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lapetino

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Posts posted by lapetino

  2. Posted

    10 hours ago, Random Terrain said:

     

    My opinion about Pac-Man has been on my web site for years. Time to update it:

     

    randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-favorite-games.html#pacman

     

    If Tod Frye wasn't half-assing it, maybe he was half-braining it. He said this in the video below:

     

    "One thing I have never gotten is why people are so persnickety about the exact maze layout. My maze is simpler, takes less ROM, and I have these exits at the top and bottom and that freaks people out and I got no idea why. It's like, they're exits, so what if they're on the top and bottom instead of the left and right? I mean, come on, I just don't get it."

     

    youtu.be/RqezF_Lv05Y?t=83

     

    After all this time, he's still clueless about it?

     

    I remember reading interviews where certain classic programmers would talk about going to the arcade as much as possible. It wasn't just to learn from the games, these programmers seemed to love playing games. They were "gamers" who made games. From the way he talks, Tod Frye seems like somebody who would rather bash his head on a fire sprinkler than play arcade games. He doesn't seem to "get" what makes each popular arcade game special and unique. The Pac-Man maze is the same as any Berzerk maze, right? A maze is a maze. What's the big deal? If Tod Frye poured you a big warm glass of yak piss and you complained about it, would he say "Yak piss and clean water are both liquids. What's the difference? Liquid is liquid. They taste the same to me. Why are you being so persnickety? I don't get it."

     

    Tod Frye's myringa-molesting, malevolent maze of mucky movement (a.k.a. Pac-Man) was released in March/April of 1982. There were three big arcade ports that were released before Pac-Man that managed to recreate the magic of the arcade games. They got the vital things right.

     

    Atari 2600 Space Invaders was released around March of 1981. It had the basics: aliens looked similar to the arcade aliens, gameplay was similar, you could shoot pieces out of the bunkers, and the background color was black. Atari also improved on the original by adding a ton of variations. The Atari 2600 game didn't have the exact number of aliens that the original version had, but Rick Maurer did a pretty darn good job capturing the essence of the arcade game. If Space Invaders would have had a hot pink background, bunkers that looked like moldy pickles, and rabid purple bunny rabbits instead of aliens, I'm pretty sure people would have complained. Maybe Tod Frye should have played Space Invaderss longer than 3 months back then. He'd be better at playing it and he might have learned how to recreate the essential parts of an arcade game. :D

     

    Missile Command for the Atari 2600 was released around April of 1981. Some gameplay elements had to be pruned and the game had to be adapted so it would work with a joystick, but like Space Invaders, the essence was captured. There wasn't much to complain about. Rob Fulop didn't decide to turn the game sideways or use chartreuse as the background color of the first level.

     

    Released around July of 1981, Atari 2600 Asteroids also had a black background (just like the arcade version). The ship looked similar and you could shoot in multiple directions. The asteroids were blocky and filled in with color instead of looking like those hollow vector things from the original, but that was excusable and possibly welcome for people who like colorful graphics. Gameplay was close enough and fun enough to stifle most complaints.

     

    Back to what Tod Frye said about the exits in his version, that's exactly what they are; exits, not escape tunnels. As Video Games Magazine from August of 1982 said on page 75, "The exits on the top and bottom, at times, seem involuntary; on several occasions, as I passed by one, I was sucked in and spat out the other side." When playing the arcade version, you have to enter the tunnels on purpose. You can't get sucked in.

     

    If Tod Frye would have given us a black background, an arcade-like maze, better joystick response, and sound effects that weren't imported from the depths of hell, Pac-Man would have received an overabundance of respect and praise. Pac-Man could proudly sit on a shelf next to Space Invaders, Missile Command, and Asteroids without cowering and whimpering like a mangy rescue dog that peed on the carpet.

    Hey, I appreciate that you're so passionate about this game. That's what I love about this hobby and our connections to specific games, and strong feelings abound. You feel this way (and I happen to disagree), but I guess then we can still play Atari and like the games we like. I was trying to show a different side. So, how do you feel about Dennis Debro's 4K Pac-Man and DINTA816's 8K? They are both impressive, IMO.

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    12 hours ago, Lost Dragon said:

    The various sagas concerning what RG magazine have printed as fact and why have been investigated and explained over the years and the information is still in the public domain.

     

    Sometimes it's as simple as an article being submitted to cover a single format (Making.of Myth on the ZX Spectrum),  editor rejects it, wants it expanded to cover all versions and writer has no experience of anything but the ZX Spectrum version, so when told by Mark Cale the Atari ST version was finished and released,  takes comment at face value.

     

    Mark was never going to explain the real reason it never appeared and the ST coder does not want events behind it made public.

     

     

    Others are a bit more curious,  an ex-Thallion coder quoted as working on cancelled SNES Starfox 2 when he joined Argonaut,  a bit of simple fact checking by the article writer would of shown the SNES game canned 3 years before the coder joined Argonaut, but the writer in question not known for his research abilities. 

     

    As for their editorial approach..Let's just say it's why myself and others stopped subscribing or even picking up odd issues, a long time ago

     

     

    It's very reassuring to hear you had other sources who could confirm what Tod was saying, GTW'S Frank Gasking and Atari Historian Scott Stilphen taught me that lesson very well when i started assisting on sites like GTW and Unseen 64, never go off single sources, keep looking and sharing what turns up.

     

    Slippage is very understandable given amount of years passed when we start asking about games they worked on, amount of people honest enough to say they simply don't remember or memory is hazy..and i would rather they said that, than lay blame at an individual. 

     

    ;-) People like myself (who did buy the issue of RG with your article in) are always going to read a feature with a big name and ask why were they not asked about?

     

    That's our nature :-)) 

     

    If you,myself and 3 other people spoke to Tod about the same base subjects, i have no doubt there would be a healthy overlap of the same questions, but also a good mix of unique questions, as each of us had pressing questions of our own we felt needed answering.

     

     

    I've just grown tired of magazines like RG and Gamestm not pressing industry folk.

     

    Mark Cale's agent issues a warning that Mark will not answer Q's about Unreleased games..you must use interview to promote System 3's latest product.

     

    I had John Carmack's Agent say John would not be answering anything regarding his time developing on the Atari Jaguar..

     

    My approach is simply to say ok then and try and find others from the teams who worked on the titles i am interested in and see if they are happy to chat.

     

     

    I totally get it. Well, hopefully some of what I wrote was worth the cover price. And thanks for picking it up! ;)

     

    • Like 1

  4. Posted

    4 minutes ago, Lost Dragon said:

    if people don't challenge industry figures or simply take claims at face value or don't look to further sources, your risking not getting a feel for the real version of events.

     

    My comment isn't meant as a slight on your article,  more a criticism of how the mainstream press works these days.


    I can't speak to the other events or articles of RG--I'm just a writer who has done 2 pieces for them, and don't know anything about their editorial approach. I wrote basically what I wanted to write.

    And while I don't know that I'd call RG "mainstream," I just don't think there was something that needed to be challenged in Tod's accounts. I had other older sources that confirmed any of the questions I had. I'm willing to allow some slippage for events that happened nearly 40 years ago, which is some of why I wanted to make this a more definitive account of the process, correcting some things that have come out, like the time he had to complete it. But also, it's a case of intent--MY intent with this piece was to paint a fuller picture of the man himself, and how he feels about the label of "terrible game," how he deals with the fallout as a real person in the public eye, and where he came from. Almost none of that other stuff had been stitched together before, which I think provides a more fleshed out version of the history of video games. People might think I was more or less successful in doing that, but that's their prerogative. :) 

    • Like 3

  5. Posted

    2 hours ago, Mr SQL said:

    Excellent perspective Tim! The pioneers ideas for the translations in the early 80's included a lot of creative influence from the artist.

     

    I made a similar observation on contemporary 80's pacman ports with some examples on the other pacman here:

     

     

    Good stuff! Yeah, I want to push back on this idea that there was THE WAY to do things that seems obvious in hindsight. History always compresses decision-making and makes things seem clear. But I appreciated the perspective of Tod Frye, even if people don't believe his story. After all, even if you think his answers aren't credible, you have to believe that Atari management (the "greedy money people!") would want the thing that would keep them in the clear. If they thought beforehand that the colors or maze arrangement wouldn't fly with customers, they would have made Frye change it. They even changed the box art probably at the 11th hour so that Pac-Man looked flat and 2-dimensional, so that there would be no mistaking the character! People who are that fixated on the details wouldn't have let something they perceived as sloppy fly through.

  6. Posted

    Digging this up--it's funny, because I stumbled on this thread while working on a new project I'm doing: https://twitter.com/365ofpac

    But I also wanted to say that I wrote this article. It was an editorial oversight that they didn't print my byline in the article. See below:
     


    And as for criticisms of this article, people asking why I didn't "call Tod on the carpet" on past discrepancies or ask "tough questions" about the game development, I think you're missing the point. This wasn't a GOTCHA article, and if you've ever been in a journalist's shoes, that's not generally how it goes. But my larger aim was to put this game in context, and to give him a chance to reflect and share his views. It wasn't my goal to prove that his approach or justifications were a cop-out, but to understand his process. They did what they did, and if you think anyone at Atari was half-assing it on a game that was so hugely hyped (and expensive to license!), then you're sorely mistaken. Everyone wanted to make money. The idea that there was already an established WAY to make arcade ports is silly--if there were, Atari would have been happy to embrace it. Easier, simpler, more money made. You can't ret-con the idea of what we think of translations today to what was going on in the pioneers' basement in 1981. 

    But everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I just wanted to shed more light on this game and the topic. :)
     
     

    • Like 7
    • Thanks 1

  9. Posted

    I was going to download the latest binary but it's been removed. I'm guessing something unwanted happened between the two previous posts. :( I tried the earlier versions and this is really great! Very well done.

    Yeah, I saw that it has been taken down. What happened? I was going to download this tonight and give it a whirl. That's too bad, as it looked pretty amazing.

  11. Posted

    Asking for all rights to your game, forever and without limits, while depriving you of copyright, is easier for them but unfair to ask. You could even agree to "exclusive" distribution if they think putting your work on other manufacturer's hardware would lessen the appeal of their toy.

     

    WTF are they thinking?

     

    You're absolutely right. Companies write these things this way because it's way easier for them to absolve themselves of any work or the issue of keeping track of rights down the line. That's the kind of paperwork and due dilligence companies want to avoid. But that's no excuse for an exclusive and permanent transfer of copyrights. It might be different if this was a PAYING gig, but since it's not, this seems silly. This is a first stab, and I wouldn't write them off because of this. Smells like lawyer work. If anyone wants to include their work, I'd encourage you to redline this agreement and send it back for some back and forth. Hopefully you can get a human being to work with you on something reasonable. It'd be nice to see the community's efforts showcased here.

     

    Would love to have Andrew from Hyperkin weigh in on this.

     

     

    • Like 7

  12. Posted

    So, this won't have Harmony support, but will the SD card be like defacto Harmony?

    And if not, would its open-source nature allow others to build in support for it, or things like the oddball controllers like the driving controllers, or the Foot Craz pedals, etc?

    Glad to hear they are licensing Stella the right way.

  15. Posted

    So it has been a while since I originally posted this, but I finally got around to opening this up and taking some pics of the insides. I haven't tested it yet, as the 5200 was buried in the storage space, but I hope to try it out soon. Open to any suggestions on that.
    Here is what I photographed of the interiors. I'm not an engineer or electronics guy, so I'm even really sure what I'm looking at. Help is welcomed!

    2018 01 28 15.56.45

    2018 01 28 15.57.23

    2018 01 28 16.10.31

    2018 01 28 16.10.24

    2018 01 28 16.10.16

    2018 01 28 16.10.00

    2018 01 28 16.05.02

    2018 01 28 16.04.57

    2018 01 28 16.04.29

    2018 01 28 16.04.21

    2018 01 28 16.04.14

    2018 01 28 16.03.50

    2018 01 28 16.03.43

    2018 01 28 16.03.27

    2018 01 28 16.02.34

    2018 01 28 15.58.58

    2018 01 28 15.58.53


    Neato!

    • Like 6

  16. Posted

    Thanks!

    Right now, one definitely has some Atari ties, but it's not strictly Atari-focused. Sorry that's a tease, but it's all I can say for now... :)

    This is wonderful to find the original author on here!

     

     

    WIth regards to, "Working on negotiations for some other books too. Some video game related, some not.", are any of those Atari based (you're on AtariAge, you're going to get biased questions!)?

  17. Posted

    I really like the 8bit computers too. We've talked a lot about the potential for Atari sequels, but I don't think there's a large enough market for that focused of a follow up, at least for a big publisher. It could be great for some Kickstarter efforts or something along those lines.

    But I'm continuing on with other projects. Here's our latest: https://www.amazon.com/Undisputed-Street-Fighter-Anniversary-Retrospective/dp/1524104663/

    I'm also working on something else video game related, but it's still in the negotiations stage.

    Thanks again, all!

    I love the game related art books, me and my daughter own the Zelda one

     

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/1616550414/ref=sspa_dk_detail_1?psc=1&pd_rd_i=1616550414&pd_rd_wg=x9gEC&pd_rd_r=PTR83HF8SMGD9C4YE1GC&pd_rd_w=X0S3O

     

    They are simply stunning.....Would LOVE (Listen to us all Tim) an Atari 8 bit home computer book with your amazing visual way of seeing it, the 2600 has had its share, lets have one for the computer based geeks and nerds...

    • Like 2

  18. Posted

    Thanks. Why yes, I just edited and art directed the next book in the series we're doing. It's called Undisputed Street Fighter: https://www.amazon.com/Undisputed-Street-Fighter-Anniversary-Retrospective/dp/1524104663

    Working on negotiations for some other books too. Some video game related, some not.

    Always wanted that book, its been brought up in here before over the years and the quantity of 2500 stuff did put me off but the actual artwork was / is just stunning so it nice to have you pop in Tim, the inspiration and style is amazing..

     

    One day I'll get the book if its still about when I have more free funds..

     

    I've not looked but have you other similar art collections / creations Tim?

     

    Paul...

     

    • Like 2

  19. Posted

    Thanks so much for the kind words. Glad you are digging it.

     

    And to those who wish there were more arcade art in it, some of that was a function of practicality and space. The current incarnation of Atari has no archives so everything--and I mean every single piece of art--was personally sourced by me. Some of it came down to what was practical to find. It's a lot harder to find beautiful arcade art examples and then photograph them. And I also wanted a book that would appeal to a wide audience. The 2600 is such a touchstone for many, many people and the source of most of the best art.

    • Like 5

  20. Posted

    Atari book? What is/was that? And atari shutting down competition is lame. The real Atari generated business through great products.

    The original Atari also shut down pirates and people using their intellectual property without asking, and were pretty litigious too. Activision, anyone?

    • Like 1

  24. Posted

    So I just heard from Dynamite. Apparently there was some issue with books getting shipped from Diamond distribution to Amazon. They seemed to be sitting on them for some unknown reason. But they are now going to be shipped to them so they will be available beginning July 4.

     

    Sorry for the delay -- it's pretty annoying. Any Chicagoans who don't want to wait for those to ship can come buy a copy and have me sign it tomorrow night, June 22, at Logan Arcade in Chicago. https://www.facebook.com/events/216057835573744/?ti=icl

    • Like 2
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