The mysterious CHALLENGE

[boek]

What's the story behind the mysterious Zellers game - CHALLENGE? Anyone else own it?

 

I'll tell my story behind Challenge. My oldest brother bought Challenge because it had freakin' Ghostbusters on the cart! When he brought it home and played it, he was bummed. My dad sat there, controlling the little duck around, assuring my brother, "This is a fun game!"

[lucifershalo]

I have the german version Mein Weg

but dont know the story behind it

[Impaler_26]

Oh, i just looked at the label of the Zellers-version of Challenge. No wonder your brother was disappointed...

 

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...VERSION_ID=7919

[lucifershalo]

yes but the Zellers game is more rare than Ghostbusters

[Mirage]

That's hilarious. We all know that the discrepancy between 2600 box art and the game is wide, but that is absolutely ridiculous!

[+Omegamatrix]

Yeah I have it CIB.

 

 

Challenge was a PAL original title that got converted to NTSC. Try playing one of the PAL roms of Challenge in an emulator, and then play the NTSC version. Notice how the music seems way too fast now for the NTSC version? This is because NTSC uses more frames per second then a PAL TV. When Challenge was converted to NTSC the music never got adjusted.

 

The Zellers version is not the only NTSC version of this game, but by far the easiest to find. While playing it you will see a Funvision logo on the bottom of the screen. Funvision most likely is the original company for Challenge. When you play the PAL Quelle version you see no logo because it has been erased. When you play the PAL HES version you don't see a logo either, but if you took a hex editor you can clearly see that the Funvision logo is still in the rom. This shows that HES was not the original company.

 

The other NTSC version I have never personally seen except in Atarimania's database. It is a Funvision Halley's Comet label. They come in funny looking V-cases, and have a baby blue box that looks very similar to a Zellers box. Zellers itself was just a distributor that had their name printed on the red 2600 Compatible box. The same style of boxes and carts appear in many countries under this generic (no name) 2600 Compatible. There certainly are connections between Zellers, Funvision, Ultravision, K-Tel to name a few.

 

 

That's about all I know.

Edited May 23, 2008 by Omegamatrix