KevinMos3

Played it for a while on the Harmony Cart. It's looking good. Some nice improvements lately. Once I got up to about 94 lines it got pretty crazy and I couldn't move the pieces fast enough. That's not a complaint though, just commentary on my playing.

I still crave some kind of scoring. I want points for hitting that baddie at the bottom of the screen and tearing down buildings.

I just played the frantic_harmony_20110927.bin and the frantic_harmony_20110929_MAM1_b.bin on my Jr. Both of them played fine with no crashes as of yet. I played up to about room 1A. I haven't played either of them on my heavy sixer or 7800 yet. The enemies look fantastic and the Frenzy enemies look better than either the arcade or coleco. I can't think of any other game where the 2600 version looks better than the arcade. o.O Sorry to hear that you may have to remove the digitized voice, since we've been waiting for so long for more AtariVoxes and may never see more, (here's to hoping). Although, those animations you posted do look darn good. BTW, I finally played the arcade version of Frenzy the other night. Personally, I like the coleco version way better than the arcade simply because of the tunes. If anyone hasn't played the coleco Frenzy, they really owe it to themselves to check it out. Although, I don't suppose you'd have room for both the new animations AND tunes. I hope you do what you need to do to complete the game... I'd hate to see you get frustrated and leave it unfinished. o.O

It's looking good, but the last couple of builds have been crashing on every Atari I've got. Whenever I try to go to another room, it crashes. It used to work fine on my Jr and only crashed on my heavy sixer.

I'm not. Frankly, I'm wishing more people would lend to a sense of urgency to get this done as well. I've sat quietly and patiently since ordering last year, but I'm growing weary of one projected shipping date after another being missed. Sep 15 was the last I was aware of, and it too has now come and gone. I'm very glad that more improvements have been made to the design in the past year, but it's about time these things were finalized and shipped out.

Very nice. I like the sounds. It's fun to play, but just needs some type of scoring and lives counter.

Frenzy was in arcades first and is the official sequel to Berzerk (both made by Stern). Right, which is why I should have read that manual 16 years ago. Read the manuals kids! I was unaware that the arcade lacked the music. Those tunes are actually my favorite thing about Frenzy on the Coleco. They really add to the whole feel.

Frenzy had several new features. I never took the time to play it until this past spring. I always thought it was Coleco's knock-off of Berzerk until I took the time to read the manual and finally play it. It's now one of my favorite games on the Coleco and I play it regularly. All those years, just collecting dust. :-( One new feature is the ability to shoot out parts of walls. Other walls will ricochet shots. There are really nice tunes that play in many rooms (I really hope Spiceware is able to recreate these on the 2600. It just wouldn't be Frenzy without them). Some rooms have robot factories (they will keep producing more robots until you shoot them, after which, the robots' movement will freeze but they can still shoot). There is a variety of enemies. You can kill evil otto with 3 shots. Some rooms contain a giant evil otto (you cannot harm him by shooting him, but if you shoot the normal evil otto, the giant will be very upset and make you pay! If you die on one of these screens the giant otto smiles).

I played with the straight shot version and I agree that maybe it should be a "game variation", but probably not a power-up. I find it easier to hit dragons, but harder to hit footmen. I like the idea of one of the power-ups being the ability to kill a knight by hitting it anywhere. Wider shots is also a good idea... as are player & castle health. I've been encountering a sound issue with the last couple of builds. When the last dragon is killed sometimes the sound that tells you to kill a road enemy gets messed up. It just maintains a single loud note until you finally end the stage by killing the road enemy and get the new level sound. I still think the "night time" screens are too red. The $50 portion of the palette is too much of a red-purple to look like night IMO. I understand you changed it from black because of the half black dragons, but maybe you could either go with dragons that are half $02 instead of $00... or you could use the $70 portion of the palette and see how that looks. Here are 3 screenshots, one using $70 (my 2nd fav after black), one $60 and the current $50. Actually, that "1" (levels 11-19) has a line under it indicating that it's eleven. I'm assuming level 21 will have two lines and level 31 will have 3.

Hehe. Yeah the robots in the first room of both Berzerk and Frenzy don't shoot. That goes for every version I've played and I'm glad this one keeps that tradition.

I'd been playing the game on my 2600 Jr and didn't like the sound of the voice (too high pitched and didn't sound like a robot). I thought it was the way you intended it until I noticed your post above about the "Max Headroom" speech. Maybe that's the voice I'm hearing too? I tried it out on my heavy sixer to see if it would sound any different, but whenever I leave a room the game crashes. So it looks like that issue is happening to at least disjaukifa and me.

I played some more yesterday on the Harmony. I do much better playing with a real joystick than a control pad on the PC. Also, saving the princesses helped me go further because of the extra points leading to extra lives. I was able to get to level 11 (or was it 12?) and finally saw your sunrise. It is gorgeous. I didn't realize your night was now purple instead of black. I do think it was much more apparent that it was "night" before you changed to the current color.

That's outstanding! I just wish it was FOR the Atari. Any chance you'd get around to programming it for the 2600?

I don't think I've made it past level 9 yet. The difficulty is why I liked your idea of adding in health bonuses for the player or castle. I was showing this game to my brother yesterday and he commented that "There's really a lot going on there." He said that as a positive thing, not knocking it. I'm not complaining about the difficulty at all, just re-affirming my support of bonus powerups. BTW, your screenshot looks like you're still in a sunset stage at 17. Did you remove the night levels or had you already cycled back through night and day by then?

You sir, are such a tease! Seriously, that looks good and the ideas sound very good. I love the sprites and control scheme.

I'm sorry to hear of Frenzy being canceled. I hope you change your mind about that. I was really looking forward to this one. I agree with the others, that I would gladly get both the 7800 Frenzy and 2600 Frantic. I would love to have pokey sound as well. However, it would ease my pain if you made Cybermorph or Iron Soldier 2 for the 7800 instead. ...or how about a run-and-gun Contra type game?

It's looking phenomenal! I would say, only remove the staff if you need the space for something else. BTW, would you be able to make the backgrounds different colors other than just black? Having gray, brown, tan, and green for stone, dirt, sand, and grass would add a lot of flavor to the game IMO.

Those graphics look outstanding!

You could add some ramps and stuff to jump and turn it into the long-awaited Knight Rider! You will be very happy with your purchase and kick yourself for waiting so long. It's really no bother at all, but I feel bad when I give an initial report and then can't follow up within a reasonable time. My availability is sporadic at best.

I love the princess addition. I've not yet been able to catch one when falling though. I could swear I was positioned underneath, but she'd still crash into the ground. I'll miss the bats if they don't make their way back into the game, (simply because they looked good -- adding depth to the terrain/sky -- and didn't harm the castles too much), but your other ideas sound good too. It's a tough choice, but I think I'd vote for a Powerup/Bonus being added. Most 2600 games have enemies, but few have Powerups. I like the idea of a fairy or Willow'o'wisp. The latter always makes me think of Draconus on the Dreamcast (great game). BTW, will there be any room for clouds in the game?

This looks outstanding! Very well done so far. I kinda liked the outline style level numbers from the previous release better, but I like that you've put sunset levels in between day and night. That's a very nice touch. I assume the night levels are still there, but I've not made it to them in the latest binary. I played it on the Harmony cart a while today and noticed that the horizontal graphics (background and/or playfield?) bounce up and down. However, the sprites are nice and steady. I thought that might be something you'd want to know about.

Yes, you can play through to an ending. It's a pretty nice ending too. One of the best I've seen in a 2600 game. If you would like a map of the entire game, you can look at my post here. Warning, it does contain some spoilers. The ONLY thing that I hope to see changed before it's called completely final and put on cart is those dead ends. If there were something, anything there it would feel more polished and complete to me. One idea is to just put a static sprite in those rooms such as a flower, or maybe some other animal that the kidnappers have been holding captive, or you could take a darker turn and make it the bones of an animal that has been held captive for too long, or maybe the kidnappers themselves, (such as one of the poachers at each dead end). Putting something in those rooms would make it more interesting and rewarding to go there. I know there is currently not enough ROM space left to do anything too significant, but a static sprite would be sufficient in my opinion. Maybe Thomas could help find enough space to do something even better. But again, I would completely happy to just see a static sprite(s).

Looks VERY good. Thank you for continuing work on this.

I'd like to see only (or at least "primarily") characters from Atari games. Such as: Bentley Bear The Adventure Dragon The Adventure Hero Pitfall Harry (of course) The hero from H.E.R.O A Yar from Yars' Revenge The Kangaroo from Kangaroo E.T. or any of the many others to choose from.

I don't see any download links for this. What happened to them?