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

atari2600land

+AtariAge Subscriber
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    18,165

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Blog Entries posted by atari2600land

  1. atari2600land

    Lights and trees

    By atari2600land,

    Right now we're doing the traditional putting up the lights and tree. Mom got a "friendly" reminder to pick up the leaves, and she's pissed off about it. I am, too, I mean how can we do that if it doesn't stop raining? Stupid trailer park managers. I think they should be forced to pick up our leaves if they want to be that stupid. I probably should stop talking about the managers if I don't want to be kicked out of AtariAge!
    The weather people were saying we'd get snow on Sunday night, but then they flipflopped it to anyone over 500 feet. I'm stuck here at 140 feet. I wish my stupid grandparents hadn't have moved from Akron all the way to Oregon. I bet Akron, Ohio gets tons of snow! And here we are, with over 13 inches of RAIN so far this month. The Weather Channel is bucking the trend and saying snow on Monday night for some reason. Perhaps they know something the local network news doesn't? Or is the Weather Channel just stupid?
  2. atari2600land

    November Snow?

    By atari2600land,

    This is just wishful thinking, but the Weather Channel did say rain on Sunday-Tuesday with lows of 31, 32, and 31. I guess it could be freezing rain, but I really want it to snow this winter because the last time it snowed was New Year's Day 2004. So we really need to make up for the past 2 winters where it didn't. (It did, but it didn't stick! Argh!) I want to go out and make a snowman. You can't make a rain man. We've had over 11 1/2 inches of rain this month in Salem. And the airport (where they measure the temperature and stuff) is right across the street from me. Yes, it does get noisy some times, but there's no commercial airlines, although they are talking about adding 2 trips a day to Salt Lake City. Who in Salt Lake City would want to come to Salem? There's nothing here except boring government offices.
  3. atari2600land
    I'm interested in long songs. I collect them. Anything ten minutes or longer. Some of the more famous ones in my collection include "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (17 minutes) and "Alice's Restaurant" (18 minutes). But there is a band from Toronto that specializes in long songs. That band is called Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Now disbanded (but may reform again in the future), GYBE has 4 albums out, and all the songs are more than 10 minutes long except one. If you think Godspeed You!Black Emperor is a weird name, take a look at their album names: "Yanqui U.X.O." "F# A# infinity" "Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven" and "Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada." As for what type of music they play, think "Atom Heart Mother" and "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd, another one of my favorite bands. "Atom Heart Mother" is almost 24 minutes long, the longest of my long songs. It's also the name of the album it's on. For more on long songs, there's a website listing songs 15 minutes or longer here:
    http://www.dprp.net/longsongs/index.php
    I'm going to Game Crazy tomorrow. I hope that guy that brought in those Atari 2600 games I saw brought in more I don't have.
  4. atari2600land

    Yoshi's Island DS

    By atari2600land,

    I finally got Yoshi's Island DS. That's the final name of the game. First it was Yoshi's Island 2, then at the last second, they changed it to Yoshi's Island DS. Why, I have no idea, but they did. And, it's true, if you like the first one, you will like this one.
    The introductory level is exactly the same as the SNES version, and so is most of 1-1. I was hoping and praying it wasn't the exact same game just for the DS, and my prayer came true. Starting at around level 1-2, the game is totally different. New levels in the style of the first one, yay! And new characters, too. Mario has his special M blocks he can hit and walk on, and he's the one you'll start with. In order to clear some levels, you'll have to switch between Baby Mario, Baby Peach (with parasol), Baby DK and Baby Wario (the last two I haven't come across yet. I'm up to 1-8 after playing for about 20 minutes. The controls take some getting used to, as they're not what you'd expect. There's two different options, and the most natural choice IMHO is jumping with A, eating with B and controlling shooting eggs with the shoulder buttons. And now, a picture of Fred:
     
    I'm still working on "I".
  5. atari2600land

    The I's Have It?

    By atari2600land,

    A possible title for the letter game I'm making. Tweaked it a little more than the version I posted in the Atari 2600 Basic forum earlier today. Not much added, just a score (life counter) and sfx. And, by the way, 3,000 people have viewed my blog! I feel like celebrating. I want a cake. Send me a chocolate one with strawberry frosting. Wait a minute, it'd probably get all smashed in the mail. Nix that. Guess I'll just have to settle for ice cream. I have ice cream. Ice cream tastes good.
  6. atari2600land

    Tapeworm - review

    By atari2600land,

    Hey gang, Hell froze over! There were actually Atari 2600 games at Game Crazy I didn't have! I got Raiders of the Lost Ark & Q-Bert, each for a buck. I had a Q-Bert, but it didn't fit in the hole. I now have one that does. Now my collection is up to 80 Atari 2600 games. I also got Yoshi's Cookie for Game Boy. It's not on Nintendo's official Game Boy game list, but there it was. And I bought it. Now, I'll do the review of Tapeworm:
     
    Can you name a video game after a parasite? Apparently, the people at Spectravision thought people would actually buy a game called Tapeworm. Yes, that's its name. Now say "Who wants Tapeworm?" Get the drift? This game also is about as fun as having a tapeworm. Basically, it's Nibbles. For those of you who don't know what Nibbles is, you guide a snake (or in this case, tapeworm), across the screen eating dots. The more dots you get, the longer the tapeworm gets. If you run into yourself or the border, you lose a life. And if that wasn't bad enough, they added enemies. That's right. Touch one of these things that move left/right or up/down the screen in a line periodically and you lose a life. Most of the time, they come so fast and they come at a point where you can't avoid them. And get this, there's a time limit to getting to the dots (or in this case, flashing squares.) If you don't get to one fast enough, two more pop up on the screen. And the time limit isn't shown in numbers. No, to make things more difficult, the time limit is shown by a spider getting nearer towards a fruit. When the spider gets to the fruit, two more squares pop up. So what this all boils down to is, some idiot botched Nibbles by putting a whole bunch of stupid extra crap in it, called it Tapeworm and actually sold it. Only get it if you're a fan of Q-Basic games and difficult arcade games, otherwise, don't get infected.
     
    I'll be doing more reviews of Atari 2600 games as my collection gets bigger and has more interesting titles. Up next is a review of Word Zapper, which I want to post tomorrow.
  7. atari2600land
    ...or programming for them, anyway. Just to see if I could do it, I tried to put in a black and white version in GoSub2, and it worked. To play a B&W version of GoSub2, set the color switch to B&W (from color.) Also, I've added an easy version if you switch the left difficulty to A (yes, I know that's backwards, but I consider left difficulty B to be normal.) Easy mode is marked with the letter E at the beginning of the score. Gosub2 in Black and white means someone could do this for the original Game Boy. What I did to get the switches to work is something like this:
     
    if switchbw then c=1
    if !switchbw then c=0
     
    and then, have COLUPF, COLUBK, and COLUP1 be different values, like for instance, COLUPF=u.
     
    Then set u to either a color or a shade of gray depending on whether c=1 or 0.
    This is exactly what I did for the easy/normal mode, except I had s be the value of wither the left difficulty switch be A or B. The only problem is that you can't change the screen to black & white in the middle of a game (but who would do that, anyway?)
     
    And by the way, my computer seems to be working normally now.
  8. atari2600land

    Internet troubles

    By atari2600land,

    Actually, my computer works just fine, but it doesn't want me to go on the internet, so if you don't hear anything from me for a day or two, it's because I'm probably cussing it out for "not responding" to NetZero. Actually, a couple of times it said it was logging me on to Juno, and I have no idea what that is. It's another ISP, but what is it doing on my computer? Oh well. If my computer feels like letting me go on the internet tomorrow, I'll have another blog, probably a review of Yoshi Topsy-Turvy. If it still decides to hate me, I guess it has the right to.
  9. atari2600land
    The game I'm most anticipating for the DS is coming out next Monday (which is also when I'm going to get my suture out). Yoshi's Island DS is supposed to come out this Monday. Hopefully, it'll be an "if you loved the first one, you'll love this one" kinda thing. And I don't even have to pay for it because Mom said she'll get it for me for my birthday (which was November 2nd.) My wisdom teeth stopped bleeding and I'm still alive. I got some strawberry Ensure, I'll have to see what that tastes like. I don't know when I can eat solid foods again, but just to play it safe I'll wait until Monday. I'm rinsing my mouth out with saltwater every couple of hours and very carefully brushing when I'm done eating something. I just got Resident Evil: Deadly Silence for $20, which ups my DS game total to 39.
  10. atari2600land
    Man, I guess that win on Wednesday was just because it was my birthday. After tonight's disappointing loss to Golden State, I'm predicting a Blazers season of one win and 81 losses. It's already 1 loss, so all they need to do is lose 80 more games this season and my prediction will be true. Then, I will land my job: Odds maker at Vegas. I bet I'm the only one who will say the Blazers will have 1 win this whole season, and this blog, written before the second game is even over, is proof that I predict very good. I want the Blazers to move. Portland has suffered long enough. It's time for some other city. St. Louis? Baltimore? OK City? The possibilities are limitless.
  11. atari2600land

    Gosub 2

    By atari2600land,

    I'm working on a sequel to Gosub called, well, Gosub 2. And thanks to SeaGtGruff's suggestion on my Capital I game, the first version was 1,695 bytes. After implementing said thingee, it was 2,151 bytes, a saving of over 450 bytes! Right now, there's 4 screens, but I hope to have over 10 by the time it's finished, which should be in early 2007.
    I really should get back to programming the capital I game, but I have no idea what to do next when it comes to screens. At first, it was just a demo to have the I's moving around, but then I got in the spirit of making a game based off it. I know I give up on games way too easily, and I want to keep the I game going and possibly make it 8k.
    I guess the whole I project was doomed from the beginning because I was looking at the instruction booklet to Adventure, and the thing is about 12 pages long! I don't have a big enough attention span for that. That, and I don't really like Zelda games. I know, I'm weird in that respect. I'm more of a Mario kinda guy. I really like New Super Mario Bros. I plan on getting the Zelda game for DS but keeping it in the original cellophane forever. I figure in about ten years or so, it'll be worth more than one that has been opened. Anyone know how the prices on never-been-opened video games work? Would it be worth more if I kept it in the cellophane, or the same as if I opened it?
  12. atari2600land
    1. Grand Prix
    2. Word Zapper
    3. Hangman
    4. Dig Dug
    5. Moon Patrol
    6. Ms. Pac-Man
    7. Othello
    8. Asteroids
    9. Video Pinball
    10. Jr. Pac-Man
     
    Grand Prix takes the top spot for the fourth month in a row, but either #2 or #3 could take the top spot next month. I have been having a lot of fun with new games Word Zapper and Hangman, and another new entry at #7, Othello. Also, Asteroids, long absent from my top 10 list, makes its return at #8. See ya all tomorrow, with a report on the Blazers' opening game (which starts in about 8 minutes on channel 8 here.)
  13. atari2600land

    24

    By atari2600land,

    That's how cold it's supposed to be tonight. Sorry if I misled you viewers of the FOX show of the same name. And I'll be up taping Jay Leno's funny headlines (that is, if it's not a repeat) And on Halloween night, it's supposed to be 29. Not that trick-or-treaters will be out in the middle of the night knocking on people's doors. To put this 24 degree coldness in perspective, yesterday's record low in our town was 23 in 1971. So we might well break a record with this, depending on what the record was (I don't know.) On Wednesday, I'll take down the Halloween lights, and even though stores already have Christmas displays, we'll wait until the day after Thanksgiving to put our Christmas lights up. I said yesterday that I got Break 'Em All for my birthday, the game was a let-down. I was expecting Arkanoid: Doh It Again, what with the powerups and all, all I got was a confusing power-up scheme and when I went to tap the power-up words when they lit up on the bottom screen (like I was supposed to), nothing really happened. Except a few times, it did turn on the catch power-up. So if you like Breakout or Alleyway, it's very much like it. The controls are great, though. When the paddle is on one end of the screen, you can tap the other end and it will magically appear there. You can control the paddle with the L and R buttons, but those controls suck and I like moving the paddle with the stylus much better. If anyone has info on this game (and how to use the powerups in it), please tell me because I'd really appreciate it.
  14. atari2600land
    Went to Game Crazy earlier today. Not much there this time, but I did get Jurassic Park (B), and Palamedes (B+) according to Mike Etler's NES rarity list. Jurassic Park was made in 1993, and I really like NES games made after 1992 for some reason. 2 Zoda's Revenge (early 1994) was still sitting on the shelf, both still priced $6.99. Want to get rid of them? Sell them at $2.99 like all the other cheap NES games. And is Chubby Cherub really worth $4.99? Geez. Here's the thing about these stores that sell old games, like mom & pop stores and places like GameStop. They follow this rule: If the game has the word "Zelda" or "Mario" in the title, make it priced way higher than it should be. The reason Game Crazy has 3 Zelda Game Boy games sitting in the Game Boy section is because they're priced $14.99! Who is going to spend that much for an original Game Boy game? I can understand Kwirk being $9.99 (someone bought that), but Zelda should not cost more than Kwirk, especially since Zelda is way more common. It makes me sick. Of course, the only Atari 2600 game still there was Pac-Man (like always, costing $1.00). What happened to that guy who kept bringing in 2600 games? Guess he got rid of the whole collection (I bought Skateboardin' and Strategy X at said store like 6 months ago.)
  15. atari2600land

    Sponge Lover

    By atari2600land,

    Well, I finally bought the complete 3rd season of SpongeBob SquarePants. I wanted this for my birthday last year, but other things took higher priority, plus it was probably more expensive back then. I found this at Wal*Mart for $26. It has some of my favorite episodes like Krab Borg, Idiot Box, and One Krab's Trash. Who can forget Smitty, who was #1 "I just want the hat back.", the old man who thought SpongeBob was a box of bran flakes, or Squidward going insane during a snowball fight? This isn't only for me, but it's also for my niece, who loves Spongebob as well. It's like the Simpsons, except each story is half as long, there's no sex & violence, and it's under the sea. It would also come to no shock to you faithful readers that one of my other favorite cartoons is Ren & Stimpy. My favorite Ren & Stimpy episode is "Stimpy's Invention." with "Man's Best Friend" being a close second. Also, I'm trying to find Sesame Street Vol. 1 1969-74 but to no avail. So if you see it somewhere, be sure to tell me where so I can get it.
  16. atari2600land
    Some games I make derive from hatred for others. Take for instance, Miner 2049er. If you fall off the edge of a platform, you die. Is that fair? No. So what I'm doing here is taking Miner 2049er's platform deals, replacing the miner with a headless chicken, and replacing the goal of walking along every single part of every platform (that's a stupid goal) into how many handfuls of henscratch Mike can get in 60 seconds. How to work the game thus far:
    Flip the game reset switch using your favorite 2600 emulator.
     
    To get up onto a different level, go to either end and press up.
    Fire makes Mike jump.
    For every handful of henscrach Mike eats, he gets 1 point.
    The goal of the game, like I said earlier, is to see how many handfuls of henscratch Mike can eat in 60 seconds. Once the timer reaches 0, it goes back to the title screen, displaying the score.
     
    And, yes, there really was a headless chicken named Mike. No, it's not an urban legend, it really happened. I don't have a link, I just know. And yes, that's supposed to be a headless chicken. If anyone can draw me a better headless chicken, then by all means, reply with your purdy picture. The game thus far isn't going to be winning any awards anytime soon (well, maybe "Worst game ever made using Batari Basic"), so I'll be updating this one as time goes on.
  17. atari2600land
    Not many people know this, but I also draw. I also have a cartoon I update weekly at http://chrisread.comicgenesis.com called "Chris's Collection of Crappy Comics." Right now, the only one up there is Jessica, a comic strip about a 13-year-old girl. And, seeing as how it's been running since April and apparently people visit the site (I can tell by the statistics), not once has anybody commented on it. And, I am interested on how everyone thinks how badly I draw. So, if you could do me a favor and visit the aforementioned website and comment on it, maybe I can improve on it.
  18. atari2600land

    Pitfall?

    By atari2600land,

    Worked on Super Mario Bros. a little more. Once you go down the pipe, you'll find a few Spinys and once you get to the end, the screen changes and there's a big hole to jump over. Fixed the pipe glitch, although you can still walk in front of it. And one game in particular popped in my mind when I was testing this. That's right, Pitfall. Is this too much of a Pitfall clone, or should I keep working on this? I'd like some comments on this.
  19. atari2600land

    SMB2600

    By atari2600land,

    I'm working on a Super Mario Bros.-type game for the 2600. Forget Super Maria Sisters, this one is going to be really neat. Right now, it's just one screen, but it's a nice screen with a pipe. If you stand on the very top of the pipe, you can go down it. Right now it's set up that once you go down it, you end up at the beginning, but I'm going to put a second screen for down beneath the pipe (like 1-2). Fire is jump, left and right moves Mario left and right. I'm completely winging it right now, so I'll see what I'll add and stuff as time goes on.
  20. atari2600land
    I was originally going to have all my wisdom teeth pulled out on the 23rd. Yesterday, I recieved a call from the dentist's office saying the dentist was not going to be in that day. It was a message (I was on the internet and I have dial-up), so I told mom (she's the one that's going to take me), and now it's set for November 6th. They originally wanted November 2, but that's my birthday and decided that would be a cruel thing to do to me (good for them.). A really interesting coincidence is that someone where I used to work asked me when my birthday was on my birthday (i didn't tell anyone, nobody asked). My mom had her wisdom teeth pulled out the day before her birthday and she said she didn't have a good birthday that year. Oh, also, I was supposed to go to the doctor's office today, but he's going to be operating today! So now I have to wait until some time in December (good thing I'm not sick, just a medicine check). C'est la vie.
  21. atari2600land

    Gosub

    By atari2600land,

    After the disappointment of not being able to program Zoop for bBasic, here's a little (so far) program I'm working on "cleverly" titled Gosub. Guide the submarine to the treasure, but if you touch the sides, you lose a chance. You have 5 chances for every level. Level 2 in this build will obviously be later in the game. If you feel like it, you can design your own levels and reply to this and I'll use them if they're good enough and not too hard. BTW, using no_blank_lines has a weird effect in this game, adding a really thin 12th playfield line, which if you have the first line all Xed, the "12th line" will be all Xed too, and it will act as the playfield, so if you touch it, you'll lose a chance.
  22. atari2600land
    First we went to Skippers for dinner. That's the thing about my dad, he takes me to all these restaurants, it's like he's fattening me up for no good reason. And then he orders stuff and he can't eat it all and I have to finish his food for him. That posed a big problem when we went to Marie Callendar's for breakfast and he put way too much stuff on his plate. I helped a little, but I ate way too much food and I don't think I'll eat anything else today. Then we went back to his apartment. He stayed up with me for an hour or so and then went to sleep at about 7:30. I went to sleep at about 8:30 and woke up at about 10 PM. Couldn't go back to sleep for a bit. I brought my DS and played Activision Anthology for a bit and finally fell asleep at about midnight and woke up at about 7:30. And when he took me home, some car fell in a ditch. We have this big long deep ditch down each side of the road for some stupid reason, which is stupid because there's hardly any water in it even when it's been raining a lot. The reason I stay over at my dad's is because my mom takes care of my niece, who is 6 (and very annoying.) And when I get home, she's still there and I get greeted with "can I play you's video games?" She always wants to play with them. I let her once but she sucks at them. I might let her play my Atari when she's not so reckless, although I don't know any good video games for kids except Strawberry Shortcake (which is back in style again) which I don't have. Then she left and I turned on my computer and checked for e-mails about my Wanted post and then wrote this blog. So there.
  23. atari2600land
    Version 4! Added sounds for hit, sounds for successful cross, game over screen, and made quandor positions random at the start of every game. I won't be on the internet tonight because I'm spending the night with my dad again. BTW, if anyone wants to see the code for this, I'll post it on here. There's a special include file (to get the space in the score on) if you want to compile it.
  24. atari2600land
    Here's version 2. Fixed a few things. The yellow quandor on the right is all yellow instead of flashing white. Also, nobody noticed that if you hit the yellow quandor, you lose two lives. Fixed that to one. I also made quandors #2 and #5 move faster than #s 1, 3 & 4. And missile1 (the Adventure-type dot) no longer has a blue stripe flashing in it. I don't know how far I should go on this. I mean, it was an experiment at first, but now I might want 8bitclassics to make a cart out of this for me, I'm having so much fun playing it (and working on it.) For me, I don't really mind the flicker all that much. I guess it's because my unconditional love for most Atari 2600 games.
    -
    When I bought that Atari 2600 sitting on the shelf in the used video game store about a year ago, I didn't know I would have this much fun with the Atari stuff!
  25. atari2600land

    Xela

    By atari2600land,

    I've decided to change the name of Bad Gorf to Xela. Why Xela? The name of the programmer of Gorf is Alex (according to AtariAge), so I thought, what is that backwards? Xela. It starts with X, which makes it sound like some alien species, which is a plus. I've always had a kind of fascination with games or words that start with X. It must be because there aren't very many of them. For the NES, I have a CIB Xevious and a loose Xexyz. I'm still looking for Xenophobe. Well, anyway, if someone can come up with a better title, please tell me. And if someone can come up with a better looking spaceship, please give me a drawing of it. I've tried on my own and I can't come up with anything. Anyway, here's a few screenshots and a binary file of the latest build of Xela, fka Bad Gorf.
     
    EDIT: Here's the instructions in Rich Text Format.
AtariAge
Forums
Store
General
Follow AtariAge

Copyright ©1998-2021 AtariAge

×
×
  • Create New...