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It pays to revisit and scan the Bob Fabris collection once in a while. I'm currently scanning in the last box of material that I have in my garage. This box contains the cut and paste versions of the Arcadian newsletter. This box has been very low on the to-scan priority list, as (so I thought) everything in it was scanned already in another format. Well, I was mostly right. I have found a few neat tid-bits in the box so far: this is one of them. Today, I added to letter to Bally Arcade/Astrocade venders that Bob Fabris wrote on January 1, 1983. On December 30, 1982, Astrocade, Inc. declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Bob Fabris wrote this letter, hopefully of opportunity, to many of the vendors who wrote software and created hardware for the Astrocade. Bob hoped to be able to carry the thousands of Astrocade users through the coming drought brought on by the declaration of bankruptcy. This one-page letter describes Bobs ideas on how to do this for Astrocade owners and distributors. You can read the letter here: http://www.ballyalley.com/newsletters/arcadian/arcadian_misc.html#LetterAstrocadeDistributors I OCRed this letter. Here is the complete letter (a few comments from me follow): ---------------------------------------- ARCADIAN 1-1-1983 OPPORTUNITY (?) Well, Astrocade bit the dust Thursday, asking protection from creditors under the provisions of the infamous Chapter 11. The latest news report from Nitron is attached - they stopped trading on Friday "pending news", and there is a possibility they may drop as well - see your papers. So where does that leave us? Well, of the various options, it seems to me that there is opportunity here for the third party vendors (TPV) to step in because the only game in town now is the TPV GROUP (pun intended). Only you fellows have material for the unit. There are lots of owners out there, and they will either be 1) left in the lurch if the whole thing collapses never to be seen again. 2) left in a hesitancy period while a Receiver is chosen and restructuring of the 'new' Astrocade company is completed. 3) same as 2) until a new company buys out the assets and starts up. Under any one of those three - or anything else, I would guess - there will be a void that can be filled by the T --- an opportunity to step forward and present wares to ... who? Timing - the CES is right now, who's there? All those distributor guys who know where dealers are - the ones still in step. The best time/place to get in touch with outlets. It seems to me that a best-foot-forward approach to the distributors, etc., that will be there is the only thing to do. Dick Houser and I plan to function as your collective agent, essentially representing everyone in the Sourcebook. We will be pushing the Sourcebook to the distributors - whoever is left - with the message that we can be the bridge of available stock that can tide the dealers over until the reconstructed Arcade is back in production. This representation scheme is only temporary, to take advantage of the opportunity presenting itself. We've been noodling about in this area in a sort of wishy-washy way - now we can be definitive and make those contacts that are available. Who else? Well there are thousands of machines in owners' hands and we can get at a few of them through advertising in the game publications. What have been the replies from the Electronic Games ad? This kind of advertising should be looked into as a possible on-going thing. And also, we can make contact with 8 or 9000 owners that I have from mailing lists, for direct mailings. These are not subscribers, so they are not normally contacted. Also, I'm sure a number of them are no longer interested or owners. Anyway, a package of literature can be shipped to alert these people to TPV existence. OTHER STUFF------ Game Production: The Alternative Engineering people are now geared up to produce cartridges for the Arcade unit, utilizing EPROMs. They will also handle distribution - contact them if you have a program that you would like to have prepared in the cartridge format-- certainly a better way to get a program into a machine than tape, and there's more capacity. ---------------------------------------- To me, this letter exemplifies the ways in which the Astrocade community pulled together to keep software and hardware available for users of the, soon-to-be, defunct Astrocade game console/computer system. Adam

I posted this to the Bally Alley Yahoo group, but it might get more traction here. Plus, the AtariAge forums are much more popular-- and you don't have to be a member to view most of them. I'm using my library's special services to search the Newspaper Archive for Bally Arcade/Astrocade material: https://newspaperarchive.com/ This is a pay site, but I can use the website for free using my library card. I've come across some newspaper ads that I've not seen before now. I've noticed that in 1978/79, there are a number of ads from mom and pop TV stores around the country who are selling the Bally Professional Arcade for $300 (the retail price at the time). If you buy it from them, then they would throw in the Tornado Baseball cartridge for free. Here is an example of such an advertisement (This ad is from page 29 of the December 2, 1978 issue of the Bluefield Daily Telegraph newspaper): (Don't those kids look like they're having so much fun? Man, I love ads from the 1970s!) I've never seen this Tornado Baseball promotion anyplace. Since the promotion seems to be from different stores in various area of the United States, I wonder if this was something that Bally pushed when the system was first introduced. I've also noticed some ads from the same period of time promoting Tornado Baseball World Series tournaments at bowling alleys! Anyone ever heard of that before now? I may post an example of this separately. Did anyone here get a free Tornado Baseball cartridge with their Astrocade when they bought it in the 1970s? Adam

Every once in a while I'll just type in the word "Astrocade" (and remove my BallyAlley.com website) in Google and see what I find in the deep links, you know, the ones that no one ever clicks because they're dozens of pages from the top of the searches. The recent links that I've been posting are coming from these not-at-the-top search pages. It's fun to find "hidden" Astrocade links! Bally Astrocade RGB Schematic I came across this Bally Astrocade RGB schematic by someone named "hotdog6394." https://easyeda.com/hotdog6394/Bally_Astrocade_RGB-4W86GgdNn Can anyone vouch for this hardware? Does anyone know if this is an original design? The Bally Astrocade, A True Hidden Gem Here is a blog post about the Astrocade called "A closer look at the Bally Astrocade, a true hidden gem among game consoles." This was posted by zadoc on April 11, 2018. The "article" is quite general, but I like the pictures: https://imgur.com/gallery/tQJJI Not too bad, right? Revived Astrocade by drunknretro! On June 24, 2016, a blog post was written by "drunknretro." He fixed his Astrocade that had bad video and he shows pictures of the steps that he followed to do it. https://drunknretro.blogspot.com/2016/06/up-from-crypt-bally-professional-arcade.html It's always nice to see an Astrocade live again! Twitter has Astrocade Hashtag?!? I'm not a Twitter user, but maybe I should join the "fun." There are several people that use #astrocade. I didn't expect it to be about the Bally Arcade/Astrocade, but the "tweets" (I hate that word) all seem to belong to the little console that could(n't). https://twitter.com/hashtag/astrocade Does anyone here use this tag on Twitter? 3D Moveable Model of Astroade Here is a link to a 3D moveable model of an Astrocade: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/ue9c95c6f-746c-4cc9-9eae-882e23ac2289/Bally-Astrocade This is kind of cool. You can move the Astrocade console around in 3D! "Meet me in the Astrocade" Lecture (June 2018) Rachel Weil gave a lecture at the Joy of Coding 2018 conference on June 8, 2018 called "Meet me in the Astrocade: peace, love, and 8-bit hardware hacking." You can read about it here: http://joyofcoding.org/2018/rachel-weil.html I met Rachel a few weeks ago when she was passing through town. We had a three player game of the homebew game "War" together. Great fun! If anyone else has weird or unusual Astrocade links, then please post them here. Adam

I wrote these notes for myself this morning, since it took me a while (too long!) to remember how to clean a non-BASIC WAV file. I thought that the notes might be useful for other people, so I cleaned them up a little and I'm posting them here. This document presumes that you're familiar with process of archiving Astrocade programs already. If not, then I advise you to try archiving an "AstroBASIC" program first and then come back to this document. Cleaning a RAW Binary (Non-BASIC) WAV file with BallyBin and AstroWAV By Adam Trionfo Version 1.0 July 10, 2018 Summary: These are general instructions, written mostly so that I'll remember the process, on how to clean an Astrocade's RAW 2000-baud binary recording created with the Blue Ram Utility. I used the tape version of the Blue Ram Utility 3 by Perkins Engineering. I loaded the utility from a WAV file into my Blue Ram 16K unit. In this example, I converted the 2KB Machine Language Manager (MLM) cartridge by Bit Fiddlers to a WAV file that can be loaded with "AstroBASIC." Here are the steps to load the Blue Ram Utility: Load the Blue Ram Utility using Blue Ram BASIC using :INPUT. (Do not try to load it using :INPUT %(24576). This will not work.) 2) The version of the utility that I used is in the file: Blue RAM Utility (Perkins Engineering).zip This file is located here: http://www.ballyalley.com/program_downloads/ram_expansion_required/perkins_engineering/Blue%20RAM%20Utility%20(Perkins%20Engineering).zip The file contains a zip file called Blue RAM Utility and Instructions (1982)(Perkins Engineering)(2000 baud)(Blue RAM BASIC).zip The Blue RAM Utility files in that zip file are called: 1) Blue RAM Utility (1982)(Perkins Engineering)(2000 baud)(Blue RAM BASIC)(Load 1 of 2).wav 2) Blue RAM Utility (1982)(Perkins Engineering)(2000 baud)(Blue RAM BASIC)(Load 2 of 2).wav 3) Blue RAM Utility Instructions (1982)(Perkins Engineering)(2000 baud)(Blue RAM Utility).wav Load loads 1 and 2 one after the other into BRB. The program will run automatically after using :INPUT. My intent was to create a loadable WAV file of the Machine Language Manager cartridge. First, I loaded the Machine Language Manager cartridge into the Blue Ram Utility using the COPY command. Then I verified that the load was correct using VRFY. After that, I saved the 2KB MLM program to a "tape" (WAV file) using the Utility's SAVE command. I will not go into details about how I did the above steps. It's easy once you know how, but is beyond the scope of this document. If you are curious about how it's done, then the detailed instructions for how to use the Blue Ram Utility are available online here: http://www.ballyalley.com/perkins/docs-blue_ram_utility3.pdf After I had a RAW WAV file on my computer that was output from the Utility, I used Audacity to amplify the file. I saved this amplified file and then used Ballybin 2 on the WAV to digitally archive the file. Here are the general steps on how to clean a non-BASIC binary file saved in the Astrocade's 2000-baud WAV format using Ballybin and AstroWAV 2. First, there are two versions of BallyBin and AstroWAV 2. Make sure to use the following version of these two files: AstroWAV and Ballybin 2 (2004)(Bob Colbert)(beta)[Feb 27 2004] Once you have these files on your Windows PC, use the command line to clean the saved RAW WAV file. It is presumed here that the RAW WAV file is called input.wav. First create a BML file of the RAW file using the following command: ballybin -l3 -v2 -i1 -bcleaned input.wav Next, make a cleaned WAV file: astrowav -h3 -f1 -woutput.wav cleaned.bml This WAV file is stereo. I used Audacity to make it mono, but this step isn't required. This cleaned WAV file can be loaded into an Astrocade with expansion RAM by following these steps: 1) Insert "AstroBASIC" into Astrocade. 2) Make sure that you're Astrocade RAM expansion has the switches in the 6K area and is set to RAM. 3) In "AstroBASIC," type: :INPUT %(24576) 4) When the program is done loading, hold down Reset and keep it down. Switch the RAM expansion switches to 2K and ROM. Then release the Reset button. After releasing the Reset button, the cartridge (which was saved as a WAV file) should load perfectly. The "AstroBASIC" cartridge which is in the slot will be ignored. [End of Document]

Has anyone here used the Music Maker cartridge for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade to create music or sound effects? I'm referring to this cartridge: The above picture is for the version of Music Maker with the built-in tape interface. However, this program can be used without the interface. Music Maker is included on, I think, all of the Astrocade multicarts. Here is the manual for this "game:" http://www.ballyalley.com/cart_manuals/pdf_manuals/docs-music_maker.pdf Here is a video of Music Maker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzV7mS_lk1E The above video just shows the program being used, rather randomly, for a couple of minutes. I've never seen a video that shows the program being used to create music, which also requires, I think, use of the following keypad overlay: If anyone has experience with music, then I'd love to watch a narrated video of someone using Music Maker to create even a short piece of music (even Camptown Races would be fine!). Is anyone up for the challenge? Adam

Last week I began to disassemble the 4KB, 1979 pinball game for the Astrocade called Bally Pin. The game looks like this: Today I've reached a point where it's worth sharing. You can download it here: http://www.ballyalley.com/ml/ml_source/ml_source.html#BallyPinDisassembly Most of the ROM can be seen in Z80 mnemonics now. Sure, it's hard to follow, but it beats reading hexadecimal! This code can be assembled using the Zmac assembler and the Home Video Game Library (HVGLIB.H), which are both available here: http://www.ballyalley.com/ml/ml_tools/ml_tools.html I became interested in disassembling this game in May of 2016 when we played Bally Pin in the Astrocade High Score Club, here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/252219-hsc01-round-7-bally-pin-pinball/ The game's manual looks like this: The game cartridge looks like this: I'm learning to use the MAME debugger a little better, which makes disassembling the game go a bit faster. Most of the ROM has been disassembled, but I have not started to follow the game's logic yet. Although, to a certain extent that isn't true, for it's impossible to disassemble a game without following the logic a little bit. Today I disassembled the music "scores" used by the on-board ROM's music routines. By "score" and music, we're actually talking about sound effects. I hope that tomorrow I can start looking into the graphics of the game. I'd also like to see if I can follow how the game gets laid out. If possible, I'd like to add a few well-placed pixels so that the ball doesn't drain. It would be cheating, sure, but it would make disassembling the game go faster, as I have been playing the game without mixed results. If I can't prevent the ball from draining, then maybe I can at least add more default balls when the game begins. As progress continues, I'll post the disassembled source code to BallyAlley.com and mention it here. Adam

I don't know if I'll have more MAME debugger examples, but if I do, then I'll post them here. Over the last few days, I've been disassembling the 4K ROM of Bally Pin (aka Astrocade Pinball). Today while disassembling Bally Pin, I found the table that holds the six "scores" (sound effects) that are called by BMUSIC (a subroutine that you can read about in the "Nutting Manual"). Here is the source code for that table that I created (note that L stand for Label here, so L2F7A means that a score is at $2F7A on the cartridge): ; Music Score Table ?? L2F6E: DW L2F7A DW L2FE6 DW L2FA3 DW L2FB8 DW L2FC2 DW L2FCA Each score is called by the BMUSIC routine, which resides at ROM location $2F67 on the Bally Pin cartridge. I set a MAME debugger breakpoint at $2F67. This allowed me to check what was going on with various registers when BMUSIC is called. I needed to know the values of HL, A and IX. This worked okay, but was a little clumsy. I wondered how to set a breakpoint only when HL was a certain value. I looked online, but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for exactly. Through trial and error, I discovered that I could stop Bally Pin's execution when the BMUSIC routine was called and one certain score was called. Here's how I did this in MAME's debugger: BPSET $2F67,HL == $2FC2 This allowed me to figure-out that the "score" at $2FC2 is the one of the two sounds that the spinner makes as it goes round and round. MAME's debugger is sweet! It's too bad that the documentation for it is sparse. You sort of need to know how to use it before you start using it, which is intimidating. Adam

It's rare that I find new-to-me Bally related items that I didn't know existed in any form. While looking on Archive.org today, I found a 24-page hand-written notebook that John Perkins wrote to "Bob" (I presume, Bob Fabris, the editor of the Bally Arcade/Astrocade Arcadian newsletter) when the Blue Ram was still in development (probably around 1980). The Blue Ram is a RAM expansion unit. You can read John's notebook here: https://archive.org/details/ballyalley_John_Perkins_Blue_RAM_Notebook This notebook was uploaded by "Sketch the Cow" on November 12, 2015. I wonder how he came about acquiring it? I have transcribed the first page of the notebook: "Bob - "This notebook is intended to provide you with a glimpse of the potential of our 'Blue Ram' accessory. The full potential is too vast to be adequately treated in a book 10 times the size. This is because the 'Blue Box' provides the Bally Arcade with many of the features of a normal personal computer about which volumes have already been written. What I hope to provide here is a sketch of what the 'Blue Box' can do as well as some sample "experimental" applications." The notebook provides quite a few details and sketches. This is a great find! Adam

I've got some CIB games, CIB homebrews and sealed games on eBay if anyone is interested. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=&_in_kw=1&_ex_kw=&_sacat=0&_udlo=&_udhi=&_ftrt=901&_ftrv=1&_sabdlo=&_sabdhi=&_samilow=&_samihi=&_sadis=15&_stpos=98020-4507&_sargn=-1%26saslc%3D1&_salic=1&_fss=1&_fsradio=%26LH_SpecificSeller%3D1&_saslop=1&_sasl=danagret&_sop=1&_dmd=1&_ipg=100 Colecovision CIB homebrews: Ninja Princess Pooyan Remember the Flag Roller Ball Sudoku Traffic Jam Zombie Incident Intellivision CIB games and repro boxes: Game Factory Hotel Bunny Triple Challenge Truckin' Worm Whomper Ms. Pac-Man box Rocky Battles the Champ box Action Force (GI Joe) box Strawberry Shortcake box Deadly Dogs box Atari 2600 sealed games and CIB homebrews Crack'ed Crazy Balloon BMX Air Master (sealed) Bump 'n' Jump (sealed) Burgertime (sealed) Froggo games (sealed) Atari 7800 sealed games Ace of Aces Fight Night Food Fight Mat Mania Challenge Super Huey UH-IX Tower Toppler Winter Games Astrocade sealed games Amazing Maze/Tic-Tac-Toe Bally Pin Dog Patch End this weekend - thanks for looking and PM or eBay message with questions! Dana

I came across a channel on YouTube called "Placelogohere." There are currently 126 videos of Astrocade titles, including (mostly, in fact) BASIC games and games/programs that require expansion memory. It looks like someone got the UlltiMulti multicart and a Lil' White Ram and had some fun going through many of the games on that cartridge. These videos were uploaded in September 2017, but hardly anyone has watched these videos. In fact, currently, most videos have less than ten views! None of the videos I watched had any commentary, which is too bad. These videos look pretty good and are worth watching especially if you don't have an Astrocade, because then videos are the only way to view many of these games, since the MAME emulator doesn't support loading tapes. Placelogohere created an Astrocade playlist on his playlist page: https://www.youtube.com/user/placelogohere/playlists To get you started, here are links to some of the more interesting videos: Arcade Golf, by Gambits (Ken Lill). 1983. Blue RAM BASIC, 2000-Baud, Requires Expansion RAM. From ad in "Arcadian" newsletter: For 16k & 32k Blue Ram Basic 1.1 Extended RAM. 1-4 PLAYERS. 1-4 HAND CONTROLS. No bang-bang shoot-em-ups here. Just your choice of 9 or 18 holes of golf!. Each hole is different -- each and every time!! There are trees, a lake, sand traps and an always changing wind! With the wind gusting up to 25mph, your ball can be blown off its course. Try to break par. It isn't as easy as you might think. Music Keyboard, by WaveMakers 1987. Expanded BASIC, 2000-Baud, Extra RAM Required. This is an enhanced version of the AstroBASIC program that was released on Tape 17 in December 1982. Pro Golf, by Henry Sopko. 1988. 2000 baud, Blue RAM BASIC (+16K). This game was converted into a BASICart. Ken Lill's instruction book for the UltiMulti Cartridge has these brief instructions for the game: This is similar to the "Links" games. The "Swing" power/slice box is controlled by to trigger. Let go at just the right time to get the maximum shot. The "right" time is when the moving box is in line with the line on the right side. Everything else is pretty much easy to figure out. Flying Ace 82, by WaveMakers 1982 AstroBASIC FLYING ACE is for 1 to 4 players. Try to gun down the enemy before your time runs out. Get the "feel" of flying a fighter plane. At first everything seems backwards until you get the hang of it, then you'll become a FLYING ACE. Avalanche!, by Steve Walters Tape 821, April 1982 AstroBASIC Paul Thacker comments, "It's kind of like a strategy Pachinko game--pretty unique. [...] Yes, I definitely interpreted it as lowest score wins." We played Avalanche! during season 1, round 7 of the Astrocade High Score along with Bally Pin (Pinball): http://atariage.com/forums/topic/252219-hsc01-round-7-bally-pin-pinball/?hl=%2Bavalanche 1-4 players drop blocks through a system of levers. Depending on the positions of the levers, the blocks will either get stuck or fall to the bottom. After a set number of turns, the player who let the fewest number of blocks fall to the bottom wins. Dungeons of Dracula, by WaveMakers Tape 16, October 1982. A real adventure game with mazes, doors, keys, and 7 different monsters. Can you get all the way to the top room (level 10) in time? Will you trap the terrible two-headed monster or the giant spider or Dracula himself? Find out how you will do when you play Dungeons of Dracula. You are the chain which enters the maze from the left. Your mission is to trap the monster by surrounding him with your chain. You cannot touch anything, including the key, until the monster has been trapped. When you trap the monster, you must grab the key which opens the door on the right to enter the next maze. Time is always running out so you must hurry. As the maze level gets higher it becomes harder to trap the monster in the maze. It may take a smaller box around the monster to trap him. You can go over your own chain to remove it and reposition your trap for the monster. Extra time can be gained by trapping the monster and picking up the key. You cannot go through the door until it is open. You can escape to the previous maze by going out the door on the right. If the monster escapes, you remain at the same level but you lose time and must rebuild your traps. If anyone else finds some videos that they like, then please post direct links to them here. Adam

On April 30, 2018, Allen Schweitzer sent Ken Lill, Michael White and myself a private email about a possibly undocumented Astrocade motherboard modification. I asked if I could toss this question out to the public. Allen said that that was fine with him. Here is what Allen said to us: Here are the eight pictures that he included in his email. After the pictures are some comments that Allen got from Michael. Allen followed up his original email to me with this telling me that he did get a reply from Michael about that board. Does anyone know anything about these modifications? Adam

Astrocade fans and collectors sometimes ask me how many Arcadian newsletter subscribers there were in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This subject has been touched upon a few times on the Yahoo message board. Some of this information has been touched-upon on the Bally Alley Yahoo group: Subject: Arcadian Subscribers Date: March 3, 2005 Message #2067 Number of Subscribers to the Arcadian: 1979 - 915 1982 - 2,147 (sub) + 1,260 (No Mail) = 3,407 I gleaned this information from subscriber lists that Robert Fabris sent to me recently. I also have info for other years too, but I'm not about to count those addresses by hand. Adam ---------- Subject: Arcadian Newsletter Subscriber Statistics Posted by: Paul T. Date: April 25, 2006 Message #3015 I received the Arcadian mailing lists from Adam, and for the most part it's page after page of subscriber addresses and order sheets. This could be useful for finding unarchived programs and such, but at the moment there are easier avenues to explore. However, I did find something of historical interest. On November 16, 1979,and October 29, 1982, Bob Fabris made gigantic computer printouts of all the subscribers. These included cumulative statistics of the subscribers, breaking them down by state/territory/foreign country and by gender (male, female, both, non-person [like an electronics store], and unknown). I typed the statistics into a spreadsheet, so I'll upload a couple of CSV files to the group. Here's a few observations. Readership grew substantially between 1979 and 1982, from 915 to 2147, a %235 increase. It also became more regionally diverse. There was massive growth in the Southeast--1 to 22 in Georgia, 2 to 24 in Kentucky, and 1 to 16 in Louisiana, for example. Was the system initially hard to find in some areas? The subscribership was extremely skewed towards males. Ignoring non-persons and unknowns and counting 'both' as one male and one female, the male/female ratio was 712/16 in 1979 and 1862/151 in 1982. Using these figures, the female representation did grow from 2.2% to 7.5%. I do have one question. Most of the non-state state abbreviations I understand--PR for Puerto Rico, DC for the District of Colombia, VI for Virgin Islands, and CN for Canada. But what does FN stand for? Paul ---------- Bob Fabris, the Arcadian published commented on this posting April 26, 2006. He said: "Stuff comes out of the woodwork - Haven't thought about that mailing list in years.... To answer the question about 'FN' This does refer to ForeigN addresses. Post Office requirements. I had to have mail presorted by zip codes to get "publication" rates, and this would put the non-US mail into one pile which would go airmail. One of my subscribers paid for his subscription by sorting all the addresses I sent him, printing labels, and sending them to me for each issue." Paul added the two subscriber list summaries as CSV (comma-separated values) files to the Bally Archive group. The links no longer works, but here they are anyway: File : /FAQs/Arcadian Subscriber Statistics, 10-29-82.csv Description : Cumulative statistics about Arcadian subscribers, from October 29, 1982 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ballyalley/files/FAQs/Arcadian%20Subscriber%20Statistics%2C%2010-29-82.csv File : /FAQs/Arcadian Subscriber Statistics, 11-16-79.csv Description : Cumulative statistics about Arcadian subscribers, from November 16, 1979 http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ballyalley/files/FAQs/Arcadian%20Subscriber%20Statistics%2C%2011-16-79.csv I tried to find these CSV files elsewhere (I thought that I would have them on my hard drive), but I had no success finding them. It's pretty neat that subscriber records like this survived nearly 40 years! Adam

I have added a 38-minute video of Ken Lill's Blue Ram Operating Guide to YouTube. The first eight minutes of the video are an overview of the "Guide," while the rest of the video is the tutorial that Ken wrote. You can watch it on YouTube here: If you're interested in downloading a higher-quality video (2.43GB, 720p, 10Mbs, MP4) to watch on your TV or computer, then you can get that at archive.org, here: https://archive.org/details/BlueRamOperatingGuidebyKenLill The Blue Ram Operating Guide by Ken Lill is a Blue Ram BASIC tutorial written for the Bally Arcade/ Astrocade in 1984. The Blue Ram Operating Guide loads using the Perkins Engineering Blue Ram RAM expansion for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade. The "Guide" is an interactive tutorial which starts out explaining the operation of the Blue Ram hardware-- how to connect it to the Astrocade, what the switches do, and more. This includes some images and animations. The later sections are mostly text explaining the new commands in Blue Ram BASIC. The Blue Ram Operating Guide requires 16K of expansion RAM and is used from four cassette tape loads (actually, each load is three separate loads). When the load is done, it tells the user to turn off the tape (i.e. stop playing the archived file). It also tells the user when to turn the tape back on again. Then the program automatically senses when the new load is started. It then asks the user to wait for the load and then goes through its explanation again. It took Ken Lill over three months to create the tape that shows almost all of the features of the Blue Ram BASIC 1.1 in "real time." The tutorial actually shows on the screen what each feature does and how to use it, rather than the user needing to go through the manual and look up how the new Blue Ram BASIC commands work. The video is split into three main parts: 0:00 - Narration and overview of Blue Ram Operating Guide 7:40 - Blue Ram Operating Guide (video of all four parts of the tutorial) 37:21 - End Credits If you're curious about the extra features of Blue Ram BASIC 1.1, then you will enjoy this tutorial for Astrocade users. This video makes a great follow-up to the overview that I made of the Blue Ram hardware last week. If you missed that video, then you can read about it in this post: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/278894-blue-ram-expansion-for-astrocade-hardware-overview/ The Blue Ram hardware is a mystery to many Astrocade fans. Hopefully this video helps to shed some light on this otherwise niche area of the Astrocade that few have seen before now. Adam

I have created a video overview of the Blue Ram hardware expansion for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade. It includes video of the hardware, as well as video of ten examples programs. You can watch the overview on YouTube, here: You can watch or download the 3GB, 720p, 10Mbs video on Archive.org, here: https://archive.org/details/BlueRamHardwareExpansionbyPerkinsEngineeringVideoOverview The Blue Ram expansion was created by Perkins Engineering. It was first released in 1980 as a 4KB RAM expansion for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade. The Blue Ram was originally meant as a stop-gap upgrade until Bally released the add-under (AKA the ZGRASS) keyboard/upgrade. When the add-under was never released, the Blue Ram became one of three available RAM upgrades for the Astrocade. Here is some additional information about the Blue Ram from the "Bally/Astrocade Game Cartridge and Hardware FAQ:" "The Blue Ram plugs into the 50-pin connector on the back of the Astrocade and expands the programming capabilities of the Astrocade. Available either fully assembled or as a kit, it was originally released in June, 1980 as a 4K unit. Over the next couple of years the memory capacity increased, so several different versions exist (4K, 8K, 16K and a small handful of 32K versions). Several confirmed accessories for this unit were released, including: keyboard, printer interface, modem interface, EPROM burner and BSR controller. The Blue Ram could be switched into a mode that simulated a cartridge; several of the third-party game cartridges were programmed using this unit and either the Machine Language Manager cartridge or the Blue Ram Utility." This video covers the Blue Ram in detail, including explanations of how the extra hardware, such as the Blue Ram keyboard, plugs into the ZIF socket. Details of how the three toggle switches (Range, Mode and tape I/O) work are also provided. Without examples, it's hard to get a clear idea of what the Blue Ram can be used for by a user. Short videos of ten different pieces of software are shown that require a Blue Ram and are written in either Blue Ram BASIC or machine language (or a combination of both). The ten videos that are shown after the explanation of the Blue Ram hardware are: 1) Four Blue Ram BASIC (BRB) games by WaveMakers (Mike Peace): 1. Gate Escape 2. Monkey Jump 3. Outpost 19 4. Wack-A-Mole 2) Two other BRB games: 5. Astro Zap, by George Moses 6. Snake Snack, by Ken Lill. 3) Two Perkins Engineering products: 7. Blue Ram BASIC 8. Blue Ram Operating Guide (by Ken Lill) 9. Blue Ram Utility 4) Programs for External Hardware: 10. Plotter Drive Program with Space Shuttle and Robot - By Leroy Flamm Some of these programs, if used from the UltiMuli Multicart, are also compatible with the Lil' White Ram that was created by Ken Lill and Michael White. Enjoy the video! Adam

I added an article to BallyAlley.com called A Power Transformer Substitution for the Bally/Astrocade Computer System by Michael Matte (MCM Design). Michael wrote this article in April of 2018. If your original Bally power supply fails, and you have experience in electronics, then these detailed instructions with schematics and picture explain how to build a substitute power transformer. You can read the article in various formats, here: http://www.ballyalley.com/faqs/faqs.html#AstrocadePowerTransformerSubstitution Here is an example of the finished power supply (more pictures are included in the article): Thanks to Michael for writing this article. Enjoy! Adam

The Bally Shrine was a web site run by Charles Taylor in the mid-to-late 1990s. Along with Lance Squire's Bally / Astrocade FAQ, The Bally Shrine is the first Astrocade-related website that I ever saw. It is quite difficult to find any references to this website, as it seems to have been gone since the early 2000s. I've uploaded a three-page print out of The Astrocade Sale/Trade web page to archive.org. The first page looks like this: This document was scanned from the Bob Fabris Collection. Of course, all of these items that are listed for sale are no longer available. Which is a true shame, as this was probably the last place where the Astrocade kiosk was sold brand new; they cost $100. This is the seldom-seen-except-in-pictures kiosk: Imagine getting this kiosk, brand new, for a hundred bucks?!? Charles was unable to get rid of all the kiosks; they took up too much space. I think he threw away the unsold kiosks. Curt Vendel build a homebrew Astrocade Kiosk that was displayed at the Philly Classic 3 in April 2002. You can read about that here: http://www.ballyalley.com/pics/hardware_pics/astrocade_kiosk/Homebrew_Astrocade_Kiosk/Homebrew_Astrocade_Kiosk.html It's strange that people claim that once something is added to the Internet that it is around forever, for The Bally Shrine website clearly shows that this isn't true. It's nice to be able to see this small portion of the website again, even if it is only a small detail of what was available there. You can download the printout of the website here: https://archive.org/details/TheBallyShrine1999AstroSaleTradeWebPage It's is both strange and cool to see this "website" again! Does anyone else remember The Bally Shrine website? Adam

I recently purchased Ken's UltiMulti Astrocade multicart and highly recommend Ken as a seller and as a great contributor to the community. I have also purchased a working Astrocade system from Ken in the past and it still works like a champ! You can buy with confidence when buying from Ken!

Selling my personal Bally Astrocade. 15 game's 2 controllers instructions owner's manual basic cart overlays. Haven't posted it to eBay. Taking reasonable offers.

Season 2, Round 10 of the Astrocade High Score Club will last about two weeks. This round ends on Sunday, September 3, 2017 at 10pm MST. The main game is a prototype cartridge called Bowling. The BASIC bonus game is called Ten Pins by Esoterica. Bowling Bowling is a prototype game that first became available for purchase in 1985 or 1986 as a 4KB cartridge. Bowling, which was to be released by Astrocade Inc. in about 1982, was supposed to be part of the Sports Series. It would have been cartridge #3006. The programmer(s) of this game are unknown. Here is the cartridge's main menu: Here are three screenshots from Bowling: Here is what the Bally/Astrocade Game Cartridge and Hardware FAQ (version 1.82) says about this game: "This cartridge, though never finished, is playable; it contains two games: "Regulation" and "Flash." It was created by Astrocade, Inc., but was never released. New Image released it in cartridge format in 1985 (between forty and fifty were made). Mike White owns the original prototype (the only one known to exist)." The Bowling cartridge ROM image (called "bowling.bin") is part of this archive: http://www.ballyalley.com/emulation/cart_images/ROMs/astrocade_rom_collection.zip The prototype, Bowling, is a one-of-a-kind cartridge. Copies of it were made in the mid-80s until (probably) the early 2000s, therefore, it's possible, though not probable, to get your hands on an actual cartridge. If you don't have it, then it is included on, I think, every multicart that has been released for the Astrocade over the years. Bowling does require the knob, but it doesn't require precise control with it, so it should run okay using the MAME Astrocade emulator with proper setup. I suggest using an X-Box 360 controller for the knob, as this work well. In about 1981 or 1982, Astrocade, Inc. published a 34-page color game catalog of the cartridges available for the Bally Astrocade. The catalog was called "The Professional Arcade: More Games... More Fun... and More to Come..." Among the 28 cartridges showcased in the catalog, five were never released: Bowling, Creative Crayon, Conan the Barbarian, Music Maker, and Soccer. The catalog listing for Bowling looked like this: Here is the game description for Bowling from this catalog: "It's like actually being at the alley. The game has all of the action and sounds of the real thing. Direct your ball with as much hook as you want. Make strikes, spares-- but watch out for splits and gutter balls! Keeps score according to official rules. Try your hand at a perfect game! Can be played alone or by up to 4 players." In June of 1982, Bally released a press release for Bowling that looked like this: The pdf of the press release is here: http://www.ballyalley.com/documentation/press/Bowling_[Press_Release_06-06-1982].pdf I've OCRed the press release for Bowling. It says: "For Release June 6, 1982 --- "Astrocade unveils bowling video game cartridge at CES "CHICAGO-Astrocade, Inc. (formerly Astrovision, Inc.) unveiled its BOWLING video game cartridge at the Consumer Electronics Show here today. "BOWLING makes you feel like you're actually in a bowling alley. You can aim, control hooks, and watch the exciting pin action as the ball hits the pins with a bang. BOWLING keeps a running score on strikes, spares, and pins. "With a game variation called "flash bowling," you can also rack up bonus points by rolling over a moving dot, as in the popular commercial bowling machines. "BOWLING can be played only on the Astrocade home video game. It will be available this Fall at Astrocade dealers, priced at $29.95." Of course, since Bowling wasn't released, there is no official box. That didn't stop an enterprising go-getter with quite some artistic talent to create an "official" box for Bowling over on Hyperspin-fe.com. Thanks to "Avar" in the AtariAge forums, and member of the HyperSpin dev team, for sharing this picture with me (note, he didn't create it; I don't know who did). This is what the Bowling box may have looked like had it been released in 1982: I don't have a picture of the Bowling cartridge copy that was released by Michael White starting in the mid-80s. The cartridge's label was probably based on this screenshot that Michael printed to his printer (that was hooked-up to his Astrocade). I think that this label was probably originally printed in color: There is no manual for Bowling. Michael White did write some basic instructions for both versions of Bowling included on the cartridge ("regular" and "Flash"), I retyped these simple instructions back in 2001. Here they are: BOWLING Cartridge 1. Insert cartridge and press [RESET] 2. Choose #1 or #2 (from keypad or hand controller#1) 3. Set difficulty level (from keypad or hand controller#1) 4. Input number of players (1 to 4) Moving the joystick up or down positions the ball. Moving the joystick left or right aims the ball by moving the sight marker. The ball will roll straight towards (and over) it. Turning the knob puts a left hook on the ball (green marker below). The hook increases as the marker moves to the right. Sorry, there is no left hook for you left-handers. Pulling the trigger rolls the ball. Players use individual hand controls. FLASHING BOWLING works the same as FLASH-O-MATIC that can be seen on the coin-op "Shuffle-Alleys" found in bars and taverns. The "Flasher" gives strike and spare awards by its location. When the ball touches a pin the flash stops strobing. It does not resume on the second throw either (no DUAL FLASH). The highest scores are given by "freezing" the flasher at "dead center." The center of the alley gives 700 for a strike and 350 for a spare. If you can get any kind of score out of the upper three difficulties you are truly ready to BOWL FOR DOLLARS!! Even with Michael's directions, I'm not exactly how to keep track of this game's score, or even how close the prototype Bowling cartridge is to being complete. Here is a 30-second YouTube video (posted by "FunCade 64") that shows the basic gameplay of Bowling: Gameplay Options Bowling Options: Difficulty level: Intermediate Bowling (Scoring): Regular Bowling (Scoring) Up to eight points will be awarded for playing "Regular Bowling." We're playing for the highest score. A perfect game should be 300 points. Flash Bowling (Scoring) I don't understand "Flash Bowling," nor have I played the mechanical versions of this game (although, I think I have seen them before). For this reason, "Flash Bowling" is being treated as sort of a bonus game. If you play "Flash Bowling," then you get one point. If you play it correctly (however that gets done), then you'll earn two points. It's okay if one person explains how to play "Flash Bowling" and then we all pile on and play it correctly. Scoring Exception Since Bowling is a prototype, it may be that all functions of the game don't work properly (which may just add to the fun-- whoopee!). If we discover some issues with this game, or if it's just not fun, then I may change the scoring to make this round more enjoyable. Ten Pins This round's BASIC bonus game is a rather nice-looking, first-perspective bowling game called Ten Pins. The "AstroBASIC" version of Ten Pins was released by Esoterica on Tape 5 with Garbersville in 1982. Ten Pins is "an exciting game of bowling complete with hook ball, gutter balls, AMF style pinsetter and every spare situation found in real bowling." Here are a few pictures of Ten Pins: For this round's bonus game, I had originally picked Bowl by Edge Software. After trying it, I realized it is a two-player-only game. I needed to choose another game, so special thanks to Paul for recommending his favorite Astrocade BASIC pinball game, Ten Pins. The cassette tape that contains Ten Pins looks like this: The Box for Ten Pins looks like this: The instructions for Ten Pins are here: http://www.ballyalley.com/tape_manuals/esoterica/Ten%20Pins%20&%20Garbersville%20(instructions)(b&w)(300%20dpi).pdf I'm not pleased with how the instructions for Ten Pins are laid out, so I OCRed them, reformatted and simplified them: Ten Pins Instructions Ten Pins from Esoterica is a realistic, fun game of bowling complete with strikes, spares, hooks, and even gutter balls, for 1 to 4 players. To load the game, type: INPUT; RUN To begin: After the game load, you will see N: Now, input the number of players directly from key pad. Line the ball up by moving the joystick to the right or left. To throw a fast ball move the joystick forward, to throw a slow ball pull the joystick back. After the ball has been released you can hook the ball by moving the joystick to the right or left---Once for a moderate hook, twice for a sharp one. DO NOT HOOK THE BALL TOO SOON! The computer will keep accurate score for all players. Some practice may be required before scores over 200 are achieved. You can download the "AstroBASIC," 2000-baud version of Ten Pins here: http://www.ballyalley.com/program_downloads/2000_baud_programs/esoterica_ltd/ten_pins_[esoterica_ltd].zip Ten Pins is just one of many BASIC bowling games released on the Astrocade system. Not only are there plenty of bowling games for the Astorcade, but there are BASIC programs written to keep track of your really bowling league scores. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, at least by Astrocade standards, the world seemed crazy for bowling! The world of the Astrocade wasn't the only corner of the computer world that loved bowling. In about 1984, on my Commodore 64, I used to play a bowling game written in BASIC. It was given to me on a disk by a neighbor and, to me, was called "Bowling." I thought that I would try to find it today. To my surprise, I found it rather quickly. The game is actually called Bowling Champ by Joseph Ganci. It appeared in the December 1983 issue of Compute's Gazette. I had no idea that this was a type-in magazine listing! Bowling Champ looks very similar to the Astrocade game Bowl by Edge Software (the game we almost played this round). Here is a screenshot of the C64 game that I just made: Compute! Publications had pretty high standards. I just found the issue that Bowling Champ first appeared in. Check out this cool artwork that accompanied the game when it was published: There is nothing like this artwork in the Astrocade newsletters; that's too bad. In comparison to this simple Commodore 64 game, Ten Pins seems a little more sophisticated, but I guess I won't know for sure until I play it during this round. Bonus Points There are many bonus points available this round for both games. Bowling - Video Review - (1 Point) - Although I found examples of gameplay footage for this cartridge, I couldn't find any reviews. Anyone who makes a video review of Bowling will get a bonus point. Bowling - Multiplayer Game - (1 Point) - If you play a game with more than one person, than you'll get a bonus point.[/i] Bowling - Perfect Game - (1 Point) - If anyone manages a perfect game (300 points), then you'll get a bonus point. This seems really hard, but there may be a trick to it that makes it easy to do.[/i] Bowling - Documenting Bogs - (1 Point) - Since this game is a prototype, there may be some bugs in it. If anyone find any problems, and documents them, then you'll earn one bonus point. Just in case there are dozens of bugs, you can only earn one bonus point no matter how matter bugs are found. Ten Pins - Playing Ten Pins - (1 Point) - Yes, just for loading this game and giving it a quick in AstroBASIC will earn one point. Ten Pins - Highest Score - (1 Point) - The maximum points that can be earned are, of course, 300. Unlike bowling, there is no additional bonus for a perfect game of Ten Pins. Ten Pins - Video Review - (1 Point) - Anyone who makes a video review of Ten Pins will get a bonus point. Summary For such a late game in the Astrocade's history (1982), Bowling looks like it could have been released in 1978. Maybe Astrocade, Inc. didn't publish Bowling because it looked rather poor for the time. Or maybe its just not finished. I'm curious if anyone can figure-out a way to get the most out of this game. For instance, is it possible that "Flash Bowling" is more fun than the regular version of this game? I was pretty shocked to see Ten Pins when it first loaded; it looks really good for a BASIC game. I'm surprised that this wasn't released under a title such as "Bowling 3D" to capitalize on the game's first-person-like effect. Ten Pins has two separate loads, so I suspect that it may be using some machine language graphic routines, but I'm not sure. This round my strain us; I'm not sure I'm prepared to play one bowling game, let along two of them. However, this competition may make this round more fun than I expect. Please post scores early, as this will give us some scores to play against. I'll be gone for some key days during this round, including the weekend that this round ends. If it seems that it is taking me a little while to wrap-up Round 10 once it's over, you can be sure that I'll get to it when I can at the beginning of the next week. Adam

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A few weeks ago I was testing and comparing all of the programs on Ken Lill's latest Ultimulti cartridge (version 3.0) against the listing of programs that he made for it. My method of testing the programs is to switch the cartridge's DIP switches while the machine is still on and then press the reset button on the console to bring up the new game. Sometimes, before I press reset, this causes some pretty weird effects on the TV screen. Most of the time this looks like garbage or a program crash (which, technically, is what is happening because I'm switching out part of the ROM while the program is actually running). On rare occasions, the crashes look a little artistic. Rarer still are programs that continue to run, but act very strangely. Take this weird mish-mash of both Treasure Cove and The Incredible Wizard; it's an insanely cool Treasure Cove title screen mixed in with the maze from The Incredible Wizard: This happened while I was switching from one game to the other. Note that that DIP switch positions have only one bit difference between them: Treasure Cove - DIPSwitch position $3B, or 00111011B to The Incredible Wizard - DIPSwitch position $33, or 00110011B I tried to duplicate this feat again with no luck. I want to mention that this unusual picture is not a fault of the UltiMulti cartridge. This results from normal operation of the Astrocade. This reminds me of the Atari 2600 technique of "frying" (turning the Atari system on and off very quickly) which can get some very strange, and sometimes predictable, results. Has anyone else seen strange effects like this? I'd love to see some pictures of other unusual occurrences. Adam

Season 2, Round 9 of the Astrocade High Score Club will last about two weeks. This round ends on Sunday, August 20'th at 10pm MST. The two main games are on the cartridge Grand Prix / Demolition Derby. The BASIC bonus game is called Sideswipe. This very simple game was written in 1980 by Mike Peace and published in the Cursor newsletter. It was later re-printed in the "AstroBASIC" manual, and even eventually found its way onto a tape release by WaveMakers. Grand Prix / Demolition Derby Grand Prix / Demolition Derby is a 4KB cartridge released by Astrocade Inc. in 1981. It is cartridge #2014 and is part of the Action/Skills Series. There is a label variation called simply Grand Prix. These two games were programmed by Bob Ogden and Rickey Spiece. Scot L. Norris did the audio for this game. The Grand Prix/Demolition Derby cartridge ROM image (called "grandprx.bin") is part of this archive: http://www.ballyalley.com/emulation/cart_images/ROMs/astrocade_rom_collection.zip Grand Prix/Demolition Derby is a very common cartridge, but if you don't have it, then it is included on every multicart that has been released for the Astrocade over the years. Neither of the main games on this cartridge requires the knob, so both games play fine using the MAME Astrocade emulator. According to a letter sent to the Arcadian in January of 1979 by Glenn Pogue, the Grand Prix / Demolition Derby cartridge was supposed to be released by Bally on March 16, 1979, but I don't think that there is a Bally release of this game. You can read about the upcoming 1979 releases from Bally in Glenn's letter, here: http://www.ballyalley.com/newsletters/arcadian/letters/Glenn%20Pogue/Letter%20(Glenn%20Pogue)(Jan%2022%201979-).pdf Here is the description of the game from the manual's cover: "Four challenging courses in race car driving excitement! Jockey for position at Le Mans or go for broke on a dangerous Rally track! There's a constant trade-off between speed and maneuverability! Varying skill levels upgrade the challenge and the fun. Here is all the excitement of formula-style racing! The competition gets hotter as players improve their skills! 1 or 2 players." The game's manual cover looks like this: Here is what the cartridge looks like: Here is a label variant of the cartridge: Here is the cartridge's main menu: Here are Grand Prix's three different courses: Four-player games of Grand Prix are possible. Take a look: The winner of round of Grand Prix will see this announcement (sorry, there's no checkered flag!): In Demolition Derby, you can play with up to four players. If less than four people are playing, then the computer controls the extra cars. Here is how the derby begins: This is a game in-progress: Here are highlights from the Grand Prix/Demolition Derby manual: Grand Prix Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines! The starting gun fires, and you're off in a flash, careening around dangerous turns in the race for the finish line. Grand Prix gives you all the excitement of formula-style racing, with three different race tracks and two skill levels to choose from. Starting the Game Enter the number of players (1 to 4), then select the difficulty level by selecting 1 for pro, 2 for beginner. At the pro level, the race cars are able to reach higher speeds than at the beginner level. Select the number of laps (1-99). If you enter a number that is less than 10, press = to start the race. Playing the Game The hand control functions for Grand Prix are: Trigger - Accelerator for race car. Knob - Has no function. Joystick - In right position, race car will turn clockwise; in left position, it will turn counterclockwise. Up position will move car in forward direction. The object of Grand Prix is to be the first race car to reach the finish line. To check your racing time, watch the time clock in the upper middle part of the screen. Once the race has started, use the joystick to move your car around the track. But, be careful not to crash into the other cars or into the race track walls. Skillful driving maneuvers are as important for success as high speeds. The first car to reach the finish line after completing the specified number of laps is the winner. Demolition Derby (1 to 4 players) All the thrills of a live demolition derby! Contestants ram their cars into each other until only one car remains running. Starting the Game Enter the number of players (1 to 4). Computer-controlled cars are provided for more action in games with less than four players. Select the maximum number of points (1-99). If you enter a number that is less than 10, press the = to start the game. Playing the Game The hand control functions for Demolition Derby are: Trigger - Accelerator for car. Knob - Has no function. Joystick - In right position, car turns clockwise; in left position car turns counterclockwise. It automatically moves backward (to protect engine from being hit) unless the joystick is pushed forward. The object of the game is to be the last car remaining on the field with your engine still running. Points start at the number you specify, but one point is lost each time a car is hit in the front. When a car finally reaches 0 points, it is out commission. The last car with points remaining (and engine running) is declared the winner. You'll stay in the competition longer by protecting the front end of your car and backing into your opponent's. In this way, your car's radiator, engine, etc. will remain intact. Here is a YouTube video that shows the gameplay of Grand Prix/Demolition Derby. This video was created by "Highretrogamelord:" Gameplay Options Grand Prix Options: Difficulty level: Pro Number of Laps: 5 Demolition Derby (Options): Difficulty level: Pro Maximum Number of Points: 10 Grand Prix/Demolition Derby (Scoring): Five points will be awarded for playing each of the two main games. Grand Prix We are playing for lowest overall time for Grand Prix tracks 1-3. You can post each track score separately and I'll figure-out the math. Remember to complete 5 laps of each track. I presume all of our times will be very close; there may even be some ties. Demolition Derby This game does not keep track of the player's time. If you play a game and are the winner, then you'll receive five points. I don't expect that there will be anyone who can't win against the computer, but if there is anyone for some reason who can't beat the three computer players (how sad!), then that person will receive three "participation points." Yeah, yeah; that does sound a little like "everyone gets a trophy!" Sideswipe This round's bonus game is a straightforward "racing" game, one that I expect nearly every "AstroBASIC" owner played in the 1980s, as it was reprinted in the "AstroBASIC" Owner's Manual. The game is called Sideswipe. It's an early effort by Mike Peace, who wrote the WaveMakers games. Sideswipe looks very-much like an early BASIC game; that's because it is very early. Here are some screenshots of Sideswipe in action: Sideswipe was first published on page 69 of the October 1980 issue of Cursor: In 1981, it was reprinted in the "AstroBASIC" owner's manual on page 89: Eventually (in 1982, I think) it was included with three other programs program on WaveMakers' tape 12 called Four Famous Freebies. You can download the "AstroBASIC" version of Sideswipe here: http://www.ballyalley.com/program_downloads/2000_baud_programs/wave_makers/Sideswipe/Sideswipe%20(WaveMakers).zip This archive also includes a program modification by Lance Brisee that was submitted to the Arcadian, but never published. See his Lance's letter in the Arcadian area of BallyAlley.com for details: http://www.ballyalley.com/newsletters/arcadian/letters/Lance_Brisee_(1984)(Letter_to_Arcadian).pdf The difference that immediately jumps out in this game modification is that Lance added messages based upon your final score, like "YOU SHOULD BE DRIVING A WHEELCHAIR" or "YOU SHOULD BE DRIVING A RACING CAR". Here are the directions for Sideswipe as they were printed in Cursor: "Your goal is to steer your car through and around the other vehicles on the road at the same time making sure you don't hit the sides of the road. Your car is the one with the broken boxes at the top of the screen. The road moves up toward you from the bottom of the screen as shown in the photograph. Mike as usual has done a very thorough job using very limited memory. This program uses some interesting sounds, and a unique method of movement. Use Hand Control Knob #1." Here are the directions for Sideswipe as they were printed in the "AstroBASIC" manual: "The car appears on the top of the screen moving toward the bottom. Steer your car using knob (1) to avoid obstacles as they approach. Top score is 100 points. You lose 3 points for each sideswipe and 10 points for each collision." Don't be turned off by this game's primitive graphics. In the mid-eighties I used to play a type-in game very similar to this (probably even more primitive!) in typing class on a TRS-80 Model III. I had fun with the alternate TRS-80 version of the game then, and playing a few games of Sideswipe yesterday made me realize, that in some strange way the game holds up to this day. Maybe because it's so simple, or maybe because the game doesn't take long to play-- but I think you'll enjoy it for the brief period that you'll play it for this HSC round. Bonus Points There are many bonus points available this round for both games. Grand Prix/Demolition Derby - Video Review - (1 Point) - Although I found examples of gameplay footage for this cartridge, I couldn't find any reviews. Anyone who makes a video review of Grand Prix/Demolition Derby will get a bonus point. Grand Prix/Demolition Derby - Multiplayer Game - (Up to 3 Points) - This cartridge is a rarity in that up to four players can play at one time. For every additional player who you can round-up to play with you, then you'll earn an extra bonus point. Don't have any Astrocade fans nearby, then maybe it's time that you get your significant other into the incredible videogame system that is the Astrocade. That will be worth one extra point. If you can get that person, plus your trained dog, and possibly your Guinea pig, then that's three points right there! Easy! Sideswipe - Playing Sideswipe - (1 Point) Sideswipe - Highest Score - (1 Point) - The maximum points that can be earned are 100. Whoever gets the closest to 100 points gets a bonus point. If there is a tie, then multiple players can earn this bonus point. Sideswipe - Video Review - (1 Point) - Anyone who makes a video review of Sideswipe will get a bonus point. Summary Someday, I'd like to try a four-player game of Grand Prix/Demolition Derby at a large gaming get-together. I bet this game would be sure to please the crowd. Sideswipe is a very short, 29-line, BASIC program. For such a short program, I'd say that you get a lot of bang out of your buck. Is it a great game that you'll come back over and over again? Nope. Would Sideswipe have been worth the small time investment in time that it would have taken to type the program into BASIC in 1981. Certainly! Enjoy the two main games and the simple bonus game-- and, remember, post your high scores often. Adam

Season 2, Round 8 of the Astrocade High Score Club will last about two and a half weeks. This round ends on Sunday, July 30'th at 10pm MST. The main game is the arcade game Gorf, which uses the Astrocade chipset. The BASIC bonus program is called Nuke the #%@$*&!!, released in 1982, by Jay Fenton. This is a 1982 B-Side to Life, a "game" which was originally released on tape. We're playing Gorf because it gives us a glimpse of what could have been had Bally stuck with the Bally Arcade system. Maybe if the original Bally Arcade console systems didn't overheat from their initial release, then Bally would have added more memory and supported the hi-res ("commercial") mode that is built into the Astrocade's chipset. Perhaps this would have been called the Super Bally Arcade and released in 1981 once the price of RAM dropped. I guess we'll never know, for in 1981 Astrovision, Inc. released the Astrocade in the same configuration as its original January 1978 release by Bally. What did we really miss out on? We'll never know. Gorf Gorf is an arcade game released in 1981. It was programmed by Jay Fenton, who (among many other arcade games and Astrocade projects) programmed Bally BASIC and "AstroBASIC" for the Astrocade. I will be playing Gorf using the MAME emulator. If anyone knows of any classic arcade collections that contain Gorf, then let me know and I'll add information about it here. Here are a few screenshots of Gorf. Some of these screenshots include the bezel overlay, which is actually nearly-required to play the game, as there is analog feedback that lights up part of the bezel to tell the player which rank they have reached: Here is a zip file that includes all of the files needed to play Gorf on any version of MAME that doesn't emulate the Vortex voice synthesizer. I think that this means any version of MAME that is pre-version 0.181. Just place the files in the three appropriate directories in MAME (artwork, roms, and samples): Gorf (MAME).zip The upright version of the Gorf game looked like this: Here is a close-up of the game's marquee: The front of the arcade flyer for Gorf looked like this: Gorf uses a non-standard joystick. It looks like this: I have a little experience playing the arcade version of Gorf. This arcade joystick made my index finger tired, so I'm glad that I'll be playing the game in MAME using either an Atari CX40 joystick or the Edladdin Supreme 7800 joystick. I'm not overly familiar with Gorf, so I'm relying on background information from its Wikipedia page, which you can read in its entirety here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorf I've excerpted some of the key points and paragraphs from Gorf's Wikipedia entry: "Gorf is an arcade game released in 1981 by Midway Mfg., whose name was advertised as an acronym for "Galactic Orbiting Robot Force". It is a multiple-mission fixed shooter with five distinct modes of play, essentially making it five games in one. It is well known for its use of synthesized speech, a new feature at the time. [...] "The player controls a spaceship that can move left, right, up and down around the lower third of the screen. The ship can fire a single shot (called a "quark laser" in this game), which travels vertically up the screen. Unlike similar games, where the player cannot fire again until the existing shot has disappeared, the player can choose to fire another shot at any time; if the previous shot is still on screen, it disappears. "Gorf consists of five distinct "missions", each with its own patterns of enemies. The central goal of each mission is to destroy all enemies in that wave, which takes the player to the next mission. Successfully completing all five missions will increase the player's rank and loop back to the first mission, where play continues on a higher difficulty level. The game continues until the player loses all their lives. The player can advance through the ranks of Space Cadet, Space Captain, Space Colonel, Space General, Space Warrior, and Space Avenger, with a higher difficulty level at each rank. Along the way, a robotic voice heckles and threatens the player, often calling the player by their current rank (for example, "Some galactic defender you are, Space Cadet!"). Some versions also display the player's current rank via a series of lit panels in the cabinet." The five different screens in Gorf are: Astro Battles Laser Attack Galaxians Space Warp Flag Ship You can read more about the Gorf arcade game at the Arcade Museum website: http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7983 The newer versions of MAME don't use the prerecorded voice samples, and instead emulate the Vortex voice chip that was included with the game. I prefer to play the game using my slightly-older version of the emulator (MAME 0.177). If you have trouble emulating the game, then try reading this thread on AtariAge: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260595-gorf-on-mameproblems/ There are quite a few fun-to-watch video for Gorf, both using real hardware and emulation. Here is a selection of a few that I've browsed: "John's Arcade Game Reviews & Tech" has a video called "GORF Arcade Game Review - Bally/Midway 1981 - John's Arcade on the Road!" The video allows you to hear the digitized speech and see how a real machine functions: Here is a video by "gan9e" called "GORF 1981 HD." This shows Gorf running in MAME, with speech and with the bezel overlay. This is how it looks when I play the game in MAME: "bill heatherly" has a short video that does a good job of capturing the voice in the game. This video is called "Gorf Video Arcade Game:" This video, by "Gaming History Source," shows the arcade game and various different home conversions of the game. The video is called "Let's Compare ( Gorf ):" Midway sold a 28-page manual called Gorf Combat Manual for $1.95. It gives many hints on how to play the game. I've never seen another manual like this before for an arcade game. I'm also not sure where this manual was available for sale. The manual has been scanned and is available here: http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=2837 Gorf (Options): There is only one option for Gorf: start the game with three lives. You can insert additional quarters to start the game with more lives, but please don't do that for this round. Gorf (Scoring): Up to ten points are awarded for playing Gorf. We are playing for the highest score. Nuke the #%@$*&!! The BASIC bonus "game" is Nuke the #%@$*&!! by Jay Fenton. This was released in 1982 on a tape as the "B-Side" to the game Life. George Moses sold Jay's Life program. Advertisements for Life are here included in the October and December Arcadian newsletter: Arcadian 4, no. 12 (Oct. 07, 1982): 122. Arcadian 5, no. 2 (Dec. 3, 1982): 35. Here is what the ad says about Life (and "Nuke"): "Sure, you've seen Life games before. A BASIC program was published in a magazine a year or two ago. It took 5 or 10 minutes per generation! Well, how about one generation per second? Yup!!! Jay Fenton, the guy who wrote Bally BASIC, Gunfight, Scribbling, Calculator and Gorf has revved-up you Z-80 processor to give you a full screen scan and a new LIFE generation each second! Put some LIFE in your Arcade (and give some spending money to Jay Fenton to keep him in "programming mode!"). Buy Life and get Nuke the !$&! free!" The 12 pages of instructions for Nuke the #%@$*&!! and Life are available at BallyAlley.com: http://www.ballyalley.com/tape_manuals/misc/Life%20and%20Nuke%20the%20---.pdf The twelve-page manual has ten pages devoted to Life, and just one page devoted to the "B-Side." Here is a picture of the one page of short instructions for this round's bonus "game:" I've OCRed the short instructions for Nuke the #%@$*&!!: NUKE THE @%$* © Jay Fenton, 1982 Nuke the @%$* will automatically start after loading with the command: :INPUT GO. Use hand control trigger one to drop the bomb and to "speed up" the program. (Pulling the trigger will shorten the wait period for the title and score frames.) After Arcade power-up you should RESET without BASIC inserted before loading Nuke the @<%$?. This will set the alternate color map registers which are used to display a "fallout" pattern. The object of this game is prevent nuclear war by showing the emptiness of life even if you win the battle, because you have no human organisms left to share the victory with. So, if no nuclear war breaks out in the next five years, please give the credit to this program and its creator, Jay Fenton. In the meantime, have fun and remember... aim for the nuclear power plant for the most devastation for your bomb dollar!!! You can download the "AstroBASIC" version of Nuke the #%@$*&!! here: http://www.ballyalley.com/program_downloads/2000_baud_programs/jay_fenton/jay_fenton.html#NuketheBaddiesAB Bonus Points There are many bonus points available this round for both games. Gorf (1 Point) - Video Review - Unlike most games we play, there are scores of videos for Gorf. Still, as always, anyone who makes a video review of Gorf will get a bonus point. Gorf (1 Point) - Highest Rank - The player who reaches the highest rank among us players will receive one bonus point (i.e. you don't have to earn the rank of "Space Avenger" to get a bonus point-- just the highest among us players). Gorf (1 Point) - Play Home Versions - Gorf was released for many home systems in the early 1980s, but never for the Bally Arcade/Astrocade. Anyone who plays home computer/console versions of Gorf from the 1980s will be awarded one bonus per version that you play. Some suggestions of versions of Gorf that you can play are for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200/Atari 8-Bit, Commodore 64 and any of the many other systems that this game was released on. If you like emulating other systems, then there are a ton of points that can be earned here. To keep this semi-fair, the maximum amount of points that can be earned for playing other versions of Gorf is five points! Nuke the #%@$*&!! (1 Point) - Playing Nuke the #%@$*&!! Nuke the #%@$*&!! (1 Point) - Secret bonus point - I'm not saying how to earn this bonus point. Try playing the game in a number of different ways to see the ending of the game. Post screenshots of what you find. To be fair, I don't qualify for this point. Nuke the #%@$*&!! (1 Point) - Video Review - Anyone who makes a video review of Nuke the #%@$*&!! will get a bonus point. Summary Nuke the #%@$*&!! isn't much of a game. It's not meant to be one; it's more of a political statement. I didn't miss the irony of the distribution of Nuke the #%@$*&!!. This game, which could have just as easily called Death to Them All!, is on the opposite side of a tape on which the main game is called Life. The game "Nuke" is everything that Life is not. Nuke the #%@$*&!! gives us an interesting glimpse into the human condition: do we want to play a "game" in which, with the push of the trigger button, we can kill millions of people? In this "game," we're not out to save the Earth from invaders from space. No, it's simply "us against them," and we just might be the bad guys. Can we handle that? Will you drop your one bomb, or will you allow yourself to be ridiculed for being weak and flying over the city without releasing death to millions of people? Post your scores as you play Gorf over the next couple of weeks. If anyone finds any tips while playing these games, then please share them. In the next round, we'll be back to playing a regular Astrocade game on cartridge. For now, enjoy playing a classic arcade game that's got a touch of the Astrocade inside of it. Have fun! Adam

How to Trim Astrocade Third-Party Cartridges to Fit More-Easily (I posted this fix today to the Bally Alley Yahoo groups, but I figure I should post it here to, as there seem to be more readers on Astrocade AtariAge sub-forum than on the Astrocade Yahoo group.) The third-party cartridge cases for several Astrocade games, such as Sea Devil, ICBM Attack and the various UltiMulti cartridges from Ken Lill (among others) can be little tough to fit into the cartridge slot when inserting them into the Astrocade. Ken explained to me a few days ago an easy way to fix this problem. Here's what you need to do: 1) Trim the cartridge case with an X-acto knife. Trim about 1/16'th of an inch (don't trim too much!) of plastic from these two areas in this picture: That's it. In the above picture , the top cartridge is a third-party cartridge, and the bottom cartridge is a regular cartridge from Bally/Astrocade, Inc. (in this case, the cartridge is The Incredible Wizard). I tried this fix, and now my third-party cartridges insert into the cartridge slot much easier now. Give it a try; you'll be happy you did it. (Special thanks to Ken for his help with this simple, but clever, fix.) Adam

Season 2, Round 7 of the Astrocade High Score Club will last about two weeks. This round ends on Sunday, July 9'th at 10pm MST. The main game is an unreleased Astrocade, Inc. prototype called Conan the Barbarian. The BASIC bonus game is a 1982 Arcadian type-in dungeon-crawler called The Crown of Zeus by Todd Johnson. Conan the Barbarian Conan the Barbarian is a prototype 8K game that never had an official release on cartridge. There is quite a bit of information known about this cartridge, which was known by three different names during its development: King Arthur's Adventure, Conan the Barbarian and Quest for the Orb. Since Conan had no official release, the only cartridge label that is available is one that I scanned in black and white: I used to have a version of this cartridge that was made for me in about 2001 by Michael White. I seem to remember that the label was printed in color on a dot-matrix printed. I think that the background was yellow. This game has a very long and convoluted background. The Bally/Astrocade Game Cartridge and Hardware FAQ has some interesting information on this game under its various titles: King Arthur's Adventure Astrovision Inc., #5005 Suffered the same fate as Roman Checkers. This time the number went to Artillery Duel. It was supposed to be a Dungeons & Dragons type game. (Cursor pg.73). It may be an early version of Conan the Barbarian, before the movie license was attached. (Brett Bilbrey, Astrocade Discussion Group, Message #7175) Conan the Barbarian Astrocade Inc., Strategy Series, #5005, 8K cart AKA Quest For The Orb. This cartridge is not finished, but did see a limited release through Dave Carson Software in 1985 (about forty were made). (Michigan Astrobugs Newsletter JUL.82 pg.1, Arcadian vol.4 pg.33,75, vol.5 pg.16,36,46,66, vol.6 pg. 99, vol.7 pg.2,13,46,67,94) Hyped up to be one of the greatest games Astrocade players would ever see, and the first video game to spin off from a movie. (Astrocade press release) They failed to secure the rights, however, and the game continued development as Quest for the Orb. Quest for the Orb Astrocade Inc., #5004 AKA Conan the Barbarian. When Astrocade failed to secure the Conan license, the game continued development as Quest for the Orb. According to a news item in Astro Bits that was published on page 11 of the August 1982 Electronic Games magazine, Quest for the Orb, like Conan, would also have also been a licensed property: "Two major licensing agreements soon bring star characters from other media into the world of videogaming. Astrocade has concluded agreements for games based on Conan and G.I. Joe. The two titles, both reworkings of programs already in development, should be available quite soon. (Conan is based on the Quest for the Orb game which the game-maker had previewed at 1982 industry shows)." I looked into this, and came across a few links about Orb Quest, a pen and paper role playing game based on The Fantasy Trip game system. Here is a picture of the book's cover: Here are some interesting links if you'd like to follow-up on this never-to-be released book tie-in. This is an overview of the Orb Quest game, including some interesting pictures: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18161/orb-quest Here is a scan of the Orb Quest booklet: http://www.mocagh.org/otherbook/fantasytrip-mq8.pdf Conan the Barbarian seems to have first been mentioned in a 1981 Astrocade, Inc. catalog. I have extracted the Conan ad from page 30 of the catalog: Here is a link to the complete catalog: http://www.ballyalley.com/ads_and_catalogs/bally/astrocade_game_catalog-(150dpi).pdf Here is the brief description of the game from the ad: "Fearsome monsters give chase through a series of mazes as Conan, armed with his sword, battles them. Various levels allow you to play this adventure game with skills ranging from novice to professional. See how many monsters you can get." The game, when it was known as Conan, was mentioned in a June 6, 1982 press release, which you can read here: [url=http://www.ballyalley.com/documentation/press/Conan_[Press_Release_06-06-1982].pdf]http://www.ballyalley.com/documentation/press/Conan_[Press_Release_06-06-1982].pdf Here is an ad for Quest for the Orb: I have OCRed the text for game's ad: Quest for the Orb "Ancient scientists of the lost civilization Morte managed to extract the essence of the universe and fuse it into a single precise object-- the Orb. You must find the Orb, hidden in the castle's labyrinth, and return it to its owner, the White Magician. "Demons, monsters and traps are threats along the way. Beware the powers of black magic, cursed items and other evil influence. In your aid are spells given to you by the White Magician, along with other magic items and weapons strewn along the way. Ancient treasures are hidden here also! Fare ye well, adventurer, in your quest for the Orb!" After reading this game description, there is no doubt that this Astrocade game was meant to be based on the game Orb Quest. You can view the full More Games. More Fun. More to Come... from the leader in video game technology catalog, which features nine cartridges. Four of these games were never released: Coloring Book with Light Pen, Munchie, Music Maker I, and Quest for the Orb. http://www.ballyalley.com/ads_and_catalogs/bally/BPA_Catalog_(With_9_Games).pdf Since Conan is a prototype cartridge, there are no official instructions, but Mike White did write these very brief instructions and send them to people who bought the game cartridge from him: CONAN THE BARBARIAN Cartridge 1. Insert cartridge and press [RESET] 2. Pull trigger #1 twice to start the play This game is for one player only, and all control is on hand controller #1 The joystick moves Conan around inside the arena The knob raises and lowers Conan's sword The trigger exchanges the sword between Conan's left and right hand To slay evil creatures, use the sword by turning the knob If strength, stamina, or defenses fail, "FAREWELL WARRIOR!" The Conan the Barbarian cartridge ROM image (called "conan.bin") is part of this archive: http://http://www.ballyalley.com/emulation/cart_images/cart_images.html#AstrocadeROMCollection I think that Conan is included on every multicart that has been released for the Astrocade over the years. This game is best played on real hardware. Since there is so much that is unknown about this game, there are some fun ways to earn bonus points this round-- so make sure to give some of them a try. Quest for the Orb - Game Review Oddly, although Quest for the Orb was never released, it was reviewed in the 1982 book The Complete Guide to Conquering Video Games: How to Win Every Game in the Galaxy by Jeff Rovin. Here is the full review: "This is a well-developed, multifaceted action game which crams a great deal of activity into a single cartridge. It is similar to Quest for the Rings [for the Magnavox Odyssey 2 system], though played without the aid of a game board. "Long dead scientists of the lost civilization of Morte once unlocked the essence of life itself and encased it within the orb. This was sealed deep into the catacombs of a castle, which was subsequently invaded by an evil enchanter. He tried and failed to crack the orb. He perished years ago, but his demonic familiars live on. Making your way through the labyrinths and dungeons of the castle, you will be protected by magical spells and enchanted weapons belonging to your sponsor, the White Magician, who seeks to use the orb for good. You will also uncover ancient treasures along the way, as well as monsters, traps, and curses, any of which can slay you. Be prepared to dip into your bag of tricks for the power to induce sleep, hurl magic missiles, become invisible, confuse your enemies, launch fireballs, teleport and so on!" Rating **** There's a lot to learn in order to master this game, but it is almost without peer as engrossing, escapist, and entertaining videogames go." Bilbrey's Suggestions for Conan the Barbarian In the early 1980s, Brett Bilbrey, saw Astrovision's Conan cartridge at a "show." He didn't like what he saw and made suggestions at the time for what he thought would have made for a better game. You can read his handwrittten suggestions here: http://www.ballyalley.com/documentation/spectre_systems/Suggestions_for_Conan_(Brett_Bilbrey).pdf The much-preferred method to read Brett's suggestions are in the above pdf document, but I have also re-typed Brett's handwritten notes. Note, that these lack his drawings, which add quite a bit to his suggestions: "This would be better than what was at the show!" Rooms (Type) ---------------------- Set Patterns for: Open Plain Tunnel Stone Hall Rough Room Stone Room Colors ------ Define Rooms better 10 or 12 color sets (How about 256 colors in the game! Four at a time, but still 256!) Things in Rooms --------------- Chair Table Doors (Special Case) [This entire line is circled] Chests Treasure Objects to get (Special) - Keep with you (swords) or objects of game) Monsters --------------- Easy, Dumb ---> Hard, Smart A situation would (or could) be defined by: (Room type)(Color Set)(Number of things in Room) 0 -> # 1-? 0 -> ? (1) (3) (6) " " " Chair Door Chest 0 -> # (Number of Monsters)( )( )( ) 0 -> ? So that, 5,4,4,1,2,4,1,3 would define a stone room with brown floor, gray walls, black outlines, and light brown objects, a chair, a table and a chest and one monster. Matrix for room connection: Room 6 gets to 7,8,9 and 11, but room 11 only goes to 6! [Example drawing of hallway to illustrate the matrix idea]" For a prototype game, there really is a lot of information available for Conan, isn't there? Conan the Barbarian (Options): There are no options for Conan. You get one life, which you lose as your stamina wears down. Everyone playing this game starts on equal footing. Conan the Barbarian (Scoring): Up to ten points are awarded for playing Conan the Barbarian. Since there is no score in Conan, we will be playing for the highest level reached. On my test-run of the game today, I was able to reach level 20 on my first (and only) try. For available bonus points, see "Bonus Points" section below. The Crown of Zeus The BASIC bonus game is The Crown of Zeus by Todd Johnson. This game appeared in the November 1982 Arcadian newsletter. This game "takes you to a dark decaying castle in the evil land of Sorom. You've been asked, as the best warrior in the land of Beekum, to retrieve the Crown of Zeus which the Scromites have stolen." According to ads in Arcadian 5, no. 1 (Nov. 5, 1982): 9. and Arcadian 4, no. 10 (Aug. 06, 1982): 103., The Crown of Zeus is the first in a series of four programs that take place on the planet Gibeleous. The other three games in the series are available only on tape and are called: The Rescue of Catherine Escape from Rantanam IV The Tower of Machor Regular and Expert versions of this game are included in the archive. I'm not sure what the difference is between the two programs. Six issues after The Crown of Zeus was published, the Arcadian newsletter printed this small note about user maps: "Crown of Zeus castle floor plan - Have you determined what the castle looks like? We have one idea here and would like to get other opinions, so send in your version." (Arcadian 5, no. 7 (May 6, 1983): 106.) As it turns out, two people sent The Crown of Zeus maps to Bob Fabris, but they were never published in the Arcadian. Luckily, there are part of the Bob Fabris Collection, and I was able to scan and archive them. You can view them here: 1) The Crown of Zeus Maps, Set 1 - Castle Map by Edward Mahoney (April 20, 1983) http://www.ballyalley.com/tape_manuals/misc/misc.html#CrownofZeusMapEdwardMahoney 2) The Crown of Zeus Maps, Set 2 - Floor Plans by Kent Brenden (July 9, 1983) http://www.ballyalley.com/tape_manuals/misc/misc.html#CrownofZeusMapKentBrenden The original program submission letter from Todd Johnson to the Arcadian is available here: http://www.ballyalley.com/type-in_programs/arcadian_progs/arcadian_vol_5_progs/Crown%20of%20Zeus%20(1982)(Todd%20Johnson)/Crown%20of%20Zeus%20(1982)(Todd%20Johnson)(Original%20BASIC%20Listing).pdf The Crown of Zeus instructions, minus the parts on how to type in the game, from the Arcadian are here: This program, for AstroBASIC only, takes you to a dark decaying castle in the evil land of Scrom. You've been asked, as the best warrior in the land of Beekum, to retrieve the Crown of Zeus which the Scromites have stolen. The crown, when worn, gives the wearer the awesome ability to cause anything he or she wishes to vanish. Apparently the Scromites have not yet discovered the crown's powers. But as you hid in the forest outside the castle, you saw a troop of orcs from the warring land of Machor slip in through the front gate. They surely know the power of the crown and will have to be dealt with... [Detailed directions for typing in the game have been excluded here.] Now rewind your tape and input the main program with :INPUT. Say RUN and you're on your way. The computer will print: ROOM: STRENGTH: EXPERIENCE: ENEMY: EXITS LEAD: ACTION? Keeping strength above zero is the key to this game. You can survive a negative strength value as long as it's not too much negative and there is not an enemy in the room, but generally a negative strength value means you're dead. Strength can be increased to its maximum by resting. Finding a magic sword in the castle will also increase your strength and increase your maximum strength too. The number after ENEMY: is a code number which tells you which enemy from the enemy list is in the room. EXITS LEAD: Tells you which directions, (north, south, east, west, up, down), you can go. ACTION? prompts you to enter the number code for the action you wish to take from the action list. When you reach a room that has no exit, you are at the entrance to level 3. If you wish to enter this level, press HALT then type: R=R-24;:INPUT @(0),192 <GO> Now press the play button on your recorder to load the array for the next levels. Then RUN the program and you're on level 3. If instead you want to stay on level 2 a little longer, type HALT then type: R=R-24;RUN GO <GO> You'll be back up the stairs. This program must be reloaded after you are killed or find the crown since the data in the array gets altered. If you want to quit for a while during a game you can save it by halting it and loading it onto a blank tape. Also, you don't have to get any treasure at the time you are asked by the computer. If you wish to get it later Just press 1 when asked for an action and the computer will let you get the treasure. Enemies ------- 0 Nothing 1 Orc(s) 2 Killer Bees 3 Rats 4 Skeleton 5 Ghost 6 Zombie 7 Bear 8 Wolf 9 Black Knight 10 Giant Viper 11 Giant Spiders 12 Minotaur 13 Goblin 14 Tiger 15 Evil Warlock 17 Evil Wizard 18 Mummy 19 Dragon (Small) 20 Dragon (Medium) 21 Dragon (Large) 22 Dragon (Immense) 23 Demon 24 Giant 25 Giant Slime Monster 26 Orange Blob 27 Fire Fiend 28 5-headed Hydra 29 Cyclops 30 Demon King Actions ------- 1 Fight 2 Leave Room 3 Rest Treasure -------- 1 Magic Wand (detects traps) 2 Magic Sword (increases strength) 3 Magic Helm (increases experience) 90 The Crown! All other numbers refer to gold pieces. Traps ----- 1 Needles shoot at you 2 Small rocks fall on you 3 A pit opens beneath you 4 Poisonous gas fills the room 5 Crossbow bolt hits you 6 You receive electrical shock from treasure THE CROWN OF ZEUS is the first in a series of programs that take place on the planet Gibeleous. Others now available are: THE RESCUE OF CATHERINE: After you went to save the crown, the Scromites became angry with you and have kidnapped Catherine, the princess of Beekum, hoping that you will be sent to save her. They've set some traps so Watch Out! ESCAPE FROM RANTANAM IV: You've been captured by mechanical aliens who have come to Gibeleous for unknown reasons. You must escape and warn the leaders of Beekum. THE TOWER OF MACHOR: The orcs are after you again in this one with 8 levels. You must destroy the alien computer which has been leading the orcs in their quest for domination of Gibeleous. You can get all three great programs on one cassette tape with complete descriptions and instructions for the low, low price of only $10.00! To add these programs to your Gibeleous series collection, send check or M.O. to: Todd Johnson [Address removed] You can download the "AstroBASIC" version of The Crown of Zues here: http://www.ballyalley.com/program_downloads/2000_baud_programs/arcadian/programs_a-h/programs_a-h.html#CrownofZeusToddJohnsonAB Bonus Points There are many bonus points available this round for both games. Conan the Barbarian (1 Point) - Write directions on how to play this game. Conan the Barbarian (1 Point) - Listing the different monsters that you encounter. Conan the Barbarian (1 Point) - List the differences between this game and the prototype (called cononp.bin). Conan the Barbarian (1 Point) - Video Review - Anyone who makes a video review of Conan the Barbarian will get a bonus point. The Crown of Zeus (1 Point) - Playing The Crown of Zeus. The Crown of Zeus (1 Point) - Getting the Crown of Zeus in the game. The Crown of Zeus (1 Point) - Video Review - Anyone who makes a video review of The Crown of Zeus will get a bonus point. Summary Obviously, much more was to be done for Conan the Barbarian before it would have been considered complete. What is finished are the fighting and level progression, which work okay. The game lacks any depth-of-play, which would have made the game much better. This game reminds me, in some ways, of one of my favorite games: The Temple of Apshai. Much more about this game can be read in the AtariAge "Temple of Apshai Map" thread that I started in 2011: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/183584-temple-of-apshai-trilogy-maps/ I wonder how Conan might have worked had it been completed, or was somehow actually based on an Apshai-type game? I have no experience with The Crown of Zeus, but I love the deep concept of the game. It is amazing to me that there were three sequels to this game, none of which have been archived in any way. Post your scores (i.e. level) as you play Conan the Barbarian over the next couple of weeks. If anyone finds any tips while playing these games, then please share them. As we make our way through the Astrocade's tape and cartridge library, we're bound to encounter some usual games. These two games probably aren't for everybody, but do your best to enjoy both games for what they are: a glimpse into the creative potential of two similar games in the fantasy genre that were represented in two completely different ways on a platform that didn't really have a chance to experience other games of this type. Adam