onmode-ky

My list of all retro games included in plug-n-play systems shows that Sonic 3 has actually never been on any plug-n-play system, neither Radica's nor AtGames'. Maybe there's a known incompatibility with that game on the RedKid chips? I'm reminded of how you once told me about Battlezone having emulation issues on AtGames' Flashbacks, and now whaddaya know? The FB5's only change from FB4 in terms of Atari-IP games is the removal of Battlezone. But when it comes to games, what exactly is copyrighted? I have no doubt that G-mode owns the copyright to the original Data East arcade creation, both source code and object code, but the ports created by others under license, did Data East's copyright and ownership apply to those as well? Or just the trademark on the name? Don't look at me. I was going to take you up on that offer, but you went and found it yourself. Still, I was really looking for someone who just plain knows, not someone having to look it all up just like I'd have to. By the way, I note from that trademark info page that Sega may still own the "Zaxxon" mark internationally. The international registration part of that page says that its status is "processed." The opening jingle I'm not so clear about (aren't movie scores' copyrights separate from the movies from which they come?), but I don't think a game concept can be copyrighted--otherwise, we wouldn't have clones of games all the time, no? Perhaps G-mode's Data East IP acquisition did not include anything of their Western operations, like American trademarks? Like, if someone buys Biohazard from Capcom, do they automatically get the "Resident Evil" name, or does that need to be arranged separately? I think River West may own the content in this case, which would explain why they wouldn't need to license it from G-mode. That is: G-mode owns Burnin' Rubber, the arcade game and its name; River West owns ColecoVision Bump 'n' Jump and its name (including the name beyond ColecoVision). That's the hypothesis I'm floating here. No, I think the list is complete. River West probably went and snatched up any ColecoVision games' marks that had lapsed. Anything else that's on the CV FB is presumably licensed from their (current) owners. Jungle Hunt's presence on the Atari FB64 and FB5 may have been licensed from River West (but not the FB4, which predates their trademark registration date). onmode-ky

Also worth noting, at the time of FB4's launch, the Bed Bath & Beyond edition included Millipede, and I'm pretty sure later general production runs of the FB4 included it as well. So, for all intents and purposes, the difference between FB5 and FB4 is the loss of Battlezone and the addition of the M Network and homebrew titles. I guess there's a shadow of a chance that Space Invaders got replaced in the FB5 with the actual 2600 Space Invaders, but I wouldn't bet on it. onmode-ky

Could someone do me a big favor and group the games in the list by (original) publisher/developer? I'd like to include the pub/dev data in my plug-n-play records, but I'm a ColecoVision newbie and can't do the grouping myself. At least, not without looking up every single game individually (ouch). I don't think G-mode was in this at all. Don't forget, the owner of the "Bump 'n' Jump" mark these days is Coleco Holdings (River West); what G-mode owns is the "Burnin' Rubber" mark. G-mode may not have any claim on Data East works with the "Bump 'n' Jump" name. As for why Bump 'n' Jump is only on the CV FB, maybe River West wasn't interested in licensing out the mark for the other platforms? Or they have no copyright claim on the other ones? I'm just throwing out guesses, of course. Someone should ask River West. I don't remember who posted that link, nor where I saw it in the forum (earlier in this thread, maybe?), but it's pretty interesting data. That whole thing with Coleco owning the "Zaxxon" mark and Sega losing in their attempt to get it back (that part's not visible in that link, but you can find Sega's denied filing through that search engine) is an eye opener. onmode-ky

Regarding the 3 phrases I boldfaced above, I think it might be helpful for you to take a look at a pair of posts I wrote not too long ago, this one and this one, both concerning the developmental technology and history of 2600-based plug-n-play game systems. They may give you some new perspective. onmode-ky

Were you able to ask him if he knows definitively whether the old Techno Source plug-n-play systems were programmed in-house or by a contractor? It would be nice to know for sure. Or did the interview predate my question? onmode-ky

What a coincidence; I also marked the game as beaten in 2011 when I looped it once! But in light of the discovery above, I have edited my records to mark it as not really beaten. And I too will not be going through it again--I don't know about your skill level, but there's no way I could survive for 2.5 hours in that game on one credit, and the amount of practice which that level of skill would require to achieve is not worth my time. onmode-ky

I couldn't remember if Exed Exes were the game I was thinking of, so I looked it up on YouTube. Yes, this is indeed the game where some of the power-ups turn the insectoid enemies into fruit worth big points. The clip I found showed a guy who played/survived (though with occasional deaths) for about 2.5 hours, reaching 10 million points. Apparently, that's when the game truly ends. It happened during Round 32 for him--during, not after; the game actually stops when you hit that score, congratulates you for hitting 10 million, ends, and takes you to the name entry screen. Soooo *ahem* you didn't really beat it. onmode-ky

A while ago, I brought up in this thread the Kickstarter project for Life of Pixel, a formerly PlayStation Mobile-exclusive platformer whose worlds are patterned after specific classic game systems--both visually and aurally. That project didn't meet its funding goal, but Super Icon, the developer, continued work on the PC/Mac editions of the game, and they're now available. As far as I know, so far, you can get the game through Desura and through a Humble Widget at the game's official website. The game's latest trailer is below: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLIpFhnKmA Personally, I thought this was a lot of fun when I got the PSM edition, and the expanded content of the PC/Mac release looks very cool (there were no vehicles/jetpack/bubble in the original, and it had no leaderboards, either). onmode-ky

Er, if you'll look back at my post, that particular quote is attributed to user grips03, not you. I used the forum's multi-quote feature, as I am also doing in this post. Assuming for the moment that Techno Source themselves did not do the NOAC Intellivision programming (remember, this isn't actually confirmed but is rather merely a possible conclusion from the available evidence), it might simply be that Techno Source didn't tell Intellivision Productions who their outsource subcontractor was. If, in your future discussions with Keith Robinson, you can ask him if he knows for certain who programmed the NOAC Intellivision projects (e.g., perhaps he actually met in-house programming staff at Techno Source's office), that could resolve the mystery with certainty. However, I doubt Techno Source did it themselves, because they're a small toy company who, prior to their Intellivision work, had never done any video games. It would make sense for them to link up with a firm that had a lot of Famicom development experience. But again, this is speculation. Yes, I don't wish to imply that the jumper method is how it is really being done. It was merely a bit of "how might this be done" wondering on my part. Everyone reading, please keep that in mind. The reason why I began wondering about how the variant content might be getting done is that I don't have any concept of whether or not there is a great cost in simply setting up a second image for mass ROM manufacturing. Is it really just a matter of replacing a master source file with another one, just putting in a different name in an input field? It seems like it could be, but my mind is cluttered with vague memories of reading here and there that ROMs are very different from other memory types, so I thought maybe setting up a variant image for burning could possibly have a greater cost than just having the assembly line add in one extra step on part of the overall production run. If someone out there could definitively say for us, "The cost for making a variant ROM image is (very high|not significant)," that would be most helpful. onmode-ky

It's worth noting that the original, aborted plan for Flashback 3, as intended by Curt Vendel back when the FB2 had just gotten off the ground, was to be just that, an "800 computer in a 5200 case." There was also a plan for a portable Flashback 2, but Atari chose to pursue neither project and instead sidelined the Flashback name for ~5 years. Furthermore, all subsequent Flashback systems were not funded/initiated by Atari themselves; they most likely decided the concept was not marketable enough to the mainstream audience (i.e., the same thing that's been said earlier in this thread). But, for a brief time, it did look like there would be an Atari 8-bit computer Flashback. onmode-ky

There are folks out there who do a lot of digging in the unlicensed Famicom/Famiclone software scene, and their research pointed to Nice Code Software, a Xi'an-based developer, as the outfit who programmed the NOAC Intellivision remakes for Techno Source. There's no solid evidence, but (as noted at the linked page) Nice Code's own releases include hacks of the NOAC Intellivision games that were on Techno Source's plug-n-play systems. Perhaps they had and could hack them because they were the ones who wrote them in the first place--such is the thinking, at least. AtGames' products run on their own processors. Even if we assume that the Intellivision Flashback will be using the same AtGames ARM implementation (the Titan chip) which they have used on their Atari Flashbacks, is there any Intellivision emulator out there for the ARM architecture? Well, I don't know if the DS version of Intellivision Lives! is emulation-based, but if it is, that's an emulator by Intellivision Productions, which is working with AtGames on the Flashback anyway. So, if it were being borrowed/cannibalized, it would be with permission. And if it's the case that the Intellivision Flashback uses a completely different, new AtGames chip, then there's definitely no possibility of someone already having written an Intellivision emulator for it. I've been pondering the retailer-specific variants that the ColecoVision and Intellivision Flashbacks will be having, specifically how they will be made. It's easy enough to do the Sam's Club one (just put the additional overlays into the box), but for the Dollar General edition, is that an actual separate ROM image, different from the one used in the non-exclusive variants? What's a more economical way to produce such a variant: - burn a separate run of ROMs with an image that includes the extra game; or, - use only one run of ROMs (all with the extra game), and use a jumper installed to the PCB on the manufacturing line to distinguish between the Dollar General edition and the standard edition. For example, "with jumper" enables the extra game in the menu, and "no jumper" leaves it out. If the latter is the method used, then every unit actually has the extra game, and those in the know can just "transform" their standard edition into the Dollar General edition with a bit of unscrewing. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Does my hypothesis even make sense? onmode-ky

My skills of observation are so spectacularly good that I did not know you can choose to examine your purchases directly from the Personal dropdown menu--as would, you know, make perfect sense. No need to go to Rewards first and then switch to Purchases. I'm just used to ignoring it, I guess, since I almost never make Home purchases. Anyway, if you see no record of your Intellivision Gen2 purchases in the Home history, I think you should call up Sony and complain. If it's explicitly described as a two-for-one deal in the PSV PS Store, then you shouldn't have to pay again to get it in Home. onmode-ky

If you can't find any Intellivision furniture items under your Redecorate menus, then before you spend any (further) money, check your Home purchases list to see what exactly you did get from buying the games on your PSV: 1. Press Start to bring up the Home main menu (doesn't matter what space you're in when doing this). 2. Press right on the directional pad until you get to the Personal option. In North American Home, I think this is the fourth selection from the left. 3. Under the Personal dropdown menu, go down until you get to the Home Rewards option. 4. Opening up Home Rewards should result in a (none too quick in loading) table of free items that you've gotten in Home. Switch to paid items instead, by pressing L1 and picking Purchases. You can change the table's sort method with the R1 button (e.g., oldest first). Your Intellivision Gen2 purchases should show up in that purchased items list, with pictures, and then you'll know at least what you've already paid for. onmode-ky

As an aside, BurgerTime World Tour was removed from all storefronts at the end of April, presumably due to expiration of MonkeyPaw Games' license. Majesco did publish Data East Arcade Classics, but they never published any Minis. I think the Data East Minis were published by G-mode themselves; YouTube videos of those games show that G-mode's is the first logo to appear at startup (followed by G1M2's, and that's it). If there's ever an Xbox 360 Flashback, the absence of Yaris will be a major dealbreaker. Mark my words. What particularly puzzles me about these extra-game editions is the identity of the retailers. Bed Bath & Beyond? Dollar General? What must be going on is that these retailers are being offered an exclusive game if they agree to pay more (either via greater volumes or higher per-unit price), but did AtGames just throw out the offer and then go with whoever responded first? Those are national chains, sure, but wouldn't it make more sense to do this with a retailer that's either more closely associated with toys/games (say, Toys 'R Us) or has greater mainstream familiarity (Walmart, Target, Amazon.com)? Of course, maybe AtGames did try for them and got nowhere. Nonetheless, going with Dollar General on this deal makes it seem like AtGames is happy to announce, "We play in the minor leagues!" . . . And well, maybe they are. The ColecoVision Flashback's heavy third-party presence has made me wonder if that project is actually costing AtGames significantly more than the Intellivision Flashback. We'll likely never know, but the possibility does suggest that a hypothetical CVFB2 getting green-lit would need greater revenue generated by the CVFB than a hypothetical INTVFB2 would need from the INTVFB. Well, I think so, anyway. No probably about it. Looking at their PSP arcade collections alone, Capcom had 39 games represented, and SNK had 36 (not even including certain early titles that SNK only released singly, as Minis). But no, SNK and Capcom are not one company. Not even close. onmode-ky

Well, I don't have either of the Intellivision Gen2 games myself, but I would assume it's the same as with the arcade cabinets. Namely, your purchase adds a new furniture item, of the Appliance type, I believe. If you've never added any furniture in Home before, here's how: 1. Go to the personal space where you want to put the games (e.g., your Harbor Studio apartment). 2. Press Start to bring up the Home main menu. 3. Press right on the directional pad until you get to the Redecorate option. I think it's the second selection from the right. 3a. If you're in the Harbor Studio, I think there's an extra step now: choose the selection about furniture (the Harbor Studio has a second Redecorate capability, changing the wallpaper, which you can't do in other personal spaces). 4. I think 2 options come up at this point, adding new furniture and rearranging existing furniture. Choose the former. 5. The next screen should be a table consisting of a few categories for furniture types. I would guess that the games would count as Appliances, which is one of the selections in the lower right corner. 6. The next screen will have the Intellivision consoles somewhere in it. Scroll around until you get to the one you want to add to your space, then press X on it. 7. The console will spawn, and then you can use the left stick to put it where you want it to go. Right stick is camera; L2/R2 are raise and lower; L1/R1 are rotate, I think. Use X to commit the position, then X again to confirm. If you want, you can go crazy and add dozens of consoles to your space by repeating the above process. Of course, there is a limit; when you're in the furniture-choosing screen, there's a diagram on the left side made up of gray squares and white squares, with a number below and a number above it. One number is how many gray squares you have, which is the number of furniture slots you have available in the space. The other number, the white square count, is how many slots you're already using. I think the game consoles would be only 1 slot each, so dozens in your space is possible. Not hundreds, though. If you come up with some whacked-out console arrangement, save a screenshot to your hard drive (press R1, choose Camera, press L2 if you want first-person view, press Square to snap) and share it with us later. It will be under the XMB's Photo section, in the "PlayStation®Home" album. To play the console, walk your avatar up to it, press X when the prompt comes up, and then choose Play. The actual game will then download and load (if it's still in your Home cache, it won't need to download). To exit the game, press Start and choose to exit. Note: if your TV has significant latency, you'll definitely feel it in comparison to playing the games on your PSV. PSV = quicker startup + no need to be online + lower latency -> preferred platform for this. You can't build a fort out of Intellivision consoles on the PSV, though. . . . You know, I was just making a joke, but now that I think about it, I'd like to see that. Please do that and post a screenshot here! Disclaimer: I'm not actually logged into Home right now, so I might have gotten some of the details wrong in my directions above. onmode-ky

The Intellivision Gen2 games that debuted in PlayStation Home are available on the PSV as components of the PSV-native Home Arcade App; they aren't PlayStation Mobile releases. I'll save you some time and let you know that Night Stalker Gen2 ended up as vaporware. Despite being the subject of a nice video interview I saw last year, the project subsequently went silent and never resurfaced, as far as I know. At the least, even if it did not get canceled, it definitely hasn't reached PS Home yet. You should still reinstall Home so that you can get the second-wave Home Arcade games, that still aren't available for the PSV's app. Four Konami classics came last December, Scramble, Super Cobra, Pooyan, and Yie Ar Kung Fu. onmode-ky

Play Along itself has been a wholly owned subsidiary of toymaker Jakks Pacific since 2004. In fact, since Jakks currently describes Cabbage Patch Kids as their own license, Play Along may just be a retired name now, like Toymax and Trendmasters, rather than a division of the company. Anyway, with Jakks being a major player in the plug-n-play market, and one whose history includes multiple retro plug-n-play systems in particular, I think CPK on an AtGames system would have been a very long shot. onmode-ky

Congratulations on a successful degaussing! But your topic has made me wonder if the degausser in my Awesome Arcades AC-605SP (built by one of Curt Vendel's ventures a few years ago) monitor is the source of its strange problem. I'm not getting color distortion, but every time I switch on the machine recently, there's a loud buzzing for over a minute before the system actually begins booting. It sounds like the type of buzzing you hear from magnetic field interference with speakers (low frequency, occasional change in pitch presumably caused by a change in the affecting magnetic field). Could the monitor's degausser be, I don't know, going haywire for a minute before stabilizing? Please note, I fully admit I don't know how a built-in degausser actually works. Then again, maybe it isn't the monitor at all, but just sounds like it (it seems to me like the sounds are coming from the speakers, which are right next to the monitor). It's a bit strange that the motherboard (along with everything else) does not seem to power on until the buzzing is all over; if it were strictly a monitor issue, the motherboard would get going on its own, wouldn't it? So what's holding it back? Frankly, I'm dumbfounded. I guess my question as far as this topic goes is: can a monitor's built-in degausser malfunction so as to emit a strong magnetic field, for no short amount of time, when the monitor is switched on? onmode-ky

Are you sure the game is not in your game list? The installer "bubble" still being there after installation is normal for downloaded PS1 games, to allow you to install the game to a PSP or PSV if you want to. If you press Square button until the games are grouped by format (i.e., by original game platform), does the PS1 folder definitely not have the game in it? If it really isn't anywhere after "Installation complete," I don't know what could have happened, but if it's just the installer bubble's presence being misleading, then everything is as it should be. onmode-ky

Man. That's a lot of hearts spewing out of that vandal. Way more than 14. onmode-ky

Titan is AtGames/Digital Media Cartridge's proprietary ARM-based processor. When it was first announced in 2005, it was intended to run Sega Genesis emulators. Whether that actually happened for any period of time before the arrival of AtGames' Genesis-on-a-chip RedKid and RedKid 2 processors, I don't know, but Titan did see action in AtGames' Atari Flashback line. I posted about this just recently somewhere else in the forum, but early FB3 mainboards had a socketed Titan chip with the name printed right on the top (current Atari Flashbacks appear to have switched to glob-top chip mounting, meaning no more handy branding). The FB4 debug mode also displays the fact that it's a Titan system. Er, why would it run an NES emulator when it isn't for use with any NES games (and has never been used to do so, as well)? I know that someone out there wrote an Intellivision emulator for the NES, but it would be an architectural head-scratcher to design a system that emulated one platform in order to run a program emulating another platform. AtGames has their own chip. So, they themselves write custom software for said chip. If they want the chip to run Intellivision code, then they write an Intellivision emulator for it. No need to insert a second translation step in the middle. As for which of their chips (AtGames has several) is being used in their non-Atari Flashbacks, though, we have no information yet, so it could possibly be something other than Titan. All we do know is that the Intellivision and ColecoVision systems are based on emulation, rather than either running the games on native-compatible hardware or running ports/remakes. onmode-ky

Er, that does not compute. Bill L. has a advisory relationship with AtGames, but he has no relationship with the firm whose name was mentioned in the press release, GetGames. They could be working on an Atari Flashback 37.2 at this very moment (a 1:1-scale Atari pinballs compilation!), but Bill would not know about it. . . . Incidentally, the year on that post was 2013. If it had been based on an actual in-the-works product, surely there would have been discussion here at AtariAge in the nearly 14 months since the "announcement"? We might have even heard mainstream news reports about an epidemic of mysteriously euphoric heart attacks among Jaguar fanboys. onmode-ky

AtGames' 60-game Sega Genesis plug-n-play systems were released late last year, alongside their Atari Flashback 64 (which itself was also a cut-down version of a 2012 AtGames product). I saw both of them together at a Walmart store at that time and wrote this post about them, including the Genesis system's game list (for the 20 Genesis games on it, not the 40 generics). I don't think it was a case of licenses expiring but rather a desire to justify budget pricing for the 2013 releases when compared to their beefier 2012 predecessors (i.e., the 80-in-1 Genesis system and the Atari Flashback 4). AtGames is still making Sega and Atari systems this year, after all, with 80 planned games and 100 planned games, respectively. If you want to directly compare the games lists of the 2012 80-in-1 and the 2013 60-in-1 systems, refer to my listing of all retro plug-n-play game systems contents (that I know about). Search for "sega gen 80-in-1" and "sega gen 60-in-1" on that page. I wish I knew why Toys 'R Us has the ColecoVision Flashback classified under "Home Theater Systems" instead of with the other AtGames retro systems under "Electronic & Interactive Games." onmode-ky

At my website about modern-era plug-n-play game systems, I have a table that reports my findings of what processors are used in what plug-n-play products. My findings for AtGames' Atari FB3 and FB4 were that they were built on AtGames' own ARM implementation, the Titan chip. However, the hardware may have had variants over time, perhaps with significant changes; the AtGames Flashback I was hearing about had a socketed chip that was the Titan, but my first-hand peek at last year's FB64 (which was just a FB4 with fewer games) revealed a board with a glob-top. I can't remember if I saw a second glob-top chip for ROM, but I recall seeing a socketed chip which I assumed was a RAM module. Regarding the Titan, I said it was "AtGames' own," but I suppose it's technically from Digital Media Cartridge. However, DMC and AtGames are so closely related that they're either the same company, two companies with the same parent, or a parent and its subsidiary. For example, AtGames Flashback shipping boxes have "Digital Media Cartridge" printed on them. onmode-ky Edit: I just searched Google for "atari flashback 'titan'" and found some supporting evidence. Here is a YouTube clip showing the FB4's debug mode, and it clearly says "Titan" at the top of the screen. Also, innards from an early version of the FB3 are pictured in this AtariAge forum post from 2011, and the socketed Titan chip is visible in one of the shots.

I don't have the From Russia with Love game myself (nor a scanner), but I did find a recent eBay listing that included photos of the front and back covers (but no spine). You'll have to click on the thumbnails and then right-click-save to get the full images, which are something like 850 x 1350 pixels. Not as good as a scan, but maybe good enough as a temporary workaround until you can get a real scan? onmode-ky