Was circus atari based off of an arcade game?

[Rocko]

I found an arcade game that plays (and looks) exactly like circus atari.

 

 

 

The name of the game was clowns.

[CPUWIZ]

I found an arcade game that plays (and looks) exactly like circus atari.

 

Yes, this one http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter...=C&game_id=7340 !

[sku_u]

I've played the arcade version. I actually like the 2600 version a great deal more. Must be a nostalgia thing

[Inky]

Circus Atari IS one of the real gems for the system that everyone should own.

[NE146]

I've played the arcade version.  I actually like the 2600 version a great deal more.  Must be a nostalgia thing  

 

Oooh! Where did you see the arcade version? Was this very recent? Finding old games like that still working is awesome

 

Or ... It's not Mame you're talking about is it... because Mame of course does a piss-poor job of emulating that.

[sku_u]

I've played the arcade version.  I actually like the 2600 version a great deal more.  Must be a nostalgia thing  

 

Oooh! Where did you see the arcade version? Was this very recent? Finding old games like that still working is awesome

 

Or ... It's not Mame you're talking about is it... because Mame of course does a piss-poor job of emulating that.

 

No, it wasn't that dirty four-letter word that I shall never speak. The last time I came across a Circus arcade unit was at an old seasonal beachfront Arcade about 2 years ago and yes, it was still working, although the control was a bit touchy. I went back at the beginning of the next season with the intention of buying a few of the gems that this arcade had, but much to my disappointment, the Arcade closed down and the games were all auctioned off without my knowing. I found out some time later that the owner of the Arcade had passed away over the winter.

[Big Player]

*Waits for Ed Siegler to tout my prowess at this cake game.*

[foxglove9]

Or ... It's not Mame you're talking about is it... because Mame of course does a piss-poor job of emulating that.

 

How so? I thought MAME was just dead-on on just about any classic arcade game.

[NovaXpress]

The early games didn't use code exactly, it was all done by hardware so it's not easy to emulate. Someone with more wisdom please give us the technical explanation.

 

And not all MAME ROMs are emulated perfectly by ANY means.

[JB]

The early games didn't use code exactly, it was all done by hardware so it's not easy to emulate.  Someone with more wisdom please give us the technical explanation.

I ddin't think MAME had any discrete logic games in it(they pulled Pong out after deciding it was simulation, not emulation, and therefore not appropriate for an emulator, and it was the only one I recalled them adding).

...

But anyways, a lot of older arcade games didn't use ROM or microprocessors. They had everything made out of custom-designed logic hardware.

 

 

And not all MAME ROMs are emulated perfectly by ANY means.

Indeed.

The MAME dev team actually has a disturbing tendancy to ignore problems in existing games in favor of adding either un-emulatable games(like Dragon's Lair) or new games(like Blitz 2000).

 

They also have a really screwed-up control concept.

Analog pedals are treated as buttons, for example.

Games with optical encoder steering wheels also pretty much have to be played with a mouse or trackball, because they don't want to implement more than one class of optical encoder(despite having 3 classes of potentiometer).

Then there's the complete neglect of Sundance, which was unplayable for ages(despite perfect hardware emulation) because no one ever implemented controls for it(someone DID finally implement controls last year, but given the game had been in there since version 0.35, and it wasn't working 'till the .70's...).

[bjk7382]

So is the Midway Arcade Treasures emulation or are they programmed from the ground up? They seem to play pretty damn smooth. I can't get enough of Robotron.

[JB]

So is the Midway Arcade Treasures emulation or are they programmed from the ground up? They seem to play pretty damn smooth. I can't get enough of Robotron.

I'd bet emulation.

they know their target audience has things like the exact starting pattern of wave 17 memorized and will send them death threats if it isn't perfect, so why write a new program and risk the programmer missing some little nuance that the classic gaming community has memorized?

 

A bit of exageration there, but it's close enough sometimes.

 

 

Anyways, it's not like any of the 3 current systems are lacking the power to emulate those games perfectly, so why mess with perfection?

[Rob Mitchell]

I remember playing Circus back in the 70s .. Then I got 2600 Circus (Sears) and I never went back .. Until I got the Bally Astrocade in 1998 which has a Circus game too which closely resembles the arcade version.

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[highinfidelity]

The MAME dev team actually has a disturbing tendancy to ignore problems in existing games in favor of adding either un-emulatable games(like Dragon's Lair) or new games(like Blitz 2000).

OT: I agree 100% with your post, and alas that's a pity! As far as I see, the MAME thing is getting much into a "grab the new game immediately" rush rather than dig into the retrogaming and gaming history. There are tons of old games that "lacks sound OK" and are running a serious risk of being lost forever, while games that can be seen almost every day in the arcades are fully emulated. This lets a wide door open to criticism and skepticism about the entire operation, I guess. We've all seen great ROM websites shut down by force, and I guess it wasn't for the "avalanche" or the "kamikaze" dumps.

 

Understand me, I'm grateful to all of the MAME guys, without them I could never have seen a lot of games of the past. Though, they're lacking the philologic approach a bit, lately. What do you think?

[JB]

The MAME dev team actually has a disturbing tendancy to ignore problems in existing games in favor of adding either un-emulatable games(like Dragon's Lair) or new games(like Blitz 2000).

OT: I agree 100% with your post, and alas that's a pity! As far as I see, the MAME thing is getting much into a "grab the new game immediately" rush rather than dig into the retrogaming and gaming history. There are tons of old games that "lacks sound OK" and are running a serious risk of being lost forever, while games that can be seen almost every day in the arcades are fully emulated. This lets a wide door open to criticism and skepticism about the entire operation, I guess. We've all seen great ROM websites shut down by force, and I guess it wasn't for the "avalanche" or the "kamikaze" dumps.

 

Understand me, I'm grateful to all of the MAME guys, without them I could never have seen a lot of games of the past. Though, they're lacking the philologic approach a bit, lately. What do you think?

Honestly, I've long objected to MAME's obsession with boosting their game count over getting what they have working.

 

And their recent bent towards adding new games is really disturbing. Arcades are having enough trouble without piracy.

 

 

At least the NeoGeo emulator authors are locking out new games(too bad the people DUMPING those games are hacking the emus immediatly).

 

And the CPS-2 dumping project is all controlled by one man(with ETHICS!). And the part of the emulation community that's in it for the piracy bitched endlessly about how "hypocritical" Razoola is by not releasing the decryption tables for CPS2 games that are still (relatively) new. Because, you know, he HAS a CPS-2.

I think that's died down now that hte CPS-2 is a dead system.

[incog]

And their recent bent towards adding new games is really disturbing. Arcades are having enough trouble without piracy.

 

I heard they have a 5 year gap between when a new game comes out to consider befor trying to emulate the hardware. And then if the company is *still* making money from the titles and e-mail them to say that they will drop emulation of it in their next release.

 

Mame is about documenting the hardware... playing the games is just a nice side effect...

[JB]

And their recent bent towards adding new games is really disturbing. Arcades are having enough trouble without piracy.

 

I heard they have a 5 year gap between when a new game comes out to consider befor trying to emulate the hardware. And then if the company is *still* making money from the titles and e-mail them to say that they will drop emulation of it in their next release.

 

Mame is about documenting the hardware... playing the games is just a nice side effect...

So... Blitz 2000?

 

And if it's really about documenting the hardware, they'd get the hardware right, and wouldn't cram a jillion diffrent clones in.

Who CARES if you can have 8 diffrent versions of Defender, all imperceptably diffrent form each other.

...

For that matter, you could feed the hardware drivers any ROM images you wanted. There wouldn't BE a jillion diffrent clone entries, because the clones would run under the same settings. Something like MAME -driver (optional)-ROMimageset and calling MAME without -ROMimageset would get you the default set.

 

And they wouldn't treat a potentiometer 3 diffrent ways depending on how it was installed in the machine.

 

 

They can claim what they want, but they aren't about hardware documentation, they're about playing games, and it's painfully obvious from the way they handle it.

[incog]

read this you might learn something...

 

now quit moaning, its not like you paid for it

[JB]

read this you might learn something...

 

now quit moaning, its not like you paid for it

Seen the FAQ.

 

And I can bitch and moan all I want.

In fact, let's combine the FAQ AND bitching and moaning!

 

 

 

"MAME strives for emulating the games faithfully."

Lie. They stick a marginally functional driver in, then ignore it, even when the fixes are well-documented.

 

 

"The MAME project isn't intended to make every game playable, but to make every game play faithfully."

So convertiong analog controls to digital ones is making games play more faithfully how? By that argument, only games with pure digital controls should be playable on a keyboard. Analog pots should require analog inputs, and optical encoders should require optical encoder inputs. There are many chunks of code in the emulator to make the games less faithful, but more playable.

Oh, and TRY to explain to me how the cheat option is faithful emulation. I dare you.

 

 

The paragraph attached to "G13. Why don't the devs fix old games instead of adding new ones?". There is some truth in that, but a lot of misdirecting bullshit, too. Remember I mentioned Sundance? I have another emulator that emulates the proper inputs for the hardware(before matrixing). Within 5 minutes I had some of the matrix entries figured out. And I DID try to add controls to MAME, but the source code is something of a mess, especially as far as matrixed controls are concerned. I couldn't figure out how to add the controls, so I quit trying to trace them down and set up an MS-DOS box so I could use Retrocade, which DID emulate Sundance correctly, several YEARS before MAME did. The information was already out there, it just wasn't implemented in MAME.

 

 

 

Don't mistake me for some ignorant n00b.

[incog]

here's a simple answer... join MAMEdev and write better divers for them

[JB]

Or I could write my own emulator.

Or I could code something else and just ignore it.

[NE146]

#retrogamers on efnet.. lots of b.s. but also the home of a couple o' mamedevs and plenty of mame debate .. and yes, lots of b.s. in between