Big_Mo

Was just looking through these. I recall writing a review of Spectrum 512 for Computer Shopper...my only piece for them (I mostly wrote for ST-Log), but for the life of me I can't remember what issue is was in! Probably some time in 1988.

The SDRIVE MAX does take a bit of getting the hang of. I'm terrified of accidentally plugging the power supply when in when it's set to SIO mode since that apparently fries it. The silly issue I'm having is that I copied files onto the micro SD from my Mac and every time I do that I get duplicate ._filenames that I now have to figure out how to get rid of. Pretty much every disc I had from 1984–1987 still read and work. Amazing. But there's a LOT of duplicated content, which is why I want to see all the directories and make new virtual disk images that not so redundant.

That one's really neat and would be great since I bounce between PC & Mac. The maddening thing is it doesn't let you save the directory listing...of all things lol. I will perhaps ping the author. Thanks!

Hey all. Just got a SDRIVE MAX and in looking at all the many many floppy images I really want to catalog all the files. Does anyone have a recommendation of a tool I could use on a PC to look at the contents of the disk images?

Space Dungeon — Because it's fun! I just wish someone would hack it so the amount of debris lessens as the levels advance because the game slows to a crawl on higher levels and the play becomes really uneven Qix — I've always loved this, but your controller has to be in tip-top shape or forget it Pengo — I played the crap out of this Moon Patrol — I also played the crap out of this Gremlins — Fun and clever. I just wish the color palette choices were a little nicer Centipede might have made the list but for the bug (ha) where the flea stops dropping after a certain level and this messes up the gameplay because the mushroom field gets thinned out too much.

I think the texts should more directly indicate what is required to run this and where to find it. I had to do some Googling to figure it out.

Like the manual tho!

Wow. Not even one view.

Is it just me or does anyone else see frogs where the manual says octopi? A plague of frogs feels more Biblical.

I know this topic is ancient. But the game existed and can be played via emulation on the Internet Archive. Keys are typical MAME. It's clearly not a hack of PAC-MAN.

Remind me to forward that to Leonard...

My issue with the game play-wise was always that the map was too damned hard to navigate (which is why I mapped it out) because there is no "geography" to anything to help you orient yourself (even with the very simple graphics it could be done)... and, related to that, I hate that there are two screens you can exit and cannot return to by reversing directions. That's just fucking with the player, I always thought there should be a "hard" game where if you put the bridge back together before jailing Lex and his gang, if any of them enter the bridge screen, they blow it up again.

Hey all. I've poked around various file archives looking for some programs and utilities written by Charles F. Johnson and John Eidsvoog and I've had a devil of a time finding some of them. I contacted John and he doesn't have the stuff I'm looking for (at least, not where he can get to it). One thing I am in desperate need of is the old TopDown loader that John wrote, which you put in your Auto folder and forced desk accessories etc. to be loaded at the top of the available memory rather than the bottom, which got them out of the way of programs which committed the sin of being hard addressed (looking at you, Art & Film Director). Does anyone have this? Or an archive of LGF/CodeHead/Johnson/Eidsvoog goodies? Thanks in advance,

Howard is not full of himself, except in a playful fashion. I've known him for a while and had lunch with him. Recognizing the 2600 wasn't an ideal platform for Star Castle and making a game perhaps better suited to its capabilities isn't a bad thing. The biggest issue I have with Yars', and a lot of VCS games, frankly, is the really flat difficulty curve. Nothing new is introduced after the second level, and it's just A, B, A, B, harder and harder. Some more variation between levels (no ion zone in one, etc.) would have kept it fresher and more interesting.

So I did some playing around with the game and, yeah, it cheats. I plopped goons into the bridge screen and they just blithely walk across the empty space where the bridge was. When I'm Clark I can't do that. But, even powerless, Superman can walk across the same space. If you drop Lois in the bridgeless gap she often gets momentarily stuck. I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this, but Lois always faces the opposite way Superman does, rather than just facing Superman no matter where he is. I think you could be able to easily grab whatever the helicopter is carrying. Right now you mostly end up grabbing the copter. I realize the play mechanic would be affected, but it always seemed silly that pieces of the bridge and even the helicopter can be inside the subways or Daily Planet. They ought to bounce off the doorway. Lois is sometimes at the Daily Planet as you arrive in it as Clark. She ought to always be there once you arrive, trying to file her story before yours.

But they get in through the air vents.

Shrink? Call the CMDF... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kixUvjMnKpI ...but it only lasts 12 hours at a time.

As per Tod's talk, the whole "prototype" story is bogus (4:30). Like some of you, I was there at the talk. In fact, I'm the one (at 8:47) who prompted Tod to talk about his decision to implement the 2 player game because he and I had discussed it previously and I thought he should share it. I had a chat with Tod a while back where he summarized his ghost logic for me so, and while I won't repeat it all here, he did say that there are factors which make it so the ghosts do not behave identically, saying "so there are 4 distinct 'personalities'.... and they each behave different enough to not be the same."

Oh, it IS more fun than Dig Dug, for sure, but you weren't exactly encouraged to say that inside Namco!

Air Sea Battle is not a valid comparison because that game has rows of objects which utilize the NUSIZE feature which allows 2 or 3 duplicates of a single Player, but all of those move together, as evidenced in Combat with the 3 fighter against a single bomber game options. . PAC-MAN games require four enemies that came move around and even pass over one another, which you can;t do with the same technique as employed by Air Sea and Combat.

It's where I kept the quadrotriticale, until....

My brother got a 5200 at launch. The controllers were a pain for a lot of games, even when you got used to them. People would try the system and get frustrated. It was also expensive, and since Atari keep piling on titles for the 2600, often the same ones as the 5200, a lot of people saw no reason to upgrade. All that, plus the lack of a cool pack-in title, surely did the console no favors.

I love Mr. Do! Would have loved a 5200 version. Back when I worked at Namco Networks we licensed Mr. Do! from Aruze for mobile and the developer did a pretty bang-up conversion of it. I had one of my artists do a really nice cartoon Mr. Do character for use on various ads and the title screen, always trying to stay true to the original marketing art, but making the character a little more consistently cute and appealing. We always did a "classic" mode which we tried to make arcade perfect, and an "enhanced" mode with souped up graphics that felt like a higher-rez, more detailed version of the originals. So, for instance, in the enhanced mode the Alpha Monsters would escape from a circus wagon at the top of the screen and where you might see a big top in the distance. Each level was a different landscape. The dirty little secret we had there was most of us thought Mr. Do! was more fun than Namco's Dig Dug.

Looking at the game again, I always hated that the bad guys could exit screens at the bottom but when walking/grounded Supes could not. That always felt like a cheat. And since the game just popped them down to ground level on the next screen, they could effectively outrun Superman. WTF?! The Kryptonite also was much too random. If it whacked you on the hard difficulty it could take you a long time to find Lois. It'd be interesting to have had the Kryptonite follow Lex around, making it harder to nab him, rather than just randomly getting in your way. Speaking of Lois, I wish she had more game function than just being a cure for kryptonite. Like, even something as simple as having her be a sort of weathervane as to where the crooks are as she's pursuing the "story". Like, if you saw her on one screen, you'd know Lex or one of his goons was on an adjoining screen. As above, the helicopter doesn't really do very much to make the gameplay more interesting. The map is so convoluted that what randomization it does doesn't make any real difference in gameplay. One other simple graphic thing I'd do to make the game feel more "super" would be to make the bridge up out of players set to quad size, to make the thing feel BIG, so only Superman can fix it. Again, mostly gameplay balancing stuff, not redesigning the game and mechanics.

Well, obviously hindsight is 20/20 but I played this game back when it was relatively new and people then were vexed by the map. I think it just wasn't play-tested enough to find the fun v. frustration fulcrum you want in a good game design. The game ALMOST works, but there are a few decisions, like the map layout and lack of distinct geography, which make it frustrating. I'll probably knock out an idea for a revised map layout and see what I can do.