Which game should be ported to ATARI 2600 ?

[Guest]

games that should have been made:

 

the goonies

scorched earth

lemmings

comander keen

wolfenstein{not 3d cause that would SUCK on VCS!!}

bottle toss

Bigmouth

skee ball

skifree

solitare

tetris

3 stooges

pirana

galaga

duke nukem 1

ultima exodous

and worms

 

[Bob Bytchin]

Games that should have been made? Kind of a hard call since most of the games that haven't been translated are a little too much for the system.

 

My handful of choices:

 

Space Panic (severly under-rated game)

Pac-Man (I mean REAL Pac-Man)

Mystic Marathon

Major Havoc

Galaga

Tron (the Arcade game)

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Boulderdash!

 

If I had an idea, how to convert it to the 2600, I would try.

[MattyXB]

Loderunner

Jumpman

 

2 Good C64 games. And some more from older Systems.

 

Matthias

[Nostalgic]

Arcade: Do Run Run!, Galaga, Qix, and Super Pac-Man. I'm hard-pressed to think of how the last two would even be feasible without massive flicker.

 

Computer ports: M.U.L.E., Fire Bug (a masterful game from ANALOG magazine), Ballblazer, and Boulderdash.

[popeal]

Games I'd like to see:

 

*Qix

*Pole Position II

*Master Of the Lamps (Commodore 64 game)

*Break Dance (a dumb C64 game, but, it would work!)

*Donkey Kong 3

*Pac-Land

*Shark! Shark! (Fun Intellivision game!)

*Tron Cyber-Cycles (hey, if anyone can do a cool hack and mod up Surround, that would work!)

*some type of a Final Fantasy type RPG...

*Cloak & Dagger

*NeverEnding Story

*Richard Petty's Talledega (Cool racing game from my C64 days!)

*Castle Wolfenstein 3D

*Nightmare On Elm Street

.....I'm sure there is more.... lol

 

Al

www.blowoutmagazine.com

[Tempest]

I think Qix might be possible if you used playfield graphics to do the box fill stuff. Intersting idea...

 

Until last month I woudn't have thought Elevator Action was possible until I saw it with my own eyes (and it was good!)

 

I'd like to have seen (I'm not listing games that would have been impossible to do):

 

Mr. Do Run Run

Space Zap (Cosmic Ark is close)

The End

Galaga (it probably would have sucked though)

Peter Peppers Ice Cream Factory

Robotron: 2084 (maybe with major flicker)

Space Dungeon

Mappy

Tron

 

Tempest

[Bob Mackey]

"Choplifter"

(Actually, I seem to recall reading that there was some work on a 2600 version, is that true?)

 

"Spare Change"

(A game I used to play on my Apple II. Anyone here remember it?)

 

"Galaxy Quest"

(That is, if it had REALLY been around in 1983.)

[StanJr]

Snider-man's work has me thinking. Has anyone ever attmepted to recreate other modern games in a 2600 format. I'm thinking a 2600 Tomb Raider would be cool. Maybe a 2600 Legend of Zelda. (I know the trademarks would be impossible to get, but the names could be tweaked). A 2600 Castlevania would really kick!

[Tempest]

There's just not enough memory to try and do something as complex as Zelda or Tomb Raider. Even very very simple RPG's like Dragonstomper (or as I call it Dragon Warrior 0.5) required extra memory form the Supercharger.

 

There was actually a Legend of Zelda game in the works for the 7800 called Time Lords of Xantic but it required extra memory and Atari wouldn't spring for it.

 

Tempest

[Nateo]

You could make those games for the Supercharger or the Cuttle Cart only. This would allow much bigger games to be programmed. You can make a 64k game using the Cuttle Cart.

As for games I'd like to see downsized for the Atari VCS, I think a good fighting game would be nice (not like Street Fighter Alpha 3 Championship Edition Turbo or whatever). Also, one of the Dragon Warrior games or Final Fantasy games for the 2600 would look cool.

[Ze_ro]

I'd love to see someone program Crazy Taxi for the Atari. I really don't think it'd be all that hard either... naturally it wouldn't be 3D. Just imagine something like Indy 500, except with a scrolling screen, passengers, and drop-off points. I think it would be completely possibly, and would probably still be quite fun. Someone posted a faked screenshot a while back where Crazy Taxi looked a little like Night Driver, and this might work fairly well too. Also, Jet Grind Radio could probably be done in a similar matter (Though tricks and jumps would be a little difficult)

 

I think RPG's are difficult on the Atari... even if the Cuttle Cart is used, the problem is with RAM, not cartridge space. I'm not sure there are any bankswitching schemes that allow 64k worth of combined RAM and ROM (correct me if I'm wrong). Of course, I'd still love to see a decent RPG if anyone is up to the challenge (Hell, Adventure and Raiders Of The Lost Ark are RPG enough for me... anyone care to make more games along these lines? ). Fighting games like Street Fighter would also be a little too much I think... hell, the 2600 could hardly even handle Double Dragon, and I sure most of you have played Karate (Panda)...

 

Some other games that I think would be great to see ported to the Atari: BC's Quest For Tires, Jumpman Jr and Pepper II from the ColecoVision, 1942 or Raiden (Though Raiden might be too much), Punch-Out, Excitebike, and a Mario-style game should all be possible (Hey, if it can handle Pitfall 2...)

 

--Zero

[StanJr]

My thoughts exactly Ze_ro! I look at games as complex as Space Shuttle, Pitfall II, or Solaris, Raiders, and start modifying them to fit the needs of something resembling a Zelda or Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, etc. Of course its not going to be THE game, but there has to be some way to shrink these modern games into 2600 format.

 

After seeing Snider's work on Venture II (sorry Snider, I couldn't wait, I got the ROM for my PC, its a blast. I'll still nab a cart from you when I get better joystix) I have started kicking around the idea of learing to program 2600 games myself. If I can teach myself to do such, my first efforts will be to bring newer games to the realm of the 2600.

[StanJr]

Right, those games are super-complex compared to what the 2600 can do, but...

I was thinking maybe super stripped down versions of those more complex games. Tutankham for 2600 is pretty close to being a "Tomb Raider" type game. Raiders of the Lost Arc for 2600 is pretty complex, and plays similar to what I imagine a Zelda game for 2600 could be like. I'm not asking for the 2600 version to be spot on, just a neat, compacted version of the same game.

[cwilkson]

Ok, ok...

 

I guess now is a good time to tell everyone

here that there *is* a 2600 cartridge format

that was created specifically for "modern"

RPG games: The Megacart.

 

It supports up to 128KB of ROM, and 128KB

of battery-backed RAM, all in one cartridge.

 

Unfortunately, there just wasn't any interest

in using it. Even though the Stella emulator

supports it, no programmers wanted it. So it

was never actually *built*.

 

Also, I should mention that a couple of RPG

engines were in development (a couple of

years ago) but were abandoned. Personally, I

think something like Legend of Zelda is

*definitely* doable on the 2600. Even a

direct port (given a few necessary

compromises). It would just be damned

difficult.

 

It seems nobody is up to that kind of

challenge.

 

Yet.

 

-Chris

[Ze_ro]

Holy crap! 128kb of RAM and ROM?!? That's pretty crazy! I was expecting the discussed game to basically be a hacked version(s) of Adventure or maybe even Raiders... but you could do a damn lot with a cartridge like that! (By the way, the Nintendo version of Legend of Zelda was only 128kb of ROM! So any memory restrictions for a port are effectively gone now)

 

There is one part about using a cartridge like this that would cause problems though: You'd need an eprom programmer to actually test the game out on a real VCS... the Cuttle Cart wouldn't be able to handle it, so I guess we'd be stuck testing it with Stella.

 

By the way, is this an actual standard, or was it just a hack that the Stella programmers made up? (Does Z26 do this?)

 

--Zero

[StanJr]

This is an interesting turn of events! That would solve a lot of problems!

 

I think the stats rolling over into the next adventure would be cool.

 

I'd also like to see a deconstructed Raiders of the Lost Ark (I had the same idea Ze_ro, ripping off Raiders for the Zelda game) to get a feel for how they managed all those items and functions across that many screens.

 

If no individual programmer-types out there want to tackle this monster, would any of them care to team-up (join forces if you will) on the idea? Considering the skill level of some of the members here, I think it would be a most promising effort.

[Ze_ro]

Since everyone seems to like the idea of RPG's on the Atari, I just thought of one that *might* be possible to port: Rogue! Anyone else remember this game? It was all text based graphics, but it actually had a fairly in-depth inventory system and random dungeon generation and such. I doubt you'd be able to keep all the complexity in a 2600 port, but at least the graphics would probably be doable.

 

Speaking of which, I've noticed that many Starpath games seem to use a very small font for displaying messages (Survivial Island, Dragonstomper, etc) instead of the nasty huge Atari fonts used for scores in various games, or the one in Star Raiders. Would it be possible to use a font like this for full-screen display, or is this just a hack to get it to work at all?

 

(By the way, if you were ever a fan of Rogue, you owe it to yourself to check out Nethack! It's amazing complicated, and very well thought out.. but there isn't a chance you'll get this thing on the 2600)

 

--Zero

[Jess Ragan]

There were a lot of games that were released for the 2600, but many others arcade, computer, and console releases were not translated to the 2600 format. Which of these games do you wish had been made for the 2600? I'd say Robotron: 2084 and Jeff Minter's underground classic Gridrunner.

 

JR

[davidbrit2]

I kind of always wanted to see a port of Super Mario Bros, just to see how it would have turned out. Sonson might have translated well, too, but it's kind of an obscure game anyway.

[liquid_sky]

I would like to see 1942 on atari 2600

[Parcel]

Return Of The Jedi arcade. I used to spend soooooo much money playing that and got really good at it. However I doubt it could be translated very well and theyd probably have to separate the different aspects into separate games(Falcon, speeder, walker).

[Spector]

3D Deathchase.

This is a game Americans may not know about, I'm not sure. It came out on the ZX Spectrum (the most popular computer in Europe in the 1980's) and only used 16K of memory. Basically, it was influenced by the Return Of The Jedi sequence on the Ewok planet, where you are on the hoverbike things trying to shoot other people on hoverbikes while darting in and out of the trees. It's done from a first person perspective, and it is absolutely brilliant. 16K could be done using bankswitching, but I'm not sure whether the speed could be recreated.

[Ze_ro]

A few that I always miss:

 

Bosconian (This might have been difficult)

Bomb Jack

Frenzy

Lunar Lander (Why wasn't this done?)

Pepper 2 (I love the Coleco version)

Lady Bug (While we on the topic...)

Rally X or Radar Rat Race (any Vic-20 fans?)

Major Havoc

 

In fact, Bosconian and Major Havoc never appeared on any game system that I'm aware of...

 

And of course, any number of platform games would have been cool too: Contra, Rolling Thunder, Megaman, Elevator Action (100%), etc

 

--Zero

[moycon]

Shamus was a decent computer game that would seem a natural for the 2600. I always liked that game because you had a goal you could meet insted of just playing till you died.

 

As far as arcade traslation. I would've liked to have seen Tron the Arcade game translated.