KevinMos3

You're right AJ, they all should be in the Hacks & Homebrews collection, but like Nukey said, they aren't always the latest versions. Also, like Cybergoth Galaxian, sometimes there are updates or alternate hacks by someone else that you might like a bit better. A good example of this is the hack called "Mr. Pac-Man" in the database. It's an update by El Destructo to "A Better Pac-Man" by Rob. If you're looking for an "Arcade" hack of Galaxian, you can try the one I uploaded the other day. I believe the colors are a little closer to the arcade version and the animation is a bit smoother than the hacks that widened the enemies. Of course the colors look vastly different depending on what emulator you use or if you play on real hardware. I had MAME running for comparison while working on that and tried to match up colors based on the pallete in Stella. I probably could have gotten it a bit closer, but went by what I thought would look decent on a TV (I didn't want to use colors that were too dark). For a more arcade looking player ship, it would be nice to hack in a color table (if that would even be possible). That way you could have a red top portion instead of how the sprite just uses a single byte for color description now (the player ship shares the same color as the attacking flagship by the way). Nukey, if I'm saying that wrong, feel free to correct me. I'm just describing it as best I know how. As for Space Invaders, you can't get any better than Nukey Shay's Space Invaders Deluxe 8K hack. The most recent version in the thread is not what's in the download section of the site unless it's been updated recently. I never even liked Space Invaders (at all), but I really enjoy Nukey's hack and play it often which I think says a lot.

I just wanted to say that I love this hack of Pac-Man. I find myself playing it often. I've always preferred the Atari 2600 version over the arcade just because it's the only Pac-Man I knew growing up. I love how this version keeps the feel of the original, but improves the visuals and audio. Thanks Nukey for a great hack!

This looks awesome jrok. Too much teasing though. Waiting on Circus Galacticus to be finished, now I'll be waiting on this as well... too much excitement.

I always loved Beauty & the Beast on the Intellivision, so I'd love to see a version on the 2600. Keep up the good work.

I was unable to play the latest bin posted here. I mean, I tried, but couldn't get anywhere with it. So, on my 24k (max) dialup, I downloaded the youtube video to check it out and see what I was doing wrong. That video is about how I played. I would definitely suggest doing something to make the game easier. Update: After previously being able to only score about 100 pts, I just scored 1,160 pts. (I wanted to try one more time before I posted a complaint about the difficulty). Once I get to about 50 pts, the playfield gets smaller, but after that it stayed the same until I died at 1,160. When do you get to another level?

I just wanted to say that I was blown away by this game. You did an excellent job! I haven't gotten very far yet, but I'm looking forward to spending more time with it and maybe mapping it out. It's definitely one of my favorite bB games.

When I first played it, I couldn't get anything to happen when returning the chalice to the castle... then I just now realized you have to hold the key over the gate to get it to fully open before sticking the chalice in there.

I love the game, but my GOODNESS it's hard. I'm glad you changed that one screen in the orange area because I had completely given up. I had a save-state right at that spot, but could never make the jump no matter how I tried. I've found the winged? boots that make you jump high, the boots with cleats (not sure what these do yet), and a flute (not sure what that does yet either). I need to spend more time with it and maybe even map it out. Ah, the good ole days of mapping games like Pitfall and Secret Quest. The other day I found a map I was drawing of Bubble Trouble for the Lynx. Thanks for making such an amazing game and thanks for removing the sub-name from the title screen. That really left a bad taste in my mouth. eww. ...not literally.

Congratulations! I too just got my first Heavy Sixer (a few weeks ago) and I absolutely love it. I have two 2600 Jr's and several 4-switch and 6-switch models, but never one of these. It's so rock solid. I love everything about it. I got mine at a local gaming store where the owner has plenty of classic stuff -- usually at pretty good prices. This one came complete from a lady who kept it boxed and even had the Combat cart kept in plastic with a fresh-pack. She kept all the documentation individually bagged with cardboard backing to keep anything from getting wrinkled. Needless to say, it's in great shape, but the bezel still has much of the orange stripe rubbed off. I may try to find an orange paint-pen at a hobby store. I don't know that I got a good deal on it, but I don't feel completely ripped off either. The way I see it, I've purchased a great system that I've always loved. I did so for my own enjoyment of playing games, NOT as some kind of investment. I hope you enjoy yours even 1/2 as much as I've already enjoyed mine.

Thank you for the feedback. I sincerely appreciate it! I should probably give a list of changes to DD since the last release, but I honestly don't remember them all. So here goes what I do remember: made the player's life-bar blue instead of blue-violet made player 1's score color light blue instead of light blue-violet changed the 2nd screen in Mission 2 made the boxes brown in the 3rd screen of Mission 2 (unsure if I like this on real hardware) changed the light Abobo's skin color and gave him more shading made slight changes to the blue sky color behind the forest screens changed the cliff screen in Mission 3B (the olive color from beta3 looked horrible on real hardware, so I went back to gray and made the doors black to offset the blandness of too much gray). I think this screen now looks good on real hardware gave the green Abobos a black mowhawk added some detail to the door on the 1st screen of Mission 4 added detail to the podiums and gargoyle heads on the 2nd screen of Mission 4 (these would be the gargoyle statues with spears in the arcade) gave the Shadow Boss a black beard (unsure if I like this) An explanation of the screen in the new poll question: I like the symmetry of the full coverage I-beams from Option 1, but it looks a bit TOO vivid when compared to the 1st & 3rd screens. It's a bit of an eye shock when playing through the game. Since Option 2 leaves out that one line of black between the I-beams and pulls the top beam a little closer to the front, it looks a bit more subdued. Another option might be to just extend the red of that top beam to the top of the green chain-link fence. That would restore the symmetry, but it changes the illusion of perspective a bit (makes it look a little more top-down). However, if I did that it would actually be closer to the perspective of the beams in the arcade. All in all, I've come to the conclusion that when playing on real hardware, this is a game (original or hack) where you need to adjust the color of your TV to suit. After playing the hack on my 2600 Jr and 7800, I was so discouraged by the colors that I wanted to throw the hack out. I recently got a heavy sixer and the colors looked MUCH better on that system for some reason. They were still far off from Stella, but with a bit of brightness and color saturation adjustment, they look much much better. If you try this hack on your harmony cart and it looks horrible, just play with the color settings of your TV a bit. The rest of my games still look fine after playing with my TV's color settings.

Since I've had a bit of free time the past couple of days, I spent some time working on the Double Dragon hack and a couple other hacks as well. Check the first post for updated and new binaries. Double Dragon Arcade: There is a new poll question regarding the 2nd screen in Mission 2. I'm pretty settled on the "Option 2" unless I get feedback preferring one of the other choices. Here's a pic of screenshots showing the choices. Galaxian Arcade: One of the new hacks is a Galaxian Arcade hack. I know Galaxian has already been hacked several times, but I wasn't completely satisfied so here's my take on it. Note, the hack done by Cybergoth is good, but the wider enemies gave them a more choppy side-to-side movement. This is because the positioning of the narrower sprites is used for some of the sideways motion. I started with the stock NTSC binary and: changed the enemy colors & gave them slight sprite alterations altered the player ship sprite (not sure I'm totally happy with it though) made new enemy and player explosion animations changed other colors and sprites to more closely reflect the arcade removed the border There are 3 versions: one for Stella (or other emus), one identical to the 1st but with a namco logo, and one for real hardware (which just has a different purple for the enemies because the shade that looks good in Stella looks too red on real hardware. The Stella and namco logo versions are pictured below: *** It would be really great if someone could add a color table for the player ship instead of just using a single byte for the color. That way it could have a red top and white bottom more like the arcade. Galaxian Vector: Also, neotokeo2001 started a Galaxian Vector hack back in 2004 but left a few things for others to finish. I just found his thread the other day and took him up on that offer. I changed the ship a little bit (the other was one pixel too tall) added the new explosions from my "Arcade" hack made everything green that wasn't before -- including enemy shots left the original title screen logo but changed the colors to shades of green

Well, since I just got a Harmony Cart, I finally had the chance to play these hacks on real hardware. I am a bit disappointed. Pretty much every type of Brown looks like Red or Orange on both my TV (which is a nice CRT) and my brother's (which is an LCD). It looks like I may have to call the versions already posted "emu" versions and redo the colors for "real hardware" versions. Once I get the s-video/composite mod done, I'll make a decision on that. If there's any silver lining on my day today, it's that after receiving some VERY BAD news today, I may have a lot more free-time soon, (which I've not had since the semester started). I'd much rather not have the free time than swallow the news though.

I have a similar problem with my 2600 Jr, except it's the second controller port that's bad. It went bad in the early 90's. I tried re-flowing the solder on the port, but that didn't help. I've not tried replacing the port itself. Most games still play fine with only one player, but it has bugged me for a long time that I can't play two players. Also, there are some games that are not playable at all because of this. If the port turns out to not be the problem, what might I be able to replace to fix it?

Bought some goodies from Chris. He was very fair to deal with and had good communication. Items took a long time to arrive, but that was the fault of the post office, not Chris. I'd be happy to buy from him again. Thanks Chris!

I haven't actually installed mine yet, but I'm planning to stick all the jacks into a little project box from Radio Shack, (about a 2"x3" box), and have a single cable coming out the back of the Jr. It'll be like a dongle, but that way I won't have to carve up my case to install everything. I really don't like the idea of cables coming out the side of the case anyway.

Wow... just, wow. -- And did I say Wow? Though, my opinion may not mean much since I can almost never find things to complain about in your work.

That's because it IS Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle. Just a quick note to Pacfan97 and others who do game hacks... PLEASE clearly state what your hack is a hack of. It's simply not right to hack something and not give credit to the original authors. Also, if you find a hack of a game elsewhere, do not post it here claiming it's something it really isn't. (I don't know if Pacfan97 hacked this himself or found it somewhere). I realize Pacfan97 is young and fairly new here, but I've seen others do the first thing who are veterans here. I won't name names because I'd rather not start a feud, but some never mention the original game they're hacking, (making it seem like an original work), and even do carts of the hacks for purchase without ever releasing the hacked ROM. As if they somehow now own the code of someone else' work that they decided to hack.

I realize I wasn't invited, but I submit my two cents because I love the game and would love to see improvements to this (and Rampage). The things I'd like to see improved which I think are achievable (based on posts I've seen from GroovyBee here and elsewhere... and based on the screenshots and gameplay reports of Electrocop) are: More colors for the character sprites. Smoother scrolling Pokey sound chip Game play mechanics more like the arcade, although it's already much more playable for the casual player than the 2600 version. (I'm not knocking the 2600 version, as it's perfectly playable once you learn the right moves, it's just that the casual player is often turned off by the learning curve).

That's very good to hear. THANK YOU for doing it this way. One of the things that has been so frustrating to me, (to the point that I just plain gave up messing with the Atari community for several years), is that releases almost ALWAYS seemed to be perfectly timed with difficult financial periods of my life. Then when I'd have a decent paying job, items would be sold out.

I like the looks of this. The title screen is excellent and the game seems to have a good foundation. I hope you keep up the good work.

A great homebrew fighting game is KO Cruiser by Devin. Easily the best boxing experience on the 2600. You can get it here. You can also try the AVGN version for different characters. Double Dragon is one of my favorites. It's agonizingly difficult and will make you want to throw the cartridge against the wall if you don't master the Elbow Smash. Once you get that down you can have fun running around beating the crap out of everyone. Heed Mr. Miyagi's advice and learn the Elbow Smash! Boxing by Activision is an all-time classic. To me, this one never gets old. RealSports Boxing is a good game but lacks the fun feel of Activision's Boxing IMO. It seems to use the same game mechanics as Titlematch Pro Wrestling. Titlematch Pro Wrestling is decent for a 2600 wrestling game. It needs more frames of animation or something because the action just feels way too fast. Kung Fu Master is just plain excellent. I realize some people rag on this game, but it was everything I'd hoped it would be. It's a button masher more than a strategy fighter, but I don't believe this game could be any better graphically. Kung Fu Superkicks aka Chuck Norris Superkicks isn't one of my favorites, but it's ok. There's a homebrew fighter called Karate Master being worked on. You can get it from the author's blog here. If there's a thread link, I can't seem to find it. Of course there's always Karate. But you were asking for "good" fighting games weren't you? lol

I can't give away all my secrets! Actually, I was working on a new strategy today but I have more work to do. My goal now is to break 200k. My best advice is to master the elbow smash. If you can pull off that move readily, you can own this game. It makes an otherwise insanely difficult game fairly easy and a lot of fun. Bentley Bear has some good videos up on yootoob under the username Rkanum. He's a very good player. Most likely better than me. I'm strongly considering it. I registered at the site earlier today, but I'm having second thoughts after reading about some of the drama. I understand the guy mentioned in that thread is gone now, but it says the issues remain unresolved. Someone feel free to correct/clarify me on this. I'm just not anxious to get drawn into drama.

I thought you might suggest adding a dongle.

Update: I don't know what I was thinking when doing the bridge screen for beta3... I guess I wasn't thinking. Since the left and right sides of the bridge are part of the rock cliff, they should have a pattern like the following Cliff screen with the Abobos. Here's what was in beta3 vs how it should have been: Old Bridge | New Bridge I hate to do this, but I don't want to make a "beta4" release just to make this correction, so I'm replacing beta3 with a new ROM using the new bridge graphics. If you downloaded beta3 already, please download again. NOTE: I'm not quite happy with the Green Chainlink screen with the Abobos in Mission 2, but I'm not sure what to do about it. I'm also not satisfied with the Cliff screen in Mission 3B, so I'll probably make some changes there. Other than those 2 screens, I'm pretty happy with how it looks and unless someone offers to help with disassebly, the next version with probably be final. So if you have ideas, now is the time to speak up.

Is pron a pink TRON? I prefer it in blue.