Kurt_Woloch

Yes, I know... this game hasn't been emulated yet, since apparently no one got hold of a tape of it. But that was back in 1981, 28 years ago. I'd kill for that. I've always wanted it for my DECO cab. I don't think it's been dumped or released either. Tempest

That reminds me of my attempted port of Tetrinet to the G7400 (the European, released version of the non-released Magnavox Odyssey^3). The G7400 has multiple levels of memory with ascending size but, also, ascending difficulty of accessing it... 1. The 8048's registers (R0-R7)... always available 2. The 8048's internal RAM... 32 usable bytes, only accessible by pointing a register to the RAM location 3. External RAM... 128 bytes, only accessible by pointing a register to the RAM location, AND before doing that you have to set the port so that the write goes to the RAM (since the address space is shared with the external RAM, the video chip and the teletext chip, and you have to select where to read or write from first) 4. Video RAM... several kilobytes, but only accessable by defining characters or writing them to the screen on the Teletext chip - no way of accessing the memory directly Because of those added difficulty levels, I tried to pack as many of the game variables as possible into the internal RAM. However, instead of displaying falling bricks as they should be, every time a brick came down to a halt, the program virtually "exploded", putting characters all across the screen. After a long time of debugging, it turned out to be the following error: If a brick went down, the program went into a routine that brought up the next brick (the line checking wasn't implemented yet). However that routine took longer than usual, so processing time exceeded the time needed to draw a frame on screen (partially due to the slow access to the Teletext chip's screen RAM, where each access takes over 100 yS in average). Normally, I was waiting for the next frame to start and then executed the game calculations. However, in between that, the interrupt happened, and the interrupt routine got called, and also trashed some CPU registers and some internal RAM locations. As long as the game calculations didn't exceed the frame, it was all fine, but when they were not finished at the time the interrupt routine kicked in, some temporary variables (most notably a loop counter which counted down the bricks from 3 to 0... or up?) got trashed, and everything went mad from that on. The solution to that problem was: 1. not to use those locations which got trashed by the interrupt routine 2. to spread the long routine across several frames... which I planned to do, but then I didn't continue work on that game. However, this point would be necessary in order not to influence the speed of the game by the actions of one player, which would cause the game to run at an inconsistent speed for the other player for no apparent reason.

There are a few games I've seen that are pretty rare (which I didn't know back then, of course...) First, there was the Data East game "Manhattan", actually running on their DECO system. At the same time, in another arcade, I saw "Sheriff" by Nintendo. It was the color version as shown here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheriff_(arcade_game). Actually, I didn't know Nintendo was a company back then, so I thought the title was "Sheriff Nintendo". Of course, I learned better not too long afterwards when Nintendo put out the Game&Watch games. One of the later games I saw I would consider rare was "Parasol Stars" by Taito, the sequel to "Bubble Bobble" and "Rainbow Islands". As I learned later, there really wasn't an arcade version of that game, rather they put the NEC PC Engine version (or was it Neo Geo?) into the arcade. Other games I saw which I didn't consider THAT rare were "Turtles" by Konami (which actually there were some home versions of by Entex and Philips), "Splash" (can't remember the company name), "Super Space Invaders '91" and "Super Burger Time". Most of them I saw in the Prater of Vienna, which is a big amusement park which is open all year long (but more attractive from April to October than in other months, when many of the rides are closed). It contains about 100 rides, arcades and restaurants. In the early 80's, there were about 10 arcades in there with video games (and some more which only had gambling machines). From the mid-80's on, however, they closed down one by one, and today there are only 3 or 4 of them left... and others have converted from video games to gambling, such as the "Fortuna Halle" at the entrance near the Praterstern, which converted to gambling in the early 90's.

Actually, this game (in both versions presented) reminds me of the released game "Ram it" by 20th Century Fox (if I got it right) which has been played on the Hi-Score competition recently... only that in Ram It!, bars grow from the left and right instead of from the top.

OK, here's my best so far... 6621.

OK, I hope I'm not too late for the contest yet... here's my best: 26320.

OK... here (again a bit late... unfortunately) are my times for the past week. Playing time this time has gone down considerably since I found a new hobby of mapping in Openstreetmaps.org. Park Patrol (C-64) 185 minutes (in 3 sessions) Fatal Run (2600) 39 minutes Toyshop Trouble (2600) 34 minutes Jack and the beanstalk (2600) 11 minutes Conquest of Mars Rev. 2 (2600) 11 minutes Spider Fighter (2600) 6 minutes Solar Nexus (2600) 5 minutes Tint (2600) 3 minutes Ballblazer Demo (2600) 2 minutes As always, the C-64 was emulated in VICE and the 2600 in Stella.

Hmmm... I wonder if she would look better if you could color-stripe her a bit. Maybe use the ball to add some color?

OK, here's some ideas how the game could be improved: - Start out with the difficulty a bit easier, that is, with the planet moving only half as fast as it does now, and then make it pick up speed gradually - Display the player's score after the game is over (right now, it's reset to 000000 immediately when the "MAUS" screen gets shown again)

So... where is the file?

OK... to specifically answer the question about Spider Fighter: Basically, in Spider Fighter, things are pretty much zoned out. Here are the zones I found, from top to bottom: Zone 1: Enemy's reserve (one player used) Zone 2: Fruits (one player for fruits standing still, second player for a fruit carried away by the mothership) Zone 3: Upper enemy (one player for the upper enemy, second player for the mother ship) Zone 4: Lower enemy (one player for the lower enemy, second player for the mother ship) Zone 5: Your ship (don't know if any enemies come down that far) Zone 6: Your reserve ships (up to two players used for up to 6 ships) Zone 7: Activision logo (both players used) So you see, you never need more than two players in any zone here, and the zones are fixed in where they begin. In between them, there probably are a few scanlines where there's time to reposition players that aren't able to cross the boundary. The only mystery remaining is how they make it to have two streams of shots (yours and the enemy's) in different colors, that is, different colors than all other objects. If worse comes to worse, we'd have 2 objects and 2 shots on a scanline, each in a different color, which would be one more object than the 2600 has color registers for. But apparently, they used the ball for all the shots, so they have to interleave the scanlines the shots are using so that a bunch of scanlines are reserved for the enemies shots, the next bunch for your shots, and so on. When shots travel, they skip the scanlines that aren't reserved for them.

Here are my times for the past week... Park Patrol (C-64, emulated in VICE)... 391 minutes in 8 sessions (will probably go down now since the last game already lasted for 51 minutes) Doom2600 (Dark Chambers graphics hack) (2600)... 99 minutes Toyshop Trouble (2600)... 37 minutes Galaxian (2600)... 19 minutes Arctic Landtran (2600)... 2 minutes Spider Game (2600)... 1 minute All 2600 games were emulated in Stella. Aside from that, I played a contemporary game, ORF Ski Challenge, for 28 minutes.

Hmmm.... well, here's a rough calculation: The 6502 steps through the code one byte per cycle, but stops if data access has to be done. Also there are some instructions which take an additional cycle to process something internal (for instance, INX and INY take 2 cycles although they are only 1 byte long and don't transfer data over the bus). So let's assume that the average instruction is 2 bytes long and takes 1 additional cycle for a data transfer. In this case, the average instruction would take 3 cycles to process. Since a cycle on the 2600 takes 840 nanoseconds, we have one instruction occuring every 2,52 microseconds, which would give about 397 KIPS. But that's only a rough estimation.

Ah, Galaxian... this was one of the first arcade games I played. I can still remember going to the Shopping City Süd (a big shopping center south of Vienna) with my parents back in 1980, where there was a remote controlled robot called "Klatu" acting. Anyway, after Klatu's show was over, there was this Galaxian cocktail machine standing around somewhere in the mall, and a technician was there to fix it. We were watching, and in the end he turned the machine on, and before he left, he gave us about 15 free credits on it by means of short-circuiting the wires of the coin mechanism directly. So we took turns playing Galaxian for a while until the credits were used up. I still have this on a tape, I had my portable cassette recorder with me to record Klatu. Each game lasted for about 1-2 minutes (the arcade version is rather hard), and needless to say, I played Galaxian often later on other arcade machines in other locations, most notably the "Las Vegas" arcade in the Vienna Prater. I can still remember the background music they played there, most notably "Funkytown" by Lipps Inc., "Knock on wood" by Amii Stewart and "Matador" by Garland Jeffreys. This was in late 1980... Then we bought the Atari 2600 version in mid-1984 for an already discounted price of ATS 598.- (full price cartridges were up to ATS 1398.-). So I own this game, but it's the PAL version which is probably a bit slower than the NTSC one, so I still emulated it on Stella for the sake of the HSC. Got to Level 13 already, with 28090 points.

OK, this is my entry for this week... 109880. From the 6th city on, the gameplay gets much harder in that the debris fields start moving so fast that they catch up with you easily and you're practically constantly surrounded by debris. Actually, Flash Gordon was the first movie I ever saw in a cinema back in early 1982 at the age of 10... but I can't remember anything remotely being similar to this game being in the movie. Actually, your ship's movements are pretty unrealistic when compared to the surrounding's movements... the background graphics somehow seem to scroll, but your enemies still keep the same speed relative to you no matter which direction you're flying.

Hmmm... an 8x8 grid? Then it could maybe be done with the kernel of Atari's Othello... as far as I know, this kernel actually allows for each grid position being in a different color.

OK, I'm late again this week, but since the times have not been tallied up yet, here are my times for the past week... Park Patrol (C-64)... 482 minutes (in 5 sessions) Flash Gordon (2600)... 76 minutes (in 2 sessions) Toyshop trouble (2600)... 76 minutes (in 2 sessions) Doris (2600)... 16 minutes Fonz (Nukey Shay's Enduro Hack) (2600)... 10 minutes Pacman 4K (2600)... 3 minutes Ballblazer demo (2600)... 2 minutes Zoo Keeper Audio (2600)... 1 minute The C-64 has been emulated on VICE, the 2600 has been emulated on Stella.

OK, here's my best for this week... 17400.

Well... maybe it was planned to turn Zeke into a monochrome character when he's standing sideways. Don't forget that when he's standing horizontally, there isn't an asymmetric playfield to draw on those scanlines, so they have more time to do Zeke's color stripes, for instance... while on the scanlines where the interior is (and Zeke moves on those scanlines when standing sideways), there may not be enough cycles to do any color striping at all.

OK, here are my times for this week... Toyshop Trouble (2600) 191 minutes (in 4 sessions) Snake-Pit (C-64) 122 minutes Space Treat Deluxe (2600) 22 minutes Buck Rogers - Planet of Zoom (C-64) 20 minutes Jack and the beanstalk (2600) 15 minutes (in 2 sessions) Ballblazer Demo (2600) 3 minutes (in 2 sessions) (in addition to some non-retro games... 77 minutes of "Pizza Hot" and 98 minutes of "ORF Ski Challenge 2009" in 2 sessions)

Are there multiple versions of it? Then I think it's for the first version, which came out in 2001 or earlier.

Now that's funny... I once made a Pac-Man map for Unreal Tournament.

Wow... the game keeps getting better and better. It would be great, actually, if a full verse of "Greensleeves" would be playing. Right now, the music repeats after half a verse of it. And the ability to shoot the troll definitely adds to the game. However, I think it's a bit illogical that if you collect the watermelon, but don't use it during the screen you picked it up on, you enter the next screen empty-handed. I think it would be better if, once collected, the watermelon is yours until you shoot it (or get through Level 1 completely). This could help prevent stupid cases where you just can't get past the troll in time, since then you would be able to pick up the watermelon and reserve it for those cases. However, I'd also reward the player for picking up the watermelon, let's say with 50 points. If the player enters a new screen and still has the watermelon, that new screen should not contain another watermelon. Thus, no chance for scoring the points then. This could lead to different strategies... the player would have to weigh the advantage of scoring another 50 points on the next screen against the advantage of being armed in case the troll gets in the way.

OK, here are my collected times for this week... Buck Rogers - Planet of Zoom (2600)... 631 minutes (in 4 sessions) Buck Rogers - Planet of Zoom (C-64, emulated in VICE)... 51 minutes Toyshop trouble (2600)... 35 minutes Buck Rogers - Planet of Zoom (Arcade version, emulated in MAME)... 15 minutes Squared away (2600)... 2 minutes Knight rider (2600)... 2 minutes Jack & the beanstalk (2600)... 2 minutes Ballblazer WIP (2600)... 1 minute Total classic gaming time... 739 minutes (106 minutes per day) All 2600 games emulated in Stella.

So what is the change from Level 12 to Level 13? I know that from Level 8 to 9, the "double enemies" on a line get added in the places where the hoppers are... what is different from Level 13 on?