BSRSteve Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 For the 40th anniversary. here is an early promotional video, which was on a tape dated 12/31/1978. I suspect (but do not know for sure) that it was made for 1979 January CES. This was copied from a 3/4" tape just in the last week. 10 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Steve Jones Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 Somebody still has a working 3/4" deck? Wow, the last time I saw one of those was in the movie Speed where they somehow used one to LOOP a 10 second recording. None of the ones I ever used in my TV career ever had a Loop function haha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IMBerzerk Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 Just sounds so serious... lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IntyFanMatt Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 Seen this video before, it’s awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+JasonlikesINTV Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 Pretty cool! Those prototype overlays are interesting. No copyright. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denicio Posted December 3, 2019 Share Posted December 3, 2019 BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Space Battle? Anyone else catch that? What do you hear, starbuck? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSRSteve Posted December 4, 2019 Author Share Posted December 4, 2019 No one noticed The Electric Company Spelling Fun or Craps and Slots on the Roulette cartridge? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+cmart604 Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 34 minutes ago, BSRSteve said: No one noticed The Electric Company Spelling Fun or Craps and Slots on the Roulette cartridge? This guy did. ? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lathe26 Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 To copy what I said on Tommy's Amico thread... Well, this doesn't pick out all the differences (I skipped all the unreleased or changes games and software changes), but here's some of the changes: Keyboard component (2:30): Keys are different: all white instead of various colors, different sizes (ex: right shift), locations, different meanings. One key is blank! Keyboard surrounded by gold plate. Tape drive is very different (turned sideways and is raised vertically) Microphone is different (blocky instead of cylindrical) Tape cases are different (clear bottoms so you can see the tape). Tape drive lid wobbles when user inserts a tape. KC looks strongly like a mock up. Intellivision games: Football Font for letters looks very different; thinner and boxy. The "I" in "TIME" is proportional width, not fixed width. Might be using GRAM for letters. Font for numbers looks mostly correct but the zero has a weird extra pixel in the lower right... as if a zero was merged with a Q. Tackled quarterback 'explodes' when tackled. One player returning to the huddle is stuck in running mode until the 2nd line-up starts. Horizontal scrolling is buggy. The green of the field is out of sync with the white of the field (watch left and right sides of screen) Armor Battle Tanks seem flickery when they turn Keyboard Component tapes: All text is mocked up: wrong font, font is blue instead of white, wrong sizes, different sizes on same screen. Graphics are mocked up as well (ex: exercise figure at 9:36 looks like arranged paper cut outs) Overall, it looks like it was mocked up with TV electronics, not computer electronics, of the the time (ex: "COMA TALAY VOO" is smoothly revealed in Conversational French instead of 1 letter appearing at a time) 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 (edited) 5 hours ago, BSRSteve said: No one noticed The Electric Company Spelling Fun or Craps and Slots on the Roulette cartridge? According to the old intellivisionlives website. "APh completed (and was paid for) this adaptation of the dice game Craps, but it doesn't appear to have ever been announced or scheduled by Marketing for release." Maybe it's on a floppy somewhere. Edited December 4, 2019 by mr_me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atariboy2600 Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 14 hours ago, Denicio said: BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Space Battle? Anyone else catch that? What do you hear, starbuck? I KNEW IT! When I first got this game in 79/80 every time I played SPACE BATTLE I always see the enemy ship looking like Battlestar Galactica Cylon Raider but now seeing the label help prove it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 (edited) 14 minutes ago, Atariboy2600 said: I KNEW IT! When I first got this game in 79/80 every time I played SPACE BATTLE I always see the enemy ship looking like Battlestar Galactica Cylon Raider but now seeing the label help prove it https://history.blueskyrangers.com/mattelelectronics/games/spacebattle.html "If the enemy spacecraft look familiar, it's because they are Cylon raiders from the late-seventies TV programBattlestar Gallactica. One of Mattel's subsidiaries, Concepts 2000, had the license to produce Battlestar Galactica electronic toys, so it was figured to be a lock that Mattel would get the license to produce the official Battlestar Gallactica videogame. Wrong. The game was well into development when they discovered Mattel didn't get the license. The name was changed, but the graphics remained the same." I wonder what happened to the license. I don't think anyone else made battlestar galactica video games at the time. Maybe they just wanted too much money. Edited December 4, 2019 by mr_me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zendocon Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 I did comment about "Roulette, Craps & Slots" on my old website 21 years ago. It would have been more interesting than just Roulette. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_me Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 Roulette itself is over 3.2k. Not much room for anything else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSRSteve Posted December 4, 2019 Author Share Posted December 4, 2019 Just now, mr_me said: Roulette itself is over 3.2k. Not much room for anything else. Has anyone looked inside to see if any of Craps or Slots is still in there? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zendocon Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 7 minutes ago, BSRSteve said: Has anyone looked inside to see if any of Craps or Slots is still in there? Not yet, but I'll go take a peek now. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zendocon Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 The first thing I found was the easter egg. If you have the ROM in .bin+.cfg format, just open up the .cfg file in the editor of your choice and add these lines at the bottom. (I suggest making copies of the .bin and .cfg files first and appending " (Hack)" to their names.) [macro] p 502b 204 p 5031 204 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zendocon Posted December 4, 2019 Share Posted December 4, 2019 40 minutes ago, mr_me said: Roulette itself is over 3.2k. Not much room for anything else. Yeah, nothing but padded zeroes after $5cc0. I didn't find any text either except for "STAKE" and "PLAYER." I'll see if I can decipher the graphical elements (not using the ECS "sucky" feature this time). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
decle Posted December 6, 2019 Share Posted December 6, 2019 (edited) On 12/4/2019 at 3:52 PM, Zendocon said: Yeah, nothing but padded zeroes after $5cc0. I didn't find any text either except for "STAKE" and "PLAYER." I'll see if I can decipher the graphical elements (not using the ECS "sucky" feature this time). Sadly I don't think there are any remnants of Craps or Slots in Roulette. Here is a text file of the lower 8 bits of the game expressed as "graphics": roulette.txt The main graphics start at about $50e8, with some more at $57f8. Sadly no dice or cherries to be seen Taking a similar approach with Space Battle and Sharp Shot also fails to show the Cylon Basestar seen in the TV POWWW version of the game: spaceBattle.txt sharpShot.txt Is it just me, or does the Basestar look more like a Battlestar? And is it not a bit weird that you would be shooting a Battlestar? The TV POWWW videos of Space Battle (or KSPACE as the game was known inside Mattel) might show an interesting development titbit. You will notice in the single player version of the game the centre of your crosshair is very similar to the Space Battle one, and the Cylons sometimes turn and leave the screen, such that you can see the top or bottom of the spaceship, just like they do in Space Battle: However, in the (later?) two player version of the game, the Space Battle like target is missing and the Cylons seem to have more limited movement, never turning such that your can see their top or underside: This more limited movement is also seen the Sharp Shot version of the game, and might suggest that the two player version of KSPACE is a significant rewrite, more closely related to the Sharp Shot version of the game than its Space Battle based single player sibling. Anyway, if you fancy looking through game ROMs for graphics, here is the Perl script I used to generate the files above: stdBin2Gfx.pl Cheers decle Having found a better video of the single player version of KSPACE it also has a some interesting Basestar graphics that are momentarily garbled as it comes onto screen at 1:00: Edited December 6, 2019 by decle Better single player KSPACE video 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSRSteve Posted December 6, 2019 Author Share Posted December 6, 2019 So, I guess that Roulette just took more space than they expected and the other games couldn't fit in the cartridge. And then they never were released. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted December 14, 2019 Share Posted December 14, 2019 On 12/4/2019 at 1:37 AM, Lathe26 said: To copy what I said on Tommy's Amico thread... Well, this doesn't pick out all the differences (I skipped all the unreleased or changes games and software changes), but here's some of the changes: Keyboard component (2:30): Keys are different: all white instead of various colors, different sizes (ex: right shift), locations, different meanings. One key is blank! Keyboard surrounded by gold plate. Tape drive is very different (turned sideways and is raised vertically) Microphone is different (blocky instead of cylindrical) Tape cases are different (clear bottoms so you can see the tape). Tape drive lid wobbles when user inserts a tape. KC looks strongly like a mock up. Intellivision games: Football Font for letters looks very different; thinner and boxy. The "I" in "TIME" is proportional width, not fixed width. Might be using GRAM for letters. Font for numbers looks mostly correct but the zero has a weird extra pixel in the lower right... as if a zero was merged with a Q. Tackled quarterback 'explodes' when tackled. One player returning to the huddle is stuck in running mode until the 2nd line-up starts. Horizontal scrolling is buggy. The green of the field is out of sync with the white of the field (watch left and right sides of screen) Armor Battle Tanks seem flickery when they turn Keyboard Component tapes: All text is mocked up: wrong font, font is blue instead of white, wrong sizes, different sizes on same screen. Graphics are mocked up as well (ex: exercise figure at 9:36 looks like arranged paper cut outs) Overall, it looks like it was mocked up with TV electronics, not computer electronics, of the the time (ex: "COMA TALAY VOO" is smoothly revealed in Conversational French instead of 1 letter appearing at a time) The tape drive is chonk! So's that electric razor... I mean microphone: Watch closely at around 2:54 - 3:00, where the cassette "lid" shifts in a way that makes it obvious it's just a piece of plastic sitting over a hole. And yeah, something's weird with the text in Football. Good spot on the extra pixel on the 0. The other labels do indeed seem to be GRAM-based text. Also, watch the display glitches during horizontal scroll around 3:54 (+/-). As you noted, the background wash doesn't seem to scroll with the foreground pixels (see right edge of screen). At the very least, they aren't suppressing the pixels that went beyond the right-hand boundary. In 1978, they would still be using a STIC emulator box rather than the final chip. That still seems like a weird bug to have. The blue in Baseball is somewhat muted. (Also seen in Armor Battle and Math Fun.) It actually looks a lot like the blue I got from the AY-3-8915 data sheet a long time ago. The flickery tanks in Armor Battle are likely due to the fact they're two MOBs each, and they probably haven't coordinated the MOB updates properly yet. The version of Math Fun is the "forward digits" version, and that brown looks brown! Well, orangish brown rather than greenish brown. And yeah... that text from the keyboard component was a total mockup. And the physical fitness... LOL. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
intvnut Posted December 14, 2019 Share Posted December 14, 2019 When they removed the other games from Roulette, they left room for this: .TITLECODE: PSHR R5 ; 5026 0275 MVI .PSG0.rgt_hand,R0 ; 5027 0280 01FE CMPI #$001E, R0 ; 5029 0378 001E BNEQ L_5079 ; 502B 020C 004C MVI .PSG0.lft_hand,R0 ; 502D 0280 01FF CMPI #$005E, R0 ; 502F 0378 005E BNEQ L_5079 ; 5031 020C 0046 MVII #$0007, R3 ; 5033 02BB 0007 MVII #$023C, R4 ; 5035 02BC 023C JSR R5, X_PRINT_R5 ; 5037 0004 0118 007B STRING " JOHN " ; 503A DECLE $0000 ; 504E 0000 MVII #$0007, R3 ; 504F 02BB 0007 MVII #$0292, R4 ; 5051 02BC 0292 JSR R5, X_PRINT_R5 ; 5053 0004 0118 007B STRING "ETTELUOR" ; 5056 DECLE $0000 ; 505E 0000 MVII #$0007, R3 ; 505F 02BB 0007 MVII #$02D0, R4 ; 5061 02BC 02D0 JSR R5, X_PRINT_R5 ; 5063 0004 0118 007B STRING "2001" ; 5066 0032 0030 0030 0031 DECLE $0000 ; 506A 0000 MVII #$0007, R3 ; 506B 02BB 0007 MVII #$02D5, R4 ; 506D 02BC 02D5 JSR R5, X_PRINT_R5 ; 506F 0004 0118 007B STRING " D E I" ; 5072 DECLE $0000 ; 5078 0000 L_5079: PULR R5 ; 5079 02B5 MOVR R5, R7 ; 507A 00AF Dabney Eats It, I suppose. If I decoded that correctly with my calibrated eyeball, that requires you to press 1+2+3 on the right controller, and 1+3 on the left controller. (O HAI!, I DID!) You should get this: 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walter Ives Posted December 3, 2022 Share Posted December 3, 2022 On 12/3/2019 at 8:02 AM, BSRSteve said: For the 40th anniversary. here is an early promotional video, which was on a tape dated 12/31/1978. I suspect (but do not know for sure) that it was made for 1979 January CES. This was copied from a 3/4" tape just in the last week. This is the same video that was rescued from a Betamax tape and previously discussed at https://forums.atariage.com/topic/285319-early-keyboard-component-video/ On 12/3/2019 at 9:49 PM, BSRSteve said: No one noticed The Electric Company Spelling Fun or Craps and Slots on the Roulette cartridge? Rochlis would come up with titles that he thought would appeal to retail chain buyers with little thought as to playability or implementability. Given that he pulled the titles out of his, uh, thin air, it's hardly surprising that changes were made as development progressed and reality intruded. On 12/4/2019 at 1:37 AM, Lathe26 said: Font for numbers looks mostly correct but the zero has a weird extra pixel in the lower right... as if a zero was merged with a Q. These images were generated using an emulator whose "GROM" was really RAM and it's likely that the font file Football was loading had a bit error. It happens. Fixing it would not have been a high priority—the programmer would surely defer doing so until he got a round tuit. On 12/4/2019 at 1:37 AM, Lathe26 said: Horizontal scrolling is buggy. The green of the field is out of sync with the white of the field (watch left and right sides of screen) The border is not extended on the left. The background's foreground pixels are not being suppressed as they extend into the border area at right, a chip circuit issue. Nothing to see here, folks; Duncan and Steve will fix it. Move along. On 12/4/2019 at 4:25 AM, mr_me said: I wonder what happened to the license. I don't think anyone else made battlestar galactica video games at the time. Maybe they just wanted too much money. Glen Larson thought he had created another Star Wars. He closed a pre-broadcast deal with Mattel on toys, but delayed closing the video game deal with the expectation that the show's reception would bridge the gap between what he wanted and what Mattel was willing to pay. It didn't. The price that Mattel was willing to pay fell faster than did the price Larson was willing to take and negotiations fizzled out for lack of energy. On 12/6/2019 at 1:31 PM, BSRSteve said: So, I guess that Roulette just took more space than they expected and the other games couldn't fit in the cartridge. Who is "they?" If Rochlis or Chandler, neither had any clue as to how much space a game would take—"they" went into 1978 planning for 2K cartridges without regard for actual content, and without an EXEC. If Chang, "he" knew better by mid-1977 because he was responsible for handhelds, took the trouble to have APh make a realistic and accepted the estimate as rational. "He" shared the information with "they" who, exhibiting a textbook case of Feynman Gap, ignored it. On 12/13/2019 at 6:09 PM, intvnut said: The blue in Baseball is somewhat muted. (Also seen in Armor Battle and Math Fun.) It actually looks a lot like the blue I got from the AY-3-8915 data sheet a long time ago. The flickery tanks in Armor Battle are likely due to the fact they're two MOBs each, and they probably haven't coordinated the MOB updates properly yet. The version of Math Fun is the "forward digits" version, and that brown looks brown! Well, orangish brown rather than greenish brown. The emulator didn't use the same color circuitry as the final hardware and the colors were place-holders chosen by GI. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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