Kurt_Woloch

No, there are only four possible color combinations which can be changed line by line. So each pixel line may use one of the following hardwired color palettes: 1. black - white 2. light green - red - blue - green 3. light blue - red - blue - green 4. light grey - red - blue - green These are all the colors and all the palettes you get (the colors are not necessaraly coded in the order I gave). I think maybe simple ones may be possible. On one hand, the Channel F has a bitmapped screen (though in rather low resolution). But as far as I know, video memory is write-only. I don't know of any documented way of reading from video memory, which means that video memory can't be used for storage. So the only RAM you have (unless there's extra RAM in the cartridge) are the 64 bytes that are internal to the CPU. Which is not very much.

OK, I've tried to do a video on YouTube. It's not very hi-res, but here you go...

OK, here's mine... 1043. This was my third game, and it already took close to 15 minutes, so I doubt I'll be playing this again...

OK, here's mine... 50093. I must say that this is really a fun game, reminiscent of such classics as "Toy bizarre", "Manic Miner" or better yet, "Bounty Bob strikes back". It also reminds me a bit of Bomb Jack. I also like the cute face movements of the snowman character. And the fireballs... well, that's the way they should have been drawn in Donkey Kong.

OK, here's my best... 25100. Here's some of my experiences, also containing some tips on how to play the game: The game seems to be more watered down than necessary from a technical standpoint. The music is awful, the graphics and enemies get pretty repetitive after a short time, and I also don't understand why all enemies you shot simply disappear instead of properly exploding. Like in other Atari 2600 games, this game is divided in "zones" which are small horizontal strips. About 3 of those zones are shown on screen at one time. Actually, you can see them pretty clearly because the background graphics of the field repeat in each of the zones (as long as you are on the open field, that is). Each zone only contains one enemy or building (or an item), which is confined to that zone. This means that once an enemy appears on screen, it will stay on pretty much the same height (relative to the background). This also means that if you've cleared a zone, no further enemy will appear until you advance in the game so that the next zone gets visible (which effectively pauses the game as long as you don't do anything). And there are only so many different things than can appear in a zone: 1. a soldier 2. an enemy tank 3. an enemy helicopter 4. a red tank you can jump into 5. an item 6. a building 7. a barrier to shoot 8. the boss I'll tell you how to deal with each of those. Generally, it's best not to advance too far at a time as long as you're not in a tank. Try to have only one enemy on screen and deal with that one before advancing to the next one. Oh, and there will only be a maximum of 2 enemy shots on screen at a time. Soldiers: Soldiers run back and forth in their zone. They can shoot at various angles. The three most important ones are straight down, and in an about 45 degree angle down/right and down/left. They always start out relatively close to the middle, so if you stay close to the middle as well, they won't ever use any other angle to shoot at you. These are three angles you can also shoot at as a soldier. If they shoot at you in other angles, you're probably in trouble. Either you hit them by shooting up straight or by shooting up diagonally. For this you should get a feel of when you're in the correct line of fire to hit them with those diagonal shots. In that, you are aided by the diagonal shots they fire back at you. If you're a tank, you can either run over the soldiers or shoot them with your grenades. For the first tank, it's better to run them over, however, on tank 2 and 3 you can also shoot them. I'll explain why in a moment. Enemy tanks: They move in a similar way to the soldiers, but only shoot left, right and down. You have to hit them with a grenade to destroy them. Since you have to hold the button down a moment to fire a grenade, they generally are harder to hit than soldiers, but on the other hand, they are bigger and also have a pretty generous collision detection. When approaching them in a tank, you shouldn't get too near because they can shoot you too with their grenades. Enemy helicopters: These also move in a similar way to the soldiers and are able to shoot in the same directions, however, you have to kill them with a grenade. Like the soldiers, they shoot normal shots, so they won't be able to harm you if in a tank, you just have to avoid colliding with them which is deadly. If you're in a tank on a bridge, and they are far enough to the left or right from the bridge, the best way to hit them is from the side since that way you don't have to wait for them to come into your line of fire. Red tanks: Well, this is the one you can enter and drive. If you drive a tank, you shoot grenades (no normal shots), and you can only be harmed by grenades, not by normal shots. But you can only run and shoot horizontally and vertically, not diagonally. If you're in the first tank, it's advisable to run over the soldiers, however by shooting them, you can save time in order to advance further in the game before you have to leave the tank. In the 2nd and 3rd tank, however, you should rather shoot the soldiers than run them over, because by hurrying up, you can reach the "S" item waiting for you, and with it you get another full tank of fuel which prolongs your time in the tank considerably. Be careful when your fuel supply runs low. Try to have a screen clear of enemies when you get out of the tank so that you won't get hit instantly by their shots or grenades. And, of course, get out of the tank in time! Once you're out of the tank, by the way, you will again have 99 shots to fire (if I'm not mistaken). Items: There's only one item here, which gives you a new supply of 99 shots, grenades and fuel units. Those also occupy a zone. Buildings: These stand still, but shoot at you like the soldiers do (I think there are also ones that don't shoot). You have to destroy them with a grenade. Barriers: You have to hit barriers with a grenade. Touching them is deadly. The boss: I only saw him once, but he seems pretty easy to kill with a grenade. Expect to see him at a score of well over 20.000 points for the first time. Once you've cleared the boss, the game starts over, but now the enemy shots are twice as fast! This is where I lost all of my lives quickly.

I'm not very good at this... 467.

OK, I managed to slightly improve my score... to 98550.

OK, I've played it now, and here's my best so far... 74350. I must say that the 2600 version was the first one I ever played (back then I was going to school, and we used to swap Atari cartridges in class for some days... and one classmate had this game and swapped it against my Sea Monster cartridge). After that I played various other versions and clones of it and forgot what was different about the 2600 version... and of course, there are a lots of differences. Other than the obvious ones in the graphics, the enemies also behave differently. For instance, there always seems to be only a few large groups of enemies which always move right and left synchronously, such as most of the landers, and all of the mutants in the mutant waves. Therefore, it's impossible to get more than 4-5 enemies on the screen and blast them together with a smart bomb, unlike in the arcade version where it's possible to group many more of them and destroy them at once. The physics also seems to be quite illogical, compared to the arcade version where it seems more or less believable. And it's nearly hilarious that you can stop enemies on your track by simply reversing your ship. But that's also one of the main keys of coming far in this game (though not to recommend for the arcade version!) One tip I haven't seen yet is that when you've got only one humanoid left, you shoud stop travelling all across the planet surface and rather stay directly above the humanoid, shooting everything reaching you from the left and right. That way, no lander will be able to capture that last humanoid. And once they have one, at least in the later waves, it gets very hard to recover it, since the landers ascend with their victim at the same speed as you do, so if you're below them, you won't be able to catch up! Beating the mutant waves... well... for me it works like this: At the start of the wave, you'll typically be attacked by a mutant from the right, which you should shoot right away. After that, each time they start homing in on you, just reverse your ship... that will stop them and enable you to get one or multiple ones into your line of fire before they attack again. Alternatively, you can also fly below or above the screen and either activate hyperspace (which will put you at your start position with another humanoid attacking from the right) or reverse direction while you're above the surface, and then come up again. Howver, there's no guarantee for success!

OK, haven't played this yet, but it occured to me that Deteacher did NOT roll the score. Rolling it would mean that it starts at the beginning score again, but in fact, it does not... instead, it shows trailing zeroes after the score has been "rolled", so you can see by the zeroes that there's a 7th digit which doesn't get displayed. Therefore, I'd propose that we don't set 999990 as the maximum here, instead we should set it to 1099990 (100.000 points more) because that's the maximum that can be distinguished from the not-rolled score. In this case, 1099990 would be displayed as 099990, while 99990 would be just 99990 without the trailing zero. From 1100000 on, the 6 digits should be the same again, so THAT should actually be considered "rolling" the score, although you don't start at 0 this way.

Here's my highest one so far... 3093. And yes, I also adopted the strategy of keeping the enemy alive as long as possible, but at the same time I try to freeze him from time to time as long as that doesn't let him fall off the screen. Oh, and I didn't use the trap opportunities at all... I guess they don't really help your score, do they?

OK, here's my best so far... 85265. I also have got some tips... This seems to be another game where you have to prioritize things. In this case, buildings get gradually destroyed, and then the enemies begin to dig their tunnels. Now the tunnels, once digged, never go away, while every 10.000 points, the building with the most damage gets restored. Thus, aside from of course aways destoying the game-ending bomb, you should concentrate on shooting those paratroopers who go for the most damaged buildings, because if these reach their goal, they will start or continue digging the finally deadly tunnel. An exception to this could be if there's no building that received three hits yet. In this case it might be better to let the paratroopers hit one building completely in favor of other, yet undamaged or less damaged buidings, because on reaching the next multiple of 10.000 points, the building with the three hits gets restored... but if the damage is distributed evenly across all the buildings, and none of them has three hits yet, the one with the highest hit count will get repaired, while the others remain damaged... which ultimately repairs less damage than if one building has three hits and others have none.

OK, I'm probably the first one to post a score... and it's NOT great. I've managed only3 laps, but that's via emulation. Sadly, I don't own this game (nor do I have "real" driving controllers), so I have no choice but emulating it. I suppose using real driving controllers, I could zip through the track much faster...

OK, here's my best score so far... 34-24. This game seems to be similar to "Basketball" and "Fishing Derby" which we played earlier in some respects... the 2-digit scoring, and that it's actually a two-player game, and a timed one.

OK, here's my best so far... 57240. I found the best strategy to be shooting mindlessly to the top. :-) No, seriously... in the waves before the banana wave, it's essential to dodge the enemies' shots. It's better to make that first priority than to hit the enemy (unless the master nest tries to steal a fruit). Generally, the master nest swoops around the whole screen, while for the other enemies, the screen is divided in 4 horizontal bars. Once spawned, each of the other enemies stays in his bar. And only two of the enemies will actually shoot at you: the master nest and the highest flying other one. Therefore, out of the other enemies, you should take out the lower ones first, because they don't shoot at you anyway as long as the top one is there (so no danger of getting hit by them), and the bullets dropped by the top one are visible relatively long, so that it's possible to dodge them if necessary. As for the master nest, I think it's best to wait until it tries to steal a fruit, because at that point it will stop bouncing around erratically and rather go in a straight path which is easy to anticipate, so it's much easier to take out the master nest at this point. My strategy changes a bit with the banana level, because at that point both your and the enemies' bullets begin to travel twice as fast, which also means you get to shoot at twice the rate as before. This also means that it's much harder to dodge the enemies' bullets at that level, so it's best to stay out of their line of fire entirely. The non-guided missiles, I think, are better suited for this strategy... just give off a constant stream of bullets and wait until the enemies cross your line of fire. Most of them will be killed this way. And if they get killed at that point, you also have an easier time dodging their bullets. There, however, is a problem if the master nest comes out with the white band which stays on for some seconds, while the master nest bounces around erratically. In this case, it's better to avoid the master nest and its line of fire as well as possible and wait for it to deploy other enemies. Then let them all run into your line of fire. However, if you can't take out the master nest that way (you will usually take out the other, slow going, enemies by that strategy before they turn into stingers), and it stays on screen last, avoid it until it goes to steal a fruit, as described earlier. By the way, if the master nest spawns a stinger, that stinger is as slow-going as the other enemies. However, if you then take out the master nest, while other enemies will turn into fast-moving stingers, the "native" stinger will remain a stinger, and also will remain as slow as it was.

I've managed to improve my score too... 124920.

Here's my best so far... 87930. I don't know if you could call all this "tips", but here's some things the manual doesn't mention: - The game seems to have two level counters... one for the Mogwai stage and one for the Gremlin stage. The one that gets displayed before the Mogwai stage is the one for the Mogwai stage, not the one for the Gremlin stage. - The level counter for the Mogwai stage goes up by one for each set of 8 falling Mowais where at most one of them turns into a pupa. If two or more turn into a pupa, the counter won't go up for that set of 8. - The level counter for the Gremlin stage (which doesn't ever get displayed) turns up by one for each successfully completed Gremlin stage. - Each phase seems to have 8 levels. - The levels of the Mogwai stage only differ in the speed the Mogwais are fallnig at. - The Gremlin phases are built up as follows: Level 1: slow-descending Gremlins which don't multiply. Level 2: faster descending Gremlins which don't multiply. Level 3: fast descending Gremlins which don't multiply. Level 4: slow-descending Gremlins which turn into 2 each at water contact. Level 5: faster descending Gremlins which turn into 2 each at water contact. Level 6: fast descending Gremlins which turn into 2 each at water contact. Level 7: slow-descending Gremlins which turn into 3 each at water contact. Level 8: faster descending Gremlins which turn into 3 each at water contact. - The level number can also be seen by the background color of the scoring line (I didn't write up the exact sequence, but Level 7 seems to be red, and Level 8 seems to be brown, for instance). - After reaching Level 8 on both phases, the difficulty seems to top out. However, there might be subtle changes after that, such as the rate the Mogwais and Gremlins appear at, which might get even faster (but I think it already tops out at the 8th or 9th Gremlin stage as well). - When a row of Gremlins has reached the bottom and is running towards Billy, the rows above them stop descending. You can use this to your advantage by activating a flash cube as late as possible, which buys you a little time to shoot the other rows (but not too late, otherwise you get thrown out before the flash cube deploys). - If you see that you can't shoot the bottom row of Gremlins in time, don't try still to shoot some of them, rather concentrate on the upper rows because all of them will run away when activating a flash cube anyway.

OK, here's my best so far... 93035. I don't know if I'll be able to improve this, though... I don't manage to consistenly reach higher scores. My score on this game seems to be all over the place... sometimes it's only a few thousand points, sometimes it's much higher. I've reached the 93035 right on the third game, I think...

OK, this is my best score for this game... 50-52 (a 2 point loss - sorry, I initially posted it the wrong way around). I probably won't play this game any more since it's not exactly motivating for me, and summertime is here... which means time to go swimming and less time to play Atari games.

I waited for the last moment, but I didn't get to play for as long as I hoped for this week, so I didn't manage to roll the game again as I did back in 1998. My score is... 11340. Actually, I own that game... got it in swap for a broken PAL Mangia cart I sent to a US collector back in 1998. I think in this round the Europeans (or anyone with a PAL TV) may have some advantage, since they are able to play the game in PAL (which is slower than in NTSC), but still on the "real thing", while the NTSC area gamers only are able to emulate a PAL system (and by the way, I didn't find out how to get Stella to do this). And this is a game I also proposed a few weeks ago... though I didn't get credited for it. So it's time for a new proposal, I think...

OK, just to clear this up... there ARE 3 trident pieces on Level 3. I just didn't find the third one. But I'm not sure if it's still possible to uncover another trident piece after the clouds have turned grey. Maybe that's where I went wrong. Anyway... I found the 3rd piece by looking at a FAQ that exists somewhere on the Internet, which, among other things, lists all the trident part locations. But I'm not sure if I should post the score of that game here, because basically, I cheated. Or isn't that cheating? I still had to play the game, after all... Anyway, I don't have time to play this game any more, and improving the score would mean mapping out the 4th level. It always takes multiple tries to map out one level since you run out of purple clouds before you have explored all the screens. And to try again, you have to reach that level again, which means another 10 minutes of playing time, which goes up with every level. Though in levels 1-4, I could always find one trident piece at the top screen of the RIGHTMOST stack of sky screens (NOT at the leftmost ones, as was stated earlier here! This rule, in fact, already gets broken on level 2, where the 2nd piece is in the 2nd stack from the left, as it is on level 3. So much for hints...)

Sorry, but this one does the same thing. And I've compared it with the one from AtariAge, they're exactly identical (except for the file name).

Here's the best I could do... 421. Somehow I can't manage to beat the third level... just can't find all pieces of the trident there. Either the ROM image here on Atariage is bad, or something else is wrong... I'm playing it on Stella, and for me, in level 2, the leftmost column of screens does NOT have a part of the trident. In the third level, which I can't beat, there doesn't seem to be a trident part under water, but there still are only two in the air... one at the rightmost and one at the one immediately left from your starting position (on the top screen of each). But the third part is nowhere to be found...

I've managed to improve my score to 206390. This includes killing the 4th dragon... but only once. With greetings from Austria Kurt Woloch (DJ Würmchen on Jukebox-Heroes-Radio)

OK, this is my best so far... 107780. Didn't manage to beat the 4th dragon yet...

OK, here's my best... 99 - 66. Some tips along the way... Through the restriction that only one player is able to pull up his fish at a time, the game gets some kind of "rhythm" to it. Either you get to hook the next fish first, or the computer does. Whoever does it gets his fish first, and also gets to throw out his rope again while the other player is pulling up his fish. The reason for this restriction is probably the Atari 2600's restriction to two "player" objects, where the fish that currently gets pulled up becomes the 2nd player, while all the other fish are displayed multiplexing the 1st one. Anyway... this leads to the following tips: - The manual is a bit misleading. Actually, while one player pulls up his fish, the fish the other player caught won't move up slowly, but it won't move up at all (since it's still the same shared player). It only will start to move up once the other player has pulled up his fish completely. That means that you're not in a big hurry with pulling up a fish once you've caught it as you otherwise would be, because the other player won't be able to overtake you... he maybe will catch a fish too, but he won't be able to move it up until you've finished yours, so you can take your time avoiding the shark. Now the "ideal" way of playing the game would be if both players take turns pulling their fish from the 5th and 6th row. There are, however, ways that "routine" gets broken: - One player's fish gets caught by the shark... in this case that player won't get points for his fish (but sometimes he still will, as I think I found out). - One player "overtakes" the other by pulling up his fish and then catching another one before the other player is able to get his next one. So... if you haven't got your rope completely pulled out yet, and you see that the computer is close to catching his next fish, it may be better to catch a fish from a higher row if that's possible more quickly than the computer can catch his. In this case, you get your fish first, and get to throw your rope again before the computer gets his, which gives you a bigger advantage than if you let the computer catch his fish and then catch yours on the lower rows. On the other hand, while the computer is pulling up his fish, there's no need to go for a fish yourself quickly, rather you can take your time digging into deeper rows because you won't be able to pull up your fish anyway before the computer is finished with his one. I hope that wasn't too confusing...