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Kurt_Woloch

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Posts posted by Kurt_Woloch

  2. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (February 3rd through 9th) on modern systems...

     

    Browser based:
    Funny Pizza: 787 min. in 12 sessions

     

    I heavily continued to play Funny Pizza, basically doing nearly everything you can do on one day, which unfortunately takes several hours. The tally is still missing the times of today in the afternoon, I'll add those tomorrow as I did for last week.

    • Like 3

  3. Posted · Edited by Kurt_Woloch
    forgot min.

    Here are my times for this past week (February 3rd through 9th) on classic systems...


    Arcade:

    Elevator Action - 81 min. in 4 sessions

    Tetris (Atari Games) - 10 min.

     

    Handhelds:

    Game & Watch: Mario's Cement Factory (New Wide Screen) - 60 min.

     

    I continued playing Elevatoir Action and finally managed to beat the 3rd level. The 4th level, unsurprisingly, is even harder...

    Then I also played one game of Atari Game's Tetris machine.

     

    Last, but not least, I learned that quite a few handheld games are now emulated in MAME. This has been trickling in over the last 2-3 years. I selected one of my favorite games, Mario Bros. Unfortunately, the MAME version required for this doesn't run on my normal PC anymore which is still on Windows XP, so I ran it on my notebook which has Windows 10 64-bit, but it's rather slow... without tweaking, it runs at about 20% of its normal speed, but with frameskips you get full speed. The question is what in the emulation of such a primitive game takes so much CPU time?

    Anyway, I also took a peek at the code of this game (since it runs on the same MCU as Mickey & Donald, which I disassembled before), and there are more differences between the two games code-wise than I expected. I expected some common subroutines doing the same thing and being in the same place, but this doesn't seem to be the case... at least not in the places I looked at.

    • Like 4

  5. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (January 27th through February 2th) on modern systems...

     

    Browser based:

    Funny Pizza - 120 min.

     

    This week, on modern systems I rediscovered a game I played back in 2011 if I remember right, Funny Pizza, where you get to open your own pizzeria, buy recipes and make pizzas. This is a classic browser game in that not the whole game runs in one canvas embedded in a page which always stay the same, but you basically press buttons to submit your moves and get presented with different HTML pages depending on what you do in the game. It's actually much like we build our web apps at work. I don't know if this style of game is actually considered a different "system" from games which run on Javascript or other languages embedded in a HTML page.

     

    Sadly, the 120 minutes don't include today's times because I didn't get to tally them up yet... I hope I'll make it tomorrow. Today's times aren't complete anyway since, like a Tamagotchi, there are certain things that can happen any time in the game so that you are supposed to return to it and do something about it. You might say it runs in real time, so some more minutes may be added even after I post this.

    • Like 5

  6. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (January 27th through February 2nd) on classic systems...

     

    Arcade:

    Elevator Action - 128 min. in 7 sessions

     

    Channel F:

    Golf - 3 min.

     

    I continued to play Elevator Action, but I can't for the life of me beat the 3rd level. The enemies get pretty tough by the end of it.

    I also tried Golf for the Channel F which is a homebrew game by Atari2600land and eFrog5. It's not as flexible as other Golf games though... the ball only ever moves in one of 8 directions, for instance.

     

    I also thought of developing a game of my own - an adventure game possibly for the TI-99. It would be something for geeks though... I'd incllude several rooms where you meet various Atariage forum regulars who talk the way they do here in the forum and give you appropriate hints and things. Some of the things you have to do might be helping out with their projects by bringing some contributions from one member to another. ;-)

    • Like 5

  7. Posted · Edited by Kurt_Woloch
    added revised session count

    I just noticed that I forgot something which still belongs to last week (the week ending yesterday)...

     

    Atari 7800:

    Baby Pac-Man - 22 min.

     

    To make up for this, the time on Elevator Action I gave in my previous post has to be reduced from 262 minutes in 13 sessions to 240 minutes in 12 sessions because I accidentally misattributed the last 22-minute session to Elevator Action instead of Baby Pac-Man, but I realized that error when I went through my logs again today.

     

    I actually played Baby Pac-Man because I read the still ongoing thread about that Atari 7800 port and read that some people found the game to be hard, so I went to give them some tips, but to do that properly, I had to replay the game to see if my tips actually work. ;-)

    • Like 3

  8. Posted · Edited by Kurt_Woloch
    forgot formatting of heading

    Here are my times for this past week (January 20th through 26th, 2019):

     

    Arcade:

    Elevator Action - 262 min. in 13 sessions

    Lock'n'Chase - 14 min.

    Loco-Motion - 10 min.

    Turtles - 8 min.

     

    This week I played 4 arcade games, and my main game was Elevator Action, in which I often reach the 3rd building, but never managed to clear it. I also played a bit of Lock'n'Chase inspired by a Youtube video where a new board game called Rubik's Chase was presented, which actually could be adapted well to nearly all 8-bit systems since the main display consists of an 5x5 grid where each cell should be able to hold one of 6 colors, and by basically doing a sliding puzzle you should assemble the middle 3x3 tiles in the given order. I didn't quite manage to beat Turtles this time, and Lock'n'Chase is similar to Pac-Man in a way, but still a bit different. Like Loco-Motion, it was one of the arcade games that were ported to the Intellivision system.

     

     

     

     

    • Like 4

  9. Posted

    Since a few people complained about the game being hard, here are a few tips and tricks how to achieve higher scores...

    - As in most pinball games, the angle the ball takes depends on where it is on the flipper at the moment you push it - and I actually took care to replicate this behavior. That is, for instance, if you hit the left flipper when the ball is on its tip, the ball will go roughly in a diagonal, while if you hit it while the ball is in the middle of the bat, it will go more straight up. It's not always accurate and also depends on the speed of the ball, but you can somewhat steer where the ball is going by timing your pushes.

    - Sometimes it's better not to shoot the ball straight up, but rather to let it bounce towards the upper part of the flipper by holding up the flipper as the ball hits it, so it will only be deflected and bounce off. This gives you a bit of control in preparation for the real shot.

    - You should try to get good at hitting the green holes because they are very beneficial for the player. Each time you hit one of them, either the fruits or tunnel lights will advance, and for 6 advances you get an extra arrow, with 6 arrows giving you an extra baby. When I played Baby Pac-Man on Virtual PinMAME, I actually had a technique down where, after coming back from a hole, I would hit the ball just as it hit the flipper, and it would go straight to the other hole! This technique doesn't work on the 7800 port though because the ball doesn't always come out of the holes in the exact same direction, but I put in a bit of randomness in there. ;-)

    - Another advantage of the green holes is that if you have power pellets earned, hitting the green hole will give you a turn at the maze, giving you some extra points before you return to the pinball field. But if there's a chute open, you should take care of returning to the pinball field before the ghosts can eat you! This works especially well if there are still lots of dots to eat in the lower part because then you just get a few of them and then head down again, and next time you return, the monsters will start out from their pen again, so you have some more seconds for collecting dots before they catch up to you again.

    - If you've earned some power pellets, and you have some practice in hitting the green holes, it might be good not to use all the power pellets immediately, but to retain at least one of them as you go down the chute (if one is still open) so that each hit in a green hole will send you to the maze again. In addition to that, left-over power pellets can be multiplied by means of the "even up" rollover when the yellow lights above them are lit.

    - In the maze part itself, it's always a good idea (like, in fact, it is in many similar maze games) to lead around the ghosts in circles. That is, keep to the edge of the maze or some fast tracks and go in a direction where none of the ghosts can get you. They will try to find you where you are, so then you try to find an opening to another part of the maze and then lead them there. With a bit of strategy, this way you can reach left-over stretches of dots without ghosts getting in your way.

    - If a ghost is on your heels, take a winding path around many corners (without hitting any other ghosts of course!) because you can corner faster than the ghosts can, so with each corner taken, the distance between you and the following ghost will increase by a few pixels.

    - Another general Pac-Man tip is to use the tunnels if the ghosts crowd together on the left or right and head towards you. Some of the ghosts won't follow you through the tunnels, and those who do slow down, so basically you appear on the other side with some air to breathe.

    - If you use the tunnels and have gained a higher tunnel speed, it may be good to hold the controller up or down as soon as you've entered the tunnel so that Baby will continue in this direction after you reach the exit.

    - If you've reached the maze with some power pellets in it by means of the green holes, it might be better not to clear the maze just yet, but rather return to the pinball part to get some more points (and possibly power pellets) there. If you lose the ball there, you'll still end up in the maze one more time before you lose that life, and then you've got another chance of finishing the level and starting a new one with the chutes open again!

    • Like 7

  10. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (January 13th through 19th)...

     

    Arcade:

    Devil Fish - 92 min. in 2 sessions

    Elevator Action - 39 min. in 2 sessions

    Gal's panic - 17 min.

    Journey - 51 min.

     

    Commodore 64:

    Transylvania - 8 min.

    (non-eligible) Graphics Magician - 29 min.

     

    This week I played an assortment of arcade games. I replayed Devil Fish and made it through all four mazes which then repeat, but with changed palettes. In Elevator Action I cleared the first two buildings. Gal's Panic was a bit frustrating because I couldn't quite figure out how exactly you are supposed to move for a good score.

     

    In Journey, I managed to clear the 1st round after some attempts. This is a game about the band Journey, which still has one of the most requested older songs in the "listener charts" of our biggest radio station Ö3 with "Don't stop believing" currently coming in at #28 although, strangely, this song didn't even chart around here back in 1982.

     

    Finally, I played the C-64 version of "Transylvania" mainly to test it somewhat. After that I run Graphics Magician (which is a drawing program rather than a game, thus ineligible for the tracker) which is able to load and dissect the drawing files from Transylvania. Both programs originated on the Apple II before being ported to the C-64 and store their pictures in a vector format (as a series of line and fill commands) rather than as a bitmap. Dithering / mixing multiple colors in one area is also supported. I did all that because in another thread there was a question about porting Transylvania to the TI-99, which in principle is possible, but with some graphics limitations which are particularly evident if a line divides two differently colored area, which is only possible in some distinct locations with the TI's video chip. I also took a look at the inner workings of both the TI Adventure cartridge and the adventures by Penguin Software, the original maker of Transylvania.

    • Like 4

  11. Posted

    Another thing about this game... as I already mentioned, at least the originally released versions don't load the graphics from disk as bitmaps, but as a series of line, fill and other draw commands which get executed to form the picture on screen. The way the pictures are drawn, this is a big memory saver. I did a bit more research and found out that the pictures have been drawn with "Graphics Magician" by Penguin Software (the same company which also originally released Transylvania), which also had the property that you could port graphics you drew on the Apple II to other machines (Atari 800, C-64) very easily. Graphics Magician also could use the special capabilities of each computer like setting interrupts on the Atari machines to set 4 different colors for every 2 lines and using the color RAM on the C-64, though this hasn't been done for Transylvania as it seems. The graphics still do look different on each system the game was ported to, for instance, the stump scene has a reddish road on the Amiga and Atari ST, but it's brown on the Apple II, yellow-ish on the Atari 8-bit and light green on the C-64, which tells me that the colors don't really have to look exactly like any other version because they look a bit differently in each version anyway.

     

    What's more, Graphics Magician saves the pictures as SPC files which then can be loaded by the main game, and at least the C-64 disk of Transsylvania actually contains the SPC files for each individual room which indeed can be loaded and dissected with Graphics Magician. I'm pretty sure that a variant of this was also used on the other versions even on machines Graphics Magician wasn't released for. The manual of Graphics Magician also mentions an "interpret" command which would save the binary SPC files in a readable format, but I couldn't find that command in the C-64 version.

     

    Now I thought how this could be used on the TI-99... the TI graphics chip has no "multicolor mode" where each pixel is defined by multiple pixels, but rather that strange bitmap mode with its 8x1 zones. So the pictures would have to be adapted a bit because any vertical or diagonal lines separating differently colored areas create a "clash" if they don't fall on a boundary of an 8x1 pixel field. So I think one could adapt to this by converting most of the dithered areas to solid colors and then drawing them in a way that works on the TMS9918A. To explain this, the "fills" are done by starting at a specific point and extending that color (or pattern) to the left and right until an "edge" gets reached. The way this could be done on the TI-99 is by implementing that logic as follows:

    We're filling the bitmap as stated above, line-by-line, and in steps of our 8x1 pixel blocks. If a pixel block is empty (the color to be filled), it's turned to the new color in its entirety. However, if it's only partially empty, there are multiple cases:

    1. If the block contains all pixels of a different color, it won't be changed at all, and the fill will stop before reaching it.

    2. If the block has one or multiple pictures in a different color and then pixels of the background color to be filled, from the direction the fill is coming from, first the background pixels and then the pixels in the different color turn to the new color, and the pixels in the background color beyond that don't change.

    3. If the block, seen from the direction the fill is coming from, has the background color and then one or more pixels in a different color, but nothing beyond that, the background pixels will become the new color, but the different color pixels will remain the same color.

    There are also other commands like boxes and lines, and those will probably turn the foreground color of each block they touch into the current foreground color. Since in the SPC files, usually first all lines get drawn, and then the gaps between them get filled, this should work fairly well.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

  12. Posted

    Finally, here's some speech data for the stump scene... first a howling wolf (well, me howling like a wolf, actually), then the location text gets read (also my voice). The attached MP3 file approximates how it might sound (simulated by my encoder, not by emulation or on the actual machine). This is for the TMS5200, the speech synthesizer for the TI-99.

    Stump_Scene_LPC.mp3 LPC_TMS5200_Stump_Scene.zip

    • Like 2

  15. Posted

    OK, I did a bit of an experiment here in order to see how well the graphics would translate to the TI-99. I actually meant to convert the first picture that's seen in the video, but since I wanted the highest possible quality in the source material, I started with the Amiga version. But despite the Amiga supporting 32 (or more) colors at once on screen, it still dithers the graphics. And then I noticed that it actually doesn't start with the picture shown in the video, but in the woods by a stump, so that's the picture I converted. To clean it up, I first un-dithered it by using colors that are the average of the two colors that got mixed and filling the respective area with that color. Actually, for the stump picture, still only 8 colors are needed (plus the colors for the non-graphics area). I then ran the resulting picture through my converter program to see what the colors converted to, and I saw that three of the areas consisted of mainly one color with a few differently colored pixels sprinkled in, so next I filled those areas with that color (which is one of the colors supported by the TMS9918A) so that the areas remain solid.  There are, however, two dark areas which remain dithered because the TMS9918A doesn't support such dark colors. What's also evident is that there are problems with the black lines if they are separating two differently colored areas. But all in all, I think it doesn't look too bad, so I've attached the resulting picture which respects the resolution and colors of the TMS9918A as well as the assembler code for the pattern generator and color tables you need to display the picture on it.

    In reality, from the way the pictures are drawn, I guess the author of the original game didn't really store bitmapped graphics, but rather "draw" and "fill" commands, where the fill also supports dithered colors, and then there are some shapes stamped over the drawn graphics. Thie probably saves some memory vs. bit mapped graphics.

    Transylvania_TMS9918_result.PNG

    Transylvania_TMS9918_asm.zip

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (January 6th through 12th, 2020) on classic systems:

     

    Arcade:

    Alien Syndrome - 30 min.

    Amidar - 25 min.

    Bosconian - 22 min.

    Devil Fish - 46 min.

    Sheriff (Nintendo) - 17 min.

    Son Son - 45 min.

     

    Atari 2600:

    Vanguard - 12 min.

    Seaquest - 18 min.

     

    MSX:

    Penguin Adventure - 32 min.

     

    This week I replayed quite a few games... in Amidar, I got to Level 4, in Bosconian I didn't get farther than usual, and in Devil Fish I made it to round 3. I quit Son Son when it got too hard to progress. As for Sheriff, I played it on MAME, but couldn't get my ideal control configuration to work, which would have been running with the cursor keys and controlling the aim and fire with the mouse (as you sort-of do in FPS games), but I couldn't get that configuration to work... in fact, mouse support was greyed out in the configuration settings (but maybe that was because I used an old version of MAME). Sheriff also was a game Nintendo put out before they hit the home market with their Game & Watch games, and back then I actually thought Nintendo was part of the game name (as if the sheriff's name was Nintendo). It's still got pretty primitive graphics on about the level of Carnival, but it's got music which is a great feat for the sound chip used which can actually only be controlled in an analog fashion.

     

    In Alien Syndrome I got past the first boss, but the 2nd level looks pretty confusing, so I didn't want to continue playing.

     

    As for the Atari games, Vanguard is strictly divided in several scenes with different scenery and enemies while the arcade original, as far as I know, scrolls through the whole tunnel in one pass until you get to the boss. Also you can only continue the game until you've made the 1st tunnel, then it's game over after you lost your last life.

     

    Seaquest gets harder quickly, but I think I managed to rack up about 30,000-40,000 points.

     

    Finally, Penguin Adventure is a game I hadn't played before, but I had completed its predecessor, Antarctic Adventure. My inspiration here was actually a thread about Smurf's Rescue which never came out on the MSX and the similar game Cabbage Patch Kids which actually was a rewrite of Konami's MSX game Athletic Land. Antarctic Adventure, then, also by Konami, came out for the Colecovision under the same title as the MSX version, both done by Konami. Anyway, in Penguin Adventure I managed to beat the first boss, but despite being an "adventure" the game is still pretty linear. I expected the world to be more open, but it isn't although there are some warps which don't exist in Antarctic Adventure.

    • Like 4

  17. Posted · Edited by Kurt_Woloch
    corrected sorting of Atari 2600 entries

    Here are my times for this past broken week (January 1st through 5th) on classic systems...

     

    Arcade:

    1942 - 12 min.

    Pooyan - 11 min.

    Rally-X - 24 min.

    Sidewinder - 19 min.

    Taxi driver - 1 min.

    Tetris (Atari Games) - 63 min. in 3 sessions

     

    Atari 2600:

    Commando - 30 min.

    Defender - 10 min.

    Frontline - 10 min.

     

    Another week off work means another bunch of games played...

    After having played the arcade original of Commando, I tried the Atari 2600 version, and afterwards I played the similar game Frontline which I actually like a bit more because the enemies have more freedom of movement while in Commando (as well as Ikari Warriors) everything is pretty much zoned off, and each zone contains exactly one enemy.

     

    Then I played Defender a bit because there was a discussion about an Odyssey^2 version of it which eventually became "Deaf Edna" before work on it stalled completely (maybe because I again managed to completely discourage the programmer with my reaction to it). Still trying to imagine how a proper Odyssey^2 version of Defender could look after on the Atari 2600 some liberties were taken as well.

     

    Then I tried some vertical shooters... Sidewinder and 1942 fall into that category. Sidewinder actually ran on Amiga hardware, and there was a pretty identical Amiga version sold on disk (except for a much longer break between levels while data got loaded from disk). Then I replayed Pooyan and Rally-X where I got to the first "Charanging stage". I actually remember watching somebody play this in the arcade room of a cinema back in early 1982 where I watched my first movie, "Flash Gordon", but I already knew the game before that. Namco always had pretty advanced hardware, and this is no exception...

     

    In contrast to that, for Tetris it seemed like Atari Games intentionally picked cheap hardware since they figured they didn't need a 16-bit processor or FM sound for Tetris, so the Tetris hardware used in 1986 or 1987 can actually be pretty much compared to the Rally-X hardware used in 1980. But Mirrorsoft went similarly low for the home computer conversions... the C-64 version actually was coded in BASIC and then compiled using Austro-Comp.

    • Like 4

  19. Posted

    Sorry, I forgot about the "broken" week... just realized that I should still post my times for December 30th and 31st, so here they are...

     

    Arcade:

    Commando - 72 min.

    Track & Field - 19 min.

     

    I played some more Commando and managed to beat the 1st area a few times. In Track & Field I also managed to complete the 1st set of 6 events and got to the 2nd one where the qualifying limits are much harder.

    • Like 4

  20. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (December 23th through 29th) on classic systems:

     

    Arcade:

    Cavelon - 33 min.

    Commando - 87min. in 3 sessions

    Elevator Action - 13 min.

     

    Odyssey^2: (I hope I didn't misspell the game names)

    Kill the attacking aliens (KTAA) - 22 min.

    UFO! - 4 min.

    Space Monster (AKA Invaders from space) - 13 min.

     

    VIC-20:

    Seafox - 26 min. in 2 sessions

     

    I had this week off from work, and it shows. Although I was busy with Christmas celebrations as well, they didn't take place on all days, so I still managed to sneak in some gaming time.

    I played some games on the Odyssey^2, mainly spurred by Atari2600land's attempt to port Defender as "Deaf Edna" to the system, which then turned to something else and was rather quickly abandoned. In KTAA, I failed at the level where there are only two big targets left to guard. In Elevator Action and Commando, I reached the 2nd level respectively, and the 3rd one in Cavelon. In Seafox, I managed to complete Mission 2 in both sessions, but Mission 3 is much harder with 2 enemy subs instead of 1 and also having them shoot at you.

    • Like 5

  21. Posted

    10 hours ago, carlsson said:

    Here's the summary for Week 51, running from December 16 - 22. We logged 4089 minutes of eligible play, playing 36 games on a total of 10 systems. (...)

    I'm surprised you didn't pick up one detail I noticed... last week several of the games in the tracker had some kind of "adventure" feel to them where you discover secrets, go for the king, enter the caverns of death or the Realms of Antiquity, or fight ghosts and goblins. This week, however, I see a bunch of variants on Pac-Man in the tracker instead. ;-)

    • Like 3

  22. Posted

    23 hours ago, carlsson said:

    You can get a honorable mention, but I don't think general use of an operating system (which at the end of the day Extended BASIC is) should go into the tracker, just like we usually don't count development time and early test running of own games (though beta testing is fine once the game is in a such playable state). Though I can kind of see the charm with counting your weekly times spent on Lotus 1-2-3 or Deluxe Paint as doing anything retro.

    I wouldn't count development time as gaming time as well. The question is where to draw the line and what to do with "construction kit" games such as Pinball Construction Set where you can basically construct your own levels or tables or tracks within a game.

    As for playtesting, I think I have a feeling when a game becomes "playable" and the times thus eligible to post here. This question came up during the development of the pinball portion of "Baby Pac-Man" for the Atari 7800 about a year ago... as long as I did the development, I didn't record my times... the game got better over time at doing realistic ball movements, but there were some key components missing... scoring wasn't added, losing a ball never cost you a life and never ended the game, and there wasn't a way to return to the maze section. Only when Bob added these parts of the game mechanics (even though the logic wasn't complete yet), I started logging the times on this game in the tracker here.

    The same is to be said for Extended Basic games under development... development or debugging time generally doesn't count, I think, and the general question is... does it somewhat feel like a completed game? Would you come back to the game just to play it and see how far you get, not for testing it? Is there a way to lose the game or loses lives, gain scoring etc.? Or is it still a kind of demo which really doesn't have an end to it, like a program I wrote where one player controls Pac-Man and the other controls a ghost, but nothing happens if they meet... that's not what I'd call a game, thus it's not eligible for the tracker.

    • Like 2

  23. Posted

    On 12/23/2019 at 2:01 PM, digdugnate said:

    I'm editing my post (again) because I remember I fired up my TI for Mom- she remembers Dad spending a lot of time programming and selling demos to TI.  She was amazed that 1) The computers still work now and 2) That mine looked so clean and shiny (I have the aluminum one with a Speech Synthesizer plus the P-Box).  Several cartridges used here- @carlsson, not sure if you want to 'count' Extended Basic, but I used that cartridge to load up my dad's demos (which my Mom was equally surprised that kind of stuff could still be loaded off disks).

    It's not surprising for me... I still have my TI-99 as well, but it doesn't seem to work properly anymore. But the thing that failed is actually the TV modulator which doesn't seem to deliver a good picture anymore. I never had the problem that one of its disks would have become unreadable over time... this only came about with 3 1/2" disks on the Amiga where I regularly created "working disks" with copies of software I used every day because I knew that the disks would eventually fail... and the same thing happened with some of my PC 3 1/2" disks. But the failure came from heavy usage, not from time passing.

    But it seems we've gone through different kinds of main storage media now (which is where things get permanently stored)... first we used cassettes, then 5 1/4" disks, then 3 1/2" disks, CD's and DVD's, then external hard drives (with moving disks), and now these are being replaced by SSD's... at my company we now got new PC's which don't have optical drives anymore, and my new $200 notebook which I bought some months ago has virtually eliminated all moving parts, with an SSD replacing the internal hard disk, no fan and no optical drive. I just now came to the conclusion that after backing up all the data of my Amiga disks, I should back up the CD's and DVD's as well... preferrably to an SSD, because CD's now can be called obsolete as well. And a tiny USB stick the size of a thumbnail now holds up to 64 GB, which you previously needed 13 DVD's for (not counting how many of the other storage media this would be!). Somehow plugging in such a USB stick with data feels like plugging a cartridge into the old TI-99 because it works pretty much the same way, except that the cartridges were mostly read-only.

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    Here are my times for this past week (December 16th through 22nd) on classic systems...

     

    Atari 2600:

    Superman - 18 min.

     

    Arcade:

    Jr. Pac-Man - 49 min.

     

    This week I only played two games, Jr. Pac-Man and Superman, in one session each. I read that Superman was one of the earliest games featuring a game map (similar to Adventure which actually uses part of the same engine). I didn't too long to solve it, and I only played it once. It has a non-smooth framerate and a non-optimal flicker when multiple characters / things besides Superman are on the same screen. I think this comes from the game actually recalculating the position of all NPC's which probably takes longer than one frame, and the flicker follows the same lower frame rate. But at least all of the objects are color-striped.

    As for Jr. Pac-Man, nothing special there except that I managed to stabilize my gameplay in round 5.

    • Like 5
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