Jstick Posted March 19, 2021 Share Posted March 19, 2021 (edited) When playing Superman on my 4-switch woody, the game will alternate between normal colour and "black & white". The "black & white" has a lot of thin vertical lines running through it. This is NTSC via RF. I've never seen this issue with any other game. I had always assumed my cart was faulty, but I get the same result with the game using a Harmony Cart. Any guesses as to what the problem might be? Edited March 19, 2021 by Jstick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jstick Posted March 20, 2021 Author Share Posted March 20, 2021 Adding some pics: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted March 20, 2021 Share Posted March 20, 2021 Try some other early VCS titles (pre-1981, generally) - if you see similar problems you might have a B&W/Color switch that’s going bad, or potentially a damaged RIOT chip (which reads that switch position on one of its I/O pins). Many early games actually switched to B&W output with switch position. Later games merely shift the colors for better contrast on B&W displays but don’t actually go monochrome. Other later games use the switch for game features (Starmaster, etc). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jstick Posted March 20, 2021 Author Share Posted March 20, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, DrVenkman said: Try some other early VCS titles (pre-1981, generally) - if you see similar problems you might have a B&W/Color switch that’s going bad, or potentially a damaged RIOT chip (which reads that switch position on one of its I/O pins). Hmm, I've been using this same setup for a few years, and haven't seen this issue on any other game (I've probably tried several hundred different titles). The B/W switch seems to work as expected for games that switch the colour on / off. The weird thing is that the issue for this game is consistent, so it will always start off in colour, then switch to b/w, then entering a specific area back to colour, then exiting that area b/w, etc. If it was a faulty chip or switch, I would expect the problem to manifest randomly and intermittently... (I did notice that there is a "fixed" version of Superman for the Harmony Cart, is it possible this game is doing something nonstandard, like pushing the boundaries of video timing or something that causes my TV to interpret the signal incorrectly in certain areas?) Edited March 20, 2021 by Jstick Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jstick Posted March 22, 2021 Author Share Posted March 22, 2021 Well, I found out that the "fixed" version of Superman related to a gameplay bug, and not anything to do with a display issue. I dunno, I'm stumped... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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