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Starblitz Rainbow is a Starpath SuperCharger game for the Atari 2600 with super smooth graphics and rainbows. Gameplay You defend the colorful Rainbow Cities of Mars from Comets and Meteors while fighting off Invaders that shoot homing pods at you. Your Defender style ship is equipped with drone missiles you can control and loop around your ship. The Rainbow Cities don't realize you're protecting them so launch surface to air missiles at you increasing the difficulty. PRGE Edition The PRGE 2016 Special Edition has extra sound effects and a playable PRGE cut scene ending with background music. This version for the Commodore 64 includes an embedded Atari 2600 Emulator that runs the SuperCharger game. Note this game is running unchanged in the emulator so much of the color transitions are currently lost for two reasons - The C64 only gets the least significant Nyble (4 bits) for the 8 bit Atari color registers, often this is a zero resulting in black. The C64 only has 16 colors instead of 128 making it more like a SECAM Atari 2600. SECAM color tuning I'm planning to make some minor changes to tweak the colors but I wanted to share this version before making any changes as there are some interesting and unexpected effects from the emulator: Your Ship sometimes turns invisible but you can still see the black outline over the City buildings and cutscene structures. Your Drone missiles are always in stealth mode making it difficult to use them in space. Interesting optical illusion: If you look at your ship the PETSCII graphics on the City appear. If you look at the City the PETSCII changes to show an illusion of parallel lines and artifact colors too if you have NTSC and a real classic Television. SID Sound Effects and music are interesting, turn up the volume to hear all of it. Impossible City Mode Set the BW/Color switch to BW (shift lock or holding left-shift on the C64) and Cities become crooked. What's missing: Crystal clear video mode - I may add this to the emulator. Besides all the color and Rainbow effects there is a small amount of judder that creates the optical illusions. On the Atari 2600 the judder is only present in Impossible City Mode. starblitzrainbow.prg (C64 program) STARBLITZ_Rainbow_PRGE_V2.bin (Atari 2600 binary) STARBLITZ_Rainbow_PRGE_V2.wav Starpath SuperCharger audio WAV file
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Hi, This is a cool project of controlling Atari 2600 Defender game using the hands pose as a virtual joystick The project demonstrate how can we replace the traditional joystick with our hand and fingers The code estimate if the second finger is open or close for simulating “Fire” button , and the directions of the finger In order to simulate : up, down, left and right You can watch the enjoyable result here : https://youtu.be/iQGDvn3bZrI The project is based on OpenCV , Mediapipe and Python Eran
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Hi, This is a cool project of controlling Atari 2600 Defender game using the hands pose as a virtual joystick The project demonstrate how can we replace the traditional joystick with our hand and fingers The code estimate if the second finger is open or close for simulating “Fire” button , and the directions of the finger In order to simulate : up, down, left and right You can watch the enjoyable result here : https://youtu.be/iQGDvn3bZrI The project is based on OpenCV , Mediapipe and Python Eran
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Hi guys: For those of you that don't know, I have re-started porting 'Defender' to the 7800. I started from scratch as I wanted to use 320B mode and I had an idea for the terrain (use 320A mode for that). However, I'm finding that I'm having issues with the scanner area: As you can see, I have a 16x4 tile grid, which works out to be 64x30 pixels. (The bottom two scan lines are the scanner box itself). When I did this the first time, I blocked out an area of (added) memory, made the DL point to that area of RAM and just updated it each frame. This time, I would really like to not use expanded memory (I want to see if I can do this within the limits of the vanilla console). I tried using DL entries for each of the 'dots', but because of the character modes used (score, ships in reserve, etc) I can only get 4 sprite DLs in the zone before I run out of Maria cycles. Flickering at 30Hz is not out of the question, but even then I'll only get 8. I won't go more than 30Hz as then it gets bad. I know Atari has done this with Defender and Defender II on the 2600 (with Defender II only adding 128 more bytes of memory), so there has to be some sort of trick of doing this without using much memory. (I would try and read the Defender II code but there is no disassembly of it that I know of). Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Bob
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So I have been looking for this bizarre Atari Corp Defender label variation ever since I saw a picture of it about 2 years ago. Well, in June I was searching on ebay.de and found a listing for this variation. The bonus was it was CIB and in decent shape and priced reasonably even with the exchange rate. The problem was the item was in Germany and the seller was not shipping to the USA because of COVID19 package size restrictions to the USA. I had to find a way to get this title. I sent @Marc Oberhäuser a PM asking for a huge favor. He obliged and bought the item. But the COVID19 restrictions were still going to be a hurdle to get the box to me. Marc figured out that he could ship it to Canada with no restrictions if I knew someone in Canada to be another middleman in this transaction. I had a friend that I had made via the AA Facebook group and I asked if I could have Marc ship to him and he then ship it to me. He agreed. So after 2 months the package finally got to me. I was very excited to have this checked off of my wish-list and the bonus being it was CIB. I have also been working with @daniel.inforede on his "little project" providing box scans and tab pictures of some of my Atari Corp titles. He requested a picture of the Part Number tab and the printing date tab on this box. I never really thought much about it. The back of the box stated it was an 1987 release. But when I took a picture of the tab and it was April 1992 my jaw dropped to the floor. Crazy. Atari Corp was still having boxes printed in Europe in 1992. Who would have thought? Does anyone know of any other titles printed this late in the game for the 2600?
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I'm selling some games I've found during some room cleaning. This one is the Condor Attack, from AtariMania maker. I also have other titles, like Air Sea Battle, Spider Man, Air Raiders (with manual), Crack Pots, Defender and Bachelor Party. I'm in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, but I can send worldwide. I can provide very low cost shipping to Europe. I'm also selling the console Atari 2600 Darth Vader (not functioning) with 2 joysticks. But this one I think will be too expensive to send worldwide. Please, send me PM, whatsapp call or skype for price and details. https://rj.olx.com.br/rio-de-janeiro-e-regiao/videogames/cartuchos-atari-bachelor-party-e-condor-attack-raros-757853936
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Eugene Jarvis - Atari - Podcast Interview - Creator of Robotron: 2084, Defender & Stargate This is probably my favourite interview to date as I have a long and in-depth chat with arcade, Atari and Williams legend Eugene Jarvis. Eugene shares some great stories of working at Atari, what it was like working with Nolan Bushnell, creating Defender and Stargate. He also talks what inspired him to make Robotron: 2084, Smash T.V. and loads more. He also looks at his current work at Raw Thrills where he keeping arcades alive with amazing innovations. He also talks about his views on the Jeff Minter's Defender 2000 on the Jaguar. The 1 hour 30 mins chat with Arcade Attack is honest, funny and really insightful. I would be so honoured if you checked it out and shared your feedback. The links to various platforms are listed below: Apple Podcasts / iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eugene-jarvis-interview/id1174983594?i=1000474625155 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Db70NAAhCA7SxonnrZWpG Podbean:https://arcadeattackpodcast.podbean.com/e/eugene-jarvis-interview/ YouTube: If you did like the interview, please do consider subscribing to our podcast and YouTube channel and even leave us a nice review! We have also interviewed other legends in the past such as Trip Hawkins, John Tobias, Tommy Tallarico and many more.
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Eugene Jarvis - Atari - Podcast Interview - Creator of Defender, Robotron & Stargate This is probably my favourite interview to date as I have a long and in-depth chat with arcade, Atari and Williams legend Eugene Jarvis. Eugene shares some great stories of working at Atari, what it was like working with Nolan Bushnell, creating Defender and Stargate. He also talks what inspired him to make Robotron: 2084, Smash T.V. and loads more. He also looks at his current work at Raw Thrills where he keeping arcades alive with amazing innovations. He also talks about his views on the Jeff Minter's Defender 2000 on the Jaguar. The 1 hour 30 mins chat with Arcade Attack is honest, funny and really insightful. I would be so honoured if you checked it out and shared your feedback. The links to various platforms are listed below: Apple Podcasts / iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eugene-jarvis-interview/id1174983594?i=1000474625155 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Db70NAAhCA7SxonnrZWpG Podbean:https://arcadeattackpodcast.podbean.com/e/eugene-jarvis-interview/ YouTube: If you did like the interview, please do consider subscribing to our podcast and YouTube channel and even leave us a nice review! We have also interviewed other legends in the past such as Trip Hawkins, John Tobias, Tommy Tallarico and many more.
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Eugene Jarvis - Atari - Podcast Interview - Creator of Defender, Robotron & Stargate This is probably my favourite interview to date as I have a long and in-depth chat with arcade, Atari and Williams legend Eugene Jarvis. Eugene shares some great stories of working at Atari, what it was like working with Nolan Bushnell, creating Defender and Stargate. He also talks what inspired him to make Robotron: 2084, Smash T.V. and loads more. He also looks at his current work at Raw Thrills where he keeping arcades alive with amazing innovations. He also talks about his views on the Jeff Minter's Defender 2000 on the Jaguar. The 1 hour 30 mins chat with Arcade Attack is honest, funny and really insightful. I would be so honoured if you checked it out and shared your feedback. The links to various platforms are listed below: Apple Podcasts / iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/eugene-jarvis-interview/id1174983594?i=1000474625155 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Db70NAAhCA7SxonnrZWpG Podbean:https://arcadeattackpodcast.podbean.com/e/eugene-jarvis-interview/ YouTube: If you did like the interview, please do consider subscribing to our podcast and YouTube channel and even leave us a nice review! We have also interviewed other legends in the past such as Trip Hawkins, John Tobias, Tommy Tallarico and many more.
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From the album: My Collection
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I've recently become fascinated, again, with early software synthesis. For example, take Eugene Jarvis' sound engine in Robotron and Defender: I love that it ran on such a limited processor. But the thing that really gets me as a synth geek is the parameter space-- the fact that you can do so much with what I think he said was 8 parameters (in the Robotron GDC post-mortem). I see that he goes into a little more detail here: http://www.firepowerpinball.com/downloads/Eugene_Jarvis_Interview.pdf-- it's funny too because we always think of general-purpose-CPU softsynths as a late 90s phenomenon! Now, I see someone has done a commented Robotron disassembly, but I don't think they got to the sound system. I'd love to find more info about it, short of disassembling it myself. I also noticed that Konami's Time Pilot '84 produces a lot of similar tones. It supposedly uses one of those simple squarewave+noise PSGs, but it's driven by a reasonably fast CPU, which makes me wonder what's really going on there. Maybe it's manipulating the sound chip's registers really fast, or there's a bit-bang channel in addition to the sound chip. I think some of those dedicated PSGs had simple amplitude envelopes you could leverage, too..? Any other arcade games that use or are suspected of using a softsynth to generate their sounds besides these and the Namco games? Any tones that strike you as particularly neat? I might play with some primitive softsynth concepts tonight. I want to see if I can make one that barely branches, and also see what FM does with such low resolution grainy tables (for example, do you really need a LFSR if you've got FM feedback?).
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I had some extra Coleco shells and Atari boards and thought maybe I should try to put them together. Threw in a bit of graphics work for good measure, and here's what came out: Yes they are playable! This was a lot of fun....I really like how Coleco incorporated the arcade marquees in their titles. I'll definitely be giving some other games this treatment as well.
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http://atariage.com/forums/topic/272433-rare-intellivision-titles-for-trade/ Looking to unload some rare titles for things I need: Melody Blaster - CIB flip top short box Mountain Madness Super Pro Skiing - CIB Super Pro Decathlon - CIB with custom overlays World Series Major League Baseball - CIB Defender - CIB with Atari warranty mail in card Dig Dug - cart, manual, reproduction box by intellivision.us Triple Challenge - cart, manual, reproduction box by intellivision.us Diner - original box, cart, reprinted manual Pics in the actual Marketplace thread linked above. PM me with offers.
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Looking to trade some rare Intellivision titles as a lot for one of the rarer games listed in my signature or individually for Intellivision homebrews. Open to all offers. Melody Blaster CIB, flip top short box: SOLD Mountain Madness Super Pro Skiing CIB SOLD Super Pro Decathlon CIB Pics coming soon: World Series Major League Baseball - CIB Defender - CIB with Atari warranty mail in card - SOLD Dig Dug - cart, manual, reproduction box Triple Challenge - cart, manual, reproduction box Diner - original box, cart, reprinted manual - SOLD If I can't find decent trades here these will go to eBay and no one wants that, do they?
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Season 1, Round 5 of the Arcadia 2001/MPT-03 High Score Club will last about two weeks. This round ends on Sunday, December 3, 2017 at 10pm MST (aka Monday, 2am GMT). The game being played this round is Space Raiders, a game released in 1982 for the Emerson Arcadia 2001. Space Raiders is a side-scrolling game, a bit like Defender … except there is no one to defend except yourself. Here is a screenshot of Space Raiders being played on an NTSC Emerson Arcadia console: Here is a two minute YouTube video of Space Raiders being played by "Rickstilwell1 - TheGameCollector." The quality isn't great (the screen is completely crooked), but this is the only video of Space Raiders that I could find that is being played on real hardware. He published this on Dec 22, 2008: Here is the box for Space Raiders: Here is the cartridge for Space Raiders: Here are the overlays for Space Raiders: Here is the manual's cover: Space Raiders - Quick-Play Rules Play Space Raiders for high score on real hardware (PAL, NTSC, and any Arcadia family systems) or use the WinArcadia or MAME emulator. Space Raiders has no gameplay options. Just shoot the baddies (mutants and flying saucers), bomb the missile-launching bases and make sure to refuel from time to time. Visit the Emerson Arcadia 2001 Central website for cartridge images and Arcadia emulators: https://amigan.yatho.com/ Here is a direct link to the Arcadia 2001 ROM images ("SpaceRaiders.bin " is the filename for Space Raiders): https://amigan.yatho.com/games.rar Post pictures of your high scores here. Use the left-hand controller to play the game. The fire button, or any of the middle-column buttons on the gamepad, shoots your laser gun. The right column buttons drops your bombs. You can "freeze" (pause) the game by pressing the left-hand column of keys. You can "un-freeze" the game by pressing the right-hand column. Space Raiders - General Overview I'm using Ward Shrake's "Director's Cut" of his Arcadia 2001 section of the Digital Press Collector's Guide 7 (published in August 2002) for most of the information that is in this section. Space Raiders - Emerson Confirmed. 4k cart. 1982. #1016 (5). This is the legalized version of a "Defender" clone. One player game. Left side controller. Long cartridge. Game by "UA Limited". Emerson family label art shows a small triangular space ship and a helicopter… both are flying in outer space. They were apparently attacking some sort of space ship or station. These crafts were veiled hints to consumers that the game included game play elements from the arcade games "Defender" and "Scramble"… which was how they legalized it. Space Raiders - Hanimex Confirmed. 4k. #MC1029 (26). See the FAQ for a U.K.-based magazine article which talked about early plans to make a version of the arcade game "Defender". ("Computer and Video Games," June 1982). The ROM code includes about 16 bytes of what appears to be the original assembly code at the tail end of the memory map. (See "American Football".) LANDMARK: This is the legalized version of "Space Squadron," which was a more obvious clone of "Defender". When game makers began to fear lawsuits for copyright infringement, they watered the similarities down by adding some features of "Scramble" into the game play. High quality scans of Space Raiders box, manual, and cartridge are here: https://archive.org/details/SpaceRaidersEmersonArcadia2001 Since I'm short on time this week, I'm not going to include the manual. The game does play very simply: just shoot everything! Maybe I'll include the manual in another post in a week or so. Scoring Each Mutant Destroyed - 5 points Each flying saucer destroyed - 20 points Each Missile Launching base paralyzed - 10 points Space Raiders Gameplay Options This game has no gameplay options for this game. Space Raiders (Scoring) We are playing for the highest score. 10 points are awarded for first place, 9 for second, 8 for third, etc. Space Raiders (Bonus Points): There are quite a few ways to earn bonus points this round: Space Raiders - Video Review - (1 Point) - I didn't find any proper reviews of this game. I tried to get some video of it, but as was the case with Funky Fish, because the background screen is black, my camera kept going in and out of focus. I'd really like to see some quality video of this game being played on actual hardware. Space Raiders - Documenting Bugs - (1 Point) - As we've been discovering for ourselves, Arcadia games can be flaky. 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. Space Raiders - Backstory - (1 Point) - Funky Fish had a backstory, but Space Raiders gives us nothing. Write a background that may have been included with the game in 1982 and you'll get a bonus point. Summary Space Raiders is a scrolling game. The Arcadia hardware doesn't seem to designed to scroll very well, so it's neat to see a game like this place on this platform. The premise seems simple: shoot and refuel. I think that this game may be fun; we'll all find out together. As always, as you play Space Raiders, please post pictures of your scores as the round progresses. Not only does this help you not forget to play the game, but it gives other player's a challenge to try to beat your score. If you've not played in a round before now, then now's the time to join in! Have a fun fifth round, everyone! (Don't forget, I'll be posting the final scores for round 4, Funky Fish, in about a week.) Adam
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I just wanted to write a quick blog entry here to show my intention of acquiring a Defender Arcade cabinet someday. This game means to me more than I can properly convey. My younger brother Joey, and I (he much more than I) played for countless hours on the Defender cabinet that they had on the pediatrics floor of St. John's Hospital in Detroit, Michigan. Defender is a really complex game which really takes a lot of practice to get good at. Joey was really great at that game despite often having to adjust his technique because of where his IV was on any given day. Cystic Fibrosis took him away from us when he was 10. He wasn't able to grow up, graduate high school or get married and have kids, but he was a wizard at Defender.
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DEFENDER III Edit: 8/17/23 Added support for Defender III to the Commodore 64 Atari 2600 Emulator, see this post for details. Commodore 64 prgs: defenderiii.prg defender3trainer.prg Basic Gameplay: Protect Martian Cities from fallling Meteors by blasting them out of the sky! Meteor impact slowly destroys the cities of Mars - your ship is equipped with audial Radar which allows you to hear off screen meteor impacts; reach them fast enough and you can stop the meteors in mid-destruction! Restore health to damaged Cities by catching falling score power-ups. To complete the wave and defend a new City, you must destroy at least 10 meteors before either your Ship or the City are destroyed. Shields: The impact from any of the baddies will damage your Ion shields to varying degrees with spectacular plasma color effects (not in the Beta yet) - take on too much damage and your shields are eventually destroyed completely; sustain a hit without sheilds and the game is over. When you save a City, your Ion shields are fully recharged. Defender III Weapons: All Defender games have different weapons - in Defender you had a colorful laser burst while Defender II sported more precise particle beam weapons. In Defender III, you've got an unlimited supply of remote control Drones, which control a bit differently than laser bursts or particle beams: Until a Drone goes offscreen and out of range you'll have full control over it - you can even make the Drones do loop-de-loops and figure eights which comes in handy for clipping the high speed meteors. It can take awhile to get used to not being able to fire another shot after you miss a target because your Drone is still airborne - this Defender plays different Game Characters: Meteors Enemy landers heat seeking pods Surface to air missiles Buildings Score power-ups Defender Ship Remote control Drones Console compatibility: Beta 5 currently plays on all Atari consoles including the Flashback Portable though the pre-production version is as of yet untested (someone please test on a pre-production unit!) Defender III does not work in Stella yet, at least not in my version - a scrolling mosaic appears at the start instead of the ship being in outer space, and the mosaic permeates the cityscape once the game starts making it unplayable. I will find a workaround for this as development continues; Defender III was programmmed in Flashback BASIC which is also in Beta. I'll post new versions of the game as development progresses, hope everyone enjoys! DefenderIII_Beta5.bin Edit: 3/2017: Defender III and Defender III Trainer ROM's below! Changes: Harder to clear a level, you must destroy 15 meteors! Unique bonus round challenge levels - a playable title screen level and a playable game over level showing waves completed. You'll need a light touch to play these levels without starting a new game. Defender_III_Trainer_v1.binDefender_III_v1.bin
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Hi Guys Just thought I would share a friendly link to a nice interview with the Atari legend Eugene Jarvis: http://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/interview-eugene-jarvis/ Please enjoy. Adrian
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A cooler looking shot if Darth Duke's Atari 2600 set up in action.
DarthDuke posted a gallery image in Member's Gallery
From the album: Darth Duke's Atari Corner
Here's a shot of my setup in my preferred situation: mostly dark so there's no glare on the TV screen.© DarthDuke 2016
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A while back, I stumbled upon the last issue of the Atari Force comic book at a mom & pop comic book store. It's is really good condition. I don't come across them too often at comic book stores here. Have you guys seen them around? The first I was aware of them was when I looked up the reference to an Atari comic book on the box of my Defender game and found out which comic books they were talking about. I've had that game for a really long time, I think the year or next year after it came out, but I've no idea what became of the comic book that was packed in with it. I've got the manual for it and the cartridge, which I still play now and then as it's one of my all-time favorites for the 2600. It would be cool to have the pack-in comic for it as well. Besides the pack-in comic for Defender, which of the Atari Force comics, if any, would you guys say are the best to read and/or to collect? I suppose I could track down and collect them all, but space is a bit limited for me, so I tend to look for the best of a group of something I'm interested in instead: like the first one made, last issue, intros of new villains etc. Thanks!
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I picked up a few loose carts in great shape at a local Goodwill, and a fellow forum member noticed something strange (or perhaps not so strange) about the copy of Defender I picked up. Here's a link to a few pics to show you what I'm talking about: http://imgur.com/a/LtghZ If you'll notice there's no "Use Joystick...", there's also a 1986 copyright. Also there's the open cart design with only the guide tabs, as well as the two holes in the face that you normally see in the red label variants. I found a site that cataloged this, but it really didn't tell much about when/where it was released. Just curious if anyone is familiar with this particular label before I slap that sucker up on eBay with a fake PVC T-handle and sell it for one MILLION dollars!
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I recently spent some time with each of these games as they fit in the "Defender Clone" category. I've been playing all of these with a Radica Plug n Play that I modified to work with Intellivision, and it works beautifully with all of these. I really like Intellivision Defender, but the enemies advance very quickly from off screen to kill you which makes the game difficult for me. You can compensate a little using the radar of course, but my games just don't last very long. The control you have over your ship however, is pretty great, and I think it is one of the most responsive Intellivision games from the original library. It also looks and sounds nice and does a MUCH better job imitating the arcade than the 2600 version. I wonder why they didn't work hyperspace onto the keypad? Nova Blast should be better than Defender. It puts a nice twist on saving people by giving you the ability to reinforce your cities, and the enemy variety of ground and air adds an extra dimension to the game. However a couple of things hold this title back. First (and somebody check this for me) I can't keep the ship pointed to the left. Sure if I hold left it goes to the left, but as soon as I push any other direction (namely up or down), the ship flips back to the right. This is beyond annoying. I tried with multiple controllers, so I know it isn't that. I remember playing the Coleco version of this game, and I just can't get past this particular control obstacle in the Intellivision version. I also can't seem to make sense of WHEN and WHERE I should be to rebuild the shields on my cities. Sometimes I go over the city and beam down a shield that I see satisfyingly transfer to the city below. Other times, I empty the entire tank and nothing happens. Maybe it is a RTFM problem, but it just doesn't seem like I can be predictably precise enough to get this mechanic right. ESB - I just recently tried this one for the first time. The big differences between it and the 2600 version are well known. There are only 2 spots on the walkers to hit instead of 3, the Star Wars music is worse, and the colors somehow manage to offend my eyes more than the VCS version. All that said, if you play on one of the higher difficulty settings, the core gameplay that I like from the 2600 version is in there. Not being able to zoom down and hit those flashing targets predictably takes a lot of the satisfaction out of this one though - maybe I'd get the hang of that if I played more. Result (Score 1 - 5) 1) Defender (4) 2) ESB (3) 3) Nova Blast (2) I have to give it to Defender for not screwing anything up. The game controls well, and everything in it functions as it was intended to. ESB takes the second spot but only because its simplicity lets the game underneath poke through. Nova Blast could be the best game of the bunch, but the game's individual elements don't seem to consistently work and defending all 4 cities simultaneously is too big of a challenge for me.
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OK. I've already asked if I had paid too much for two 2600 games. Now I'm almost sure of it. Space Invaders plays fine but I think Defender might be defective. Last night before going to bed I played a good game of Defender. My score had reached over 65,000 points. A first for me and as much as I wanted to play another round I simply left the system on and went to bed. I wake up, turn on the TV only to be presented with a blank screen. I was confused so I turned off the Atari and then back on. Still nothing. I tried another game. The game appeared on the screen without any issues. I tried Defender again and seen something weird happen. Defender started its demo routine just fine. After a few seconds, however, parts of the game started to disappear including the smart bombs, extra lives, and part of the "© 1981 Atari, Inc." statement. Then it like faded away into darkness. Turning the console off and letting it sit for about a minute before turning the system back on the game looks fine but eventually goes into darkness again after removing game elements. Any ideas? Does some of these carts have capacitors in them that can be changed? Because its almost like playing a game on battery power with a dead battery.
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My wife and I, just out of spite, stopped by one of two local pawn shops. I was curious to see what they had in video games. Expecting to find the usual, unwanted, modern stuff I was surprised to four large stacks of Atari 2600 games. They were dusty but some old friends were in the piles. Defender, Space Invaders, Missile Command, Crystal Castles, Dig Dug, Pitfall!, and Dodge 'Em. Also in the mix were a lot of games I never seen before including Flash Gordon, Revenge of the Beef Steak Tomatoes, Pitfall II, Aliens, and Fire Fighter. There were a LOT more than I can remember. When I asked how much they were I was expecting a flat price for all of them. I was surprised to hear the owner say $4 each. I know on the internet that those games are very common and usually sell for less. But then there's that fee to get it from point A to point B, making the items cost more. I grabbed Defender and Space Invaders, took them to the counter, paid for them, and left wishing that I could have grabbed more. I could see $4 for some titles but not every title and definitely not for the 2600 Pac-Man. Some of the titles were the Sears Telegames labels. So...two games. Defender. Space Invaders. Total spent was $8. Did I just pay too much for two common Atari 2600 games?
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From the album: SIO2 Projects
My first and probably only entry for the 5200 High Score Club Defender contest.© Public