Jump to content
Have You Played Atari Today?
2600|5200|7800|Lynx|Jaguar|Forums|Store  

Psionic

+AtariAge Subscriber
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    4,567

  • Joined

  • Days Won

    1

Posts posted by Psionic

  3. Posted

    On 10/29/2019 at 2:35 PM, -^CrossBow^- said:

    To make matters more complicated, the PlayAsia orders for the game released and published by Columbus Circle have gotten shipped and are in the hands of those buyers already. Evidenced from FB posts I've seen of people showing their carts and gameplay that is already up on the web.

     

    In fact, the rom has also been dumped either off the carts or the MegaSG and is floating out there but I'm happy to wait for my physical cart.

    I purchased the Japanese Mega Drive release by Columbus Circle after missing out on the Genesis one from Strictly Limited.  SLG not limiting the number of copies one could purchase was completely ridiculous and left a bad taste in my mouth.  This practice only benefits scalpers.

    I don't believe anyone has cracked the Mega SG and extracted that version but the Japanese release was indeed dumped and there are already Chinese bootleg cartridges being sold on eBay using the Japanese NTSC version of the ROM image.  I'm sure the SLG versions will also be circulating in short order once people get their hands on the physical cartridges.

     

    On 11/24/2019 at 10:08 AM, -^CrossBow^- said:

    Yes I received the same email earlier last week I believe it was. However, not long after I got that email, I heard from a few members at Sega-16 that they had gotten shipping notifications for their copies. So perhaps they aren't far out now from getting into our hands officially.

    Has anyone received theirs yet?  I see a few people on Facebook are reporting that they have.  One person complained about the overall lack of quality and another reports a damaged case.  I've been watching eBay and I'm surprised that none have turned up for sale yet.  I'm sure there'll be no shortage of people flipping them.

  6. Posted

    CommaVid distributed their games nationally, albeit in limited quantities.  Despite rumors to the contrary, all titles except MagiCard and Video Life were sold in stores to some degree.  I'm sure that most distributors in the Midwest had them although I couldn't tell you which stores actually sold them.  There had to have been regional department chains there that carried them.  I'll check old newspaper ads and see if I can find any.  I know Boscov's (who had other rare oddball stuff at closeout prices like the Wizard games) sold them in the Northeast.

    The Tigervision games were sold at several national chains, including Kay-Bee and Lionel stores.

     

     

    boscovs.jpg

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    4 hours ago, bobcurtiss said:

    Generally true, but not for the 2600. Code that generates the playfield, especially in a side scroller like Super Cobra, should reveal a few clues about whether it was done from scratch or partially copied.

    Very true, I stand corrected.   To be fair, when I spoke of "graphics" I was referring to the sprites specifically and whether they may have been directly copied pixel-for-pixel (or nearly so).  As Thomas Jentzsch stated above, an analysis of the two binaries using CloneSpy apparently found no coding similarities.

    This is not all that surprising since the other programmer besides yourself who worked on this game at Roklan told me he never saw the demo version (which I assume was created internally at Parker Brothers).  Based on your response, I assume you never saw it either (until now).

  14. Posted

    9 hours ago, Dutchman2000 said:

    Here is a screenshot of the code for Super Cobra for the 8-bit. 

    I figured that was developed at Roklan since a prototype turned up in a yellow Roklan shell a few years back.  Ed Schneider was a Chicago-area programmer who worked on games for various publishers including Artworx and Atari.  I believe he was involved with NuFX in their early years, which eventually became EA Chicago.

  15. Posted

    9 hours ago, chewy said:

    oh wait no its Zimag, well zimags even a whole different story--- god yea well anythings posible w/ them right-

    Anything is possible since they were a thoroughly crooked operation.

    One of the brothers who owned Syncro Software told me that non-payment of contracts for games they had developed for Zimag was a major contributor to Syncro's bankruptcy. 

  16. Posted

    On 10/29/2019 at 4:24 AM, Nukey Shay said:

    No...this was basically "proof of concept" code featuring all the significant gameplay elements...not the version that Dick had created/expanded from it.  It sounds like it went though a crunch phase before he even saw it, tho (since he doesn't recall it being 2 bytes beyond where the cold start vector belongs).

    To be fair, it's unclear to what extent this game may have been expanded beyond this and by whom, but I'm still looking into it.  For what it's worth, when I first spoke to him several years back, Dick Balaska told me that he thought Bob Curtiss had done most of the programming on Kickman but he informed me recently that Bob has since denied this and he may simply have been confusing it with Solar Fox.
     

    On 10/29/2019 at 6:56 PM, Supergun said:

    M8774 - Wizard of Wor

    - Targ

    M8793 - Gorf

    - Maddenness

    - Kickman

    4L-2486 - Blueprint

    4L-2487 - Solar Fox

    - Domino Man

    4L-2520 - Tunnel Runner

    Stomp It

    4L-2737 - Omega Race

    4L-2738 - Mountain King

    - Wings

    Those are the internal part numbers for the cartridge labels, not the catalog numbers for the games themselves.  The proper ones can be found on the spines and UPCs of the game boxes.

    Wizard of Wor - 80000
    Gorf - 80010

    Solar Fox - 80020
    Blueprint - 80030

    Tunnel Runner - 80070

    Mountain King - 80080
    Omega Race - 80090

    AtariProtos and Atarimania both have Targ listed as 80110 but I'm not sure where that number came from.
     

    • Like 1

  17. Posted

    16 hours ago, Crimefighter said:

    Kickman for the 2600 is quite a simple barebones version - balloon stacking is half the arcade game and seems to only be able to do four rows instead of eight. 

    Not surprising since the Commodore 64 version also only allowed a stack of four balloons.  At least in this 2600 port you can properly bounce balloons between the stack and the side edge of the screen to make them easier to control.  On the C64, the falling balloons pass right through your stack and drift across the screen making them almost impossible to kick as several fall at once.  They also don't pop automatically once you reach a full stack of four balloons unless you have a Pac-Man on your head which means you have to pop the falling balloons at the very top of the stack.  So it actually ends up being harder than the arcade version.  By comparison, this version is slightly worse in some ways yet slightly better in others.

     

    5 hours ago, carlsson said:

    I haven't read up on the full story, some sites claim Namco sued Midway for Ms. Pac-Man, others write that they were "ok" with it but eventually ended the partnership in 1984.

     I think Namco was perturbed that they were not consulted in the beginning but they did have input into the development of Ms. Pac-Man and I'm certainly not aware of them ever suing.  The partnership was ended, but I think that was due to Bally Midway really taking liberties with the license later on (in creating stuff like Professor Pac-Man).

     

    5 hours ago, Tempest said:

    So it sounds like Alex did the game for Midway, then moved on to Roklan.  Midway sold the rights to the game to CBS who tapped Dick Balaska to fix the game for release (adding a title screen, bug fixes, code compression, etc.), but then CBS decided not to release it after all (most likely because the arcade game tanked). 

    Seems about right.  Obviously Alex showed the game to someone at Roklan and either gave them a copy, or simply left it behind when he quit and left for California.
     

    5 hours ago, carlsson said:

    Since Hank Ross was the co-founder of Midway and executive, it would seem like he knew what they had the rights to do, or he just gambled.

    I would bet on the latter.  Actually, Bill Adams told me that when GCC first brought Crazy Otto/Ms. Pac-Man to Midway, the first thing Mr. Ross did was ask him and the other programmers in-house "Why couldn't you guys come up with something like that?".  Bill's response was "I didn't know we were allowed to!".

  18. Posted

    18 minutes ago, Tempest said:

    The only reason I say Roklan is involved is that's what on the source code.  I'm sure Alex brought it with him to Roklan, but why update the source code if Roklan didn't have some claim on it?

    Is the reference to Roklan actually in the original source or is that a notation that Ken added when he was assembling it?  Thomas first claimed it was in the code but then later recanted that claim.

    All I know is, Balaska told me he was sent out to Bally Midway in Chicago.  That's where he claims to have worked on the game and also where he first met Bob Curtiss (who would later go on to work for Roklan and eventually CBS).  He didn't seem to know who Roklan was, or that they had developed games for CBS.

  19. Posted

    51 minutes ago, Tempest said:

    This was a first release candidate which Alex did for Midway.  It was only 4K because that was standard at the time and he squeezed what he could into it.  After Midway decided not to get into the home game business they sold it to Roklan who offered it to CBS.  CBS decided that it needed a few tweaks (title screen, code optimization, etc.) so they tapped Dick Balaska to do it.  After Dick made the changes (I'm curious if he got it into 4K with some optimization, I'd guess yes), CBS decided that they didn't want to release it after all since the arcade game wasn't a hit and there was the issue of Pac-Man licensing. 

    Seems reasonable enough, although I question whether Roklan had any hand in this one at all.  CBS obviously had a licensing agreement directly with Bally Midway from the get-go, and Roklan certainly developed 2600 games but never published any so there doesn't seem to be any reason why they would be involved.  The Pac-Man license very well could've been an issue but it certainly didn't stop Commodore from releasing their version for the C64 with Pac-Men and ghosts intact.

     

    51 minutes ago, Tempest said:

    To me the game was mostly there, it just needed some minor code optimization and a title screen.  Yes it's missing the bonus round, but most 2600 ports of the time stripped out extras like bonus rounds to save space.  It is a bit simplified (I never saw more than one balloon fall), but I don't think this indicates that it's incomplete.  It's just a simple 2600 port.  Look at how many features other 2600 ports of the time were missing.

    Like I said, it's a passable version of the game, especially considering it was developed in late '81/early '82 and was probably Alex's first VCS effort.   But there are issues with the kicking mechanic which of course isn't used all that much since only one balloon falls at a time.  It would be almost impossible to have more than one falling since the playfield is so short with so little void space above the cyclist.  And normally I wouldn't think too much of the missing bonus rounds if not for the fact that CBS's own advertising literature seemed to indicate that they were included ("Challenge Racks, too!").

    • Like 1

  20. Posted

    2 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

    That fits. The code is indeed not optimized at all.

    So that means with some optimization it should've been reasonably easy to squeeze in a very basic title screen of some sort, which Dick says he seems to remember doing.  While it's definitely possible that this game could've been simply cleaned up a bit and released in its current 4K form, after playing it for a bit it's hard for me to believe that CBS would've done this.  The first couple CBS releases were only 4K, but by the time they would've been publishing this game, 8K was not just an option but pretty much the standard.  All of the later CBS releases were 8K, and of course a few of them utilized RAM Plus.

    Not only is the game missing a title screen and the (possibly) problematic Pac-Men are present, but more importantly the gameplay just seems lacking.  Where are the challenge racks?  Does more than one balloon at a time ever fall?  Or have I simply not played far enough into the game?  I can't help but think that your earlier assessment was probably correct (that we should see this as a 50% complete 8K game rather than a 95% complete 4K game).

  21. Posted

    I spoke with Dick Balaska today about this game.  As I suspected, this was developed at Bally Midway not Roklan.  According to Dick, when the game was handed to him it needed some work mainly involving code optimization but he doesn't remember specifics.  I told him about the source code that was found and the problems with the resulting binary.  He doesn't remember the game having these issues even when he started working on it, and it certainly wouldn't have had them when he was finished.  Either way, the code that was found is most likely a very late WIP that Alex was still working on when he left Bally which had not been touched up by anyone else yet.

  22. Posted

    Well, this certainly would explain why CBS would've needed Balaska to work on the code before they could release this game, even if nothing within the game program itself needed to be altered.

    For what it's worth, the intro screen rolls on my 24" Sony Trinitron CRT (KV-24FV12 manufactured Jan. 2002) but I have a 13" Panasonic (CT-13R1V manufactured Nov. 1997) that tolerates it just fine.

     

    On 10/25/2019 at 12:44 AM, CRV said:

    Bally was also working on games for the Atari 8-bit computers, Intellivision, and ColecoVision.

    Yes, the ColecoVision port of Tapper was supposedly done there, for one.  And obviously many of the Astrocade games were done internally, although a number of them were produced by Action Graphics and Dave Nutting Associates.

  23. Posted

    12 hours ago, Supergun said:

    So clearly Roklan, CBS, and Bally had working relationships.

    That much is obvious.  The question is how the puzzle pieces fit together and what the timeline was for these deals falling into place.  I really can't say since I've never spoken to anyone on the business side of things.

     

    For the record, the supposed Bally Midway releases from 1984 that you mentioned in your last post (i.e. the Sega games in white boxes like Spy Hunter and Tapper) were developed by Sega or by contactors under their employ.  They were also fully marketed and distributed by Sega and have UPCs and catalog numbers that reflect this.  Bally Midway's logo appears on the games but they had no direct involvement with them.  I'm referring to games that were being developed during the 1981-82 time period, when Bally was still supporting the Astrocade.

     

    11 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

    I have to correct myself. The original, non-converted source which I got just lately has no reference to Roklan. It only has Alex Leavens' name on it.

    Sorry for the confusion.

    That makes a bit more sense.  The only game that anyone from Roklan seems to remember Alex working on is Crazy Climber, and he did not finish that game.  The story I was told was that he had been working on the game for quite some time without making significant progress to the point that they had to send someone to his house to see what the hell was going on.  He apparently quit or was fired shortly thereafter and another programmer (Joe Gaucher) had to finish the game.

     

    11 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

    Many thanks for providing this additional information. But I am not sure if I can fully align it.

     

    What's the most likely story of Kickman for the Atari 2600 for you?

    I really can't say for sure without reaching out to some people for more info.  But my opinion is that the bulk of the game programming was likely done at Bally Midway before Alex left to join Roklan.  Alex basically said so himself in the 1983 interview he gave with Video Games Player magazine...


    "I designed Kickman for Midway a few years ago when they were thinking of entering the home video game market."

    Later in that thread, Bob Curtiss chimes in and says that he and Alex had developed 2600 games at Bally before joining Roklan.

     

    9 hours ago, Supergun said:

    This much is certain, this would most likely have been how we got Kick Man, if we had gotten it.

    I would not dispute that CBS would've been the one to ultimately publish the game had it actually been released.  But they had little if any involvement in the game's development and I'm not sure whatever changes Dick Balaska may have made would necessarily be in this version, since it was sourced from Bally or Roklan and not from CBS.

     

    5 hours ago, carlsson said:

    But what does it mean to publish a game? Can't a company develop a game and publish it through another manufacturer or distributor? Would Bally have to etch their own circuit boards, mold their own cartridge shells and find their own distribution channel to video game stores in order to publish home versions of their own arcade games, and everything else would be licensing? What about the Astrocade as mentioned above, didn't Bally publish stuff for that system on their own, meaning it wasn't entirely far-fetched if they would put out some Atari 2600 carts too while at it?

    Exactly, but of course Bally lost interest in supporting the Astrocade and sold the rights to Astrovision.  One would then assume they similarly lost interest in publishing their own games for other home systems around the same time and sought other publishers (i.e. Roklan and CBS) for these titles.  Coin-op was their bread and butter.  They tried to form a consumer division and gave it a go but it just didn't work out.

  24. Posted

    Who was your friend?  Did he work on any other games?

    Nice find.  I suspect this is probably very similar to the 2600 version but hopefully you can get your hands on a VIC so we can see for sure.  In the meantime, be careful with that exposed EPROM window and don't expose it to any UV light.  I also would suggest removing it from the socket and dumping the contents to create a backup sooner rather than later.  This is probably the only known copy of the game at this point, so it'd be a shame if it were lost.

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

  25. Posted

    21 hours ago, CPUWIZ said:

    No, AFAIK, this is a combined effort.

    Correct...and most of the info on the Atarimania site (including game credits) comes from other sources.

     

    On 10/23/2019 at 6:09 AM, carlsson said:

    I see, so the question is from where Atarimania originally got the info. Balaska's website was last updated in September 2018 so chances are he is around to clarify that, if needed.

    The info originally came from the Digital Press Guide.  The DP guys got in contact with Dick years ago.  I followed up with him a few years later (he lives not far from me) and I asked him to explain his involvement (see my last post).

    • Like 1
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...