What is your top 10 list of Atari 400 or 800 games that you would want to see ported to the 5200?

[Giles N]

This would be my number one if technically possible to port:

 

 

[Giles N]

As the 5200 do not have a plethora of scrolling man/platformer action games, - if this could be ported I’d think it looks like a nice addition:

 

 

 

Here is longer video showing more landscape and more enemies.

(the people playing *Schreckenstein* commenting in background speaks german ?)

 

 

Edited November 23, 2019 by Giles N

[Giles N]

It seems Schrecenstein was produced for the Atari 800.

 

Is it then possible to port to the 5200 console?

 

From a screenshot it seems a Rom download takes 33-34 Kb.

 

Can different 5200 carts handle this?

[Giles N]

 

Anyone knows is this is ported?

 

Could be ported?

[Giles N]

Or this!!

 

 

[Giles N]

@Albert

What would be the possibility of any of these games to be put onto the 5200?

 

—

if the 5200 is not capable, could some of these be ported to the 7800, say in a collection, or would the hardware be incompatible?

 

Do you know?

 

[buzz_n64]

17 hours ago, Giles N said:

Or this!!

 

 

This would be amazing. I think extra RAM would need to be added to the cart for it to work.

[Giles N]

On 11/25/2019 at 6:55 PM, buzz_n64 said:

This would be amazing. I think extra RAM would need to be added to the cart for it to work.

I think the RAM problem is very complex or highly technical.

 

I wonder if ports of these games could be done using 16kB RAM, by shortening the games considerably.

 

Lets take a hypothetical example:

 

A game with 8 levels, is cut down to 4 levels.

 

A game with 8 different enemies per level, is cut to only 4 different enemies per level.

 

Something in that vein.

[kiwilove]

Although I have no idea regarding the technical issues involved with porting this over to the 5200.  Even if it could be ported over - which I doubt?  It's still less than a perfect platform game - in that I felt it wasn't the best in responsiveness and control.

The difficulty in porting - would be the same as for Space Harrier to be ported.  These were not designed with 5200 limitations in mind.

 

You're fortunate to have Bosconian ported over to the 5200 - by it's developer.

 

Harvey

[Wrathchild]

On 11/29/2019 at 4:35 AM, Giles N said:

I wonder if ports of these games could be done using 16kB RAM, by shortening the games considerably.

Some games can but it takes a heck of an amount of work to get to point where you'll know.

Two that I'd looked into for 5200 ports that would need more than the 16K RAM were Zybex and Lode Runner.

Then again, some can surprise you, Rampage was an example of that.

 

[Giles N]

On 11/29/2019 at 10:09 AM, kiwilove said:

Although I have no idea regarding the technical issues involved with porting this over to the 5200.  Even if it could be ported over - which I doubt?  It's still less than a perfect platform game - in that I felt it wasn't the best in responsiveness and control.

The difficulty in porting - would be the same as for Space Harrier to be ported.  These were not designed with 5200 limitations in mind.

 

You're fortunate to have Bosconian ported over to the 5200 - by it's developer.

 

Harvey

I hope Bosconian will be put on Carts (and perhaps even neat boxes ? ) and become available here and elsewhere.

[Giles N]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_pack

[Giles N]

 

 

RAMpack, RAM expansion cartridge, RAM expansion unit (REU),^[3]memory expansion pak^[4] and memory module^[5] are some of the most common names given to various self-contained units or cartridges that expand a computer, games console or other device's own internal RAMin a user-friendly manner.

Such units are generally designed to be installable by an end-user with little technical knowledge, often simply by plugging them into an expansion or cartridge slot easily accessible at the rear of the machine (e.g. the Sinclair ZX81 or the VTech Laser 200^{[6][circular reference]}), or via a user-accessible hatch (e.g. the Atari 800's CX852 and CX853 modules or the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak^[7]).

The ZX81 16K RAM expansion gained particular notoriety for the "RAM pack wobble" problem^[8][9] because it was top-heavy and only supported by the edge connector. This could lead to it falling out, crashing the ZX81 and losing any program or data currently in the computer's memory.

Examples of such memory expansions include:

• Jupiter Ace RAM Pack^[2]
• Sinclair ZX80 RAM pack units (available in 1–3 KB and later 16 KB)^[1]
• Sinclair ZX81 16KB RAM unit, commonly referred to as "RAM Pack" like its predecessor^[8][9]
• Atari 1064 Memory Module (expanded the Atari 600XL's 16 KB RAM to 64 KB)
• Commodore's Vic 20 RAM cartridgesofficially available in 3 KB (with or without BASIC extension ROM), 8 KB, 16 KB, with 32 KB and 64 KB third-party cartridges also available
• Commodore REU, a series of RAM Expansion Units (REUs) for the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 computers (128 KB, 256 KB and 512 KB capacities)
• Saturn carts, 1 or 4 MB of RAM, sold by SNK and Capcom respectively for use with their games.
• Nintendo 64 "Expansion Pak"^[4] expanded the N64's RAM from 4 to 8 MB
• Nintendo DS and DS Lite "Memory Expansion Pak" was supplied with the DS web browser software and adds 8 MB of RAM

Edited December 3, 2019 by Giles N

[Giles N]

Coukd something like this be built for the A5200?

[Lynxpro]

A RAM pack?  Well, supposedly the 5200's Expansion Slot doesn't have the bandwidth to do anything cool like RAM expansion. I suspect what needs to be accomplished is a plug-in expansion board like the rather limited-edition XBoard for the 7800, but for the Mighty 5200. The XBoard plugged into the MARIA chip's socket on the 7800's motherboard and provided 128K RAM and Dual POKEY sound chips. What essentially doomed the XBoard was that very few 7800's had socketed MARIA chips and despite how popular it is to do AV Upgrade Mods on the 7800 requiring soldering, this was deemed by many to be impractical for the XBoard.

 

Now, how many 5200's have socketed chips compared to the 7800? Lots. Many. Maybe all of them. So the key would be to find a perfect candidate chip, maybe even the SALLY CPU, plug in such a hypothetical expansion board to it, and then standardize on supporting whatever address the RAM is mapped to. Would a new BIOS have to be coded? I don't have an answer for that. But I would say that 128K RAM should be the bare minimum in such a hypothetical upgrade since RAM - even SRAM - is cheap and then the 5200 could run something like the A8 version of Stunt Car Racer which uses a full 128K to run the C64 code on A8 hardware. That, demos, and anything else developers might want to throw at it. Personally, I'd say go for 1MB so the 5200 would have memory equal to the popular Ultimate 1MB Upgrade on A8. Now even with that, the 5200 still wouldn't have SIO or light gun capabilities like A8 and the 7800 with an XM but it would substantially improve possibilities such as the bare minimum of porting A8 games requiring more than 16K and without having to aggressively modify bankswitching routines to make up for the lack of standard RAM and the difficulty of using cart-based RAM with the 5200.

[leech]

Question in regard to this, but isn't a 5200 really close to an A400?  What sort of Memory upgrades do they have?  Would be great to even boost it to 48 or 64k.

[Giles N]

On 11/29/2019 at 10:09 AM, kiwilove said:

Although I have no idea regarding the technical issues involved with porting this over to the 5200.  Even if it could be ported over - which I doubt?  It's still less than a perfect platform game - in that I felt it wasn't the best in responsiveness and control.

The difficulty in porting - would be the same as for Space Harrier to be ported.  These were not designed with 5200 limitations in mind.

 

You're fortunate to have Bosconian ported over to the 5200 - by it's developer.

 

Harvey

I’m happy for bosconian, but would need it on old-school cart.

[leech]

I'd go with Dandy Dungeons (I mean come on, 4 port goodness there for four player gaming!)

Well and of course it's successor, Gauntlet, with the Deeper Dungeons expansion.

 

Would love to see some RPGs, though depending on which one, you'd almost need to figure out how to get the XEGS keyboard to work on the 5200.

But yes to break down my vote, it'd be;

Great American Cross Country Road Race (loved this game)

Dandy Dungeons

Gauntlet

 

And any other 4-player game from the 400/800 era.  I'll look to see how many 4 player games there were... Is there an adapter to give the 2 port 5200s the other 2 ports back?

[Giles N]

5 minutes ago, leech said:

I'd go with Dandy Dungeons (I mean come on, 4 port goodness there for four player gaming!)

Well and of course it's successor, Gauntlet, with the Deeper Dungeons expansion.

 

Would love to see some RPGs, though depending on which one, you'd almost need to figure out how to get the XEGS keyboard to work on the 5200.

But yes to break down my vote, it'd be;

Great American Cross Country Road Race (loved this game)

Dandy Dungeons

Gauntlet

 

And any other 4-player game from the 400/800 era.  I'll look to see how many 4 player games there were... Is there an adapter to give the 2 port 5200s the other 2 ports back?

Ok, so lets have a look at

Gauntlet 

(for other readers):

 

 

[Giles N]

As to more driving-game ports, methinks ‘Speed Ace’ would be preferred as to my tastes as road-graphics which ‘parallaxes’ or adjusts its perspective dynamically to the horizon-point (when moving from side to side) would be better.

Edited January 17, 2020 by Giles N

[leech]

Other games I mentioned, well and then some...

Floyd of the Jungle is another fun 4 player game!

[Wrathchild]

11 hours ago, Giles N said:

As to more driving-game ports, methinks ‘Speed Ace’ would be preferred as to my tastes as road-graphics which ‘parallaxes’ or adjusts its perspective dynamically to the horizon-point (when moving from side to side) would be better.

Which version? I ported the Zeppelin Games version back in 2014

[kiwilove]

I'll mention this 16K game as it's been missed out on - but is worthy of a conversion - if it's possible to work on it?

And that is Stratos. It does use the keyboard - spacebar during the game to activate the saucer for repairs to the shield as such.  On title screen, C and B are for changing the colors of the City and Background.

Because it's a crosshair you move around - it seems ideal to convert it to analogue control?

 

It's anyone's guess as to why it's been overlooked?  Maybe it's more of a technical issue that stopped it being converted, rather than doing the changes required, as mentioned above.

 

It's certainly a playable game - but probably wouldn't beat Sea Dragon as a firm favourite.

 

Harvey

[leech]

6 hours ago, kiwilove said:

I'll mention this 16K game as it's been missed out on - but is worthy of a conversion - if it's possible to work on it?

And that is Stratos. It does use the keyboard - spacebar during the game to activate the saucer for repairs to the shield as such.  On title screen, C and B are for changing the colors of the City and Background.

Because it's a crosshair you move around - it seems ideal to convert it to analogue control?

 

It's anyone's guess as to why it's been overlooked?  Maybe it's more of a technical issue that stopped it being converted, rather than doing the changes required, as mentioned above.

 

It's certainly a playable game - but probably wouldn't beat Sea Dragon as a firm favourite.

 

Harvey

If it uses a cross hair, may even be a good one for those with a trackball.

[kiwilove]

About a rampack for the 5200.  If it was possible to simply add more memory and the 5200 would magically work with it - it would have been done already by someone able to do that?  And how would the 5200 games work with this extra memory?

The 5200 is not like the Atari 400 computer at all - not designed to accept more memory and work with it.

 

I haven't looked into the info about doing 400 memory upgrades to increase it from 16K to 48K.  But I guess more memory is added hardware wise, and the OS remains the same.  On the 800 you had empty slots in which extra memory can be plugged into - 16K memory packs as such.  The OS pack slotted in as well.

 

Harvey