  10. Posted

    7 hours ago, phoenixdownita said:

    But in specific as the JB states:
    "The existing Intellivision ROM conventions were deemed unsuitable to the Intellivision Core."

    I guess that explains why the Inty core was left out of the jailbreak on the original NT Mini. There was more work to do on it than most people realize.

     

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    19 minutes ago, doubledown said:

    So I'm offering a bounty of 1 Schrute Buck to anybody who can propose an idea, or theme, or game tie-in, wherein a white joystick would be a brilliant idea.  Note I've already used a white ball-knob joystick for the SMURF: RIGC controller, so that one's out...as it's already been done.  I await your brilliance & inspiration, and thanks in advance!

    Antarctic Adventure?

     

    Oil's Well?

     

    :) 

     

  13. Posted

    9 minutes ago, Serguei2 said:

    Is this mock-ups or actual real screenshots?

    Mockups I did several years ago. I snapped some screens from the PC version and redimensioned them for the GBA resolution. At the time, I just wanted to see if the GBA's resolution was good enough to render this game appropriately. There's a loss in detail for sure, but I think it's acceptable.  :)

     

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    53 minutes ago, youki said:

    concerning Dark Forces on GBA,  i would say it is a good thing that it does not appear on that support.

     

    When you play Doom or Duke Nukem ,  despite the very honorable effort for the console , it is not really fun to play compared to originals.

     

    Oh, I dunno. Looks nice to me...  ;) 

     

    Dark Forces on GBA - Image 1.gif

    Dark Forces on GBA - Image 2.gif

    Dark Forces on GBA - Image 3.gif

    Dark Forces on GBA - Image 4.gif

    Dark Forces on GBA - Image 5.gif

    • Like 1

  15. Posted

    When I look at the history of video games, I often wonder about why certain things that should have expectedly happened never really materialized. Some of these things can be explained via a closer examination of historical events and context, while others can only be attributed to overlooking potential or "stars not being aligned" from a business standpoint. Here are a few examples of missed opportunities that I find regretful:

     

    Sequel to H.E.R.O.: I see a lot of untapped potential there. One could even make a Metroidvania-style remake of the game, with caves to explore and missions to complete that wouldn't necessarily involve rescuing stranded miners, although that would still be a significant part of the game. I don't see why today's Activision (which is a totally different company from the Atari 2600 era) would object to publishing a modern take on H.E.R.O.. If I could have a talk with John Van Ryzin, I'd ask him about his thoughts on the subject.

     

    Classic Mega Man Metroidvania title: Here's another MetroidVania idea that seems like a total no-brainer to me: Have Mega Man infiltrate and explore a sprawling fortress, separated into distinct areas with one Robot Master per area, and defeating a Robot Master would grant you a weapon or ability that you need in order to unlock access to other areas (or sub-areas). Lots of backtracking, with maybe a few teleport stations to get around the fortress quicker (like the keyhole gates in Castlevania SOTN), some familiar faces like Duo could make an appearance, it would be the kind of game that practically codes itself. I'll never understand why Capcom never bothered to do it, although to be fair, they did do Mega Man ZX on the Nintendo DS, so I can't say that they never dabbled into MetroidVania territory. Still, my point is that classic Mega Man was (and still is) a perfect fit for the concept.

     

    Mega Man X series re-released on GBA: This one is more understandable. Capcom did release a couple of Mega Man X games on the Game Boy Color, and they invested significant effort into the Mega Man Zero and Mega Man Battle Network series on the GBA, so maybe re-releasing Mega Man X1/X2/X3 on the GBA could have seemed like overkill at the time, and Mega Man & Bass didn't do much of a splash on the GBA. But with Nintendo re-releasing many of their flagship titles (Super Mario Advance series, Donkey Kong Country, and several others) and Capcom re-releasing many of their own tiles on the GBA (Final Fight, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Breath of Fire I & II) I sincerely think they could have outsourced the development of Mega Man X1/X2/X3 for GBA to an outside development studio and the games would have seen some good sales. And who knows, perhaps having Mega Man X4/X5/X6 redone in the graphic style of X1/X2/X3 would have been a hoot, and they could have fixed a lot of "design errors" in X5 and X6 in the process to make them better than their PS1 counterparts.

     

    Dark Forces on GBA: A true missed opportunity here, but I have to admit I'm biased because Dark Forces is the most memorable first-person shooter I've ever played on PC, despite its age. Seeing all those 3D engines running on GBA (Doom, Duke Nukem, and many others) I was expecting someone somewhere to say "Hey, LucasArts should actually release Dark Forces on the GBA" but it never happened. I would have bought that game on GBA in an instant. Go figure.


    So those are a few examples off the top of my head. What "missed opportunities" have left you scratching your head throughout the years? Feel free to contribute to this thread without any restrictions in terms of game genres, series or console/handheld generations.

     

    • Like 2

  19. Posted

    2 minutes ago, NIAD said:

    I think all CV and Adam emulators support the Super Action Controllers 3rd and 4th fire buttons as well as numerous custom gamepad and Arcade style controllers that are available to play on actual hardware. Adding support for the 3rd fire button is a no brainer as long as you have the room within the 32K limit. A good example would be how Coleco did things with Spy Hunter and Star Trek depending on which controller (standard or SAC) the gamer was going to use.

    Right, and let's not forget that the Roller Controller maps the red buttons to the fire buttons of both hand controllers, so that's another thing to consider.

     

  22. Posted

    5 minutes ago, retroillucid said:

     

    Probably, we'll see how it goes
    We're missing 80 members to hit 200 

    I don't mean to stir up any controversy here, I'm just a little puzzled: Didn't you manage to sell hundreds of Phoenixes? Did you try contacting all those people to see if they'd be interested in the club? Seems to me like reaching 200 members from that pool of customers should not be all that difficult.

     

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