Kurt_Woloch

Here are my times for this past week (June 3rd through 9th, 2019) on classic systems... Arcade: Anteater - 8 min. Kangaroo - 7 min. Atari 2600: Alligator people - 281 min. in 7 sessions My main game this week was "Alligator people" on the Atari 2600. This is a game that caters very much to the Atari 2600's capabilities, using all available objects and amending the rules to fit the graphics capabilities. Your job is to cure 6 people from turning into alligators with a syringe which first has to pick up the medication it sprays at the people, blocked by moving walls and attacked by alligators which it can shoot as well. Other than that, I only played Arcade games. I replayed Kangaroo, Anteater and two games I first played last year, Dolphin Star and World's biggest Pac-Man (I think that's what it was called). The later two are ineligible for the classic tracker, so they will appear in the modern tracker instead.

Here are my times for this past week (May 26th through June 2nd) on modern systems... sorry, I didn't play any modern games this week.

Here are my times for this past week (May 26th through June 2nd)... Arcade: Gyruss - 85 min. in 4 sessions Rod-Land - 17 min. Super Burger Time - 14 min. Atari 2600: Chaotic Grill - 8 min. Gyruss - 8 min. Ixion - 12 min. Roc'n'Rope - 9 min. Commodore 64: Gyruss - 18 min. Super Pipeline - 10 min. This week I mainly continued to play the original version of Gyruss until I reached the last stages (warps to Earth), but there the enemy formations get very hard to avoid, so I didn't manage to complete the trip to Earth. After that, I tried the Atari 2600 port of Gyruss. There the enemies are pretty easy to hit, but the rocks (asteroids?) come at you pretty fast (although they start at a higher score than in the original version) and also killed me pretty fast. The C-64 version is easier overall, also with much slower rocks, but I still got killed by the very first formation on the first warp to Earth. Other than, I also replayed the C-64 version of Super Pipeline, but didn't get particularly far. In the arcade section, I played Rod-Land after reading about the Amiga version which uses sprite tricks (the scoring panel on the right entirely consists of sprites) and also clever Copper lists on the title screen. I also replayed Super Burger Time, but didn't get very far on it. On the Atari 2600, other than the games already mentioned, I also replayed Ixion, but in later levels it gets hard to reach all the points you have to reach in order to complete a level because you first have to push the ball to build bridges to where you need to go. I also replayed Chaotic Grill (after not having read any news for months) and surprisingly stumbled on an error where after losing a life the game doesn't go on.

I just played the last version again and got a strange error... I died by being touched by two enemies at once, and strangely, the game didn't go on from the dying sequence even though I still had at least 4 lives in reserve. I also had > 9 peppers.

Here are my times for this past week (May 20th through 26th) on modern systems... sorry, I didn't play any modern games this week.

Here are my times for this past week (May 20th through 26th)... Arcade: Bagman - 6 min. Funky Fish - 19 min. in 2 sessions Galaxian - 4 min. Gyruss - 92 min. in 6 sessions Pengo - 12 min. Rod-Land - 6 min. Time Pilot - 7 min. Track & Field - 9 min. This week I played an assortment of classic arcade games, but most only for short sessions. Inspired by the release of "Galaga" for the Atari 2600, I played the original versions of its predecessor, Galaxian, and its successor, Gyruss. (I think that Galaxian actually evolved out of Space Invaders and then evolved on into Galaga and finally Gyruss, even though that one was by a different company - I think among those games, you can see the influence of one game on the next). In Galaxian, I didn't come far, but in Gyruss, I nearly reached 150,000 poiints, making it to the way to Mars. However, by then the enemies drop their bombs at you in rapid succession, so it gets really difficult to survive. In Track & Field, sadly, my age shows. I'm 47 now, and I think I was a better button masher when I was younger. Now I can't seem to qualify for the later events anymore... I already failed at the third event (spear) and didn't reach the 4th. I only played a single game of Time Pilot in which I nearly made it to the end of the last wave (before the cycle restarts), but got killed by the last boss (the big UFO). Nothing special needs to be said about Pengo and Rod-Land which I played for a few minutes each. I played Funky Fish a bit longer, and I think I reached Level 4 as the farthest there. Bagman was another try to play a game which is a bit like Pac-Man, but I didn't get very far there... I only managed to clear the 1st screen out of the 3 a level consists of.

Here are my times for this past week (May 13th through 19th) on modern systems... Wii: Wii Fit - 30 min. Today I visited the daughter of my father's cousin (what is that to me?) Sylvia who has a Wii, and she let me play her Balance Board (not to confuse with a Hoverboard!) with the Wii Fit cartridge. The 30 minutes time is as measured by the game itself... it's what you should do as a day's fitness unit.

Here are my times for this past week (May 13th through 19th)... Arcade: Gauntlet - 21 min. Galaxian - 2 min. Super Qix - 85 min. in 3 sessions Pang 81 min. in 4 sessions Bank Panic - 25 min. Pac-Mania - 38 min. Non-eligible: Rubik's Cube - 29 min. This time, again, I played some different arcade games... Gauntlet was one single game in which I got pretty far... but Galaxian fell noticeably short from that. In Super Qix, I made quite a few rounds. In Pac-Mania, this time around I got the hang of it a bit. In Bank Panic, I achieved my goal of 100,000 points. I also solved Rubik's Cube for a few times with a top time of about 4-5 minutes.

Here are my times for this past week (May 6th through 12th) on modern systems... Android phone: McDonalds Rally - 3 min. As for modern games, McDonalds has a new game in its app, a rally game with overhead view where you steer your car by putting your finger on the left and right buttons, so I tried that one for a bit (you're only allowed to compete in one round per day).

Here are my times for this past week (May 6th through 12th) on classic systems... Arcade: Burger Time - 12 min. Jr. Pac-Man - 135 min. in 5 sessions. Ms. Pac-Man - 18 min. Puzzle Bobble - 17 min. Atari 7800: Pac-320 Pokey - 12 min. Channel F: Pac-Man - 14 min. This week started out by considering which games might be feasible for the Gigatron systems. I found that Puzzle Bobble should be possible, and it has actually got surprisingly few demakes... nobody attempted to port it to the Channel F or to the Atari 2600 or 7800. I played that one in its original form for a bit after also reading about the Neo Geo hardware it was using. Also possible should be Pac-Man, but the sprites would have to be scaled down due to the low resolution. To that end, I played some Pac-Man variations, starting with that of the Channel F, then going to Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man both in its original form and finally the homebrew Pac-320 Pokey on the Atari 7800 (don't know if that's its exact name though). Here, back in 2011, Bob hacked Ms. Pac-Man into Pac-Man (or, rather, Hangly Man? The maze is a bit strange) in high resolution. Somehow I like Jr. Pac-Man because of its wide mazes. I also played Burger Time since that's another game I consider possible on the Gigatron.

Maybe there could be a 16K Ms. Pac-Man instead... the official version of Ms. Pac-Man was 8K, so I'm sure something could be improved on that to make it as accurate as 8K Pac-Man is.

I think it wouldn't be too hard to "fix" Ms. Pac-Man building on the core of this version since the gameplay doesn't differ too much from the original Pac-Man.

Here are my times for this past week (April 29th through May 5th) on modern systems... Gigatron: Racer - 5 min. In case you never heard of it, the Gigatron is a computer made of TTL chips without a real CPU. It still generates a VGA output under CPU control. One of the built-in games is Racer which looks a bit like Pole Position, but falls short of it in several ways.

Here are my times for this past week (April 29th through May 5th)... Arcade: Blasto - 10 min. Mario Bros. - 17 min. Super Qix - 11 min. Atari 2600: Alien - 9 min Hunchy II - 21 min. Commodore 64: Frantic Freddie II - 15 min. Slamball - 18 min. Super Pipeline - 12 min. This time I played short sessions of a handful of games... Frantic Freddie II is a sequel to the original Frantic Freddie from back in the day (actually a hack) with different music (and a different music routine as well), different enemies, intermissions and levels. It starts out with a rendition of "Don't stop me now" by Queen (which really seems to have exploded in popularity since late last year, mind you!) and then plays various other tunes like "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath. Then, following my hiccup with last weeks' postings, I played the arcade original of Blasto which must be one of the earliest CPU based arcade games with no sprites, monochrome graphics and only 2K of ROM (if I got it right). Out of no particular reason, I also played Mario Bros. and Super Qix in their original versions, likewise on the C-64 without particular reason I replayed the pinball sim Slamball and Super Pipeline. Then I tried Alien on the Atari 2600 which is a variation on Pac-Man. Finally, Hunchy II. This is a sequel to Hunchy on the Atari 2600 which in turn is modeled after the arcade game "Hunchback". Hunchy II changes the game mechanics a bit into a platformer where you have to collect several bells per screen. I'm not surprised about that because the C-64, after getting a port of Hunchback by Ocean, also got a sequel in Hunchback II which changes the game principle in a similar way. The original arcade Hunchback had a last screen which differs from the rest a bit in that you have multiple platforms which you change by climbing on bell ropes. That screen is missing from the C-64 port, but instead it's the first screen of Hunchback II which in its subsequent screens expands on that principle as does the Spectrum version, but with different levels. Hunchy II differs from this as well by having the player climb ladders instead of bell ropes, and the main enemy is the difficulty of the terrain rather than the floating sprites as on the C-64 and Spectrum.

Oh, sorry. Seems like I got multiple things wrong yesterday. To explain things, I was in a bit of a rush yesterday because I won tickets for a comedy show tomorrow night and struggled to find a 2nd person to visit it with me. Therefore I mixed up the two threads and also got the name of one game wrong... it's still T:me Salvo. There is no game called T:me Blasto, though after this happened I thought about how one (a sequel to T:me Salvo) might look like... you see, there is a game called Blasto on the TI-99 (and it was even played this week by other people as I see) which has got SOMEWHAT similar gameplay to T:me Salvo in that in both games you play as a vehicle which is able to go in four directions and also shoot into them on a single, non-scrolling screen... but that's where the similarities end. On the TI-99, I actually have put this into a group of 3 games with similar gameplay which are Blasto, The Attack and Tombstone City, with Tombstone City being the most similar to T:me Blasto in that you always have a city, but it's in the center and only 4x4 blocks. The enemies can roam outside the city (as they do in T:me Blasto), but they can't enter it. To make up for that, the player ship is able to leave the city into the outer world where most of the actual fighting takes place. Actually, Blasto is an arcade port of a game by Gremlin (like Hustle, which was also made by Gremlin), and it greatly surpasses the original with much better graphics and sound, whereas the original version is only black and white, has no sprites and only one sound channel. Must have been one of the earliest CPU based games with only 6K of ROM in total. So... a "T:me Blasto" would have to be one more step up from the TI-99 version. T:me Blasto would have to be to Blasto roughly what T:me Salvo is to Targ. Things that were added include: in Crossfire: More enemy types, glimpse of an outer world where the enemies spawn, shooting enemies, shot refills, bonus capsules, music in T:me Salvo: bonus capsules converted to running men, smart bomb, challenging stages. So a T:me Blasto should have moving enemies, more mine types, extras and multiple rounds, at the least. The "mine chain reaction" concept actually cries for multiple levels with specific mine arrangements which can lead to different strategies in how to eliminate them.

Sorry, I didn't play any modern games this week.

Here are my times for this past week (April 22st through 28th, 2019)... Atari 2600: Fix-it Felix Sr - 4 min. Heartbreak - 13 min. Sheep it up - 4 min. in 2 sessions Atari 7800: T:me Blasto - 39 min. Commodore 64: Crossfire (Sierra) - 15 min. in 2 sessions Super Mario Bros - 5 min. This week I tried the new C-64 version of Super Mario Bros. which is already a bit hard to find because Nintendo went after the main sites distiruting it (why did I expect this to happen?), and then while I was at it, I also played some Crossfire (by Sierra, there's another Crossfire by a different company with completely different game mechanics), and after that I retried the Atari 7800 game T:me Blasto which Crossfire is based on because I picked up a new strategy for both games which consists of mainly staying still and only waiting for enemies getting into your lane, anticipating their entry and shooting them before they are able to shoot you. This worked better than my previous more aggressive strategy and lead to me finally making the 4th level of Blasto in order to reach the 2nd challenging stage which has got the enemies running in a different, more complex pattern than in the first challenging stage. Othere than that, I tried 3 Atari 2600 homebrews I hadn't tried before. Fix-it Felix Sr. seems to be a decent conversion although I don't remember the oroginal gameplay too well anymore. In "Heartbreak" you have a heart in the center which constantly changes color and tries to hit the blocks surrounding it with a ball going into a ranbom direction, by rotating the blocks so that the ball is able to hit the coprrect ones. Then there's sheep it up where you try to throw up sheep from platform to platform by throwing your sheep at the right moment in order to catch the next platform. Ah yes, someone tried to tell something pretty confusing about something, but I can't remember what it was.. maybe it was only a dream though.

Here are my times for this past week (April 15th through 21st) on modern systems... sorry, I didn't play any modern games this week.

Here are my times for this past week (April 15th through 21st)... Arcade: Mikie - 27 Splash - 208 min. in 2 sessions Targ - 20 Spectar - 118 min. in 3 sessions Uncle Poo - 15 Space Bugger - 7 Atari 2600: Pac-Man 8K (Dintari) - 15 Parsec (Prototype) - 3 Targ (Prototype) - 2 Taxi Panic - 10 Universal Chaos - 5 I continued to play Splash this week, and in the second session I decided to apply continues until the game was finished, which unfortunately took over 2 hours. Then I tried Uncle Poo and Space Bugger which are rare games shown in a Youtube video about the non-existant arcade game Polybius. In search for a game similar to T:me Salvo which I played last week, I found the arcade game Targ which they say Crossfire is based on, which in turn is the basis for Salvo. However, Targ is a bit too simple, but I also found the sequel, Spectar, which is much better in my opinion. Also, there's an Atari 2600 prototype for Targ (I was initially looking for similar Atari 2600 games) which fits the bill quite nicely and has been completed, renamed to Universal Chaos. Other games I tried were Taxi Panic, a game similar to Crazy Taxi on the 2600 (but in a 2D view), and a Batari Basic version of Parsec which is much cruder than the TI-99 original. Then after our discussion about Pac-Man 8K, I discovered that there was a newer version released than the one I've been playing (Version , so I tried that one for a bit. The thing most improved in it is clearly cornering. Finally, I also put in some time on Mikie before I gave up gaming completely for the last days because I didn't manage to get on with my household chores and my private projects anymore.

Just downloaded this new version as well... I think this is one of the best cornerings I've seen across all ports of Pac-Man and its variants.

The binary I'm usually playing is called pacman2600_8k_v7_test.bin. I think that's the DINTAR816 version as well. It certainly looks like the video posted by Oyamafamily. It actually makes me think if someone could make a better version of Ms. Pac-Man like this as well... I think it should be possible, but I can't see anyone having tried.

Thank you for posting this tracker! I just tried it out making a small melody, and I can confirm that it runs flawlessly under Windows XP SP 3. Crossfire theme.zip

Sorry about being unclear in my last post. I did some searching as well, and I think Universal Chaos comes closest to this as well. There's another link however... I knew something like this was done already, and the Wikipedia entry to Crossfire, which Salvo is based on, claims that Crossfire is based on the Exidy arcade game Targ. So I tried that one, and then its sequel, Spectar, but Targ is in fact very basic compared to even Crossfire with only two types of enemy and none of them firing back at you, so I like Spectar much better with its varied gameplay though it introduces some elements not present in Crossfire... your aim of also collecting dots and the barriers. Then, there's also an Atari 2600 prototype of Targ which I also played, and it actually feels a bit better than the arcade game with the enemies being slower (at least in the beginning). According to your hint to Universal Chaos, I tried that one as well, and as it seems, Universal Chaos is actually the completed version of the Targ prototype with only the enemy sprites changed a bit. And it's a nice conversion in fact, as simple as it is. Now I agree that some things shown in Salvo might be a bit too complex for the 2600, especially the multiple men following the players. The remaining elements would be pretty doable, I think, except for the colors... I, too, would expect a 2600 version to have monochrome sprites (but I think they could have different colors depending on the type of enemy). As for programming, I also have no interest in programming for an on-cart CPU. As for the TIA reference, I was actually referring to the music of Crossfire on the C-64 which is very nice and catchy. I realize that Salvo has a different tune, and I have to admit not actually having heard it through to the end.previously... but it's good as well, just a different tune. Actually I've seen (or heard) a different version of it on the Tandy PC version which plays a different melody line which isn't present on the C-64 although it doesn't use any decaying notes.

I think the different colors are great... so far all cartrides I have in that form (for the Atari 2600) are black, though they come in somewhat different shapes. Most carts for other systems are black as well, except for a few for the TI-99 and all of the Gameboy carts which are light grey.

I stumbled on this game as well in the last weeks (in a Youtube video with Atari 7800 homebrews) and I have to say I like it very much since I already liked to play Crossfire back in the day on the C-64 and TI-99. SInce the graphics are rather simple, I was wondering how a demake for the Atari 2600 could look like. I think it wouldn't be too complicated if you display the squares solid instead of outlined, use players for the player, enemies and bonus items and the missiles and ball for the shots. Also the enemy AI could be altered a bit so that they tend to avoid occupying the same scanline (so flicker can be minimised). The music could somewhat take advantage of the fact that there are (to my knowledge) multiple waveforms on the TIA whose frequencies are scaled up by the factor 3 relative to each other (I hope I'm clear enough here). Not that I want to start to do it, I only see it as a possibility... or does anyone know of a similar game for the 2600?