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Existence of Centipede/Millipede prototypes for the NES?


Atariboy

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7 hours ago, HowdyThere said:

Think it might in fact be connected to this (it does look like the 7800 version) ...

That's what I was thinking, but I didn't have time to check if the Flashback had a 7800 port of that game or not.

I also didn't know any of the ROMs had been dumped, I've only seen dumps for 2.0 before.

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As this was an official, licenced release from ‘Atari’ (Warner Communications’s Atari Inc. and Atari Corp.) from 2004 ... that just happens to be on NES type tech ... in my head (at least) this is an official release not a bootleg or unauthorised home-brew and deserves its place alongside ‘proper’ other NES releases :)

 

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

Edited by HowdyThere
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11 hours ago, Asaki said:

Yeah, I found the rest of the dumps, as well as the Intellivision ones.

Some of the games are kind of alright, I guess?

Other games, it's quite impressive just how wrong they got it.

Yup ... I think Centipede might be the best of the bunch ... and who knows, maybe Curt Vendel’s team had access to Ed Logg’s original code or specs (I’m guessing they probably knew each other).

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1 hour ago, Asaki said:

Was it Curt's team? I thought they outsourced it somewhere. Can't remember.

Probably not the most authoritative of sources but Wikipedia has the following (if you search Atari Flashback Series):

 

It was designed by Atari veteran Curt Vendel, whose company Syzygy Co. (formerly Legacy Engineering Group)[1] designs other home video game and video arcade products. Atari Inc. gave Syzygy Co. ten weeks to design the product, produce its games, and ready it for the 2004 Christmas holiday season.

 

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I didn't grab those files up there, but I'm going to be pretty certain reading the comments I'm right about this.

 

Long ago the old flashback before jakks got in on it went cheap and got this NOAC they used to make the device.  So what they did was take various titles and coded up new versions of Centipede, Asteroids, and a couple of others, those two ran best.  Coincidentally enough because of that existing code, Basic Fun used them in their first few Walmart exclusive devices with the NOAC+LCD combo I used to have them what's when I got curious and dug and dug.  Eventually I did find the files again for Centipede and Asteroids, 7800 versions of the games basically, played perfect on those little mini arcade cab tabletops for $20 at the store.  I found someone dumped the code, ran those, then ran the flashback zip package I had, ran identical in the emulator I fed them to...and everdrive.

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On 1/27/2021 at 5:51 PM, HowdyThere said:

Probably not the most authoritative of sources but Wikipedia has the following (if you search Atari Flashback Series):

Yeah, pretty vague though, and doesn't mean they didn't outsource it.

I'm sure I remember Curt talking about it before, I'd have to search the forums.

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On 1/25/2021 at 11:57 AM, HowdyThere said:

Fully accept I might have the wrong end of the stick ...

 

... but isn’t this the official NES port of Centipede then ??

Centipede.zip 10.16 kB · 8 downloads

 

I had a look at that with the nesmapper program and it comes up as "NROM or unknown" with 32k prg and nothing for CHR data. That can't be right. Does anyone know the proper mapper for this?

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5 hours ago, Shawn said:

I had a look at that with the nesmapper program and it comes up as "NROM or unknown" with 32k prg and nothing for CHR data. That can't be right. Does anyone know the proper mapper for this?

Yeah, I'm sure some programming trickery is going on. Sprintmaster looks like it has NES format CHR data, but I don't see anything obvious in the rest.

NROM might be correct, these are some pretty simple games.

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2 hours ago, Asaki said:

Yeah, I'm sure some programming trickery is going on. Sprintmaster looks like it has NES format CHR data, but I don't see anything obvious in the rest.

NROM might be correct, these are some pretty simple games.

 

If you figure out the file structure please let me know as I would like to split it into proper PRG an CHR chunks.

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  • 1 month later...
On 1/25/2021 at 6:53 PM, HowdyThere said:

Think it might in fact be connected to this (it does look like the 7800 version) ...


I’m enjoying it wherever it’s come from and seems to run fine on NES (it’s a great game, I read somewhere the 7800 version was one of the better ports, better looking mushrooms than the 2600 version) :D

 

 

 

I remember that label and need to redo a high res image of it soon.

 

And to this day I still have my complete box set of Atari Flashback.

 

 image.png.010d9159a0ac175e142e1e79e7eb65ce.png

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  • 1 month later...

At long last, here is the ROM of Ed Logg’s version of Millipede for the Famicom.  There is no sound as that wasn’t started yet.  Looks like all work on this stopped in July of 1986.  Thanks to TheRedEye and his crew for assembling this game from the source code found on the backup tapes.

milli.nes

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