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Interesting news for Bubsy on twitter... Here is one of the release of the new game and that it is coming out in May! (Gamestop had no info on this BTW when I had them check) BBS... the Bubsy Broadcasting System. I'm a fan of this since I have been calling BBSs Bulletin Board Systems) long before the internet. Since Bubsy is kinda stuck in the 90s this sorta fits.... And unrelated but still an interesting off topic... Attached thumbnail(s) http://atariage.com/forums/blog/234/entry-15654-cruisin-twitter-news-before-the-announcement-march-2019/

Game: Demolition Herby System: Atari 2600/VCS/Sears Video Arcade Published by Telesys Programmer: Don Ruffcorn Serial/Catalog Number: 1006 Copyright: 1983 Genre: Arcade - Paint It Controller: Joystick (Sega Game Pad compatible) Players: 1 or 2 Rarity Rating: 6 (B&W label); 7 (Color label) Also released in the USA by Romox on a reusable cartridge. In Europe it was released by Telesys. In Brazil it was released by Genus and Dynacom. My copy is a Custom Reproduction Cartridge from Atari Age. The least expensive option, as this game is quite pricey. This game is played on a grid, in the style of Amidar. You drive around the track painting it red as you go. There are other vehicles to contend with (chase cars). You must also watch your fuel, although there is a whopping sound to warn you when it gets too low. Run out of fuel and your car explodes! The bar at the bottom of the screen acts as your fuel gauge. The scoring is simple. Blacking out a single square earns you 32 points plus fuel. Completing two squares with one line will earn you 145 points plus more fuel. Ramming a chase car will earn you 117 points. For each 1000 points scored you earn an additional car, up to a maximum of 6. You must ram the chase cars from behind, or you will lose that car. So if another vehicle is traveling up a line, you ram it from below. If it is traveling down a line you must ram it from above. Be careful though, because once you ram them they will be shot off of the course. If they strike your car in the process you lose it. It's even possible for a rammed chase car to bounce off of your extra cars, even though they aren't on the track. If this happens you will lose any that are struck. I've lost 4 cars at once because of this! Once a chase car is rammed off of the course they are in a sort of time out. Chase cars will stay off of the track for :08 to :10 seconds. Pushing the action button on your controller will shift your car into Overdrive, increasing your speed. But it also increases the rate at which your car burns fuel. Normally you can't paint the track while in Overdrive, however if you manage to knock all three chase cars off the track you do lay down paint even in Overdrive. Three Game Variations. Each one is displayed on-screen before the race. Out of the manual: Game 1: Children's Race The other demolition racers are fairly slow. The speed stays the same every lap. Game 2: Beginner's Course Pace starts out slow, but gets progressively faster with each lap. After 7 laps, the other racers get going so fast, they don't even erase your red lines - they don't need to! Game 3: Dastardly Derby Start out quick, and then try to keep the pace! After just two laps, your opponents don't bother to erase the red lines anymore. They're just after you! Play video demonstrating the 3 game variations: This game was obviously patterned after the arcade game Amidar, which was programmed by Konami and published by Stern. Parker Brothers released their port for the Atari 2600 in 1982. Eventually the game got a make-over, in the form of new sprites and sound effects, and was released by Froggo Games as Spiderdroid in 1987 (also for the 2600). I've played them both, and in all honesty I prefer Demolition Herby over them. Game Ranking: 1 (out of 1) OTHER GAMES BASED ON AMIDAR: Kid Grid (Commodore 64) Play video by High Score user ILLSeaBass Omidar (Commodore 64) Cancelled release. I first heard of this game when someone at High Score posted a video for it as evidence of their score. Potty Painter (Commodore 64) Rollin (Commodore 64) I'd love to see this game ported to either the 2600 or to the 7800. Traxx (Commodore 64) I thought of including City Connection (Arcade), but while it is a paint game it uses platforms instead of a grid. Please Like, Comment, and Follow. Thank you to fellow Atari Age member and High Score user RetroRob for being the first to follow Cessnaace's Bog. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/760/entry-15653-game-review-1-demolition-herby-atari-2600/

Attached thumbnail(s) http://atariage.com/forums/blog/234/entry-15652-cruisin-email-special-announcement-march-2019/

I finally got the snow to fall randomly. I was wondering if there was a value that was happening psuedo-randomly all the time since the beginning, like a register. Turns out there was. While I was at it, I also composed and added a new song for level 2. it's hard to compose little tunes when you only have one audio channel to work with. A second one would have made a world of difference. I guess Nintendo didn't really try really hard when designing, making, and selling the Pokemon Mini. Which they should have because it's a great idea. How many words were used about the Pokemon Mini in the pages of Nintendo Power? 0. So anyway, that's what I did. And then I slept for 14 hours. And I'm still sleepy. But I'm not constantly yawning like crazy and feeling like a zombie like I was yesterday. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/168/entry-15651-random-snow/

This conversion was made for me by Mr. Wizard. Watch gameplay footage tonight at 8 PM ET! http://atariage.com/forums/blog/3/entry-15650-mega-man-on-sega-master-system-8-pm-et/

I think today I’m going to dial it back a bit; I’ve been fixated for too long on the graphically impressive or highly original. I think I’m just going to talk about an old favorite, I think I’ll talk about Night Driver. Night Driver is not a graphically impressive game, nor is it particularly astounding in the auditory department, but it has the one thing that trumps them all, fun. On a visual level Night Driver is seriously lacking, all you’ll really be seeing is a shit-ton of red-ish pegs whizzing by at incredible speeds, you’ll also see a tree and a house shooting by on the sidelines but you’ll only be seeing them for fractions of a second. There are also large blue cars that will fly by you while honking dramatically; they look quite a bit better than your… thing… I don’t know what that’s supposed to be. When you crash the screen will flash yellow, which is a bit startling when you’ve gotten used to the black background. If you crash into one of the cars (heavens forbid) it will get completely flattened. Sounds are nothing special just the standard fare of engine noises, tires squeaking, horns honking, and cars crashing, nothing special. The real meat and potatoes lie in the gameplay. A brief anecdote before starting though, I just really need to mouth off to AtGames for a moment, when I got into Atari I had a Flashback like many did, when I got to Night Driver though I was astonished at how horrible it was. The game was completely unplayable and I was shocked that the game was on the console or that Atari even released it to begin with. You see I was playing Night Driver with a joystick, this is not advisable. Only after getting this game and a set of working paddle controllers did I realize just how fun this game is. This is your fairly standard racing game, but instead of racing against the computer or other players it’s just you and a time limit. High scores are the name of the game here, and you get a high score by driving as far as possible as fast as possible, your score raises as you progress. For beginners there is game one and five, these tracks are incredibly easy only requiring a minimal amount of steering to get along. Games two and six are the intermediate courses, these are the ones you’ll really want to start off on as they require much faster reflexes and a small amount of course memorization. Games three and seven or the hard tracks, they’ll kick your ass no question about it, these tracks require a large amount of course memorization and you’ll even need to let go of the accelerator a few times the turns are so sharp. If you want a random challenge then I’d recommend games four and eight. The tracks are split up into timed (1-4) and non-timed (5-8) runs, the non-timed runs are perfect for practice but the real fun lies in finding out how good you are under a time limit. This is an incredibly common game; it’s so common in fact that I won’t even quote you a price on it, it’s an R1 you probably already have multiple copies of it. A bit of advice though, if you see a copy of Night Driver that is the Sears picture label variation for less than 10 dollars you should pick it up immediately, it is an R6 on the AA rarity scale and well worth the price, if only to show it off. No Collector’s Zone today, the game’s good, and cheap, a winning combination. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/729/entry-15647-night-driver-atari/

Well, today was a big day package wise. My wife informed me that I "had a tower' on the front porch. This referred to 3 packages containing a total of 7 games. Package 1 @eBay Deadly Duck (2600) An enjoyable shooter that I had only played via emulation. Package 2 @eBay Thunderground (2600) Published by Sega (w/manual). Port of part of the Sega Arcade game Borderline. I already own the SG-1000 port, which contains more elements of the Arcade original (based on the catalog number and year of release Borderline must have been the very first release for the SG-1000. I play all of my SG-1000 and Mk. III games on my Japanese Master System). I had never played Thunderground until I tried it via emulation. I enjoy both takes on the same original game. Package 3 @Atari Age Demolition Herby (2600) Custom Reproduction. I'd played this game via emulation and loved every bit of it. S.BAZ currently holds the World Record at High Score for Demolition Herby: Game 3/Emulation. Game 3 is the toughest variation. http://highscore.com/scores/Atari2600Emulated/DemolitionHerby/49147 Flappy (2600) Homebrew. Very difficult for me to make so many rapid inputs at my age and with my health status, but I wanted to try it. A user posted a score for it at High Score. It is the current World Record holder with 917 points! http://highscore.com/scores/Atari2600/Flappy/80348 Galactopus (2600) Homebrew. Shooter. I really like this one. It kind of reminds me of Name This Game (aka Octopus), a game I also like (and own on cartridge). Currently not in the database at High Score. As soon as I post this Blog entry I'll submit requests for it with all of its difficulty options. Meteor Shower (Red label variant; 7800). Shooter. I already own the Blue label variant. This game reminds me of Astroblast, or a vertical take on Meteor Defense (aka Astrowar, Astro War, Astro-War, Missile War, War 2000, etc.) Rainbow Invaders (2600) Homebrew. Another shooter. I haven't tried it yet (give me a slight break here, as I received quite a few games today). Comment and be the first to do so on one of my Blog entries. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/760/entry-15648-feeding-my-atari-2/

I worked on my brawler game today. In this demo, you can defeat all bad guys, they won't attack you. I decided to make the game scrolling and reworked on the backgrounds. If you think it's easy to make decent backgrounds, take a look at this code: It's a mess for some who are not familiar with programming in C. It took 30 seconds to compile and sometimes, the compiler freezes. Here the rom: You need a colecovision or an emulator to play. Good night everyone. Attached thumbnail(s) Attached File(s) ok 24.rom (10.98KB) Number of downloads: 0 http://atariage.com/forums/blog/56/entry-15646-sound-fight-scroll-and-a-new-demo-to-play/

Leave your thoughts in the comments section of this video going live at 8 PM ET. Thanks! http://atariage.com/forums/blog/3/entry-15645-is-the-nintendo-wii-u-retro-now/

I thought of an idea for Frank the Fruit Fly, so I decided to implement it. It took a few hours to figure out the collision code for the walls, but it was done. This was yesterday. Today I decided to play it to try to get a better picture of it. I noticed that the snowflake was only health subtracting causing if it fell on him. Since I wanted him to subtract health if he bumped into it, I looked at the snow falling code. Sure enough, I had made a small mistake. I used "add" twice instead of "add" once and "sub" once. So I fixed it and it works good now. I don't know if it's my computer or the game, but a couple of times, it did weird stuff, like buzzing for music. Right now I'm chalking it up to my stupid computer being stupid. I just tested it on a real Pokemon Mini and it works fine. It's best that when I think of something to put in there, I act on it right away or else I'll forget it, that and it may take a few hours to do because I'm dumb. Right now the code for the game is over 3,500 lines, yet I'm only at level 2! I wonder how many lines of code are in a released Pokemon Mini game, since they're 4 MB! Anyway, when all is said and done, I hope to make a 4 MB game with save support, although I don't know how I'd test the saving function. I didn't get to sleep until 4 AM and I woke up at 11 AM and I'm so sleepy. I'm trying to cut back the number of hours I sleep since I figure it's not very good for me, but I find I'm sleepy if I don't get 12 hours of sleep every night. I had to go to the post office to mail a few packages, and I had to force myself out of bed at 11 AM so I could go and have it not be so crowded. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/168/entry-15644-brick-walls-and-snow/

Made a trip to Lafayette this past weekend, one of my dad's good friends unexpectedly passed away. Him and his wife were the family friends we met for lunch in Baton Rouge when we went to Fort Benning back in October (they'd driven over from Lafayette to meet us). Lafayette doesn't have much in the way of charging options, mostly auto dealerships, RV camp sites, and an Electrify America (VW's penalty for dieselgate) site at Walmart which is one of the locations that doesn't support my car (only has CCS and CHAdeMO options, if it had J1772 I could have used it). None of the hotels had destination charging either, so we stopped at Lake Charles for lunch on the drive over and charged to 100%. From there to Lafayette was about 80 miles at highway speeds, and we had about 190 miles of range left when we went to bed Saturday night. Like Texas, charging in Louisiana is by the minute rather than kW. Without any destination charging, and having to charge to 100% with per minute charging meant it ended up costing $16.51 for about a 500 mile round trip. In contrast the trip to Fort Benning was $17.00 for ~730 miles. I ran over some debris on I-10 that bounced up and put a dent in the driver door and the strip below. The scratch on the door is 2" (dent itself is larger) and the scratch on the strip is 4". When it occurred we thought for sure I'd punctured a tire, but I don't see any damage to it or the rim. Attached thumbnail(s) http://atariage.com/forums/blog/148/entry-15643-trip-to-lafayette/

I worked on my brawler game today. Our good guy managed to beat down all his foes. Now he is ready to go to the next room. Now let's talk about the arrow: LOL The arrow is made with sprites but some part of the sprites are missing. If I set the arrow x to 40, it shows without problems. But I want to place the arrow higher on the screen, like most brawler games do most of the time. Ok. That's all for today. Good night everybody. Attached thumbnail(s) http://atariage.com/forums/blog/56/entry-15642-goomw/

I worked really hard and wore myself out working on the 19-minute-long MIDI composition. I went back to that website to convert it to MP3, and the result was it was longer than the MIDI. I had to make a special version of the MIDI (sped up) to make it the correct length. I went to check out the other one I had done, and it mysteriously slowed down as well, so I had to speed up the other one to make it the correct length as well. It was quite the challenge to do, so it's not really perfect, and could use some better parts, but I can't do it because I am not really capable of making a really great, note-by-note perfect MIDI of a song like the same people who do the really great MIDIs. As a result, it's only 51 KB. But it does have 11 different tracks (instruments). And I think it sounds decent enough. So now with it done, I found another song to do. I went to YouTube, and it only had 7 views! So I downloaded the video of it. I went and got my haircut and stopped at the game store empty handed (and with less hair.) Got some fries at Carl's Jr. Ready to return to Billy the Ball, if I can find something new to do with it... http://atariage.com/forums/blog/168/entry-15641-break-song-complete/

Welp, my laptop is dead, it freezes at the password screen and that's just the end of it. I've gotten a new computer that'll hopefully last as long or longer as my laptop. I'm tired and suffering from a mild migraine at the moment so I'm sorry if this particular review is a but nonsensical as I am both completely exhausted and caffeinated out of my mind. Of the nine games available at the 2600’s launch there are two that I feel still hold up well today. I’ve already discussed Combat and how absolutely timeless it is, but I need to be in a certain mood to play Combat, and I also need a second player. That is the biggest flaw with most of the Launch titles, they’re two player only, Combat, Street Race, Air-Sea Battle, Surround, Video Olympics, and Black Jack are all two player with only Basic Math, Star Ship, and Indy 500 having single player modes to them. I think I’ll talk about Indy 500 today. I love this game; it utilizes my absolute favorite controller on the 2600, and most criminally underutilized, the Driving controller. The Driving controller is basically a Paddle controller that you can spin 360 degrees allowing for the fluidity of a paddle and the maneuverability of a car. Indy 500 won’t win any awards at a beauty contest but that doesn’t matter since you won’t notice the bland graphics after a while. This game relies solely on it’s addictive gameplay, and believe me you won’t be starved for choice. You start off with a basic oval shaped course, just to get you acquainted with the controller, but you’re likely to spend most of your time on the Devil’s Elbow. The Devil’s Elbow looks nothing like an elbow but it is the more entertaining of the two courses on the cartridge, it’s nothing but hairpin corners so you’d better be proficient with your Driving controller if you want to make it around in a timely manner. Each of these tracks has a two player mode and a one player timed mode. The next mode is Crash n’ Score™ where two players will race around arena-like stages and attempt to crash into a flashing square to get points. There are two arenas; one is fairly closed in with two thing dividers in the centers and two small escape ports on the top and bottom of the screen. The second arena is far more open, with six squares in a grid in the center and wide open tops and bottoms you’ll have free reign over much of the screen. There are two versions of Crash n’ Score™, Tag and time trial, they are very similar to the race modes from before where you either race each other to a set amount of points or see who can get the most points in sixty seconds. The third mode is Tag™, I think you get the basic gist of that, same arenas, and same version types as the first two. The only twist to Tag™ is that the car that is NOT flashing is it, as opposed to the more commonly assumed opposite; this may lead to some confusion for first time players. The final mode is for those who have completely mastered the basic race modes; Ice Race will surely pose a challenge for even the most experienced players. Ice Race is just the basic Race modes but with almost no friction which will lead to plenty of sick drifts around the hairpins of The Devil’s Elbow. If not even the Ice Race modes can throw you off then I’d suggest putting the switches in Difficulty A for even more speed. Simply that the programmers managed to fit so much variation onto a tiny 2KB cartridge is absolutely astonishing. Indy 500 is a masterpiece of programming and should be held in the highest regards. Since it requires special controllers Indy 500 isn’t especially cheap. You can buy the game loose cheaply all day long, this is a less than five dollar game for sure, but when it comes to the controllers you’ll be shelling out a pretty penny with the cheapest one on Ebay coming in at 13 dollars for just one and 25 dollars for a pair. If you’re feeling excessive you can buy the complete package in the big box, the cheapest of those I’m seeing is around 50 dollars. I settled for a 1977 gatefold variant CIB for ten bucks, seriously there are way too many ways to buy this game. No Collector’s Zone today this is just a damn good game. Attached thumbnail(s) http://atariage.com/forums/blog/729/entry-15639-indy-500-atari/

Here's the thing. A user at http://highscore.com posted a play video of a game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Actually, this shoot 'em up has all the makings of a great homebrew conversion for the Atari 2600. The Game is called The Pyramid. It was designed by Bob Hamilton, Darren Hamilton, Ian Hamilton, and published for the Speccy in 1983 by Fantasy Software. Here's the video. Take a look and please comment on this idea: http://atariage.com/forums/blog/760/entry-15640-game-that-id-like-to-see-released-on-the-2600-1/

http://anthologyone.thecomicseries.com/comics/pl/982378 http://atariage.com/forums/blog/757/entry-15638-space-roanoke-25/

It's not easy keeping my Atari 7800 ProSystem well fed with 2600 and 7800 games that it has never experienced before while staying on a budget. I received 3 emails from Atari Age today confirming that three of my orders have shipped, leaving 2 still being processed. So what did I do? Placed another order of course. Plus which, I buy games on eBay. I'm not as mobile as I once was, so I do most of my game shopping online. Here's some of what's coming: Atari Age (Homebrews/Hacks) Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest (7800; POKEY) Berzerk: Voice Enhanced (2600) Draconian (2600) Elevators Amiss (2600) Flappy (2600) Galactopus (2600) Meteor Shower (7800; Red label variant. I already own the Blue label variant) Rainbow Invaders (2600) Atari Age (Custom Reproductions) Demolition Herby (2600) Gas Hog (2600) River Patrol (2600) Packrat Video Games (Homebrews) Astronomer (2600) Explosive Diarrhea (2600) eBay (Games from back-in-the-day) Deadly Duck (2600) Planet Patrol / Wall Defender (2600; 2-in-1; PAL) Thunderground w/Manual (2600) I only order Custom Reproductions of games that I can't otherwise afford. Sure, they play through emulation. But I'd rather play on actual Atari hardware. I especially like Demolition Herby, which is a take on Amidar/Spiderdroid but with some vehicular combat added for extra spice, and River Patrol, an extremely rare port of the arcade original for the 2600. It even has music throughout. I only recently started playing Gas Hog thru emulation. An interesting game. You probably noticed that I bought a PAL 2-in-1 on eBay (from a seller in Germany) - Planet Patrol / Wall Defender. I already own the NTSC release of Planet Patrol, however Wall Defender is another matter. Not only do I not own it on cartridge, but it will not run properly on my emulator - EMU7800 (version 2.2). I downloaded the latest version of Stella for Windows 10 (64-bit), but I have a problem. It seems to have many games already pre-loaded (such as Wall Defender), but when I select a game it only runs an attract mode for that game. I can't start an actual game. Maybe someone here can help me with this. -Mark http://atariage.com/forums/blog/760/entry-15637-feeding-my-atari/

So I've decided to take a break from Billy the Ball to focus more on some other stuff. I have all these projects I do to keep myself busy. It's quite possibly the only reason I don't watch all that much TV. This time, I've decided to try and make a MIDI of the Incredible String Band song's "Ithkos" off the 1974 album "Hard Rope and Silken Twine," which I bought for the sole purpose that it has a 19 minute long song on it back when I was collecting long songs. "Ithkos" is the 19-minute long song. It has a sticker saying "Made in England" but the back cover says "Manufactured in Germany." So who knows. But no matter. I have this really old (almost as old as I am!) keyboard which I use to find notes. Which is extremely useful because it fits on my lap. Well, just before I decided to quit the session, it died on me. It's horrible because it needs 6 C batteries! Well, anyway, I quit at the 4.09 mark. I will resume once I find or buy some more C batteries. I don't play by ear per se, but once I figure out the key the song is in, it becomes a little easier to find out the notes. Like at the part I'm in, (I think) it's E major. It started in E minor. The composer really must like E. I have 7 tracks so far. I listened to the whole song and there's a few more instruments I need to add. Despite the band's title, there are some non-string instruments, like a drum set, but yes, it is mostly strings. Violins, electric guitars (for when it turns into a rock song), piano, stuff like that. This is the type of stuff I do: Discover bands I listen to because I was/am introduced to them because they've made long songs. Regarding MIDI making, I try to be as accurate as I can. But sometimes, it's downright impossible to figure out notes, especially when there's a bunch of instruments playing all at once, so I figure out something that sounds good. I use Anvil Studio, which has a built-in keyboard, so I guess I could use that to find notes, but then the notes would actually be in the MIDI and I'd have to erase them. The keyboard is more for note inputting. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/168/entry-15636-break-song/

This track may seem a little plucky but if you listen to the tracks in order your ears may become conditioned to the point where it doesn't sound half bad. Or maybe not. All the rest of the music has been entered into the MIDI Music System and is ready to record once some new sounds can be programed. For this track minor changes to the BASIC software was made to give a quick pluck or hit sound. I was a little supprised that a delay loop was needed when the program was compiled. This is the code that produces the sound. It occures so quickly that there didn't seem to be much need to check for a new note during the play period. The effects processor on the mixer was used to add some depth to the sound. REM VOL IS DISTORTION+ VOLUME 960 POKE AUDF1,LOBYTE(MIDINOTE) 970 POKE AUDF2,HIBYTE(MIDINOTE) 971 LASTNOTE=MIDINOTE 975 FOR VOL=160 TO 175 STEP 1:POKE AUDC2,VOL:FOR X2=1 TO 4:NEXT X2:NEXT VOL 976 FOR X2=1 TO 4:NEXT X2 978 FOR VOL=175 TO 160 STEP -1:POKE AUDC2,VOL:FOR X2=1 TO 4:NEXT X2:NEXT VOL The .MUS and program files are on the .ATR. The prelude and fugue were enter into different files and then combined in PANDF07.MUS for recording. PRODUCTION NOTES: Music File origin: PANDF07.MUS - entered from sheet music into MMS Control Computer: 130XE Sequencer Software: MIDI Music System by Lee Actor MIDI out: MIDIMAX Sound Source: Atari 130XE (#2) MIDI in: Arduino Software: MonoSyn_1voice. ino Monitor output to mixer Software: T7VA4.OBJ - MMG compiled Atari BASIC program Loaded from ATARIMAX Cart. Mixer: Behringer Xenyx 1202 FX Mic One input - Atari monitor port FX : Voice 1-3 #85 Phaser + Reverb 2 Voice 4 #09 Church Recorder: PC - Audacity 2.1.2 File: prelude and fugue No7 in E-Flat Major.aup Sound Edit - Sync tracks and trim - Pan 40%L-40%R-10%L-10%R Attached File(s) prelude and fugue No7 in E-Flat Major.mp3 (6.56MB) Number of downloads: 0 TRACK07B.atr (90.02KB) Number of downloads: 0 http://atariage.com/forums/blog/746/entry-15635-sop-track-7-prelude-and-fugue-no7-in-e-flat-major/

I bought my copy of Mappy earlier this month, and I find myself unable to stop playing it for any appreciable length of time. John W. Champeau and his team at Champ Games have really done an excellent job at porting this arcade game to the 2600. John W. Champeau has done a marvelous job with the Coding and Design work. The Music and Sound Effects, by Mike Haas, are standouts as well. Darrell Spice, Jr. provided the Music driver. Not wishing to leave anyone out, Thomas Jentzsch worked on optimizing the code. Nathan Strum did a marvelous job designing the label, manual, and box artwork. I will be expanding my collection of Atari 2600 games by Champ Games. I already own Conquest of Mars and Super Cobra Arcade, but still need to add Lady Bug and Scramble (both are in my Wishlist). I will certainly be purchasing their Wizard of War Arcade when it releases. If I'm not mistaken there was another Mappy arcade game called Hopping Mappy. If we're lucky we will get a port of that some day. Now don't get the wrong idea and think that I don't buy homebrews made by other designers/coders. I most certainly do. Currently I have 6 orders being processed here at Atari Age (for the 2600 and 7800), and 2 being processed at Packrat Video Games. I went there to buy a copy of Astronomer for the 2600, which I did, but also bought a copy of Explosive Diarrhea, also for the 2600. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/760/entry-15634-mappy-makes-me-happy/

Due to some unforeseen and extremely annoying computer troubles my upload schedule is probably going to be even more erratic than usual. I think I just need a new laptop. We’re back with Avalon Hill today, and my goodness we have quite a stinker! Death Trap is one of the most lackluster shooters I’ve ever played, and I will savor every minute I spend tearing it apart. In my opinion this is my least favorite of the five games Avalon Hill released on the 2600, actually it may fall on my list of most disliked Atari 2600 games in general. I don’t have anything to pad out the first paragraph with so I’ll just move on to the meat of the review. This game got my hopes up; one look at the title screen makes me think of greater things than what I wound up being presented with. The title screen is quite nice, the title itself is rendered quite nicely in blue and the font really looks very good for the 2600, but it’s soon after that where the flaws begin to show. This game has the worst flickering of any game I’ve seen to date. There are three colored lines separating the player’s ship from the large blue space station, and another line beneath the player’s ship. The lines quickly flicker through several different colors causing a disorienting strobe effect on your TV, and it just looks plain disgusting on an emulator. The player ship also flickers something fierce, seriously this game just looks nasty. You’ll find that the flickering worsens as you get further into the game, as more and more little blocks begin filling up the lines the flickering just get’s horrendous. The overall design for the player’s ship is fine, it would be decently animated if not for the flickering, and the enemy space station is impressively large. In summation… this game get’s an OW out of ten for the looks, how about the sounds? Well… they ain’t good, actually they’re pretty terrible. I can deal with minimalist soundtracks if the sounds are at least implemented well, Death Trap does not do this. All you’ll be hearing while playing this game is the wonderful generic Atari engine sound, nothing but a constant grating noise as you battle the forces of monotony. You’ll also have several annoying beeps as your erstwhile companions but you’ll likely never notice them since they’re drowned out by all the noise, noise, noise! Death Trap is not a very fun game, I’ll admit that the idea that this game puts forth is interesting to say the least, but in no way does it constitute fun. All you have to do is shoot two gun turrets on the bottom of the space station, then one more, and the game is over, but it’s not that simple. Every hit you land on a gun turret will place a little grey block on one of the lines that separates the turret from the ship, these little blocks are impenetrable and will stop your shot dead in its tracks when hit. The turrets will also fire seeking plasma balls that follow you to a tee and can only be evaded by moving quickly to the side as the ball’s horizontal speed isn’t as fast as yours, but it’s close. Speaking of speed, let me tell you about something this game lacks in abundance, speed. Everything apart from the plasma balls seems to move in slow motion, your shots crawl up the screen, and the moving blocks seem to move at a snail’s pace. By the end of the game you will be nodding off from everything that’s not going on, and this is where Death Trap really annoyed me, you can guide your shots by holding down the action button and moving with the joystick, I didn’t know this and therefore beat the game on the easiest difficulty without guiding my shots. I deserve a medal, oh look that’s exactly what you get when you beat the game, a picture of a medal. Ugh… I don’t really like this game, if that hasn’t become quite apparent. It’s slow it’s monotonous, and despite having a good premise it’s just plain boring. Death Trap is easily my least favorite shooter on the 2600 only being trumped by the one and only Skeet Shoot. I got my copy for 25 dollars, and for a game of this rarity that seems a fair enough price, but please… Just don’t. Collector’s Zone for sure, I can think of no better place to put this game. Attached thumbnail(s) http://atariage.com/forums/blog/729/entry-15632-death-trap-avalon-hill/

I thought that the title screen didn't look very good with the copyright notice right under Billy. So I decided to change the title screen. I changed the title so it was a smaller font size. I think this looks way better than it did. Thoughts? I've also been working on this game for most of my waking hours again for the third straight day or so. And it is really hot in my room. Yesterday it was 77 degrees in my city. It's hopefully supposed to cool down. So now in the code I have a 6-digit score, different levels, death, music, sound effects. I just don't know what to do next, how to differentiate the levels besides just a level number. The only idea I have is making a third enemy appear. I just thought of something: changing the colors of the grid. Green makes it okay, Yellow means it's about to change, and Red means if you start drawing, you'll instantly lose a life. Or is that too hard? I don't know. Anyone have any ideas? I also want a new Intellivision game for my collection, but it means spending $50 or so on a new homebrew. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/168/entry-15633-a-moving-story-about-billy/

http://anthologyone.thecomicseries.com/comics/pl/981938 http://atariage.com/forums/blog/757/entry-15631-space-roanoke-24/

Now then if I were to ask you what the most unique boxes were for the 2600 I’d expect to hear answers like Commavid for their amazing box art, Bomb for their unique cutout design and included iron-ons, Tigervision, Mystique, the list goes on. Almost every publisher had a thing that made their boxes stand out on the shelves, but what if the best of these boxes were never actually sold on the shelf, and were instead sold online. What about homebrews? Yes, the homebrew scene on the 2600 is immense. It seems that there are more homebrews released for the system every year than there were in the final five years of its retail run, and as the technology becomes better and cheaper the things these homebrews can do becomes greater and greater. I have two homebrews from AtariAge, them being Mappy and Draconian. I also have an oddity that I will lump in with the homebrews, a while back AA user Brian O noted that an old box design he made for Raiders of the Lost Ark surfaced on Ebay even though he never really distributed the box. I now own this strange one-off box. So let us dive into the fantastically artistic world of AtariAge homebrew boxes! Draconian: The box art for Draconian is incredible, it depicts your space fighter bum rushing a squadron of enemies as several enormous space stations approach from the distance. On the sides of the box both the missiles and spy ships are featured below the title. The art by Nathan Strum is highly detailed and looks almost photorealistic. The artwork takes the Tigervision approach in that it wraps around the entire box making the whole thing extremely eye-catching. One thing that Tigervision didn’t do however was make the art seamlessly wrap around the entirely of the box like Draconian has done. The back of the box has high quality screenshots/artist renditions of the game and details the premise of the game while also tying in to the gameplay, it’s all around good stuff. Mappy: Mappy takes a bit of a 180 and turns from hyperrealism to goofy and cartoony with a hint of abstract. The titular Mappy is throwing open a door waving his billy club as he’s pursued by Goro and one of the Meowky, the orange and purple cats. In the background you can see a television flying through the Void and the Mona Lisa behind another open door situated in the Void. The box art doesn’t completely wrap around the box but it does stretch to both sides of the box giving each a unique side, just like Draconian. The back is simpler than Draconian’s, but not by much. There is some more wonderful artwork from Nathan Strum showing Mappy leaping from a trampoline reaching for a bell which he will then presumably drop on the heads of the three pursuing cats. The blurb is short but details the premise well and the screenshots/artist renditions look just like the in-game graphics, there’s no need for embellishment here. Raiders of the Lost Ark: This design is in stark contrast to the other two which were bright colorful and detailed and goes for a more subdued minimalistic style. The front has only a picture of the in-game Ark of the Covenant and the title with accompanying game information. The box is almost completely black with only the writing, Ark graphics, and two small grew swooshes on the front bottom left and back top right. The back has another Ark but is smaller with the blurb underneath it. The blurb is straight from the manual but it get’s the point across well. There are no pictures of the game itself anywhere on the box, as I said it is pretty minimalistic. Honestly I do rather like it; it has a sort of mystical/mysterious air to it. Construction: The AtariAge boxes are made from standard thickness card stock and have a nice professional smooth and glossy finish to them. Unfortunately finishes like this have a tendency to show any and all damage that happens to the box, even though I’ve kept them in box protectors and they rarely feel the open air they do have several dings and scratches. Raiders on the other hand is constructed from very thick card stock, probably 50% to double the thickness of the AA boxes. It also lacks the shine of the others which leads me to believe this was not professionally printed. Since the box is completely covered in matte black ink it is almost sticky to the touch if you have even a whisper of moisture on your hands. The Raiders box doesn’t show damage as easily as the AA boxes though as the non reflectiveness of the ink hides most small dings and scratches, but this has a small caveat. Since it lacks that shine small smudges and scrapes will never come off, and if even a drop of anything liquid touches the box it will disrupt the ink and create irreparable damage. This thing will have to live inside a box protector until the end of time. Inserts?: All three of these boxes use the same AtariAge style insert, I don’t know where the Raiders box got theirs but it has one. I personally don’t like these things, they hold the cartridge in the center of the box, making it rather difficult to get the cart out without removing the insert as well. I personally prefer the style that most other publishers used, but those had their own issues. Instructions: Both the AtariAge manuals are high quality affairs. Each are printed on high quality thick glossy paper and are filled to bursting with even more custom artwork from Nathan Strum, actually Nathan designed both of these manuals in their entirely. Each manual is themed with their respective game and each is full of pertinent information, as manuals tend to do, Mappy even includes a full color comic detailing the premise of the game and how to play for people who don’t want to read the text. The Draconian manual looks and feels like a military debriefing, like it should have classified stamped on the front. The Raiders manual is just the standard Atari manual, nothing special. Cartridges: The Raiders cartridge is just the standard Atari Silver Label cartridge, there is nothing custom here. The AtariAge cartridges use the standard Atari shells, probably long dead Combats, and simply have a custom glossy top and front label of the box art for the game. They all do the job well. So know what?: Well… Would I recommend that you go out there and buy every single homebrew that you can get your hands on? Well no, even though it supports the site and the creators on it I would recommend that you only get the homebrews that you want, that’s why I only have two. These games aren’t cheap either; they sit at around 50 dollars for boxed copies and 20 dollars for loose cartridges, though some are higher or lower. I will admit though that the moment Wizard of Wor Arcade comes out I’m buying it immediately. As for the Raiders box, well I don’t think you can actually buy it anywhere as this seems to be a one-off printed by somebody in their basement, if you want one I’d recommend talking to Brain O, the designer of this box, and talk it through with him. I paid way too much for this box but I honestly don’t care, it’s a weird one-off that was never really meant to exist in the first place and I love stuff like that. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/729/entry-15628-homebrew-boxes/

Since I had a problem with the Atari 2600 version, I decided to abandon that version and instead attempt it on the Intellivision. It took most of my waking hours to get started on it. To have a good base to build the rest of the game upon. I had lots of trouble with the line clearing, there are still some areas that it does dumb things, so I made it impossible to do them. If the title screen looks familiar, I just took the cranberry title screen image, erased the words "Quest of the Cranberry," and put in "Billy the Ball." To clear the screen, you need to clear 125 lines. I was having trouble with bonuses for clearing more than 125 lines, so, again, I made it impossible. All I have had to eat the last few days are potato chips and clam dip. Something must be right with that because I weigh a little less than I usually do. I love clam dip. It is now my favorite food. It used to be hamburgers until I discovered I can't eat them because my throat doesn't like them. It's odd, most of the throat problems I have occur when I'm eating meat. Except turkeys. And clams. When I was going to the post office, I saw some turkeys on the sidewalk. They looked exactly like you'd expect a turkey to look and not one of those weird looking turkeys. It's been above 70 degrees the past few days. I hate sun. Perhaps I'm a vampire. A non-melting one. So anyway, unless I begin having trouble with this version, Billy the Ball will be an Intellivision game. http://atariage.com/forums/blog/168/entry-15630-having-a-ball/