Anyone know why Centipede never had an offical release?

[leech]

Someone pointed out to me that the ST never had an Atari made version of Centipede for the ST.  Anyone know if this was just a case of Jack not wanting it to be a games machine?  There is a version in PD, but no official Atari version.  Is it one that went with the Arcade division?

[oky2000]

What's so odd about that? Who would buy Centipede for the Atari ST by Atarisoft for 20 bucks in 1986? 

 

Only a handful of people worldwide were interested in Centipede by 1986 that's why, don't blame the god of all computer company founders for Centipede being past it's sell by date by end of 1984 even on a VIC-20 on tape for 5 bucks lol

 

 

[leech]

5 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

What's so odd about that? Who would buy Centipede for the Atari ST by Atarisoft for 20 bucks in 1986? 

 

Only a handful of people worldwide were interested in Centipede by 1986 that's why, don't blame the god of all computer company founders for Centipede being past it's sell by date by end of 1984 even on a VIC-20 on tape for 5 bucks lol

 

 

Ha, well someone wanted it badly enough themselves to make a release.  It isn't like they couldn't have made a 'classic arcade games' release.

[bfollowell]

Even more odd since there was a Millipede release.

 

[ParanoidLittleMan]

Funny to say that Atari corp was not for publishing games for ST, while there is plenty of them published right by Atari.

Maybe they just did not want that Atari ST serve for very simple games like Centipede, Pong ...

[tjlazer]

Because we had Millipede

[leech]

7 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:

Funny to say that Atari corp was not for publishing games for ST, while there is plenty of them published right by Atari.

Maybe they just did not want that Atari ST serve for very simple games like Centipede, Pong ...

Jack famously didn't want really to sell games initially, which is why the 7800 was delayed.  But yeah, Star Raiders was done on the ST as well, but were they all coming out in 86 after he decided his original non-games idea was found to be not a great decision?

[blakespot]

14 hours ago, bfollowell said:

Even more odd since there was a Millipede release.

 

I’ve been wanting an ST Centipede release lately what with a dead on 60fps perfect Centipede release that just landed on the Apple IIgs. What’s odd to me - I got Millipede last night - is that it seems it’s stick-only. No mouse control! It’s a trackball game ffs! So it’s not very playable. It’s better than that PD Millipede clone from 1992 that’s called “Centipede,” but I can’t believe there’s no mouse control option.

 

bp

[ParanoidLittleMan]

9 hours ago, leech said:

Jack famously didn't want really to sell games initially, which is why the 7800 was delayed.  But yeah, Star Raiders was done on the ST as well, but were they all coming out in 86 after he decided his original non-games idea was found to be not a great decision?

We can speculate about what J. Tramiel had in mind. I'm even not sure that it was his job to think/decide what (kind of) SW to develop and publish. Joust was realized in 1985 by Atari. Then more in 1986. But looking it at atarimania can see that in 1986 about 4x so many games were realized for ST. There is learning time factor: you can not program game without some experience and knowledge level.

And in 1985 there was big %-age of games not using TOS - oh why ? Because it was not finished, there was only small part of it in 16 KB ROM. I think that it hurt much more than delay of couple games. And Atari games were all with TOS function calls, big part was developed by Andromeda in Hungary - yeah, we can blame J.T. to save on programmers salary ? Or all US TV manufacturers for doing all assembly work in Mexico . Because that, TVs appeared 2 weeks later in shops !

They used to say: power without price. But lower price in $ costed price in time  ?

 

[MrMaddog]

5 hours ago, blakespot said:

I’ve been wanting an ST Centipede release lately what with a dead on 60fps perfect Centipede release that just landed on the Apple IIgs. What’s odd to me - I got Millipede last night - is that it seems it’s stick-only. No mouse control! It’s a trackball game ffs! So it’s not very playable. It’s better than that PD Millipede clone from 1992 that’s called “Centipede,” but I can’t believe there’s no mouse control option.

 

bp

Joystick only? Might as well play the 2600 version...

 

I liked the Sinister Developments version of Centipede even though they made the game way too tough by using large bounding boxes for collision detection (pixels don't even touch!).

 

 

[prog99]

20 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

Joystick only? Might as well play the 2600 version...

 

I liked the Sinister Developments version of Centipede even though they made the game way too tough by using large bounding boxes for collision detection (pixels don't even touch!).

 

 

I was behind centipede. I apologise for that (and the other bugs..theres an absolute whopper I didn't hear about until years later).

Its mostly a fast sprite routine with a game fudged into it extremely badly.

Theres loads of cpu time left to really improve it but the code is an absolute mess, I just looked at it to reacquaint myself with the collision detection and its embarrassing. I might have written it nearly 30 years ago but thats no excuse.

I did get it building again with vasm on my mac with the intention of reworking some of it but enthusiasm waned rapidly.

[blakespot]

8 hours ago, prog99 said:

I was behind centipede. I apologise for that (and the other bugs..theres an absolute whopper I didn't hear about until years later).

Its mostly a fast sprite routine with a game fudged into it extremely badly.

Theres loads of cpu time left to really improve it but the code is an absolute mess, I just looked at it to reacquaint myself with the collision detection and its embarrassing. I might have written it nearly 30 years ago but thats no excuse.

I did get it building again with vasm on my mac with the intention of reworking some of it but enthusiasm waned rapidly.

Wow. I was not trying to call you out! The game is lovely and FAR better than the '92 "Centipede" Millipede clone from the PD group in my view, but having gotten a superb Apple IIgs port of Centipede ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcmpkEUQznM ) where the mouse control is perfect, I had to ask. Good work on the port and I imagine powers that be found a mouse not a "gaming device" surely! 

 

I love the port, would love it more with mouse support, but thank you for that awesome game on the ST!

 

(I am __NOW__ agnostic (I was in the Amiga ST wars...) and love Amiga, ST, Apple IIgs and all the rest now -- and have them all in my basement.)

 

 

bp

[prog99]

If anyone is feeling adventurous and fancies writing a perfect clone then the technique this guy used to convert games to the trs-80 may be of interest.

https://nowhereman999.wordpress.com/2016/12/

 

Years ago at work I did something similar that ported some ancient pascal code to vb6. Quite an interesting task but you can be bitten quite easily if you fail to read the source languages documentation correctly.

[oky2000]

I can't remember all the official Atarisoft ST releases but I think Star Raiders was possibly the only one that I had as an original, I remember had others but they may have been from my old school friend who would pop round now and again with some crack disks to try out. Star Raiders is a strong enough game, certainly better than the hideously expensive Deep Space rubbish by Psygnosis I got very early on. 

 

There are loads of arcade games from that early period that don't have even a homebrew ST release, like Popeye. The ST seems perfect for Popeye but STOS probably isn't up to the challenge despite the minimal graphic operations on screen and no scrolling required. I used to play arcade games and then when I got home do some pixel art in Neochrome and shovel them into STOS as simple demos...I even did some weird 5 to 1 frames per second dual layer parallax effect for Salamander in STOS...oh how naïve I was back then lol  

 

Circa 1986 people weren't really that big on nostalgia for those old 8 bit arcade games on a commercial scale I guess.

[jefffulton]

On 2/23/2021 at 5:16 PM, leech said:

Someone pointed out to me that the ST never had an Atari made version of Centipede for the ST.  Anyone know if this was just a case of Jack not wanting it to be a games machine?  There is a version in PD, but no official Atari version.  Is it one that went with the Arcade division?

They did Millipede. It's pretty good. They also did Joust, Battlezone, Missile Command, Star Raiders, etc as Blue Box 1986 and 1987 USA releases. I don't think they were afraid of classic Atari games on the platform. I think they just put their budget were it was best used. 

[leech]

On 3/2/2021 at 10:31 AM, jefffulton said:

They did Millipede. It's pretty good. They also did Joust, Battlezone, Missile Command, Star Raiders, etc as Blue Box 1986 and 1987 USA releases. I don't think they were afraid of classic Atari games on the platform. I think they just put their budget were it was best used. 

To be fair, I think Star Raiders is a requirement.  Joust isn't actually an Atari game, though they probably did the ST port. 

[Lynxpro]

On 2/24/2021 at 8:20 AM, leech said:

Jack famously didn't want really to sell games initially, which is why the 7800 was delayed.  But yeah, Star Raiders was done on the ST as well, but were they all coming out in 86 after he decided his original non-games idea was found to be not a great decision?

 

And that is famously a myth that Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg debunked years ago. The 7800 was delayed because it wasn't part of the sale of Atari Inc's Consumer Division assets to Tramel Technologies/Atari Corp. GCC didn't want to be paid by Jack Tramiel but by Warner, Jack Tramiel wanted Warner to pay GCC, and Warner wanted Jack Tramiel to pay GCC. The negotiations went on until August 1985 which is why the 7800 was widely released in early 1986 instead of Christmas 1984 as originally intended. It wasn't because Jack didn't want to sell video games. He always intended for his Atari to sell games...

[leech]

14 minutes ago, Lynxpro said:

 

And that is famously a myth that Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg debunked years ago. The 7800 was delayed because it wasn't part of the sale of Atari Inc's Consumer Division assets to Tramel Technologies/Atari Corp. GCC didn't want to be paid by Jack Tramiel but by Warner, Jack Tramiel wanted Warner to pay GCC, and Warner wanted Jack Tramiel to pay GCC. The negotiations went on until August 1985 which is why the 7800 was widely released in early 1986 instead of Christmas 1984 as originally intended. It wasn't because Jack didn't want to sell video games. He always intended for his Atari to sell games...

Huh, why didn't he also buy Atari Games then?  Seems he could have had the whole enchilada. 

[Lynxpro]

16 hours ago, leech said:

Huh, why didn't he also buy Atari Games then?  Seems he could have had the whole enchilada. 

 

Because Warner decided to retain Atari Coin/Games since it was profitable at the time. They later sold it to Namco when it ended up owing them some money. 

 

The consoles would've done better had they ended up in the hands of Atari Games instead of Tramiel's Atari Corp. But then without the rights to the "Atari" name in the consumer field, I guess they would've been known as the "Tengen 2600" and the "Tengen 7800" assuming they couldn't have persuaded Jack to license them the name for the home or go in on a joint-venture partnership. The 7800 certainly would've done better against the NES had they had the Atari Games library available even if the other 3rd Party companies were still restricted by Nintendo.

[leech]

51 minutes ago, Lynxpro said:

 

Because Warner decided to retain Atari Coin/Games since it was profitable at the time. They later sold it to Namco when it ended up owing them some money. 

 

The consoles would've done better had they ended up in the hands of Atari Games instead of Tramiel's Atari Corp. But then without the rights to the "Atari" name in the consumer field, I guess they would've been known as the "Tengen 2600" and the "Tengen 7800" assuming they couldn't have persuaded Jack to license them the name for the home or go in on a joint-venture partnership. The 7800 certainly would've done better against the NES had they had the Atari Games library available even if the other 3rd Party companies were still restricted by Nintendo.

Not what I had always read.  Pretty much it has been said that they offered Atari Games to Tramiel fir dirt cheap and he wasn't interested in coin ops at all.  So they later sold it off (I thought Williams got it for some reason, but it probably was Namco)

[Lynxpro]

9 minutes ago, leech said:

Not what I had always read.  Pretty much it has been said that they offered Atari Games to Tramiel fir dirt cheap and he wasn't interested in coin ops at all.  So they later sold it off (I thought Williams got it for some reason, but it probably was Namco)

 

I think it's a myth. I remember reading in a magazine - or, probably in the book "Game Over" - that supposedly Atari Coin/Games was offered to Jack Tramiel for $10 million more and he turned it down. I highly doubt it. In fact, I'd wager money that someone at Atari Games made it up later as an alleged example of how he supposedly didn't understand or appreciate the video game industry. Much like how a disgruntled ex-Atari Inc/Corp employee spun the story about Jack raking a 7800 off the table after supposedly being shown it and saying "we're a computer company!" It didn't happen. Just like many of the anti-"Atari" stories that the ex-Amiga people told to Amiga users groups over the years.

Edited March 9, 2021 by Lynxpro