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onmode-ky

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Posts posted by onmode-ky

  1. Posted

    But why didn't they at least try to improve the FB2? I guess the money wasn't there, but then why re-release the newer versions that are guaranteed going to piss off the retro crowd with their cheaper quality?

    It sounds like you're under the impression that Atari actively shaped how the Flashback line developed across the various iterations of the series. This is not the case. For no iteration of the series was Atari the primary driving force. Even when they were the ones providing the funding (i.e., FB1 and FB2), they were not the ones in the driver's seat:

     

    FB1 - "Hmm, so you Legacy Engineering guys want to make a 2600 mini-console that's fully Atari-branded? I dunno. It sounds awfully risky, an untested market. How about you make something similar but quick for this holiday season--yes, this holiday season--and if that goes over well, you can do the 'real thing' next year?"

     

    FB2 - "Good news, Legacy, we'll go ahead with funding your project! I know you'll do a great job!"

     

    [post-FB2, Atari corporate seems to have chosen to move their focus away from retro gaming, until a cereal company knocked on their door . . .]

     

    FB2+ - "You're saying General Mills wants to commission a special run of Flashbacks? Well, hey, if they're paying for it, sure!"

     

    FB3 and beyond - "So you AtGames guys want to make a new Flashback system of your own? That sounds pretty good. Now, you're going to develop and make it, but Atari still gets sign-off, right? Okay, great, let's do that."

     

    It was always someone else coming to Atari with the idea. The differences between the Legacy productions and the AtGames productions came about because different people worked on them, and Atari just gave their approval to the final products. For them, it wasn't about pushing the Flashback series forward, making it even better for the hardcore retro gamer audience; instead, it was someone else's idea that just sounded good for the company. Did Atari want them to make a good product? Presumably yes. Did they want to make sure it was better than what came before? Well, yes, but their only metric for "better" was "more games." All the other details were in Legacy/AtGames' court, however they wanted to handle it. To put it simply, Atari was never proactive when it came to the Flashback line. They owned the name, but it wasn't their baby.

     

    The success that AtGames had with the FB3 and FB4 have given them the opportunity to do Sega and Colecovision units, and I believe I've heard something about an Intellivision FB in the works?

    Just some timeline rearrangements: AtGames has been doing Sega stuff since ~2005, long before they ever got their Atari license, and while you're right about them now working on both ColecoVision and Intellivision products, your ordering is a bit unusual--the Intellivision one was actually known about for something like a month prior to the ColecoVision one and seems to have much more buzz here at AtariAge than its CV sibling. Both should be coming sometime this year (along with new editions in the Atari and Sega lines).

     

    onmode-ky

    • Like 7

  2. Posted

    Supposedly Sony is (or just has) rolled out an update to their online PSN store on the Vita

    To clarify, this was not an update to the PS Store itself but rather just download lists on the PSV now allowing you to download all your PSP/PS1 purchases, instead of some entries saying you can't download them. The PSV's view of the PS Store continues to omit a large number of PSP/PS1 titles. E.g., no Crash Bandicoot games, no Spyro games.

     

    *edit: It appears a lot (if not all) of the previously de-listed games are now available in the store as well, not just your download history if you previously purchased them.

    Can you give an example? It sounds like you're saying delisted games have been relisted--but that makes no sense, since delisting comes from contract expirations and such. Well, okay, games sometimes get taken down temporarily if exploits are found in them, but I assume that isn't what you're referring to.

     

    Oh my mistake! I haven't checked my download history, I simply went into PS1 games and looked for them in there. My history is rather long so its tiresome trying to get to whatever I want. Unless there's a better way?

    So far, Sony hasn't updated their Store cataloguing to allow all PSP/PS1 titles to appear in the PSV's Store, but they might get around to it someday. . . .

     

    onmode-ky

  3. Posted

    Has anyone tried this?

    We actually have a pretty long thread about just that system over in Dedicated Systems. I've had a little bit of experience with it myself. I recall that I didn't particularly like the poor ergonomics of the base. And no, I never did get any info on what kind of microcontroller the system used, nor any confirmation on whether it was made up of ports or ran on emulation that happened to rearrange the display to fit a landscape-orientation screen. The only thing I can tell you about the hardware is that it has an 8-MB SDRAM chip.

     

    I have a large collection of plug n plays so that's the main reason I bought this one too.

    Heh, my collection of plug-n-play systems is the main reason I didn't get this one. :) Bandai decided to release this system made up entirely of games that had already been released on Jakks Pacific's plug-n-play systems. Sure, Jakks could not claim theirs were emulated, but they were largely ported quite well. Bandai's system thus offered only 2 enticements: the form factor and the bookmark at Board 255 of Pac-Man. The bookmark was interesting for a while, but overall, it was just not worth their MSRP to me.

     

    I recall there were two versions of PnP Golden Tee. The first was by Jakks and reportedly a turd in every way, but the one that came out a few years ago was a hidden gem of a port.

    You have your details confused. The first Golden Tee Golf plug-n-play system, from ~2006, was a 2D, overhead-view game produced by Radica and developed by FarSight (currently best known for Pinball Arcade, but yes, their history includes this and, on an unrelated note, also Action 52; go to their website and see for yourself). The second Golden Tee Golf plug-n-play system, from 2011, was a 3D, on-the-course-view game produced by Jakks Pacific and developed by HotGen. I've played the latter and thought it was pretty good stuff.

     

    onmode-ky

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    The FB1 (or whatever you call it) seems to have a bad rep- it's emulation, there's not many games, etc.

    Actually, the FB1 is not emulation. As mentioned by others, the games on it are ports to the new hardware--and ports (newly programmed code that runs on a different hardware architecture from the original) are not the same thing as emulation (existing code that runs through a translation program on a different hardware architecture from the original). As far as faithfully reproducing original look and behavior, both techniques can be done well and both can also be done poorly, but they are fundamentally different.

     

    The Flashbacks that do utilize emulation are the AtGames-produced models, i.e., from FB3 onward.

     

    Sure, there are better options out there, but these plug&play consoles had to start somewhere, right?

    Being the first is not an excuse that the FB1 can fall back on, because it wasn't the first plug-n-play system to attempt to recreate the 2600 experience. Bootlegs aside, the first were the 2001 Activision TV Game from Toymax and the 2002 Atari TV Game from Toymax purchaser Jakks Pacific--both of which systems have their own unhappy reputation among retro gamers--but the excellent 2004 Atari Paddles TV Game that jaybird3rd mentioned also predates the FB1, having beaten it to market by a few months (summer vs. fall).

     

    Again, as mentioned before, the FB1's excuse is that it is the product Atari decreed had to be developed within a short time frame before they would give the green light to the system which Legacy Engineering really wanted to make. So, as with many other examples in gaming history, its flaws stem largely from being rushed.

     

    [the Jakks Pacific Atari 13-in-1 Paddle] proves that, with clever programming, a NOAC-based system doesn't have to be cheap junk.

    Well, technically, it didn't prove that. :) I get what you mean, and I certainly agree that the Atari Paddle TV Game was very well executed, but it was not a NOAC, so it doesn't entirely support the statement. My research a few years ago indicated it was most likely built on a 65C816-compatible 16-bit microcontroller from Winbond (presumably the same as the other early TV Games systems, including the Atari joystick model), possibly the one mentioned in this AtariAge post. I'm not a game programmer myself, but it does at least seem like a chip that's more akin to the SNES than the NES would have an easier time doing, well, most things. So, not using a NOAC in that case may have been an advantage as far as mimicking the 2600 successfully. Again, I don't disagree with your basic statement, just that the Paddle TV Game may have had an easier path to travel than a NOAC-based system would have had.

     

    onmode-ky

    • Like 3

  5. Posted

    I've been neglecting to post about this for too long, but the Kickstarter for Flying Hamster II: Knight of the Golden Seed has been underway for a couple of weeks. Whereas the original Flying Hamster, initially released as a PSP/PS3 Mini, then on smartphones, then on the PSV as Flying Hamster HD, was purely a side-scrolling shooter "cute'em up," the sequel is explicitly described as a spiritual successor to the Wonder Boy and Monster World games (see the trailer). The initial funding goal is for a PC release (both on Steam and in DRM-free form), and after polling their backers so far, the first additional platform, via stretch goal, was revised to be a PSV version of the game (personally, this is how I want the game, too). Also of note, former Konami composer Michiru Yamane is on board to contribute some music to the game, along with a second famous composer whose name hasn't been revealed yet.

     

    Go, Flying Hamster Newton! Swing your sword! Spit your, uh, spit! We believe in flying hamsters! Or at least one.

     

    onmode-ky

  6. Posted · Edited by onmode-ky

    I would like to thank the person who came up with the Flashback 2

    I can't tell if you're aware, but in case you aren't, that very person is active here at AtariAge, Curt Vendel. Well, he wasn't solely responsible for everything, but he was the lead hardware engineer and the primary driving force behind the project. His firm, Legacy Engineering, developed the 2004-2010 entries in the Flashback series for Atari to put their name on and sell. So, hehe, you've really come to the right place. :)

     

    onmode-ky

     

    P.S. I have to say I'm amused that, at this moment, Curt's profile's count of Likes received is LEET (1337). :D

  7. Posted

    I'm currently looking for Trailblazer for my Gizmondo. Was it ported to any other game console?

    I suppose this is a remake of the 80s original rather than a port (the same could be said of the Gizmondo version, of course), but Trailblazer was released as a PlayStation Mini, a download-only PSP game playable on both the PSP and PS3. It's actually one of the most graphically impressive Minis, with very colorful effects and slick polygon graphics.

     

    onmode-ky

  8. Posted

    Wonder what Intellivision Productions was thinking when they didn't take him up on this.

    This is just conjecture on my part, but maybe they wanted to but couldn't. The firm that produced the NOAC Intellivision plug-n-play systems was Techno Source, but the actual coding and manufacturing were done by a company in China. Maybe they only wanted an all-in-one, software + hardware deal, rather than a) having to work with someone else's code that might have issues with their NOAC and b) having to take a smaller payout. Just a wild guess, though.

     

    onmode-ky

  10. Posted

    Most of my PS3 use lately has actually been participation in some limited-time events in the Asia and Japan regions of PS Home, but I poked around in the North American one lately and noticed some interesting new Atari-licensed avatar items being sold. In addition to the expected caps and shirts for avatars, there's a CX-40-shaped hat, a 2600-shaped backpack, a backpack shaped like a 2600 cartridge (different game between the male and female versions; one was Yars' Revenge, I think), and, most amusingly, avatar companions in the form of the CX-40, Yorgle the Yellow Duck Dragon, the Combat tank, and the Centipede. So you could run around in Home with Yorgle chasing after you for old times' sake. The companions are $3 each, and the other stuff ranges between $1.50 and $2. These aren't the only Atari items in Home, some actual games (bundled with furniture items like a 2600 console or an upright, cabaret, or cocktail cabinet) having been made available about a year ago, running on Code Mystics' emulation. Even funnier, I recall that one of the rewards you could unlock if you got Adventure was a Yorgle suit for your avatar. So, now it seems you can be Yorgle chased by Yorgle.

     

    I typically avoid spending money on online-only things, so these won't be going into my shopping cart . . . but I may not be able to hold out much longer on the Scramble and Super Cobra arcade cabinets (also running on Code Mystics' emulation). I'd been hoping those would make it to the PSV's Home Arcade as cross-buy purchases, thus not requiring Home login to play, but it doesn't look like that's happening for the second wave of Konami games in Home.

     

    onmode-ky

  11. Posted

    they are about 2/3 of the screen on the PS3 and 360 home screens.

    Ahh so PS4 doesn't have the "whats new" ad scroll like the ps3?

     

    I fired up my PS3 and it was almost all ads, similar to the 360.

    Do the ads stop if you buy PS+?

     

    I just flipped on my PS3, Xbox360, and XB1 and compared. Hit the power button and did nothing else. I do have XboxLive Gold, I do not have PS+.

     

    PS3 had 12 ads. 8 were for games or PS+. The other 4 were for Hunger Games, HBO, UFC, and PlayMemories.

    I'm honestly not sure what you're seeing (and thus what you're upset with), regarding the volume of ads on your PS3. You say "2/3 of the screen on the PS3" and "similar to the 360," yet you also say "ad scroll"--the ad scroll on the PS3 is just some text in the upper right corner, hardly 2/3 of the screen. When you turn on your PS3, are you seeing a full screen of "What's New" panels, rather than just the little text scroll in the upper right (which is made up of the captions from the panels)? Because if you are, and those big "What's New" panels are what you want to get rid of, you don't need to subscribe to PS+ to do it. Just go to the XMB's Settings column, go to System Settings, and switch "Display [What's New]" to Off. That's it. No more screen full of ads when you turn on your machine. The XMB will default to whatever disc is in the drive, or if it's empty, to the Games section. That settings option's been around ever since the firmware update that added "What's New" in the first place.

     

    Now, if you are in fact very annoyed at the little bar of text scrolling in the upper right corner, then I'm, well, a bit surprised it bothers you so much. It's so small, and if you really want to get rid of it, you could always just make a wallpaper that's all white right at that part of the screen. The text would blend into the wallpaper, and it would never be noticeable again.

     

    onmode-ky

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    Finished Velocity Ultra yesterday... fun shmup/maze game that grew from a PSN mini to an expanded PSN version with a platinum trophy.

    Velocity expanded into Velocity Ultra only in terms of assets; the game content itself, even the bonus zones and mini-games, was the same as before, which should tell you just how big it was as a Mini! Enough meat for a Platinum Trophy even back then!

     

    Finishing a perfect 42 second speed run of the final level wasn't easy.

    I couldn't get it until I cut my fingernails to a more button-friendly length, and then it wasn't too bad (on the PSP, I mean, as I haven't actually gotten around to Ultra yet).

     

    In case you aren't aware, the sequel, Velocity 2X, is currently in development (PSV/PS4). Look it up!

     

    onmode-ky

  14. Posted

    I've heard of this game for years, but this is my first time ever playing it. It took a good while before I found usable key mappings. I first mapped the running buttons to the left and right face buttons on my Rumblepad 2, but using my right index and middle fingers on them (like playing a trill on a piano) for some reason didn't get read by the game properly; my first three tries led to Game Over with 0 points! Eventually, I gave up on the gamepad and resigned myself to the keyboard (I'm sorry, keyboard!). It took a good while to understand how to run the hurdles (i.e., don't stop mashing the buttons while in mid-air), and I got past the hammer throw once on a fluke. However, I don't really know what I'm doing in the high jump, and my keyboard has suffered enough. My fingers, too.

     

    45,780

     

    onmode-ky

    post-8302-0-22268700-1393730924_thumb.jpg

  16. Posted

    The annual American International Toy Fair was a few days ago, and after poking around the Internet for news from it, I finally did find some news related to plug-n-play . . . but not related to classic gaming. AtGames doesn't seem to have announced or shown anything relating to their Intellivision and ColecoVision projects, but Jakks Pacific did reveal a new branch to their TV Games plug-n-play line: Hero Portal. As noted in a press release shown in this February 15th blog post (text search the page for "hero portal"):

     

    New from JAKKS Pacific comes the next generation in Plug It In and Play TV Games: Hero Portal! Select your favorite hero, place them on the portal and instantly punch, kick, and jump your way through 6 levels of an action-packed video game. Swap in different heroes to complete different challenges, discover secret levels, and unlock special powers. As with all of JAKKS TV Games titles, the Hero Portal simply plugs into the A/V jacks of any standard TV and contains all the games with no additional consoles or software required. Choose your hero and get started! (SRP $39.99, Ages 8+)

    I found pictures and a brief video showing the product (or rather a prototype) in action at Tom's Guide. It looks like the initial rollout this summer will consist of (cross-incompatible) editions based on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, and DC Universe properties. Basically, these are budget renditions of Skylanders and Disney Infinity, built on other IP; the Mattel Hyperscan concept returns to the toymaker arena, with newer technology.

     

    At this point, I haven't found out who's actually developing these games and what kind of hardware they run on, but I'll be on the lookout for that info. Incidentally, I added some newly discovered info about a pair of finished but unreleased ~2007 plug-n-play projects to my website yesterday.

     

    onmode-ky

  17. Posted

    SoulBlazer, could you take a look at the Kickstarter project for the Life of Pixel PC/Mac/Linux/iOS/Android port (from last year, canceled just before it would have ended) and give me your analysis? I've never understood why it attracted so few backers, even with a goal of only 10K pounds and a full breakdown of what the money was to be used for--admittedly not part of the original description, but rather in the first update. Is it really just that platformers don't perform well on Kickstarter? Or people don't like being asked to fund [expanded] ports of existing games?

     

    So disappointing, that Kickstarter, in light of how much fun the PS Mobile original game is. And that's coming from someone who doesn't even like platformers.

     

    onmode-ky

  18. Posted

    The game menu loading and scrolling doesn't bother me.

    I've been pondering using one of those Micro-SDHC-to-Memory-Stick-Pro-Duo adapters with my PSP, but I've read accounts of this setup resulting in very slow read speeds. Is that what you're talking about? XMB icons loading/scrolling is very slow?

     

    What speed class are the Micro SDHC/SDXC cards that you guys are using with your PSPs, anyway? I'm wondering if using one of the Class 10/UHS-1 cards (where the packaging claims range from 30-40 MB/s for read) can mitigate any latency that the adapter may be introducing. Can anyone comment on that?

     

    onmode-ky

  19. Posted

    I bet if I setup a experiment where it appeared that you were playing a heavy sixer, but actually running an emulator, that most "experts" would never know the difference while just playing a game

    It would depend on that specific emulator's level of fidelity. The emulators that the FB3 and FB4 run reproduce the 2600 experience much better than the FB1's reprogrammed ports, but I've heard that there are some significant bugs in them. For example, when running Battlezone, the radar display sometimes doesn't show enemies, and enemies sometimes don't make sounds.

     

    Excuse me for thinking a chip that is based on the original brains of the system is somehow better then a marginal emulated program that's running on non-native hardware.

    Well, an emulator is also based on the original brains of the system. Whether via one-chip hardware consolidation or software emulation, it's an effort in abstracting the original system's components into a new format. Errors in fidelity can materialize in both paths. Consider that there are multiple revisions of the FB2's Michele 2600-on-a-chip; each successive one fixes bugs that were in its predecessors. Right now, the Michele has a higher degree of fidelity than the AtGames emulator, but if AtGames puts some effort into isolating and fixing its bugs, there's no reason their emulator can't someday match the Michele.

     

    onmode-ky

  20. Posted

    I'm sitting this one out this week. I'm using an older version of MAME in my cabinet that doesn't support this game.

    My version of MAME doesn't support the ROM set linked in post #1, but I went searching for a set compatible with version .144 and got it to work that way.

     

    57,755

     

    I don't understand how this game works. . . . It took me a while just to notice that the attract screen tutorial used the left and right directions on the stick to do something.

     

    onmode-ky

    post-8302-0-59060800-1392509988_thumb.jpg

  21. Posted

    Did anyone like the first Rebel Assault on PC? I had so much high hopes for it and it was all but unplayable for me back in the day. Could never run it properly and when I did get it to run it felt more of a lightgun game that anything you can control with a controller.

    Well, I had fun with it . . . but then, I played it with a mouse. In fact, I've always thought it was meant to be played with a mouse. Not so? It really doesn't seem like a gamepad kind of game.

     

    Now, X-Wing and TIE Fighter, those were definitely flightstick games--yet I had a friend back then who played them with a mouse, and did well!

     

    onmode-ky

  22. Posted

    They were offered with kids meals or you could buy them alone for $1 a pop.

    The pricing actually varied depending on location. I got my full set of 4, which I've still never opened, at the local Taco Bell in March 2010 for $1.49 (+ tax) each.

     

    For more information on these, here is the original thread discussing them, started by Curt Vendel around when they were first available. If I remember correctly, somewhere in there Marty tells a story about being asked to sign a few copies while at a Taco Bell, which he described as "surreal." Ah, found it.

     

    onmode-ky

  24. Posted · Edited by onmode-ky

    88,100 (see "Edit" below)

     

    I've only played the game twice (!), but as I may not be able to play anymore today, I'm uploading a score now. While I haven't played this game before today, though, I did know of it already; it's one of SNK's arcade games emulated by developer G1M2 in SNK Arcade Classics Vol. 0 (PSP) and in the PlayStation Store, released there as a Mini and playable on both the PSP and PS3 (unfortunately, it doesn't appear in the PSV's Store). A review of the Minis release is available at PSPMinis.com. So, if you want a "legit" copy of the game, it can be had for $3.

     

    Now I wish I had not let Zaxxon go without submitting as I have now fallen out of first. The top six have really bunched up.

    Hey, hey, if you're going to include the #6 position, which is 19 points behind the #5 position, I think you ought to include everyone down to #10 in the bunch up, since they're all within 15 points of the #6 position! :)

     

    I am going to guess it is 15,500. Bt=((2Bp)+500).

     

    Where:

    Bt= bonus

    Bp= previous bonus

    The score table in the attract mode confirms this, actually.

     

    onmode-ky

     

    Edit: I got a chance to play a bit more. A few low scores later, I managed to blow away my previous high:

     

    170,400

     

    I managed to get 6 in a row once, and I believe the point value that showed up was 23,500.

    post-8302-0-95779600-1391268857_thumb.jpg

    post-8302-0-25461200-1391295951_thumb.jpg

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