What are the best demos... that work on a stock NTSC 800XL?

[Mr.Amiga500]

I've seen plenty of "top demo" lists for Atari 8-bit, but none that list "best + 64K + NTSC compatible". I'm trying to find amazing demos like "Drunk Chessboard", impressive animations like "The Magician" and simple, but fascinating graphics programs like plasmas and shade bars.

 

I've just sifted through about 50 useless demos - which either don't work properly in NTSC (one had the gall to say "upgrade to PAL"), require massive memory expansion or just plain suck - despite inexplicably high ratings. I'd prefer demos with good music. (...without those annoying high-pitched fast wobbly notes that European 8-bit musicians seem to like, for some unknown reason)

[MrFish]

Unfortunately good demos like Numen and Drunk Chessboard are only PAL compatible. One fairly recent demo that's NTSC compatible is "Ilusia". The music will be sped up though, due to being developed with PAL in mind.

 

Another one is "Vector", which is an interactive tech-demo that uses Numen-style 3-d graphics. At one point there were plans on turning this into a full game.

Edited March 20, 2010 by MrFish

[+Stephen]

Unfortunately good demos like Numen and Drunk Chessboard are only PAL compatible. One fairly recent demo that's NTSC compatible is "Ilusia". The music will be sped up though, due to being developed with PAL in mind.

 

Another one is "Vector", which is an interactive tech-demo that uses Numen-style 3-d graphics. At one point there were plans on turning this into a full game.

Drunk Chessboard will run on NTSC, but the music plays way too fast and finishes before the video effects finish. I don't remember any graphical glitches with it though.

[Mr.Amiga500]

Unfortunately good demos like Numen and Drunk Chessboard are only PAL compatible. One fairly recent demo that's NTSC compatible is "Ilusia". The music will be sped up though, due to being developed with PAL in mind.

 

Another one is "Vector", which is an interactive tech-demo that uses Numen-style 3-d graphics. At one point there were plans on turning this into a full game.

Drunk Chessboard will run on NTSC, but the music plays way too fast and finishes before the video effects finish. I don't remember any graphical glitches with it though.

 

There are a few spots that are screwed up a bit: the white chessboard over the plasma flickers badly, the warped chessboards behind the credits have straight vertical lines over it and the music stops halfway as you mentioned. The demo is so great though that I don't mind.

 

Numen won't run at all because it requires too much memory. I've tried Illusia before and I think it has some problems too. I just tried the Vector demo and it's great! I hope somebody makes a game from it.

 

Another good demo I've found is Elenium. The music isn't that great, but there's some nice plasma in it.

[DamageX]

Liebich, Perestroyka, Swandemo, and Magnus were a few that ran. I recall that Joyride and Timeless Announcement ran partially.

[Thorsten Günther]

Liebich, Perestroyka, Swandemo, and Magnus were a few that ran. I recall that Joyride and Timeless Announcement ran partially.

What about some of the older demos like FujiBoink! or the Walking Robot Demo? These should work on NTSC machines.

 

 

Thorsten

[mimo]

Stick a Pal antic chip in your xl to do the pal upgrade

[Mr.Amiga500]

What about some of the older demos like FujiBoink! or the Walking Robot Demo? These should work on NTSC machines.

 

FujiBoink! is great! Thanks. I've got the Walking Robot / CES demo. I also like things like Pencils and AppleKill.

 

Stick a Pal antic chip in your xl to do the pal upgrade

 

PAL is not an "upgrade". PAL is utterly useless to me. I use my Atari on an NTSC TV which can't handle PAL.

 

(this comment not necessarily directed at Preppie)

I don't understand the European attitude towards NTSC - a contempt and disgust as if it's a bad life choice or something. I didn't choose to have my country follow the NTSC standard. Yet many European coders of software (many that I've talked to) for Atari, C64, Amiga and others seem to have an unnatural hatred of NTSC and don't care at all how their software runs on NTSC equipment. If you mention NTSC, they become instantly hostile as if you're a leper who just killed their favourite grandmother or something. There's no such hostility towards PAL from the NTSC people.

[MrFish]

What about some of the older demos like FujiBoink! or the Walking Robot Demo? These should work on NTSC machines.

 

FujiBoink! is great! Thanks. I've got the Walking Robot / CES demo. I also like things like Pencils and AppleKill.

 

There is the original "Fuji" Demo, which is also made by Xanth. You can play around with the console keys on both of these for some effects.

 

Of course the "Swan" demo is a nice one along this vein too.

 

Another interactive demo is "Jane's Program" cool little toy made by Douglas Crockford (Lucas Arts) for his daughter.

Edited March 22, 2010 by MrFish

[PeteD]

I think the seeming hatred of all PAL coders to NTSC is the fact that they (NTSC folk) expect ( and possibly rightly so in some cicrumstances) people to cripple their software so it can run on a machine that isn't really in their thought process as they're coding. Before emulation and before it being a cheaper proposition getting NTSC hardware to run in PAL land it was only guesswork (or very carefully calculated CPU usage) that would mean something was guaranteed to run on both systems.

 

Demos especially tend to use all the machine grunt they can, so PAL coders should not push the machine to it's limits so the NTSC guys can run it? I doubt that'll happen Games generally should be made to work on both systems, if not you're losing a lot of revenue.

 

It's funny that the shift went towards NTSC with the previous couple of console generations. PAL people complaining that their games ran slower (50fps vs 60fps) and wanted that extra framerate.

 

 

Pete

Edited March 22, 2010 by PeteD

[emkay]

New discussion about PAL and NTSC?

 

Well, most software was done to fit to NTSC. Many games suffer on PAL Ataris, mainly belonging to gamespeed. Some games are not playable in PAL.

So , what is the problem to have demos running, using the fact that the A8 has more cycles available in PAL?

 

a) 50 frames per second use less CPU speed

b) 50 frames per second use less cycle stealing.

 

this leaves about 20-30% more cpu space to do more in the same time.

[urborg]

PAL is dominating standard in Europe, so it is obvious that software which is is created here are done to comply with that standard. Most of that software (games, demos) is noncomercial, authors do it on their spare time for free. That is the reason why they don't care about making NTSC version as well. Sometimes software is pushing hardware to it's limits, so there is no way to make it working probably on NTSC machines - see Bomb Jake case. The best solution is buying a PAL Atari with PAL TV, or multisystem TV. You see - when Atari computers became very popular in Poland and other eastern Europe countries (late eighties and early nineties), nobody had a PAL TV, all TV's here used SECAM. So people massively were adapting they TV sets to work in PAL as well. I think you also could.

Edited March 22, 2010 by urborg

[Mr.Amiga500]

I think the seeming hatred of all PAL coders to NTSC is the fact that they (NTSC folk) expect ( and possibly rightly so in some cicrumstances) people to cripple their software so it can run on a machine that isn't really in their thought process as they're coding. Before emulation and before it being a cheaper proposition getting NTSC hardware to run in PAL land it was only guesswork (or very carefully calculated CPU usage) that would mean something was guaranteed to run on both systems.

 

 

Yes, I understand that... but I was talking more about the attitude of people. It's one thing to say, "technically, it's not possible to get this working on NTSC" and another to say, "NTSC sucks! I hate NTSC! Upgrade to PAL." The most shocking thing about this attitude is that it continues to this day. The author an emulator (who I won't mention) told me he doesn't care about the emulator working properly in NTSC mode because he hates NTSC. This is an emulator for a computer that was originally made for NTSC!

 

I don't have a hatred for PAL. I had to search for degraders/PAL switchers to play all the Amiga PAL games, demos and other programs. I had to open all my monitors and adjust the v-height so I could see the cut-off scoreboards, program buttons and text (but some stuff is still cut off and I have to guess what is there). I had to endure the eye-killing PAL flicker, screwed up music speed and graphical corruption. Yet with all that, I don't hate PAL at all.

[Mr.Amiga500]

So people massively were adapting they TV sets to work in PAL as well. I think you also could.

 

I don't think adapting my TV to also work in PAL would be a simple operation, but if it was I'd do it. Is it possible to make a switchable Atari - with a switch for NTSC/PAL? That would be pretty neat. I doubt it. I'm sure if it was possible, I would have heard about it by now. I'm not interested in getting a PAL-only Atari just for demos.

[+Philsan]

Yes, I understand that... but I was talking more about the attitude of people. It's one thing to say, "technically, it's not possible to get this working on NTSC" and another to say, "NTSC sucks! I hate NTSC! Upgrade to PAL."

I think, apart few cases, it is always a matter of technical issues.

For example, in this same moment, someone prefer NTSC VCS's:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/159453-updated-timing-info-on-bb-page/page__view__findpost__p__1970056

It's not a problem.