California Games was actually in production for the ATARI 8-Bit but no code might have ever been produced.

[Lost Dragon]

2 hours ago, MrFish said:

 

You're putting Panther in the same class as Green Beret?

 

? Only in terms of they were both games i had first on the XL, then i picked up again on the C64. 

 

 

Then of course there are games like Thrust... ?

 

 

 

[Lost Dragon]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Apple II has a version too, and that system has no hardware sprites!

 

I went back and reviewed the Apple II and C64 versions for ideas on how the Atari version might be done.

 

Most of the events in Cali Games have a single character on screen.   This means you could combine all the Atari Players and missiles to create a super sprite with extra colors.

 

Surfing- It looks like the this event could be done in the Atari 5-color character mode, with a wide player (or two) for the surfboard, and the rest of the P/M graphics to render the surfer.

 

Half-Pipe-  5-color character mode BG, possibly with DLIs for some extra color in spots,  all PMs render the athlete/board.   The score bubbles don't need to be so fancy. 

 

Skating- 5-color mode with fine scrolling, again all PMs for the skater

 

Hacky Sack-   You could maybe throw DLIs on the sprite to give different shirt/pants and hair color.   You could also use DLI to split the sprite vertically so that flair like the seagulls could fly across the top of the screen, and not affect the player.  A single player could be used for the hacky sack.

 

BMX- this might be the biggest challenge since the Bike is so wide.   Either the Bike would need to be rendered with wider P/Ms, or render it smaller on screen.

 

Now you probably won't get all the detail of the C64 version using these techniques, but you should end up with something in between Apple II and C64

 

Having had zero Apple II experience, i looked up California Games on YT. 

 

Very impressive. 

 

Lacking in detail in places, but not to the point it's an issue, if an Atari coding team could of matched this, it'd been a very impressive addition to the library. 

 

Thanks for opening my eyes to what the Apple II had to offer as well. 

[Gunstar]

4 hours ago, zzip said:

 

 

   A game written on Atari with large color palettte/GTIA shading was probably not going to look as good on Apple or C64. 

Perfect examples of this are the Lucasfilm games (and also the faster CPU along with the strengths you point too make the games much better on the Atari). The Atari still had a LOT going for it IF games were programmed for it's strengths, which I personally think far out-weigh C64 strengths over Atari, but use of these strengths were few, and with most later titles being ports from C64 and other 8-bits, it made the Atari look weaker than it is.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Gunstar

[leech]

On 12/7/2020 at 12:15 PM, abbotkinneydude said:

After the port:

• Major rampant piracy. Racing Destruction Set might have only sold 3000 units in the U.S. (paying only for the port to the A8 - no profits for EA).

 

We actually put in a legit mail order for Lords of Conquest and Racing Destruction Set way back when.  Months later Lords of Conquest showed up after they repeatedly said they were waiting for stock to show up.  We never did get our copy of RDS, we ended up pirating it.  So yeah back then how could they even blame piracy, you couldn't even get a hold of stuff, depending on where you were located.

[+davidcalgary29]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

There is a Winter Games clone from Italy:

 

Given LindaSoft’s penchant for pirating games, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they pinched some code from WG. And take a look at Hypnotic Land: that playfield is pure Klax, and it looks like they just threw...something...on top of it instead of finishing up the game.

[abbotkinneydude]

55 minutes ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Given LindaSoft’s penchant for pirating games, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they pinched some code from WG. And take a look at Hypnotic Land: that playfield is pure Klax, and it looks like they just threw...something...on top of it instead of finishing up the game.

 

@Andreatari would have the answer for that.

 

 

 

Also, Winter Olympiad 88 from Tynesoft has always been a top notch title which, not surprisingly in the light of Rebecca Heineman's comments, shipped on 2 double sided single density disks.

 

In comparison, the C64 version shipped on a double sided single disk.

 

Edited December 9, 2020 by abbotkinneydude
Link added

[Lost Dragon]

13 hours ago, abbotkinneydude said:

 

I'd reach out to @Jetboot Jack

 

 

For now, all we have is a 7800 screenshot glued onto an XEGS setup.

 

This actually originated from press material provided by ATARI UK at the ATARI SHOW of April 1987 taking place at the Novotel Hammersmith.

 

It leaked in Pokey! issue #3 (Summer 1987, French language).

 

I wonder who was responsible for the mock up imagery? 

 

 

I always enjoyed talking to industry folk about the P. R shots that appeared in the press at the time and finding out if screens were created deliberately in order to give the press /marketing something to run with or if the press had been told these were just mock-up screens, but reported on them as fakes. 

 

 

Adam Caveman on the Atari and C64 was another we tried to find more on, but the guy who could of answered just couldn't be found, even by his own work colleagues. 

[Lost Dragon]

Pity Tynesoft never tried anything like this on the A8:

 

 

 

The BBC/Electron version doesn't look half bad:

 

 

[zzip]

14 hours ago, leech said:

We actually put in a legit mail order for Lords of Conquest and Racing Destruction Set way back when.  Months later Lords of Conquest showed up after they repeatedly said they were waiting for stock to show up.  We never did get our copy of RDS, we ended up pirating it.  So yeah back then how could they even blame piracy, you couldn't even get a hold of stuff, depending on where you were located.

I owned both games as well.  I remember EA had a promotion where you bought 4 games, they would send you one free.   I don't remember if these were part of the four we bought,  but we legit owned a bunch of EA games as a result.

 

If Racing Destruction Set only sold a few thousand copies, that would make it rare, right?   I could list mine on eBay and make mint??   It never felt like a particularly rare game back then.  If anything Lords of Conquest seems rarer.  

 

[Gunstar]

I had RDS original back in the day, purchased at a local Book World that sold Atari software in my area. I honestly don't recall if I had any other EA titles back then, but for me there was never any pirated software in my collection, it was all original. Not that I wouldn't have accepted some pirated software probably, I had little money for the Atari back then, so I had to pick and choose carefully what I purchased. But I never knew another Atari owner near me, so no one to have copy/swap parties with and there were no user groups close enough for me to walk or ride my bike too back then, and I never had the money for modems, etc. to find pirated software on-line. My first venture into pirated software for the Atari wasn't until the early nineties when I found an ad in the back of Antic magazine for "PD" software and ordered a bunch of titles from the "catalog" sent to me that I'd never heard of before, which turned out to be English and European titles that were never released in the states anyway, and of course only about 25% of what I ordered worked properly on my NTSC Atari, so I still didn't get to play much of the great software from across the pond until I converted my 1200XL to PAL about 5 years ago!

 

By the way, that pirated software was purchased from a guy named Sid Meyers...the same guy of Civilization fame? I also got a few games this guy wrote himself, one was a strategy based space battle game, which I for get the name of...maybe Lords of Space or something like that? Anyone know?

Edited December 9, 2020 by Gunstar

[José Pereira]

19 hours ago, zzip said:

Apple II has a version too, and that system has no hardware sprites!

 

I went back and reviewed the Apple II and C64 versions for ideas on how the Atari version might be done.

 

Most of the events in Cali Games have a single character on screen.   This means you could combine all the Atari Players and missiles to create a super sprite with extra colors.

 

Surfing- It looks like the this event could be done in the Atari 5-color character mode, with a wide player (or two) for the surfboard, and the rest of the P/M graphics to render the surfer.

 

Half-Pipe-  5-color character mode BG, possibly with DLIs for some extra color in spots,  all PMs render the athlete/board.   The score bubbles don't need to be so fancy. 

 

Skating- 5-color mode with fine scrolling, again all PMs for the skater

 

Hacky Sack-   You could maybe throw DLIs on the sprite to give different shirt/pants and hair color.   You could also use DLI to split the sprite vertically so that flair like the seagulls could fly across the top of the screen, and not affect the player.  A single player could be used for the hacky sack.

 

BMX- this might be the biggest challenge since the Bike is so wide.   Either the Bike would need to be rendered with wider P/Ms, or render it smaller on screen.

 

Now you probably won't get all the detail of the C64 version using these techniques, but you should end up with something in between Apple II and C64

 

Have it somewhere my tries and thinkings are more or less similar to yours as I remember.

Don't see it much difficult to do on A8 other than the bike and surfing with maybe some guy and surf board with some adptation...

Have to find where have it or if not do something again...

 

P.s.- Also Winter Games seems the same way as possible.

One that I couldn't get because of the colour gfxs and sprites was, I remember it correctly, World Games but for sure if someone interested then we could get something (there's also by Gremlin Alternative World games with funny stuff that seemed to me even more harder).

[zzip]

1 hour ago, Gunstar said:

By the way, that pirated software was purchased from a guy named Sid Meyers...the same guy of Civilization fame?

Isn't the Civ guy "Sid Meier"?

[Gunstar]

37 minutes ago, zzip said:

Isn't the Civ guy "Sid Meier"?

I may be misspelling the name, it was over 25 years ago. And until you just wrote it, I also didn't remember the Civ guy's name spelling either.

Edited December 9, 2020 by Gunstar

[zzip]

36 minutes ago, Gunstar said:

I may be misspelling the name, it was over 25 years ago. And until you just wrote it, I also didn't remember the Civ guy's name spelling either.

So Sid Meier didn't just write a game named "Pirates", he might have actually been a pirate?  Scandalous!  ?

[+Philsan]

18 hours ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Given LindaSoft’s penchant for pirating games, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they pinched some code from WG. And take a look at Hypnotic Land: that playfield is pure Klax, and it looks like they just threw...something...on top of it instead of finishing up the game.

It's impossible that Lindasoft had access to the code of Winter Games for A8, a game never released.

 

Anyway, just go to White Circus topic first post and you'll know the story of that game (obviously the programmer didn't use Winter Games code).

 

Almost all Lindasoft games are pirated, but not Winter Circus.

[Gunstar]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

So Sid Meier didn't just write a game named "Pirates", he might have actually been a pirate?  Scandalous!  ?

This might lead to some answers of whether the Sid M. that I got pirated software from is the one of Civilization fame. I found the old ad I answered in April/May 1990, volume 9, number 1 issue of Antic.

 

 

[zzip]

24 minutes ago, Gunstar said:

This might lead to some answers of whether the Sid M. that I got pirated software from is the one of Civilization fame. I found the old ad I answered in April/May 1990, volume 9, number 1 issue of Antic.

 

 

The Sid Meier bio on Wikipedia says he lived in Canada, Michigan and Maryland.   No mention of New York.   And he started Microprose in 82..   Probably not the same guy.

[abbotkinneydude]

2 hours ago, Gunstar said:

This might lead to some answers of whether the Sid M. that I got pirated software from is the one of Civilization fame. I found the old ad I answered in April/May 1990, volume 9, number 1 issue of Antic.

 

1 hour ago, zzip said:

The Sid Meier bio on Wikipedia says he lived in Canada, Michigan and Maryland.   No mention of New York.   And he started Microprose in 82..   Probably not the same guy.

 

I would listen to Kay Savetz' interview of Bill Stealey:

 

Bill Stealey, co-founder of MicroProse Software

 

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VFDKbseZrlY

 

It seems Sid Meier, despite all his talent, had a certain idea of intellectual property.

 

Bill & Sid actually met at a SMUGGER(S) meeting (the 'Sid Meier User Group') where some piracy took place.

 

Sid's words (as quoted by Bill Stealey) were "we're not selling anything, we're just looking at it" when Bill's response, as a businessman, was less than stellar ("You can't steal software").

 

They parted way (very) temporarily until Sid came up with his first game (post MGM Grand ATARI's Red Baron game between the two) and, then, Microprose was born.

 

Later on, Avalon Hill reached out to Bill Stealey re: Sid Meier, alonside former AH employee Bruce Shelley, being seriously inspired by the AH board game Civilization for Sid Meier's Civilization.

 

In terms of timing, would Sid Meier still be a pirate in the early nineties? I doubt it.

 

Either we're dealing with a homonym or maybe a Meier family member enamored with the A8 platform who kept SMUGGER (as Aerion Software) going.

 

Please note: Designer Notes has an extensive 4-part podcast featuring Sid Meier that runs 6 1/2 hours.

 

There's also a book written by Sid Meier himself ("by The Creator of Civilization") that just came out in September of this year.

 

 

Edited December 9, 2020 by abbotkinneydude
Added YouTube direct link

[+davidcalgary29]

5 hours ago, Philsan said:

It's impossible that Lindasoft had access to the code of Winter Games for A8, a game never released.

 

Anyway, just go to White Circus topic first post and you'll know the story of that game (obviously the programmer didn't use Winter Games code).

 

Almost all Lindasoft games are pirated, but not Winter Circus.

Ooh, and I read through that thread when it was originally posted, too. 

[Mclaneinc]

I'm not going to elaborate because it does not need it but people would be stunned at some of the places the copies came from, I can't comment on Sid Meier simply because I have no clue if he got involved in that, the only time I dealt with Sid was when I was doing an article on Microprose that they liked.

 

As for pirate software and it being only kids passing it around, nonsense, I know of BIG names who actively took part in it for various reasons...

[leech]

2 hours ago, Mclaneinc said:

I'm not going to elaborate because it does not need it but people would be stunned at some of the places the copies came from, I can't comment on Sid Meier simply because I have no clue if he got involved in that, the only time I dealt with Sid was when I was doing an article on Microprose that they liked.

 

As for pirate software and it being only kids passing it around, nonsense, I know of BIG names who actively took part in it for various reasons...

It's funny, piracy back in the day happened for many reasons, but I think for most with Atari's it was lack of available places to buy it, even if money was available.  It was literally easuer to pirate siftware than it was to buy.  Especially fir kids with busy parents that didn't have a car yet to go to a store.

On the otherhand, I recall the schools had loads of pirated games as well.  I remember the Apple II version of Karateka they had was even cracked to allow a one hit kill on the enemies.

By the time we git our ST, there were really only a few stores left around here that even sold Atari stuff.

[+davidcalgary29]

1 hour ago, leech said:

It's funny, piracy back in the day happened for many reasons, but I think for most with Atari's it was lack of available places to buy it, even if money was available.  It was literally easuer to pirate siftware than it was to buy. 

Certainly true for me in the '80s with any title (aside from Atari's) not released within that calendar year. I remember thinking what the hell is this?  when I downloaded Triad and Baja Buggies and Tail of Beta Lyrae from some BBS in 1985, when I bought my first modem. I had never heard of these titles at that time and at no point did I ever see these games for sale in any computer store in Canada. You'd think that at least some money could have been made if someone had developed a back-catalogue system for computer software, just like they did with LPs and 45s. I bet a lot of people would have paid for some oldie for five bucks, even if it came in a zip-loc baggie with photocopied instructions. 

[zzip]

1 hour ago, leech said:

It's funny, piracy back in the day happened for many reasons, but I think for most with Atari's it was lack of available places to buy it, even if money was available.  It was literally easuer to pirate siftware than it was to buy.  Especially fir kids with busy parents that didn't have a car yet to go to a store.

That's true.   I did have a couple of stores I could walk to that had a few Atari titles,  but selection was very limited.   Thankfully a lot of publishers started putting games on "flippy" disks,  Commodore or Apple on one side,  and Atari on the other.   That got stores to stock Atari games they likely otherwise wouldn't.   I did wonder how the publishers knew how many copies they sold were played on Atari though

 

1 hour ago, leech said:

By the time we git our ST, there were really only a few stores left around here that even sold Atari stuff.

Same.  I remember I used to have a local indie software store special order the ST versions of games for me.

 

What's funny though is the ST game library is quite large.  I guess a lot of those games came from UK or Europe.   The system was well supported, you just couldn't find most of those games easily in the US.

[+davidcalgary29]

4 minutes ago, zzip said:

  Thankfully a lot of publishers started putting games on "flippy" disks,  Commodore or Apple on one side,  and Atari on the other.  

Typically just crappy, old, and/or budget titles, though. By the later '80s, the selection of these were either second-tier Mastertronic games, Pitstop and the like, the Questbrobe comic titles, or the Awardware line. It was a great idea, but none of the top software houses were selling older titles this way. I think that Infocom sold some of its games boxless and without feelies, but I never saw any for sale.

[zzip]

8 minutes ago, davidcalgary29 said:

Typically just crappy, old, and/or budget titles, though. By the later '80s, the selection of these were either second-tier Mastertronic games, Pitstop and the like, the Questbrobe comic titles, or the Awardware line. It was a great idea, but none of the top software houses were selling older titles this way. I think that Infocom sold some of its games boxless and without feelies, but I never saw any for sale.

My copies of the Lucasfilm Games (Fractalus, Ballblazer, Koronis Rift, Eidolon) were all on Atari/C64 flippies.   These were published by Epyx at the time.   Also my Beyond Castle Wolfenstein was an Apple/Atari flippy.

 

Yes Mastertronic was a big one, but their games weren't all bad