jbanes

If I may point out, Duke Nukem 3D was based on a Raycaster known as the Build Engine. Since pretty much the entire discussion revolves around hackish algorithms to accomplish 3D rendering, I'm not certain that Raycasting can be so easily discounted. Just saying. Carry on.

He already went back to Goodwill, apologized, and fixed it. What more do you want out of him? A pound of flesh? (Be warned. I hear he has a very good Italian lawyer. )

That's a difficult question to answer without hashing out all kinds of technical details. Thankfully, it doesn't matter. As I was saying, it's all about perception. SMB is the de-facto platformer. That means that all other platformers will be compared to it. It seems you're right. Digging through the documentation bit more: So Atari/GCC were obviously expecting expansion processors to always work with the Sally rather than replace it. Still, it's pretty cool that Atari/GCC were thinking about these things. Exactly. No / limitted background & large amount of sprites. BTW, good work on your Ball Demo. It proves almost the exact case I need to do a port of Xero.

It's goes to show that even people who should know what they are talking about, aren't always right. Can people please stop repeating this? Two minutes on Google can easily prove that Bill Gates never uttered those words. No one knows where the rumor started, but it certainly wasn't Gates. From a purely technical standpoint, a 3D engine is doable. You'd need some horizontal slivers of different lengths to power the fill routines, and you'd be juggling the DLLs like you were a circus performer, but it is possible. Whether it's practical or not is another matter. I just don't know if the 7800 has enough horsepower under the hood to do it without an extra coprocessor or seven. You could take the Wing Commander route. The IBM PC AT didn't have rotational hardware either. The game worked off of pre-renderings[1] of all the ships. This made the perspective jerky, but it was quite a feat for its time. Again, the biggest limitation for the 7800 hardware is a lack of RAM and CPU power. You can scale the sprites in memory, then juggle the DLLs to draw more/less data, but that could require as many as 64,000 operations per image. Computing a simple line scaling (ala bresenham scaling[2]) or nearest neighbor[3] scaling would be extremely expensive. You might have to drop the framerate, which means using even MORE memory. Again, a coprocessor could help here. Honestly, I'm not sure there are many instances where you want to be shoehorning a 3D engine into this hardware. It may be possible, but unless you've got a killer title like Rescue on Fractalus lined up, you just aren't going to want to spend the time and money on it. A homebrewer could probably do up some cool demos. But a full game? Probably not. The support infrastructure of Atari doesn't exist anymore. Without it, it would be extremely difficult to produce the necessary software and hardware to get it done right. [1] Wing Commander Graphics Viewer [2] Bresenham scaling (Errata) [3] Nearest Neighbor Intepolation

OOOOOooooooo! What does this do? BZZZT! .....fffffff..... Hmmm.... On second thought, maybe I should stick with drying paint. Just hang in there, shadow. With enough time, patience, and prayer, things will start looking up soon enough.

As you've discovered, ESC gets rid of the menu. This is pretty common among emulators. What you need to do is configure your gamepad's "quit" button to hit ALT-F4. That should cleanly exit the emulator. Hope this helps!

Case in point: Microsoft sunk billions into the XBox, and the unit never actually became profitable. The latest generation of the unit (the XBox 360) appears to be doing much better, but it's all custom hardware under the hood. The 7800 was the best bet, but Frogstar is right. The best the 7800 could have hoped for was a delaying action while Atari got a different system under way. Of course, if Atari had remained a household name, the Jaguar might have done better in the market. Not to say that it wasn't also poorly positioned...

Those are sequels. Generations are distinct differences in the games as the platform matures. For example, Super Mario Bros, Excite Bike, Metroid, and Kid Icarus were all first gen Nintendo games. (These are actually quite easy to identify thanks to their "pixelated" cover art.) Punch-Out, TMNT II, and Legend of Zelda were all later generations that sought to futher push the hardware beyond its humble beginnings. By the time that SMB3 came out, the games were already 3 or 4 generations down the line. The anti-nintendo pep-talk line at the end of the 7800 documentation doesn't inspire much confidence.

Is it possible that it's a hidden code path? Astrosmash, as an example, was originally going to be an Asteroids clone. However, the programmer had been working on a game he thought was a lot more fun, so he hid it in the code. Mattel executives eventually got cold feet about taking on Atari, and thus the hidden game became the primary, and the primary became the hidden game. The jump instruction at the beginning of the cart is intended to route around the Asteroids code in all cases. However, there have been reports that the instruction sometimes fails during the unstable period during power-on. The result is that the Asteroids clone is occasionally accessable, but only by accident. Given the 101 ways it seems possible to glitch out the 7800, might this only execute by pure accident?

I think that many owners of the 7800 have an unconcious need to learn exactly what their system was capable of. Since Nintendo was the king of the hill at the time, most attempts at defining system power revolve around comparisons with the Nintendo. The Nintendo had a lot of games, but its specialty was platformers. Platformers, of course, are the very genre that are so amazingly under-represented on the 7800. Taking the situation to its natural conclusion, these owners look for a comparison between the de-facto platformer (SMB) and the 7800 titles. I'm not sure what that would accomplish. The 7800 has precious few titles, and the ported arcade games were "old hat" by the time the Nintendo came along. Thus Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac Man may have been really good on the 7800, but no one is really interested. They were also good on the Colecovision and 5200, but the 7800 and Nintendo were next-gen systems. Owners wanted to see next-gen games. Things weren't helped by the Double Dragon port. The Gameplay on the 7800 may have been more intact than the Nintendo version, but the Nintendo graphics just plain looked better without sacrificing that much gameplay. Many gamers didn't even notice issues like the missing two player functionality. All in all, the 7800 was like the home computer of the age. The games were lots of fun, but just different than their console counterparts. Had the 7800 survived, it might have seen a port of games like Wing Commander, King's Quest, Sim City, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, R-Type, etc. Basically, all the games that had to wait for the Super Nintendo before being released on a console. Sure, some of those games might have required extra chipping, but I have no doubt that they could have been accomplished. (Did you know that the cart has a line to halt the CPU? Looking at the specs, they actually suggest disabling the Sally chip to run a processor in the cart! Perhaps the 7800 might had the FX chip of the 80's.) The keyboard addition would have furthered the console's home gaming abilities. More complex games like EGA Trek and Zork could have been produced. Personally, I've got an itching to port Xero to the 7800. The heavy sprite capabilities of the hardware would make a shoot 'em up like this a perfect match.

(Note: The images appear to have attached in reverese order. So look at them from right to left.) I'm not really sure I agree. If we were talking a port of SMB3 to the 7800, then we might have issues. But a port of SMB should be possible, as long as you throw away the idea of tiling. The 7800 is good at sprites, so let's treat everything as sprites. If you look at the reference image (3x normal size), you'll see that SMB has a maximum of 16 sprites of 16 pixels wide on any given scanline. Most Mario screens tend to have a maximum of three or four lines of bricks/mushrooms that actually take up a significant portion of the screen. The biggest exception would probably be the block-mountain leading to the flag area at the end. Now if we deleted the decorative sprites (which are really tiles on the NES), we shouldn't have any trouble rendering SMB. And yet, if you look at the attached Scrapyard dog image, that's exactly what it's doing: 16 sprites across, 20 pixels wide, two colors per sprite. The result is very believable bricks. Granted, the Scrapyard Dog background does appear to be 2 colors instead of 3. Which means that an SMB clone might not look as nice. Using 2 colors as a reference, I've done a mockup of what a 7800 version might look like. All the colors might not be exact, but every sprite has been reduced to two colors. A realistic version would probably be able to either use more colors, or create sprites that would better make use of the colors available. Just my 2 pennies.

Watching paint dry and playing this game have a lot in common. Still, at least I can get a score that will place. 15,668

A Wico stick conversion would be tricky without doing some real frankenstein surgury on it, but I wonder if you could convert an Amiga Power Stick? These little buggers are extremely small, smooth, easy to grip, and (most importantly) have two buttons. The two buttons are merely for symmetry, but you might be able to rejigger it to use both buttons separately. Just a thought.

(List of obscenities deleted for the sake of the children. Won't someone please think of the children?) Thanks to that stupid cheat code, the Tower Toppler cartridge I purchased (new in the box!) showed the oddest sort of damage: It was stuck in the level-switch mode. No amount of switch flipping helped, either. I eventually exchanged it. I wonder how many new owners back in the day returned their cartridge because they accidently left the difficulty switch in the wrong position? BTW, if you like Tower Toppler, you're going to love this.

You'd probably need a scan doubler in addition to a scan converter. YUV output just won't look right on an RGB screen. That being said, a low-quality scan converter/doubler is not that expensive to build. It's the fancy interpolation doublers and hicolor converters that drive up the price. For a system that otherwise produces blocky images and low color, this isn't as much of an issue.

How is that supposed to work, anyway? Are you planning to run the GTIA's output through a framebuffer, or is the intent for modders to build their own signal converter? Personally, I'm a big fan of routing the signal through a framebuffer first. The TIA and GTIA were competent chips for their time, but the signal quality just doesn't look that good on the precision of a modern LCD screen. (Though surprisingly, some of the LCD TVs I've seen do an excellent job of filtering out any jitter in the signal.) Placing a framebuffer in the way would allow for a much cleaner TV signal to be produced without compromising the original chipset design. Of course, it might also increase cost (approx. an additional 64K of RAM, +/- extra timing crystals, and a more complex SOC) so I can perfectly well understand if you don't use one.

Just a quick heads-up on Tower Toppler. I ran across an interesting site the other day while I was trying to get Tower Toppler for the 7800 working. (It seems my copy was permanently stuck in cheat-mode.) Tower Toppler has never looked so good.

Abstract This last weekend, my family and I hit the Game On 2.0 exhibition at the Museum of Science and Industry of Chicago. Given that others have shown interest in the exhibit, I decided to share my experience. Layout If you believe the hype, the exhibit is divided into 16 "levels" of fascinating information about the history of Video Gaming, covering everything from the old to the new. The reality is that the exhibit is all on one floor and is merely divided up by exhibit walls. There are no clear divisions between the "levels", though it's reasonably easy to say that there are about 5 main areas. Each area is lined with video games or video game systems, many of which have a controller available to play. Some of the arcade machines are behind glass. Section 1: Classic Arcade As you walk into the exhibit, you're treated to a visual feast of early arcade machines. To your right, you can see an original Space War machine (behind glass), a playable Vectrex version of Space War next to it, then a long line of arcade machines. These machines include: Galaxian Galaga Bezerk Ms. Pac Man Missile Command Space Invaders (With and Without Backdrop) Asteroids Dig Dug Several more that I don't remember All the machines appear to be in good condition, and are highly playable. It's quite a treat when compared to the average, beat-up arcade machine. You really get a good feel for what it was like when these machines were new. To the left, there's an original arcade Pong machine, and a large projection TV for MAME. Pong is projected onto a screen so you can play using buttons for up and down. I'm not familiar enough with the actual arcade machine to know if we were playing the original or not, but I was under the impression that the original cabinets used knobs rather than buttons. I personally didn't get to play the MAME machine (my wife and older son did), but it was an impressive machine to look at. The projection screen towered a good 8 to 10 feet high as you played from halfway across the room. It seemed to be loaded with quite a few games as well. I saw visitors playing Galaga and a platformer I didn't recognize. Section 2: Classic Home Gaming Turning the corner, you find yourself bumping into the classic home gaming machines. The machines are lined up across the wall, protected by well-lit glass cases. In most instances the controllers are exposed to allow people to play. The first machine I bumped across was a Magnavox Odyssey. The two controllers (if you call them that ) were available to play table tennis, so my younger son and I tried playing. The machine appeared in good operating condition, but my son did have a little bit of trouble controlling his character. (For those of you who've never played one before, you can move the characters all over the screen. This includes the wrong side of the screen, and even off the screen. There's no scoring, so you pretty much have to enforce all rules and scorekeeping yourself.) The presence of the Odyssey seemed like a good sign. Unfortunately, things went downhill from there. There were a few Atari 2600 games (Freeway and Code Breaker? What the... ?), but the machines immediately jumped to home computers like the Spectrum and an Atari 8-Bit. Systems like the Channel F, Intellivision, Colecovision, Odyssey^2, etc, were all missing. The display then jarringly switched to Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and Nintendo 64 systems; none of which were visible. The only Famicom I saw (or rather, didn't see) wasn't even indentifiable by its controller. It had been replaced with a cheap, knock-off controller. There was also a system that played The Secret of Monkey Island (and had a picture of Guywood Threepbrush paper dolls next to it), but I didn't take the time to figure out what that system was. It may have just been a fancy, programmable mouse connected to a PC. Section 3: Current Systems & Popular Icons Rounding another corner, we came to an entire exhibit dedicated to the million and one iterations of Golden Tee Golf. Three older machines were behind glass, while the latest machine was available for play. Amazingly, someone was playing it. What is up with this game? Also in this area was a shrine to Tomb Raider (mostly just pretty pictures), a Playstation running Tomb Raider, several XBoxs and Playstations, a PS2 Linux Development Kit behind glass, and a collection of all kinds of Pokemon stuff. We let the kids play Tomb Raider and an XBox motorcycle game before moving on. Section 4: Handheld Gaming Now this was kind of neat. Gameboy Advances were bolted onto a table along with Simon, Speak n' Spell, Game and Watch games, and "handheld arcade" systems like Alien Attack, Cavemen, and Super Cobra. The Cavemen system appeared to be inoperable, and Super Cobra didn't seem to do anything. Alien Attack worked, and was amazingly impressive for a backlit LCD game. The "fun" would probably wear off quickly for anyone who owned such a system, but it was definitely neat to try. Behind glass they had all kinds of classic handheld systems. The ones I can remember include: Game Boy Color Game Gear Wonderswan Color Atari Lynx Neo-Geo Pocket Atari Touch Me Arcade Frogger Arcade Donkey Kong Arcade Pacman Vectrex The "arcade" handhelds were the portable LCD games that look like miniature arcade cabinets. Section 5: Specialized Gaming Systems By the time we had gotten to the last section, we just weren't that interested in waiting in line for the more modern systems. There was a Flight Simulator of some sort that was out of order (complete with joystick, rudder, throttle, and a bazillion other controls) and several other modern systems. Our time was running out anyway, so we left to take the kids for some Ice Cream in the Classic Town part of the Museum. Overall Impressions When you first enter the exhibit, you find yourself extremely impressed by the lineup of the machines. It's not often that so much classic arcade hardware is all in one place. It really does promise to be a great exhibit. It's too bad it goes from awesome to mediocre so quickly. Once you pass the Odyssey, most of the stuff consists of popular systems that people probably still have in their closets, as well modern systems that you may have at home. Considering that the exhibit is supposed to be about gaming history, it's a bit saddening to see that the classic arcade is the only place they made much effort. Seeing systems like the Intellivision, Colecovision, and Atari 5200 or 7800 would have really helped close the gaps. Even if they were only display pieces. The fact that I went out and purchased Shark! Shark! and Beauty and the Beast right after we visited, shows that they weren't trying hard enough to obtain these old systems. Sean Kelley's store is known well enough in the area to where they should have had no trouble acquiring hardware in good condition. All it would have required was a bit of asking around. The handheld display was a pleasant suprise. I hadn't expected to see older handheld systems outside of a display case. The abuse these things take usually means that you don't want to be exposing small children to a now-delicate artifact. The fact that Simon had a crack and two of the arcade handhelds weren't operating seems to show that these devices were having difficulty with the abuse. Seeing the Wonderswan was a treat (I've never seen one before), but I think it would have been nice if they had put the classic Football game out for the kids to play. Not only can you purchase a remake of the system from Walmart, but the original systems stood up to an incredible amount of punishment. As the first handheld electronic games, the Milton Bradley line would have been well represented from a historical standpoint. Speaking of historical contexts, there wasn't a whole lot to actually learn. At the beginning of the exhibit, most systems had plaques to give at least a little information. As the exhibit went on, though, the information on the walls and plaques becames scarcer and fluffier in content. Simple things like a timeline of systems or a comparison of controllers would have seriously improved the educational value. It felt like the only purpose of the exhibit was to be a very expensive arcade. Final Verdict If you've had very little exposure to classic arcade and home systems in real life, this exhibit will probably pique your interest. Alternatively, you may find this extremely interesting if you want to see classic arcade machines in their prime. If you're one of those weirdos who absolutely loves Golden Tee, then there's something for you to see as well. Otherwise it's just a very expensive arcade, and you may want to spend your money on the U-505 Submarine Tour instead.

You had a Zenith Minisport? How cool! IIRC, the disks could hold 720KB on a double-sided, double-density platter. Unfortunately, the format never managed to displace the 3.5" floppies which were starting to become popular. Thus the drive was never used in any other machine. Once the 1.44MB floppies came along, all hope for the 2" format was lost.

A few weeks ago I saw several of the wireless Ms. Pacmans being clearanced at a local Target for $9.99 a piece. I was extremely tempted to purchase their stock and resell them on EBay.

Many of you have heard me mention it in passing before, and now it is that time of year again! The 2006 Java 4K Game Programming Contest is currently in full swing. The goal of the contest is to cram as much of a game as possible into an executable download of 4K or less. The only caveat is that the game must be written in Java. Here are a few links: Contest Home Page Contest Rules Game Design Tips Here's my favorite game: Xero - The Last Hope for Mankind I'll let you all figure out why it's my favorite. The 2005 Game List is also currently available. Note that there is more than one page, so don't stop at the first 25 games! If you don't have Java 1.4 or higher, you can get it as an automatic download from Java.com. The files are all provided as either a JAR file that can be downloaded and run via double-clicking (java -jar <filename> on systems where you can't double-click), or in a Java Webstart file that launches automatically. So have fun playing cool games, and feel free to crate an entry if you're up to it! P.S. There are no actual prizes in this contest. There used to be a prize of "Duke Dollars" (a lame attempt by Sun Microsystems to improve the answer rates for questions posted), but those have long since fallen by the wayside. The only real prize now is fame among peers, and the fun we have competing.

Thanks, akimmet. The emulator gives the impression that the game should start out in the desert as opposed to grass. As for the snow, I figure it's probably electronic interference. TV Cards are very precise in their sampling. Such artifacts probably wouldn't show up on a real TV screen. More modern hardware and other PNP games work without issue.

Ok, some quick background: I've known for awhile that the video picture on my Leaktek Winfast TV/2000 card is a bit screwy with the signal produced by Atari hardware. The exact issue is that there's a bit of snow on the screen. Screenshot: It really hasn't bothered me, though, and I've pretty much chalked it up to the sampling of a modern TV card vs. the inherently poor picture of older TVs that blurred over many of these issues. My 7800 exhibits the exact same issue, except that the colors are a bit off in Joust. In Joust, however, I was able to tune the color hues to match a bit closer to what the emulator shows. But nothing quite prepared me for when I picked up a copy of Desert Falcon. Or should I say, Links Golf lizard? Now that has to be the wackiest color scheme yet! I can sort of fix it for the first level (by adjusting the hue, saturation, and contrast), but the second level goes back to being green. Fixing that level doesn't seem to be possible. Any adjustments that look right are far too redshifted to be correct. What do you guys think. Is it the 7800, my TV Card, or is that just normal?

Most people don't realize it, but you can pause most of the Jakks PNPs by hitting the "Menu" button on the front. To unpause, select "Resume Game". Since Frogger is actually a Nintendo game, the pause button is much more intuitive. Glad you like the game! It's hard to argue with $5 for it.

As far as I'm concerned, the sounds are fine. Like I said, it's not a bad purchase. My kids have a lot of fun playing it. It's just that it stands out that it's the Nintendo version rather than the Arcade version. If you got it for $5, I'd say you probably got a good deal for it.