raindog Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 In short: The ROM is not available and never will be. Woohoo, motivation for a new project! (Ebivision's inability to release their Pac-Man clone was what made me decide to make Pac26. Granted, Boulder Dash is a little more demanding and not a game I actually liked back in the day, but if it's not my motivation, perhaps it'll be someone else's.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atari_envy Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 lol. Story of my life: Buy a product and the following week the next model comes out. Oh well, I guess once I come across a game that I just HAVE TO HAVE that doesn't play on my soon-to-arrive Harmony cart, I will cough up the $25. My vote is for Harmony Encore or Harmony+ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tremoloman2006 Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 I bought a Harmony in November myself so I also will need to get the upgrade once available. In the meantime, I vote for Harmony+. There are great titles that use "Plus" in a positive light 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snstay Posted January 14, 2014 Share Posted January 14, 2014 What about just the simple H2 and the 7800 version could be just Harmony 7800. That seems the easiest to me. But it is fun reading all the different ideas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
accousticguitar Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Harmonitron Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tokumaru Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 (edited) In short: The ROM is not available and never will be. Yeah, Atari, Activision and all those companies that made commercial games back in the 70's and 80's sure were nice when they gave us all the ROMs of their games for free... wait...! Not that I want this to happen to BD or anything (I really don't), but there are tons of people out there with the necessary tools, so... never say never. Back to the topic: I'm very interested in the new Harmony, whatever it's called. The idea of having more content-based games (as opposed to score-based or difficulty-based games with limited graphics/sounds/levels/etc.) is very exciting. As a programmer I feel even more tempted to dive into 2600 development. Edited January 15, 2014 by tokumaru Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Random Terrain Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Yeah, Atari, Activision and all those companies that made commercial games back in the 70's and 80's sure were nice when they gave us all the ROMs of their games for free... wait...! Not that I want this to happen to BD or anything (I really don't), but there are tons of people out there with the necessary tools, so... never say never. But in this case, Stella reports the IP address of anyone who tries to run a dumped and hacked BD ROM. Stella also slows the computer down to a crawl and a pop-up message is displayed that promises to heal the computer once the correct password is entered. The unique password will be provided once $250 has been sent to Andrew Davie and Thomas Jentzsch. This post is false, untrue, fictitious, pretend, and not real. But who knows? It could be real. Do you want to take that chance? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tokumaru Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 I really can't tell if you're serious! Either way, I guess people really went all out on this game, huh? Still, Stella is the dominant emulator now, but who knows what's gonna happen in 10 years? I'm just guessing here, but I bet people could even hack the new Harmony in case it has a similar protection (I certainly hope not, it would be terrible if a misdetection bricked someone's cart!). Again, not that I'm hoping for any of this, I just think that "never" is a strong word to use. When Nolan Bushnell founded Atari he certainly didn't think we'd be playing his games for free on the way to work on mobile devices! =) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 there are tons of people out there with the necessary tools, so... never say never. There are, but must you really even suggest such a thing? It's one thing to piss in Micro$oft's coffee***, but don't suggest doing it to a community that mostly does all of this for the love of the hobby. Consider your asses lucky that 250 copies were negotiated. ***EDIT: Just to clarify, after already getting a PM, this seems to be the general thought, not mine! I have actually lost money in a professional way, due to current videogame piracy. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Wonder007 Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Wow batari.....you have outdone yourself........ I am looking so forward to this new product. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maiki Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Sadly I bought mine in October but as I said, there would have to be a really good reason to persuade me to upgrade. Right now there is no good reason and will not be for some time to come. Just do not panic please. The worst that can happen (and is partly happening reading some comments over here) is that this new Harmony gets hyped so that noone wants the standard one. But that is not my business I don't make them... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Sadly I bought mine in October but as I said, there would have to be a really good reason to persuade me to upgrade. Right now there is no good reason and will not be for some time to come. Just do not panic please. The worst that can happen (and is partly happening reading some comments over here) is that this new Harmony gets hyped so that noone wants the standard one. But that is not my business I don't make them...There is a reason for the update to the Harmony. It will become apparent. Things get redesigned. Just like Atari 2600 was redesigned into the 7800. Old parts are no longer available, replacement parts have larger capacities (seen any 512 MB SD card for sale?) When the original model runs out we will have this new model that does everything the original did and more! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFL Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Just wondering if the hardware upgrade has been finalised? The reason I'm asking is that I would love to have a cart that would contain a modern (and easily obtainable) version of the High Score Saver. I realise that the High Score cart plugs into the second joystick port but surely some industrious programmers in the future could utilise a HSC built in to the Harmony? It would also give all you ubiquitous ROM hackers another thing to hack into all those old ROMs! Just a thought. I've always loved the idea of saving my scores for Space Invaders et al to cart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 What High Score Saver are you talking about? Link? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raindog Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 Not that I want this to happen to BD or anything (I really don't), but there are tons of people out there with the necessary tools, so... never say never. I think it would be a lot cooler if someone else did their own competing version of it, though... you know, just like Thomas and cdw did with Star Castle. Gonna go out on a limb and guess they didn't get the current Cinematronics rights-holders' sign-off on that (kind of doubt DSW did either, for his version.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 guess they didn't get the current Cinematronics rights-holders'Fortunately there are none. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PFL Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 What High Score Saver are you talking about? Link? I don't have link to hand but I was thinking of the one the was (is?) being sold by Golden ax (looks like a keyring). Are there others? I don't suppose it matters much as implementing such a thing in the Harmony would require it's own development as it couldn't utilise the second joy port. The games that would (in theory) support it would be writing back to the Harmony cart itself rather than another piece of hardware... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 15, 2014 Share Posted January 15, 2014 I believe you are talking about the SaveKey and they are not in limited supply, they are only in limited demand. I have probably 200 PCB's left. http://www.vectrex.biz/MemCard.htm 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jinks Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 Cant wait for h2. Oh I think I said that more than 5 times in the last couple of years. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RevEng Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 I'm looking forward to it too. I know the 7800 Harmony is called "the Concerto cartridge", but I think "Harmony, Ave Maria" would also be a cool name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 So, anyone pick one up at the NWCGE show? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 Any leftover from the show? You can sell me one! I can't wait to be a Zippy the Porcupine Beta Tester on real hardware... all right, I'll wait... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CPUWIZ Posted January 19, 2014 Share Posted January 19, 2014 So, anyone pick one up at the NWCGE show? No, but yes! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr SQL Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 If you use Mr SQLs idea I've already got a great logo for it! You can play games on tape without an audio input jack, but first someone has to dump the binary from tape; what if you can't dump the binary? If someone releases a VCS game on tape and holds back the binary a la BoulderDash, an audio input jack would need to be added to the next edition of the Harmony to make it compatible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iesposta Posted January 20, 2014 Share Posted January 20, 2014 You can play games on tape without an audio input jack, but first someone has to dump the binary from tape; what if you can't dump the binary? If someone releases a VCS game on tape and holds back the binary a la BoulderDash, an audio input jack would need to be added to the next edition of the Harmony to make it compatible. You just use wav2bin to make a binary of a 2600 tape, or bin2wav to make a tape out of a binary (2K or 4K). I don't get what you are saying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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