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Is Laser Gates really Inner Space?


SpaceDice2010

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You did Telepathy in a 'week or two'?

I think so. Kind of hard to remember. I know it was a last minute thing to help out the Product Manager. I know it was just suppose to be something so they could focus test the Mind Controller. I don't think they had anything that ran on the Mind Controller...maybe the hardware engineers had done some software for testing...they must have...so I must have been given that. I believe I just read a paddle port, there wasn't any special programming hardware wise.

 

Anyways, I sure don't remember Telepathy taking very long. So maybe 3 weeks, but I don't think 4 weeks. 1-2 weeks probably. And the really weird thing is I was only working 8 hour days. The concept of working an 8 hour day was very alien while developing a game. It was the instant assembler system. Previously most of your time was spend waiting for a build and I'd spend that time thinking about features, coding tricks, letting previous lessons sink in. With instant turn around that time was removed along with the with the needed design time. We'd always considered waiting for builds to be "wasted" but I found out it was important. So after 8 hours, or even less, I'd run out of things to implement, out of ideas. So I'd have to go home and day dream about the game and hit it again the next day. It was very strange, very different.

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IMHO Telepathy plays better than most commercially released 2600 games. It's actually one of my favorite games to play on the 2600 (I think this is because of the huge variety of screens). I'll have to update my page about it: http://www.atariprot...y/telepathy.htm

Your tastes in games is exceptional. ;)

 

Thanks for your page. I'd forgotten about all the screens. I enjoyed playing it once I got used to the controller...which 8 hours a day will do for a person.

 

The screens are of course all "inspired" by other games...but well stolen I think.

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Any articles on who created Harmony? Behind the curtain stuff? To me that would be cool to read.

 

Any links on the creation of Melody and Harmony? These are made one off as ordered? I'd love to see a video of one being made. Should I post this in the Harmony thread instead?

 

Someone else might be able to post better links, but until they do, take a look at these:

 

atariage.com/forums/topic/115077-chimera-hybrid-game-system/page__st__25#entry1651578

 

atariage.com/forums/topic/144469-are-you-going-to-buy-a-harmony-cart-for-the-atari-2600/

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This is very cool! :thumbsup: Thank you so much for visiting our little corner of the internet and sharing your knowledge! I know that I speak for most of us when I say that if you were to make a new 2600 game, it would sell like hotcakes, at least in our little community of collectors. The volume may not be high but I'm sure 100 carts or so would easily be within the realm of reason. With so much new tech available, it would be really cool to see new "homebrew" games created by an original VCS programmer. That might not even make them homebrews....would it make them "semi-official" or something? :D

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Wow, thanks for coming here and sharing all this information. Definitely the coolest thing that has happened here in a while :)

 

It's very exciting to hear that you are interested in modern 2600 development. You could be the first original programmer to do a new game. There are all kinds of threads and documents posted about the latest tricks, and could be a good refresher if you decide to get into it again. And of course, there are many of us willing to help you out along the way!

 

 

Random Terrain, thanks for the additional links

 

I think I'm starting to understand. I had to read the stuff about the Melody Board a few times trying to get my brain to consider it being real. When I left the VCS 8K was the max and I'd heard about the Super Charger but that didn't seem viable. Melody has 8K of RAM...mind blowing. I was doing runtime explosions in RAM, I think I reserved like 8 or 10 bytes for the sprite. What could be done with 8K of RAM. That would free up page zero too, so faster instructions could allow all the sprites to be generated at runtime. Might be able to kick Demon Attack's ass. Wouldn't be a fair fight of course, but who likes fair fights?

 

I've been search around for info on the Melody and Harmony boards and found some stuff. But kind of like you guys are interested in the past I'm interested in future which is or was your past. How does Dr Who keep this all straight? Any articles on who created Harmony? Behind the curtain stuff? To me that would be cool to read.

 

Any links on the creation of Melody and Harmony? These are made one off as ordered? I'd love to see a video of one being made. Should I post this in the Harmony thread instead?

 

Thanks

 

Not related to the Harmony at all, but you may be interested in seeing this project of mine. It's an experiment to see what kind of graphics the TIA can push with a faster processor. What I've basically done is upgrade the 2600 with a full 6502 running at 3 times the speed as the 2600's 6507 with 16K of RAM and 32K directly addressable ROM. So instead of having 76 cycles to draw a line, you have 228. Still need to get around to writing a cool demo for it.

 

http://atariage.com/...ith-a-wdc65c02/

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This is very cool! :thumbsup: Thank you so much for visiting our little corner of the internet and sharing your knowledge! I know that I speak for most of us when I say that if you were to make a new 2600 game, it would sell like hotcakes, at least in our little community of collectors. The volume may not be high but I'm sure 100 carts or so would easily be within the realm of reason. With so much new tech available, it would be really cool to see new "homebrew" games created by an original VCS programmer. That might not even make them homebrews....would it make them "semi-official" or something? :D

 

No doubt - I've never been too big on homebrews in general(no offense to homebrewers), but if it had a history behind it like an original Atari programmer made it(like when D. Scott Williamson did his Star Castle Kickstarter), I'd be all over it.

 

I'll place it in a box next to Star Castle and there it will be squirreled away to be occasionally worshiped!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=511ysATo3QQ

Edited by Donnicton
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BTW I really like The Final Legacy as well. Do you have any interesting stories behind the making of that game? I know there are some prototypes out there that use icons instead of words that we assume were meant for the overseas market: http://www.atariprot...finallegacy.htm

Final Legacy was my first chance to have all the time I wanted, lots of hardware resources. No excuses. It was all my design, my programming, my graphics, music was done by Robert Weatherby I believe. And of course I'm sure lots of other people had suggestions I probably used. But to me Final Legacy was a kind of test. Am I a game designer?

 

To me it proved I was never going to be a break through original game designer. Don't get me wrong, I've very proud of my work...I'm not a modest person. But there's a reality. I just couldn't see into the future, I didn't have the vision to do games on the systems that were coming. Maybe I just wasn't that into games so I didn't have enough source material to steal from.

 

When the ST came along I found what I really liked to do, user interface stuff.

 

Final Legacy stories...

There aren't many. It was basically long hard work.

 

I have little idea how long it took. I started at Atari 4/83 according to my resume and it was done maybe a month before the Tramiels took over. I was told the game was in manufacturing when the Tramiels took over and that some number had been produced. Maybe 8,000? I'm pretty sure someone gave me a copy which was very nice.

 

Wikipedia says Tramiels took over 7/84 so FL must have been completed say 5/84. Probably started working on it a month or two after starting so I'd say 1 year, 5/83 to 5/84. Seems about right.

 

I've always liked post apocalyptic stories, new beginings, do it right in 2.0 type deals. So the process is knowing what can be done on the hardware and melting the story idea into that. I kind of imagine myself inside the computer and everything is black, turned off. I can see the RAM, the hardware registers, the CPU. And I start turning on stuff to start building a world.

 

The main map was first because I was learning the Atari computer and what it could do. The expanding/collapsing map was a simple trick which of course I thought was cool. Now when I look at the videos of people playing the game I'm like "why didn't I speed that up or have a preference for instant switching". It looks painfully slow. Just having a instant switch was a bit jarring so some transition helped, but come on.

 

The screen with the green grid I was trying to steal arcade Battlezone. Loved that game, loved vector graphics.

 

Shooting the incoming missiles was basically stealing from arcade Centipede. I loved when you lined up on the centipede and just whale away on the fire button blowing it to bits. This screen was also tweaked for the Atari Track Ball which they were looking for any game to support. Track ball worked well for the missiles, you could get into a rhythm and blow them away like a centipede.

 

I would have liked to have stolen from Missile Command too, but I wanted perspective and Missile Command really only works in 2D.

 

The torpedo view was I think pretty original, at least for me. I was proud of the clouds scrolling at different speeds, the light from explosions reflecting off the clouds. Now I wish I would have flashed the white in the clouds when the user got hit.

 

I think Chris Horseman had done a submarine game for EMI before coming to Atari. Not sure. Seems like he talked about some submarine game a lot. I could be confusing things. I think he made it really realistic which seems like a good idea until you realize being on a sub is a pretty boring 99% of the time. Which Chris understood. So I wanted more action and didn't let too much reality get in the way. So the bow of the user's ship is suppose to look like a sub running on the surface where in theory it could move faster. The torpedos were gray to appear beneath the water.

 

Focus tests and stealing from Atari...

To focus test I made a cart for each tester. These are mostly kids found by a company that test all kinds of products. So I had to make like a 12-15 carts I think. EPROM in the cart which I had to burn. Video game industry was super paranoid about everything. And with good reason, we'd steal anything by almost any means. So I burned a unique serial number into each EPROM. The carts are sent to the kids to play for a week or so and then come in as a group to discuss the game.

 

One of the kids said "why can't I blow up my own cities". Future game designer.

 

That was like on a Friday. On monday morning someone, I think Eric, pops his head into my office and says "your game got ripped off". Within a week one of these kids, I assumed, had duplicated the EPROM and was handing out or selling copies and it had already come back to me. Small world.

 

So someone got me a copy and I find the serial number. This was a world Chris Horseman excels at. Within a really short time he's got the storm troopers at the ready and formulating battle plan to make this kid dump a deuce in his shorts. The plan is to have some PI named "Mad Dog" go have a talk with the kid.

 

I was in Chris's office when Mad Dog debriefed. To set the scene Mad Dog would be played by Joe Pesci should there ever be a movie.

 

Mad Dog goes to the kid's house and tells mom that a game got lost and he was investigating. Mind you Mad Dog is telling this like a story...Mad Dog knows we're eating this up. So he gets into the house and asks if he can look through the kid's computer stuff just to make sure the missing game isn't there...you know, by total mistake. Part of the process is Mad Dog flicking thru the kid's floppies one at a time. Mad Dog wears several large rings... Joe Pesci. Mad Dog explains that the rings are strong magnets at which time Chris and I are consumed by laughter and Mad Dog knows he's collecting a bonus. There is justice and there is getting even. Getting even is always better.

 

Mad Dog then tells the kid and mom that the carts were serialized and we know he was making duplicates. Deuce hits the shorts, mom switches from pro life to pro choice in a heart beat. Kid gives up everything. From his hidden porn stash to where the cart went.

 

He'd given the cart to a dude working at HP who used HP equipment to down load the EPROM and make copies. Mad Dog wasn't involved in what happened to the HP dude and I have no knowledge of said dude's whereabouts today. I'm guessing a dozen suits showed up at HP and conveyed Atari's concerns.

 

So, for the collectors out there. There are 12-15 of these. All were returned to me at Atari. Where they all went from there I have no idea except for one which I have. I attached a photo of my cart. The label was a white paper label hand written by me "LEGACY © ATARI 1983 Rev 5.3" and a stamp at the top in red which I can barely see "CONFIDENTIAL". I think they all had exactly the same text. But each ROM image would be different by at least a byte for the serial number. I don't remember which one was stolen so there would be more copies of at least one of these. Not sure how copies could be verified.

 

I'm getting deja vu so maybe I've already posted this info?

 

Interesting the cart says © 1983 and not 1984. Maybe I finished Final Legacy late 1983 and not 5/84? So maybe it took 7 months? Not sure. However me not knowing what year it was when I wrote it also sounds like me.

 

How I got hired at Atari and how Final Legacy got started...

After VentureVision folded and I sold Inner Space to Imagic I was still living in a trailer in Denton TX because I'd been going to N Texas State on the GI bill. Time to look for a job.

 

I looked thru the game magazines and found a bunch of companies looking for programmers. This was kind of the apex of companies looking for people, just before the crash. All the companies seemed to be in CA. I interviewed with a bunch...the smaller the company the faster they repsonded to getting a resume. Very wild, all kinds of companies, all kinds of people.

 

After a few weeks I was about to except a job I think in Sacramento for a company doing desktop computer games on floppies. Atari called. I'm like peeing. I go out and interview with Chris Horseman...I think he was younger than me. Youngest VP ever at Atari of which he was very proud and rightly so. He's talking a mile a minute about coming from EMI, about his sub game I think. He says he's starting an Advanced Games group at Atari which will have maybe 10 of the best developers in the world. He says he's talking to the dude that wrote Star Raiders which dropped my jaw because that's a mythic game. I assumed at the time that the creator of Star Radiers didn't work at Atari.

 

So I'm like not really understanding why Chris is telling me all this...Space Cavern != Star Radiers...not even the same zip code. Chris then says something like "obviously you're not of that caliber"...and am back to reality..."but we're willing to take a chance on a couple of programmers that we think we could teach"...sign me the F up. I couldn''t believe my luck.

 

First day at work it's me Chris and Ritta who was Chris's secretary (personal assistant). Chris was pretty new to Atrai but would never let on. Ritta actually knew everything. She takes me to a huge filing cabinet, flings open the doors and this thing is packed. She says "take whatever you want and if there's anything else you want just let me know and I'll get it". She said "want" not "need". And the way she said it I got the impression if I asked for a lap dance from William Shatner that Ritta would make it happen in a single phone call.

 

There was only three things missing from the Advanced Games Group. 1. Group. 2. Advanced. 3. Games. I was kind of waiting for the A team to show up and start showing me their secrets, and tell me their lunch orders of course. But Chris wasn't interviewing anyone I could see. I start thinking about Final Legacy and studing the Atari 800 internals. I assume the idea of the sea theme came from Chris, he made have been trying to get me to make a certain game, I don't know. I did know it didn't work that way. You can't spec a game, it has to come from an indivual.

 

I pretty quickly figured out why I'd been hired into the Advanced Games Group...they couldn't find anyone else. A VP must have at least one employee other than a personal assistant...I think that's a rule. The next hire was a hardware guy who knew nothing about games, didn't really want to know anything about games but I think needed a job to stay in the US. He was from England like Chris. He was a funny guy in a Black Adder way and did some good work on a Last Star Fighter arcade.

 

Pretty soon Chris says the "group" is moving to new offices. A room in a coin op warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Forklifts, trucks, noise, flumes, the whole enchilada. I don't know the whole story but the impression I got is this is when Warner announced the first big loss, like $500 million which was a lot of money back then. I think Chris saw the crap storm on the horizon and hid us under a rock. I'll bet our budget went tiny real fast. Smart move Chris.

 

When a company shuts down, which I have a great deal of experience, it's not fun. People just obsess and worry. No work gets done. Out in the warehouse I could just program. And that's where I got most of Final Legacy done. We did move back into a normal building at some point. And I think the group got one or two other people. Eric somebody and an artist working on a laser disc thing, or a music video, using the Twilight Zone song.

 

As far as I know Final Legacy was the only game to come out of the Advanced Games Group and it barely got out.

post-35686-0-78913200-1369010520_thumb.jpg

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You guys are posting a lot of great info, like the current development stuff. I've got stuff I have to finish now but it is definitely bouncing around in my head. It will take me awhile to catch up.

 

I'm trying to respond to all who ask. If I miss some question please point it out to me. I've very much enjoy reading all the history you guys have uncovered and happy to contribute where I can.

 

And here's my page about the InnerSpace prototype. I'll have to update it now with your new info: http://www.atariprot.../innerspace.htm

Your main 2600 page, the image:

finallegacy.png

That's from the Final Legacy poster...which I have framed. Artistic license?

 

Apparently I was wrong about Imagic fixing the 1/2" long black scanline on the left side of the screen. I see on YouTube vids of Laser Gates they're still there. Makes me feel a little better.

 

And someone ported Laser Gates to the 5200!!! That's amazing to me. It looks really godd on the video. Better shooting. Really nicely done.

http://youtu.be/4OHyVSyXCYk

 

Can you also tell us about your work on the Apple IIgs Toolbox? I'm a big Apple IIgs fan as well. Most of the Apple II guys hang out on Comp.Sys.Apple2 (https://groups.googl...comp.sys.apple2) so if you have time you might want to stop by there as well.

That's a whole deal. Best group of engineers I ever worked with. Best bosses, best product managers. I've worked with some great groups, but Apple IIGS really stands out. Only place I ever worked where you bosses where the best programmers, Steve Glass and Fern Bachman. Harvey Lehtman who was the champion and I assume did tons of stuff I never heard about that allowed the rest of us to get out the GS.

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If you weren't aware of this site previously, but you had that prototype cart the whole time, I'd say at least one of your other prototypes survived, as a ROM dump exists right here on this very site.

 

Is there any way you'd be able to check the ROM dump that currently exist on Atari Age to find out which of the prototype carts it was? Now that would definitely be some interesting additional trivia!

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More information on The Final Legacy would be awesome! What happened to the other parts of the game? I believe the program was supposed to come on disk and be much bigger.

There are no other parts or disk version that I'm aware.

 

What other Atari 8-bit games were you involved in under Chris Horseman's direction? Any concept demos, prototypes or code that you may still have?

I don't know of any. However, I didn't remember half the stuff until reading about all the info you guys have collected. It's jogged my memory.

 

I don't remember ever doing concepts or prototypes, which is kind of strange now that I think about it. Well I do remember doing an hour glass where each grain of sand had it's own physics. I'm talking fake video game type physics, but looked good to me. I don't think it was ever in a game.

 

At Atari I did write an instant assembler, precompiled header type tricks.

 

I was given tours of other groups to see their games and it seemed like they had tons of concepts and prototypes. I remember seeing a pretty good, graphically anyways, fighting game like Mortal Kombat. I remember thinking, and probably saying, "that kind of game will never be popular". Sure had my finger on the pulse of the future. If it wasn't a shooter it wasn't a game. I still don't get fight games. I can go down to the corner bar and get into a fight. Very realistic, excellent audio. Space ship blasting creatures, now that's cool.

 

I think every VCS game I started got released. Most barely got released, but released. I may hold the record for having written the last game the most companies ever released.

Space Cavern...close by no cigar.

Rescue Terra I...VentureVision bingo

Laser Gates...Image...pretty close if not a bingo.

Final Legacy...Atari...seems like a bingo to me.

What's My Story?...Digital Pictures, maybe a bingo

 

I don't have any old code around. Just a few carts. I sold my last 2600 at a yard sale about 10 years ago.

 

I try not to live in the past...but all this is kind of different. It's like the future went to the past and is being used in the present. Kind of Steampunk, except real.

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There was a game called "What's my Story?"?

 

Is there any info you can give on that? I did a cursory Google/AA search and came up empty.

 

And Rescue Terra I is a pretty obscenely rare game. It tends to go for a few hundred on ebay complete. I'm not sure if that's quite the honor you were hoping for with that legacy though, programming a game nobody can find. :-D

Edited by Donnicton
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There was a game called "What's my Story?"?

Is there any info you can give on that? I did a cursory Google/AA search and came up empty.

What's My Story? was PC and Mac game for kids. Edutainment deal.

 

And Rescue Terra I is a pretty obscenely rare game. It tends to go for a few hundred on ebay complete. I'm not sure if that's quite the honor you were hoping for with that legacy though, programming a game nobody can find. :-D

The irony of a Rescue Terra I selling for more now than pretty much VentureVision's entire gross revenue is not lost on me. But I can always say...at least it wasn't ET.

 

Laser Gates went right to the discount table. Final Legacy too. Rescue Terra I didn't even make it that far. Our biggest, and maybe only sale, was to a couple of guys from South America who stopped by our CES booth at the close and offered to buy all we had with us. Couple of dozen. I have no idea what they wanted them for.

 

My kid brother sold Rescue Terra I door to door. He said he sold all 12 but never sent us our cut. Kid brothers.

 

I don't know what Bob did with the rest of them. I remember we spent a lot of time putting carts together and boxing them. When you have programmers boxing carts inside of writing code you know things aren't good.

 

We had "sold" 10,000 carts to a distributor and we ordered the ROMs which took a few weeks. When we called the distributor back the guy no longer worked there, they were out of the games business. That was the crash. Third week of Oct 83. We knew the gold rush was over. We kept trying, went to CES in Jan 84. Saw Pat Roper sitting in the Apollo "booth" which was just a big empty space and a couple folding chairs in the middle with Pat sitting there. Guess he was trying to sell off whatever he could. Not a happy time. But Bob did teach me to play craps, and he was good at it.

 

At one point we hooked up with some multi-level marketing people and they seemed pretty interest in the same way sharks are interested in things splashing around in the water. After a bit they became more interested in an application to help them track all the money. Apparently these things go fast but not for too long. They had stories of garbage cans full of letters, checks and cash that they couldn't get thru fast enough. No computers. They had to doing everything by hand. A $10 sale meant $1 went to one person, $0.50 to another and on and on. Like 7-10 cuts for every sale. It was a nightmare. A lot of those guys went to jail and multi-level marketing was outlawed only because they just couldn't do the accounting if a product sold a lot. They didn't pay people because they couldn't figure out how much and to who.

 

So they wanted me to write an Apple II app which I did, pretty simple. But then they wanted to put me into hotels and keep moving me around while their scheme played out. They said it was common in their business so law enforcement couldn't find them. Apparently it was kind of up in the air as to whether or not these things are legal or not. Depends on how many levels deep and whether the product is real or not. Selling a 5 cent pen for $100 would be illegal. But selling a $50 Rescue Terra I they thought would be legal...probably...in most states. But why take the chance? Let's us put you into a hotel. Thanks, but no thanks boys.

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Sounds like a lot of illegal activity was going on. I wonder how many programmers weren't paid? How many were promised a lump sum for programming and didn't get it??

 

Thank goodness for the internet. It's harder to get away with underhanded BS like that.

 

Carry on...

 

EDIT: I ripped most of this post out and rewrote it.. sorry! :P

Edited by Csonicgo
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I never heard of programmers not getting paid back then. In those days game programmers were treated very well I thought. If you weren't you'd just go next door or start your own company.

 

The shady stuff was stealing info. Like Apollo had someone from Atari willing to sell a 2600 manual, at least that's the story I was told. I heard they had lunch and the guy wanted $100K. There was a lot of paranoia that we didn't know about some secret registers that would allow us to do better games. I remember management asking me if I thought there were unknown registers. Don't ask me how a person would know about something unknown, I was never in management. I'd worked at Apollo for a couple of weeks and had already down loaded and studied at least a few games and figured if there were any more registers we'd find them that way.

 

Who's talking to who type stuff. Worried about programmers leaving. Planting people at other game companies. None of it amounted to a hill of beans. They'd hear some company was doing XYZ game...so what? What are you going to do with that info?

 

But mostly around bootlegged games. That could kill a company.

 

Lot of fast money at stake so shortcuts are taken.

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Thanks. I read the second thread and now kind of see I have to read the Chimera thread.

 

So Batari created the Harmony and Melody boards? That just amazing. It would be cool to read an article on the project. Threads are good, but misses a lot I think. I've seen a lot of products created in companies with lots of resources and it looks to me like the Harmony project was really well done. And for someone to risk their own money...amazing.

 

Specs look amazing too from a developer perspective. I have a lot more reading to do but if I ever get the time I'd love to program for it. Time is always the issue.

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If you weren't aware of this site previously, but you had that prototype cart the whole time, I'd say at least one of your other prototypes survived, as a ROM dump exists right here on this very site.

 

Is there any way you'd be able to check the ROM dump that currently exist on Atari Age to find out which of the prototype carts it was? Now that would definitely be some interesting additional trivia!

I don't have a way to down load a cart. I'm pretty clueless with hardware. But all the production Final Legacy carts should be the same. I think 400/800/XL were all the same code. 5200 I think was different, but all in production would be the same. So all production dumps would be the same.

 

As far as I know these serialized 12-15 copies are the only other ones out there. I probably made some copies for magazines. I don't think we even had testers. Handing out copies was a very scary thing so I wouldn't even give my mom a copy.

 

If someone at AtariAge wants the ROM image I'd be happy to mail it to someone. But I'd like it back.

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There's some of us Apple ][ geeks here too you know =P

Apple II Forever

 

My first computer, $2200. Bought a 5.25" floppy for $500. In the winter I had to use a hair dyer to warm it up enough that it would start to read. Biggest purchase decision of my life. I'll never forget the sound of that floppy. Got to Google that.

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Apple II Forever

 

My first computer, $2200. Bought a 5.25" floppy for $500. In the winter I had to use a hair dyer to warm it up enough that it would start to read. Biggest purchase decision of my life. I'll never forget the sound of that floppy. Got to Google that.

 

I cut my teeth on the //e and //c back in 1983, 1984, 1985. Still biased toward it. My major retrocomputing project lately has been getting games to run under ProDOS where they can be put on 3.5" floppies and hard drives.

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The 3.5" floppies were sweet. Like the pads on Star Trek.

 

My first game was in Apple Basic, in Hi Res. Only white pixels, probably got higher res in B&W? I was knocking off arcade Asteroids. Ship at the bottom only moved left to right with a really bad pot stick. And asteroids falling down to be shot. Got too slow so I moved to 6502.

 

I liked the Apple II a lot, used it a lot. But I don't really miss the machine. The 68000 and bit map graphics really turned my head.

 

But the only machine I'd say I ever get nostalgic for is the VCS. I liked the graphics better than the Apple II. And the VCS had more personality imo. In a couple of days you could know every hardware register, every 6502 instruction, every cycle count. You'd personally store and read right from the metal. You were never talking thru an OS. It was just you and her.

 

And to debug you'd stare at this totally jacked up scrambled screen to see what she was trying to tell you was wrong. Super simple but a total challenge to create something. Not seen anything close since.

Edited by DanOliver
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It's very exciting to hear that you are interested in modern 2600 development. You could be the first original programmer to do a new game. There are all kinds of threads and documents posted about the latest tricks, and could be a good refresher if you decide to get into it again. And of course, there are many of us willing to help you out along the way!

It would be a trip. Use a modern computer to program a VCS. I wonder how different it would be?

 

I'm going to read your link now.

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Wow, amazing another top programmer on AA, welcome.

 

So there's a bunch of Rescue Terra 1 in SA warehouses. Time to get on to our friend in Venezuela and see if there's something to find out.

 

Love The Final Legacy, btw, one of my Top 5 A8 games, it's an absolute classic.

 

Also, we had a successful Atari VCS fanzine during early 90s - 2009, maybe you are willing to give an interview for Scott Stilphen at Digital Press:

http://atariage.com/...ion-newsletter/

 

http://www.digitpress.com/

look under Library, Interviews

Edited by high voltage
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