"Apple-like" games on the Atari 800 etc.

[Britishcar]

I was having a nice recollection about the days just before the C64 made it's appearance when all of the computer magazines were filled with info on the 400/800's, Apple II's, PETs and VIC-20.

 

It was during those days that the 800 would occasionally "inherit" a game that seemed to be developed on and marketed to the Apple II first and then later translated to the 800. The point being, these games had a very "Apple-like" feeling to them. Some of the characteristics of these games were often:

 

1) Scratchy sound effects and/or music

2) Hi-res (GR. modes with artifacting to create color

3) Little or no use of Atari-specific features such as P/M graphics or wide color pallets

 

Some examples of what I mean might be:

 

Lode Runner (Broderbund, the original artifacted color one).

Chop Lifter (also Broderbund)

Snake Byte (Sirius) in which ALL of the game sound came out of the 800's built in speaker -- just like an Apple II

The Ultima Series

 

To me, these games were great fun and it was fun to see games that looked and felt like our Apple brethren playing on the A800. It was even interesting to see the same "limitations" in terms of sound effects or video slowdowns with lots of non-PM moving objects on screen.

 

In an odd way, the A800 and the A2 never seemed to have same type of vicious competitive vibe that the A800 and C64 seemed to get into. A2 owners were sort of a slightly different breed, whereas the C64 owners that followed were nothing like them. After the C64, these types of software ports seemed to lessen. Perhaps because fewer games were developed on the A2 first and were now on the C64 first?

 

At any rate, feel free to comment if you remember this the way I do.

 

And can you think of other games that follow my examples?

 

 

[+save2600]

Pinball Construction Set comes to mind as a very Apple-like program. Seemed the A8 and C64 versions suffered from poor translating anyway.... wacky ball physics, the annoying flicker when playfield pieces were being dragged, crappy sound and that weird color striping that would affect pieces differently and depending on where they were placed.

 

Sucks that so many games throughout the 80's and 90's were crippled due to lazy programming and developers not taking advantage of superior hardware.

Edited December 15, 2013 by save2600

[Britishcar]

True! PCS was very A2-like. My biggest problem with PCS was the plethora of junk home-made pinball sets that made it out to 1980's BBS's and are still with us!

[+slx]

Wavy Navy (Sirius)?

(probably some other Sirius games as well)

[Britishcar]

Wavy Navy! Yes!

[+therealbountybob]

Was HighRise one (excellent game if a bit hard to see on PAL)

[Rybags]

Apple Panic.

 

Drol - initially released as hires then later done as multicolour.

 

Not necessarily a fan of the A2 conversions but some like Drol are great games. I suppose one positive is that at least doing games with softsprites at the time meant that the programmers were forced into efficient use of the machine's resources.

Although I don't think many/any games used advanced techniques like preshifted data although with the 48K or less limitation, doesn't really allow for preshifted data on more than a few objects.

[+davidcalgary29]

Night Mission Pinball, Hard Hat Mack, and A.E. all come to mind.

[Bryan]

Several of the Datasoft games like Goonies and Conan.

[Panther]

At least with Exodus they added music to the Atari version!

[Britishcar]

One of the most blatant examples had to be "Bandits" by Sirius. My friends and I called it "Apple Bandits" since on the title screen it had an "Apple" before the word "Bandits." The Atari intro screen was identical to the Apple version except an "alien" swoops out, "eats" the "apple" to reveal an Atari logo underneath! Wierdly, the Atari logo was left with a little stem and two leaves on the top! It was actually kind of creepy since the Atari logo was gray and make it look like the Apple's skeleton.

 

The scrolling of the intro screen has a lot of modulation waves running through it as if it were using a brute force scrolling technique and not a hardware based one.

 

Tons of soft sprites in this game and very Apple-esque sound effects. Fun game, though. Hard as hell if I remember correctly.

[Rybags]

Some games like Conan really suffered from being converted. It had the potential to be a very good game but I rate it barely over ordinary due to the annoying variance in speed which made an already hard game near unplayable.

[oracle_jedi]

Flight Simulator II

[bfollett]

The whole Questprobe super hero series comes to mind. I think the games were programmed for multiple computers at the same time, but the graphics were all drawn to the least common denominator.

 

Bob

[+FujiSkunk]

David's Midnight Magic for the Atari 8-bits looks very much like it came from Apple II source, even after they changed the graphic on the bumper from an apple to an Atari Fuji. Coincidentally enough, DMM is also a Broderbund game.

 

As for the last of the Broderbund "big four," Atari 8-bit Karateka has an Apple-II-sized color palette, but in this case it looks like they tweaked the source to use the actual colors, and not rely on artifacting.

[twh/f2]

One of the most blatant examples had to be "Bandits" by Sirius. My friends and I called it "Apple Bandits" since on the title screen it had an "Apple" before the word "Bandits." The Atari intro screen was identical to the Apple version except an "alien" swoops out, "eats" the "apple" to reveal an Atari logo underneath! Wierdly, the Atari logo was left with a little stem and two leaves on the top! It was actually kind of creepy since the Atari logo was gray and make it look like the Apple's skeleton.

 

The scrolling of the intro screen has a lot of modulation waves running through it as if it were using a brute force scrolling technique and not a hardware based one.

 

Tons of soft sprites in this game and very Apple-esque sound effects. Fun game, though. Hard as hell if I remember correctly.

 

Now that's a nice detail. I never noticed that. Although Bandits is one of my favorite games on the Atari! Thanks for pointing this out!

Gotta show this to all my Apple fanboy-buddies

[+davidcalgary29]

At least the Apple was a (slightly) better source for the A8 than the 2600! (I am not criticizing the 2600). I couldn't stand lazy ports, like Pitfall!, which did nothing to exploit the A8's superior architecture.

[+Stephen]

At least the Apple was a (slightly) better source for the A8 than the 2600! (I am not criticizing the 2600). I couldn't stand lazy ports, like Pitfall!, which did nothing to exploit the A8's superior architecture.

Same here - Demon Attack could have been so much better, same with Kaboom.

[Paul Westphal]

Wasn't Jawbreaker one of those weird black and white apple conversions?

[+slx]

Flight Simulator II

Does the A2 use artifacting?

FS2 on the Atari does (resulting in bad looks on my PAL 800).

[+FujiSkunk]

Does the A2 use artifacting?

 

Yes. The Apple II uses artifacting by design, so every color you see is the result of artifacting.

[R.Cade]

The strange thing is some of these games made it to the C64 like that also, and it doesn't even have artifact color. They just used the green and purple (or orange and blue) colors to "simulate" it.

 

Datasoft's Conan is one for sure...

[Bill Loguidice]

This was sadly the case due to the Apple II being a preferred development platform for many developers of the day. It was never the top selling computer (nowhere close), but a high proportion of developers had the things, so it often had games first, particularly through the early 80s. Nothing bugged me more as a C-64 owner than having to deal with Apple II ports. It bugged me in particular with AutoDuel and Conan, but there were of course many other examples.

[+save2600]

Thanks to the ST and IBM platform, too many titles to list on the Amiga where we got shit or sub par conversions, due to the same_exact_practices.

[Bill Loguidice]

Thanks to the ST and IBM platform, too many titles to list on the Amiga where we got shit or sub par conversions, due to the same_exact_practices.

 

That's true too. It's often the more powerful platform that gets screwed. Part of that is development on the more popular platform first (in that case, IBM EGA - Atari ST owners suffered at times too), and part of that is developing to the lowest common denominator spec.