rodge2001 Posted May 30, 2019 Share Posted May 30, 2019 G.I.Joe by Taxan is one of my all-time favorite NES games. A definite hidden gem that is criminally underrated. The sequel G.I.Joe Atlantis Factor by Capcom is OK by comparison and very similar but not quite as good in my opinion. Things like the white spray-painted check marks of where to place the bombs look so much better and more realistic in the Taxan game. The checkmarks are changed to white X's in The Atlantis Factor which also doesn't include the cool cut scene which shows the placing of the bomb over the enlarged spray-painted marking. But overall the bomb levels are some of my favorite levels in any game. I do wish the developers had added a higher difficulty setting with more bombs to place or else randomized the places to put the bombs. As far as I'm concerned any game that can do so should in order to add some replayability to otherwise memorized games made too easy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hastor Posted May 30, 2019 Share Posted May 30, 2019 By that same token, I'd like to see some harder games get easier modes. They are easy to implement typically (less damage, more firepower, weaker/less enemies, slower movement etc). It can just be some number swapping in most cases. I say this primarily for accessibility reasons, as I'd love to let friends with conditions that lack the dexterity for some older games to enjoy them at their own pace. The gaming community as a whole is in a weird place with this, with people pissed because Kingdom Hearts 3 didn't have a hard made, but also are angry when someone wants a Dark Souls game to add an easy mode (which could still be very hard for some people). Of course the rewards (score, trophies, bragging rights, whatever) should be a little different per mode, but I also don't like to see an easy mode where you get less levels or miss out on the game just because you have a condition that makes your hands more difficult to use. Not really expecting this on a wide scale, but if your difficulty modes are just number swaps, and the original game isn't already ridiculously easy, I'd appreciate the consideration. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opcode Posted May 30, 2019 Author Share Posted May 30, 2019 I really love the OMNI video chip. Fun fact about Jungle King: it has quite a few unused stuff. One example: at some point they planned lions in stage 3. The arcade hardware was quite powerful for its time. 3 planes and 3 bits/pixel. It can do column scroll, programmable color palettes. Just amazing. Column scroll isn’t used in JK, but Elevator Action uses that quite extensively. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smurfbert Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 Looks really promising. To play perfect ports on a Colecovision is a 35 year old dream come true:) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
killersquirel Posted May 31, 2019 Share Posted May 31, 2019 I would love to see the lions in the Omni version. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opcode Posted June 2, 2019 Author Share Posted June 2, 2019 Still needs some further polishing, but it is coming along nicely. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imstarryeyed Posted June 2, 2019 Share Posted June 2, 2019 That demo looks great! I love the way Jungle King looks on the Omni. Opcode do you plan to be doing a Master Game Release List? I would love to see what you are planning and working on for both SGM 1 and Omni / Add on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opcode Posted June 2, 2019 Author Share Posted June 2, 2019 That demo looks great! I love the way Jungle King looks on the Omni. Opcode do you plan to be doing a Master Game Release List? I would love to see what you are planning and working on for both SGM 1 and Omni / Add on. From the top of my head: - Donkey Kong - Moon Patrol - Zaxxon - Jungle King - Galaga - Elevator Action - Tiger Heli - Donkey Kong Jr - Rygar - 1942 - Commando - Kung Fu Master - Mario Bros First group is mostly playable already. Second group isn’t yet. I have been purposely picking games that aren’t too trivial to port, games with multiple background planes, or weird hardware like Zaxxon. Some simpler games in this list like Galaga, DKJr and Mario Bros should be playable in a week once I get to them. Others would be more time consuming, like Rygar, due to the massive amount of graphics and color palettes I will have to convert. And of course after we get SGM2/OMNI out, we will have all the original games to take care as well. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insertclevernamehere Posted June 2, 2019 Share Posted June 2, 2019 From the top of my head: - Donkey Kong - Moon Patrol - Zaxxon - Jungle King - Galaga - Elevator Action - Tiger Heli - Donkey Kong Jr - Rygar - 1942 - Commando - Kung Fu Master - Mario Bros Nice list. As with DK, is there a version of DK Jr with more levels than the arcade original that you plan to add? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opcode Posted June 2, 2019 Author Share Posted June 2, 2019 Nice list. As with DK, is there a version of DK Jr with more levels than the arcade original that you plan to add? We can make each of those games unique in some way, yes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VintageGamer74 Posted June 2, 2019 Share Posted June 2, 2019 @Opcode Just seeing Kung Fu Master on the list has me jumping around like my like a 10 year old! Great list of games ???! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tornadoboy Posted June 2, 2019 Share Posted June 2, 2019 If you want to add some enhancements to Kung Fu Master you might want to check out this unreleased prototype sequel to the original, it might give you some ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Efr9EQkbCSQ&t=198s For the record nope it hasn't been dumped for MAME yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VintageGamer74 Posted June 2, 2019 Share Posted June 2, 2019 @Tornadoboy That's really cool! Never knew there was a sequel in the works. Thanks for sharing! ???? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imstarryeyed Posted June 2, 2019 Share Posted June 2, 2019 @Tornadoboy That video was amazing, what a great looking game, I loved the variety. Yeah there are a lot of great ideas in this game! It would be great to play that one day if it were ever released. @Opcode Thank you for that list, it really helps those of us that are wondering what games you guys are working on so we can start saving for them! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
insertclevernamehere Posted June 2, 2019 Share Posted June 2, 2019 From the top of my head: - Donkey Kong - Moon Patrol - Zaxxon - Jungle King - Galaga - Elevator Action - Tiger Heli - Donkey Kong Jr - Rygar - 1942 - Commando - Kung Fu Master - Mario Bros Personally, 7 of the above 13 games are must buys that I will be saving for; DK, DK Jr, Zaxxon, Tiger Heli, Rygar, 1942 and Commando. I hope just over 1:2 is a good ratio for Opcode. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opcode Posted June 3, 2019 Author Share Posted June 3, 2019 I was aware of the Kung Fu Master sequel, but as someone pointed out, the ROM set isn't available unfortunately. Seems to run on the same M62 or similar board from the looks. That is a super nice board btw, with such gems as Kid Niki, Load Runner and Spelunker. As for Jungle King, I said it didn't use the Taito System SJ board's column scroll feature, but it does in fact. During stage 3. The slope is created using that. Without column scroll the terrain is flat, like the 2600 version of Jungle Hunt. Oh well, OMNI can do column scroll too, so no biggie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opcode Posted June 3, 2019 Author Share Posted June 3, 2019 Some more fun facts about Jungle King: Palettes in level 2 and beyond seem to have been created randomly. Many have illegal values. But they somehow work, and might explain the questionable choice of colors in later levels. The SJ board includes 4 PSGs (sound generators), quite a beast. But one of them is connected to the main CPU instead of the sound CPU. In JK that PSG is used for the main tune. So sound CPU is doing mostly sound FX. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artrag Posted June 3, 2019 Share Posted June 3, 2019 Subscribed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smurfbert Posted June 5, 2019 Share Posted June 5, 2019 From the top of my head: - Donkey Kong - Moon Patrol - Zaxxon - Jungle King - Galaga - Elevator Action - Tiger Heli - Donkey Kong Jr - Rygar - 1942 - Commando - Kung Fu Master - Mario Bros First group is mostly playable already. Second group isn’t yet. I have been purposely picking games that aren’t too trivial to port, games with multiple background planes, or weird hardware like Zaxxon. Some simpler games in this list like Galaga, DKJr and Mario Bros should be playable in a week once I get to them. Others would be more time consuming, like Rygar, due to the massive amount of graphics and color palettes I will have to convert. And of course after we get SGM2/OMNI out, we will have all the original games to take care as well. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk What is the plan regarding Vertical games such as Commando? Will the screen be cropped or any other ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opcode Posted June 7, 2019 Author Share Posted June 7, 2019 What is the plan regarding Vertical games such as Commando? Will the screen be cropped or any other ideas? Cropped. There isn’t much we can do about that. Of course games might require some tuning. We will soon test Omni with HDMI, to see if it can display 240 scanlines with no issues. I don’t see why it shouldn’t work, but want to check first just in case. If we can in fact display 240 scanlines, then changes to most vertically oriented games would be minimum in most cases. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opcode Posted June 7, 2019 Author Share Posted June 7, 2019 UPDATE: the OMNI board rev B schematics are now complete. This is the full system, with everything. We will soon see OMNI flying and singing! We also have the Omni cartridge. Since I didn’t participate much during hardware development this time around, I was surprised on how elegant and minimalist the design turned out. For a dual CPU system, I was expecting something way more complex. System uses a single glue chip as the bus multiplexer to coordinate everything, including interaction between CPUs and other chips. But the most amazing and elegant thing to me is the fact we can now assign any of the two cpus as the main cpu and any of them as the sound cpu. Or we can disable one of them and use a single cpu for everything. So we can use the Z80 compatible cpu for Z80 games, or we can use the 16-bit CPU to emulate other CPUs, as it has a super orthogonal instruction set. I am excited. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hastor Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 Just curious, and apologies if I missed it. Aside from HDMI output, will the Omni have any advantages over the SGM2, or differences other than cosmetic ones? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
opcode Posted June 7, 2019 Author Share Posted June 7, 2019 Just curious, and apologies if I missed it. Aside from HDMI output, will the Omni have any advantages over the SGM2, or differences other than cosmetic ones? Controller ports, possibly a link port too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smurfbert Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 Cropped. There isn’t much we can do about that. Of course games might require some tuning. We will soon test Omni with HDMI, to see if it can display 240 scanlines with no issues. I don’t see why it shouldn’t work, but want to check first just in case. If we can in fact display 240 scanlines, then changes to most vertically oriented games would be minimum in most cases. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Ok, great, will keep fingers crossed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hastor Posted June 7, 2019 Share Posted June 7, 2019 And am I correct that sgm2 is still first and the only thing that can be pre ordered currently? I'll likely want both in the end. That should be the last of my basic questions for now. Thanks! Very excited for this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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