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Team Pixelboy News Bulletin - July 24th 2012


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Hello, individuals of the ColecoVision persuasion! :D

 

I've returned from AdamCon 24, where I was able to showcase all my past and upcoming Team Pixelboy releases. It was quite a memorable three-day event, and I would like to take a moment to thank Daniel Bienvenu for organizing the convention this year. As I'm sure you can imagine, it was hard for him to keep his head above the proverbial water! So thanks, newcoleco! :)

 

This is going to be quite a memorable news bulletin as well, my dear friends, as I am ready to announce publicly on this forum the two surprises that I showed last Saturday to the people who attended AdamCon! But just before that, I would like to give you a quick update on my Team Pixelboy release schedule.

 

 

SEVERAL GAMES PUSHED BACK TO 2013

 

The following games are sure to be released this year:

 

- Wonder Boy

- Mopiranger

- Princess Quest

- King's Valley

- Thexder

 

And I've decided to release the following games in 2013:

 

- Champion Ice Hockey

- Jewel Panic

- The Black Onyx

- Spelunker

- The Stone of Wisdom

 

I don't know yet whether Module Man will be released this year or in 2013. The box template is done, but as I write this, the software is definately far from ready. So we'll see.

 

The way I figure it, most ColecoVision fans will want to purchase a Super Game Module from Opcode, and will likely purchase King's Valley and Thexder to go with it (along with CollectorVision's Rollerball) and perhaps a few more ColecoVision games during the December holidays. So I believe Champion Ice Hockey will probably be low on everybody's wish list, and the same can be said of Jewel Panic, so I may as well push both games back to 2013, and give everyone a breather, financially-speaking.

 

About The Black Onyx, I want to do extensive beta-testing on this game and I won't be able to do that this year, so it will be one more for 2013 as well. As I've stated in the previous news bulletin, Spelunker and The Stone of Wisdom will be released next year as well, to give Eduardo Mello the time he needs to port these two MSX games to the ColecoVision.

 

But wait, I did mention something about a couple of surprises, didn't I? :) The two games presented below will be released on Christmas Day, along with my other 2012 releases. They have also been added to the official Team Pixelboy web site.

 

 

QUEST FOR THE GOLDEN CHALICE

 

Programmed by a newcomer to the CV homebrew scene who prefers to remain anonymous, Quest for the Golden Chalice is none other than the ColecoVision remake of Adventure on the Atari 2600! It features improved graphics and animation, some nice music and sound effects, and even extra features not found in the original Atari game! I have attached some screenshots below, which were taken from the final build of the game with blueMSX. As one who spent weeks privately beta-testing it, I can tell you that this game ROCKS! And the cherry on the sunday: This game will be offered in special gold cartridges!

 

 

DRAGON'S LAIR

 

Yes, my friends, this is no joke! The Adam DDP game has been converted into a 256K MegaCart cartridge, and contains all levels from the original game! The Super Game Module will be required to play this game on a ColecoVision console, but ADAM owners will be able to play it without the SGM plugged in! I've attached some screenshots below, which were also snapped using blueMSX. This conversion job was done by the same anonymous guy who did Quest for the Golden Chalice, just in case you're wondering.

 

 

COLLECTOR MINI-CARTS : SUPER ACTION SOCCER!

 

Here is a piece of news which I totally forgot to mention at AdamCon: To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the ColecoVision, I will be releasing a new type of Team Pixelboy product this fall: Collector Mini-Carts! The first of these releases will be Super Action Soccer. Only five copies of this re-release will be produced and they will all be put on auction on eBay, in a similar way to Opcode's prototypes from a few years ago, so it will definately be a product for serious collectors first and foremost!

 

Each copy will include a red mini-cart (CV homebrew fans will recognize PkK's cart format), a high-quality manual, a professionally-printed Super Action Controller overlay, and will be stored in a special transparent hinged plastic box. So this will be a high-quality offering. I attached some pictures of the manual and plastic box below. I wish I could show you more, but I'm not able to at the moment.

 

By the way, I'm considering doing another Collector Mini-Cart, namely Spy Hunter Arcade. If it becomes reality, this special hack of Spy Hunter will be played with the Expansion Module #2 (a.k.a. the Coleco steering wheel). As you may recall, the original Spy Hunter game for CV was designed to be played with a regular Coleco stock controller or a Super Action Controller, but since the arcade game itself uses a steering wheel, this proposed altered version seems appropriate. It's not a sure thing yet, but I do hope this proposed hack will become reality, and I'm hoping to release it in 2013.

 

CLOSING WORDS

 

It's been quite a while since I gave my order of Coleco cartridge casings to Moldex, and all I've gotten so far from my contact at the company are delays, excuses and empty promises. Honestly, with such bad customer service, I don't know how Moldex manages to stay in business. Anyway, for those who placed an order of casings with me, I just don't know when the casings will be manufactured. But I'll keep in touch with Moldex, just to make sure they don't casually forget about me... :twisted:

 

I would also like to mention that I brought a few copies of my Team Pixelboy games to AdamCon, and while Ninja Princess, Pitfall II Arcade and Golgo 13 are now sold out, my other games did not manage to find buyers. So if you're looking to purchase a copy of Circus Charlie, Bank Panic, Star Force, Konami's Ping-Pong, Gulkave or Girl's Garden, now's your chance! I only have a couple of copies left of most of these games, and once they're sold, they'll be permanently sold out!

 

This concludes this Team Pixelboy News Bulletin. We now return you to your regular forum activities. :)

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WOW! WOW! WOW! This is going to give me incentive to break out the ol Colecovision!

Quest for the Golden Chalice looks to be a MUST BUY!

Dragons Lair? An all time favorite. How much will the Super Game Module cost does anyone know yet?

I'm assuming you mean this SGM....

 

http://www.colecovision.dk/sem.htm

 

Although Dragons Lair isn't one of the games listed.

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WOW! WOW! WOW! This is going to give me incentive to break out the ol Colecovision!

Quest for the Golden Chalice looks to be a MUST BUY!

 

Believe me, it is. :D

 

 

How much will the Super Game Module cost does anyone know yet?

 

Only Eduardo Mello can answer that at this point in time. :)

 

 

Although Dragons Lair isn't one of the games listed.

 

Dragon's Lair is a very recent development, it's not surprising that it isn't listed anywhere.

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Some of these companies and brands are still alive. Someday those companies could decided to cash in and make DLC and start taking notice like Atari has in the past.

 

Is there a backup plan in those situations? I wouldn't mind a rename and sprite swap for Wonder Boy if Hudson Soft ever decided to be a butt-monkey.

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Some of these companies and brands are still alive. Someday those companies could decided to cash in and make DLC and start taking notice like Atari has in the past.

 

Is there a backup plan in those situations? I wouldn't mind a rename and sprite swap for Wonder Boy if Hudson Soft ever decided to be a butt-monkey.

 

I don't really have a backup plan. The Wonder Boy PCBs are already programmed, soldered and ready. I'll just keep my fingers crossed, I guess...

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So far I have liked all the games I have gotten from Pixelboy. If you guys decided you were going to hate something ahead of time and didn't buy it then you should reconsider. I never heard of a lot of these games since I am pretty much all colecovision and have never played all these games on foreign consoles or arcades. I gotta tell you Girls Garden is pretty darn cool with those annoying bears and all the action, I can't believe some of those still exist.

 

As always, I am in for all of them!!

 

Or if I am on the banned list then NIAD is in for all of them double ;)

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One question, "What will happen to spending 2013 working on BasicVision then"? :P

 

Incredible news update concerning QftGC and Dragon's Lair. The live webcam from ADAMcon went down halfway thru you presentation of the your 2011 releases and I unfortunately gave up waiting for it to come back. As impressvive as QftGC looks and sounds, the fact that someone undertook the task of porting the ADAM version of Dragon's Lair to a CV MegaCart version just blows my mind and goes to show that you can never say never. One question, is CV Dragon's Lair going to include the Hall of Fame and saving the scores via Opcode's new MegaCart with save feature or has this feature of the ADAM version been dropped and the original MegaCart going to be used?

 

I guess the "wantability" of an ADAM Computer may diminish quite a bit especially if the other ADAM Super Game titles can and do get ported as well. Aside from that, it will be great to have versions in different formats (CV cartridge) as an alternative backup.

 

While I can respect the author of these two games wanting to remain anonymous, can you answer one question? Is the programmer someone new or newer to the scene, someone that was/is involved in the Homebrew scene from the mid-90's on or someone that was involved with the ADAM and the Users Group in the 80's?

 

Anyway, good luck with all these projects and will be looking forward to their announced release.

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I gotta tell you Girls Garden is pretty darn cool with those annoying bears and all the action, I can't believe some of those still exist.

 

I currently have 12 copies left of Girl's Garden. It's been a slow seller, but I do sell a copy every once in a while. Most people who buy it without being sure if they're going to like it are usually pleasantly surprised at the quality of the gameplay. :) It's cute, relatively non-violent, and pretty easy at first, which makes it interesting for girls who don't usually play video games. But the difficulty ramps up in the later levels, so the challenge is definately there.

 

 

As always, I am in for all of them!!

 

Or if I am on the banned list then NIAD is in for all of them double ;)

 

To ban or not to ban, that is the question... ;)

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I gotta tell you Girls Garden is pretty darn cool with those annoying bears and all the action, I can't believe some of those still exist.

 

I currently have 12 copies left of Girl's Garden. It's been a slow seller, but I do sell a copy every once in a while. Most people who buy it without being sure if they're going to like it are usually pleasantly surprised at the quality of the gameplay. :) It's cute, relatively non-violent, and pretty easy at first, which makes it interesting for girls who don't usually play video games. But the difficulty ramps up in the later levels, so the challenge is definately there.

 

 

As always, I am in for all of them!!

 

Or if I am on the banned list then NIAD is in for all of them double ;)

 

To ban or not to ban, that is the question... ;)

BAN HIM!! Then I could order his copies as well as request his Bouder Dash CIB as payment.

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One question, "What will happen to spending 2013 working on BasicVision then"? :P

 

It's still the plan, for the most part. If I can get all the boxes (for the 2012 and 2013 titles) printed this year, then that will leave the manuals, which isn't nearly as much work as the box templates. It takes me about a week to write up a single manual, so it's not too bad. Assembling carts and gluing boxes together is time-consuming, but again, it's not something that requires months and months of work.

 

So the 2013 BasicVision plan still stands, although it may take me more than a year to complete the parser and all the auxiliary editors, given that I'll have to beta-test certain games, like The Black Onyx. I followed newcoleco's course on the CV BIOS sound format at AdamCon, and it made me realize how much work it's going to require just to acquire a good understanding of how to make music and sound effects on the CV. I had an easier time with Dale Wick's assembly language course, but his code examples relied heavily on the CV BIOS routines, so there's still a lot of stuff to learn on that front. Until I've sufficiently mastered sound output and assembly programming, BasicVision will remain an empty shell of an application. :)

 

 

As impressvive as QftGC looks and sounds, the fact that someone undertook the task of porting the ADAM version of Dragon's Lair to a CV MegaCart version just blows my mind and goes to show that you can never say never.

 

You want to know the most incredible part? The work was done in less than three weeks. :P

 

 

One question, is CV Dragon's Lair going to include the Hall of Fame and saving the scores via Opcode's new MegaCart with save feature or has this feature of the ADAM version been dropped and the original MegaCart going to be used?

 

The game will use the original MegaCart. So while the game still features the high score table, the content of the table is lost when you press the reset button or turn the power off. I don't really see the point of keeping a persistent hall of fame with this particular game. It's so short anyhow...

 

 

I guess the "wantability" of an ADAM Computer may diminish quite a bit especially if the other ADAM Super Game titles can and do get ported as well. Aside from that, it will be great to have versions in different formats (CV cartridge) as an alternative backup.

 

Would you guys like to have Zaxxon Super Game converted to cartridge, by the way? I may be able to make that happen. But ZSG is the only other Adam game I'm willing to convert and publish this way. The other ADAM Super Games don't appeal to me enough to warrant a conversion.

 

While I can respect the author of these two games wanting to remain anonymous, can you answer one question? Is the programmer someone new or newer to the scene, someone that was/is involved in the Homebrew scene from the mid-90's on or someone that was involved with the ADAM and the Users Group in the 80's?

 

I honestly don't know him all that well. I don't even know what he does for a living, although he's probably a programmer. All I can tell you is that he's pretty new to the scene.

 

Anyway, good luck with all these projects and will be looking forward to their announced release.

 

Thanks Jim. :)

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Once you take out the 1K RAM issue with the ColecoVision through the use of the SGM and it's added RAM, I wouldn't think that there wouldn't be a whole lot of issues in porting Dragon's Lair or other ADAM games. There would probably be a couple calls/accesses to the ADAM's E.O.S. (Elementary Operating System) upon pressing the Computer Reset switch and booting up the Disk or DDP and then from there I would think most of the rest of the work would be tracking down all the routines that load further data from the Disk or DDP. There could be more to it, but really the ADAM is just a ColecoVision with extra RAM and a plethora of extra I/O ports for additional hardware. This is not to diminish the work that was done by the programmer as I surely couldn't do it and I heard enough stories from Jim Walters (Walters Software Co.) about all the time he spent disassembling the Super Games that were only released on DDP in order to convert them to disk back in the day.

 

I would think that a conversion of the ADAM Zaxxon Super Game should be a no-brainer seeing as it adds all the new asteroids and end level bosses that aren't in the cartridge and for that matter the Arcade game. I would also think that the unreleased but completed SubRoc Super Game would be a good candidate with it completely new underwater area. Donkey Kong would be pointless with Opcode's arcade perfect version coming soon and if he chooses to make Donkey Kong Junior, then an ADAM conversion of that would be pointless as well.

Edited by NIAD
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One question, "What will happen to spending 2013 working on BasicVision then"? :P

 

It's still the plan, for the most part. If I can get all the boxes (for the 2012 and 2013 titles) printed this year, then that will leave the manuals, which isn't nearly as much work as the box templates. It takes me about a week to write up a single manual, so it's not too bad. Assembling carts and gluing boxes together is time-consuming, but again, it's not something that requires months and months of work.

 

So the 2013 BasicVision plan still stands, although it may take me more than a year to complete the parser and all the auxiliary editors, given that I'll have to beta-test certain games, like The Black Onyx. I followed newcoleco's course on the CV BIOS sound format at AdamCon, and it made me realize how much work it's going to require just to acquire a good understanding of how to make music and sound effects on the CV. I had an easier time with Dale Wick's assembly language course, but his code examples relied heavily on the CV BIOS routines, so there's still a lot of stuff to learn on that front. Until I've sufficiently mastered sound output and assembly programming, BasicVision will remain an empty shell of an application. :)

 

It may be more basic (ha!) then it seems. Somebody has already done a preliminary port of ZX Basic for the Sega Master System:

http://www.smspower....pic.php?t=12902

 

If you could scavenge his framework and convert over the Sega specific code then you'd be much farther along, methinks.

Edited by theloon
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