In my quest to have all 32k carts for the Atari 2600, the 2005 Minigame Multicart arrived from the AtariAge store today. The two games I've played so far are Zirconium and Jet Man. I like Jet Man, but there's no life counter. Instead, the background fades from daytime to sunset, and it's unclear how many hits you have left. I also like the game select screen and its music, which is one of the reasons I bought it. Sometimes if I'm reading, I pop in a game and listen to its title screen music inst
Back when I was a kid, I got this "comic book" in school that was basically a tool to get kids to think about how fun the transit system is. And what could be more fun than a superhero? Thus, Transit Man was born. He didn't live very long, and nobody except me has ever heard of him, but that didn't stop me from making an Atari 2600 demo of him. Right now, you shoot the monster by pressing left or right & fire simultaneously. If you hit the monster, she'll make a roar sound. And that's it. Si
This morning was really bad. I attribute it to being Monday the 13th. First, I woke up at 3 am to the sound of a buzz. No, it wasn't my alarm going off. I went to check on it, trying to find the source of it. It was actually a car alarm going off. Weirdest car alarm I've ever heard. It went on for about 5 hours when I quit paying attention to it. Well, anyway, I went to check on the den, and when I flipped the switch on, the light bulb burnt out. So I changed the light bulb and it still wouldn't
Well, Friday I didn't do much of anything except work on Tic-Tac-Toe. On Saturday, I went to Game Crazy Lancaster, and was contemplating whether I should buy some Atari 2600 games I have but with better labels (I didn't.) Then, my niece spent the night (I was asleep most of that time, though. I went to sleep at 5pm and woke up at 5am.) Then, I went to Game Crazy South today, and they had horribly overpriced NES games. Elevator Action for $12. Hatris for $8. Ms. Pac-Man (Tengen) for $22. What idi
Here's I want for the label (if I ever get it to sell.) Something kind of like this:
Either something like this or a picture like this squared for a Atari picture label. I used MS Paint to make this as I have no other tools. I use MS Paint a lot to either draw stuff or fine-tune something I hand-draw (like my comics.) Usually, I also put in text because my handwriting is kinda hard to read. Well, anyway, if I ever finish the tic-tac-toe game (now with two-player mode.), I'd probably have a la
Taking a break from GoSub 2, I realized that there haven't been any Tic-Tac-Toe games for the 2600 (apart from the 3D one.) So I figured why not make one? In this game, you play vs. the computer. You can download the latest binary files in the Atari 2600 Basic forum. It's 8K and I plan to keep it that way. For the label, if I plan to put this on to a cart for my own enjoyment, I want to have a human playing an Atari 2600 at Tic-Tac-Toe (imagine the 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe picture label, but instead of a
I got rid of "Octopus's Garden" and added an original composition by me. Tell me what you think of it. I'm also thinking of adding an Aegis "BIOS"-type screen before the title screen. And then after that, it'd have to be bumped up to 16k if I want to add more details for the mazes (or an Easter egg. The last bank will be full of the mazes playfield commands.)
I added a deadly fish in GoSub 2. If you press fire when you're colliding with it, it will move to a different spot on the screen, and so will the octopus even though you're not touching the octopus (and vice versa). I can't get the fish's reflecting right, though. I also changed the treasure sprite to look more like a treasure. I think the fish sprite looks stupid (like a balloon), so any replacement fish sprites would be welcome. Also, check out the M&Ms: Break 'Em review on GBA 07. I adde
They melt in your mouth, not in your hand. Geez, how old am I to remember that? Well, back when I was a kid, we didn't have the luxury of having peanut butter M&Ms. If we wanted peanut butter with chocolate in an M&M, we ate Reeses Pieces. And now they have just about every type of M&M available. And not only that, they have video games based on them. I got M&Ms: Break 'Em for GBA (you may remember I bought the DS version), which means if Metal Slug (2007) and Frisbee/Frisbee Go
A nice little update in which I added a 'game over' screen with a little tune. Also, the sub now turns red when you die. The SFX are temporary (except for the found treasure one) and I'll replace them when I feel like it. This game is looking more and more like something I'm really working on, isn't it?
So I got this weird CD. Why is it weird? Because it kept pausing weirdly. I went back to about 10 seconds before it paused thinking it was scratched, but it played perfectly the second time each time. When I ripped the only track that I listened to so far to my computer, the pausing disappeared. And that's why it's a weird CD. Either that or my computer didn't like it. Well, anyway, the track is exactly 24 minutes long, and the song is called Octavarium. It's by Dream Theater. It's very beautifu
That's the number of comic books I've made (mostly for myself and my mom) so far. It's called "Bill & George" and it's kind of like my diary in comic book form. I recently found issue 1 (made in October of 1994, right before my 12th birthday), and I had been missing it for a little while. It was like I had found issue 1 of Action Comics or something. Where was it? Right between issues 80 and 81. I have a huge stack of all Bill & Georges I've made so far. It's really tall, and I'm surpris
Let me start off by saying I'm not a big fan of the Pac-Man series. The title of this game is Ms. Pac-Man, and by golly, it's Ms. Pac-Man all right. And it looks better than the Atari 2600 version. In fact, it looks almost like the arcade version. Gee, four ghosts and a fruit without flicker sure is nice. Anyway, what got me interested in this version is the codes. I love when programmers put in codes. Needless to say I'm a big fan of the Game Genie. But since there's no Game Genie for the Lynx,
First the bad news. My grandpa had to put his cat to sleep. She had been sick for the last few months and, while it was inevitable because it was clear she wasn't going to get any better, it finally happened.
Now the good news. Ms. Pac-Man for the Lynx arrived safely in the mail today. The stupid mailman was very late, and for a second, I thought that we weren't going to get any mail at all today.
I'm busy buying all the long songs I have on record on CD. It's kind of amazing that I was able to find Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Tarkus" on CD. I now have all 3 Jethro Tull songs over 15 minutes with the addition of the "Minstrel in the Gallery" album on CD. So, here's what I have left to find:
Yes - "Tales From Topographic Oceans" (album with 4 long songs on it!)
Alan Parsons Project - "Turn of a Friendly Card"
Uriah Heep - "Salisbury"
Cat Stevens - "Foreigner Suite"
Procol Harum (wi
Well, just for fun, I thought I'd use "Octopus's Garden" by the Beatles as the title screen music for "GoSub 2". I can't think of anything better that's not written by the Beatles or Disney ("Under the Sea" would also be perfect) or anyone else that would probably demand lots of money for using their song, so I'll probably use another song in place of it if I actually go through with making this game, so for now, bask in the glory of an off-key Atari 2600 rendition of "Octopus's Garden."
This movie was made in 1952. The DVD version has commentary with Maureen O'Hara, who starred in the movie. She was 82 when she made the commentary. Maureen is now 87 (unless she's dead, she's listed in the 'alive' section of the 2007 World Almanac, they don't call it that, though.) Maureen starred in the movie with John Wayne. It has one of the longest brawls ever filmed, but I have my work cut out for me watching this (it's 2 hours and 9 minutes long! I don't have a very long attention span). I
I decided to work some more on the demo because I was having fun programming it. I added another maze and the octopus. I'll take a look at the code for the first one to see if I can get the octopus to be invisible. Note that the octopus doesn't go down to the very bottom because if he did, the treasure chest would flicker and it would be a giveaway to the octopus's location. (Oh, the treasure chest is flickering, the octopus must be at the bottom.) Also, the sub is player0 because if it was play
I've been toying around with the multisprite kernel in bB. I'm pretty bummed that the ball and missiles are set at a height of 1, and that you can't have an 'if collision(player0,player3) then...' statement, but other than that, it's a cool thing. In fact, I was wondering what GoSub would look like with the multisprite kernel. Instead of one octopus chasing you, how about two? Or enemies patrolling a certain area going a fixed route that you need to avoid? I've drawn up a little demo of a game c
I thought I had all of them for the Atari 2600, but I was looking through my collection and found I'm missing three of them:
-Crossbow (Atari)
-Super Baseball (Atari)
-Super Challenge Baseball (M Network)
I've been neglecting my 2600 lately in favor of the Lynx and GBA. I think I'll plug my 2600 in and have a long marathon session with it tonight. Here's a top 6 list of games I've been playing lately:
1. Mario Kart: Super Circuit (GBA)
2. Shanghai (Lynx)
3. Mario Kart DS (DS)
4. Video
It's a combination printer/scanner/copier to be more precise. I don't use it as a printer all that often, but the time came that I needed to purchase ink cartridges for it. And wouldn't you know it, the thing has 5 different color cartridges! (Cyan, Light Cyan, Magenta, Light Magenta, and Yellow.) Luckily for me, all I needed was Light Cyan, Light Magenta and Black. So I figured I'd have my mom take me to Keizer Station since I've never seen it before. So I went there, and was amazed by how stup
I've made a list of some I'd like to see.
Quadrophenia (1979)
Queen of the Damned (2002)
Quest For Camelot (1998)
Quigley Down Under (1990)
Quiz Show (1994)
Out of all those, I think Quigley Down Under would be the most interesting. Quiz Show would probably be interesting, too, because it talks about how the quiz shows back in the 50's and 60's are rigged. I asked my mom about 'Quigley' and she said she likes Tom Selleck. I have seen a movie that begins with Q (if you don't count 'th
Last night, I watched a silent movie on TV. It was the first time I remember even seeing a silent movie on TV. It was called "Sparrows" and was made in 1926. There was a baby in the movie. My grandpa was born in 1925. So that baby is now about 82 years old. Anyway, I didn't quite get the plot, but I watched it anyway. It's funny how expressions get out of style. Like "I'll bet you frogs to turtles that..." And also, there was a bunch of scenes of Mary Pickford and kids discussing the Lord, prayi
It wasn't Buddy Hackett after all, but Abbott and Costello. I thought it was either Hackett or Costello. Anyway, here's an interesting bit of trivia: Which movie stars Boris Karloff *and* Jack Nicholson? The answer is at the end of this entry. Anyway, I just got Dirty Larry and Rampart in the mail, bringing my total # of Lynx games to 18. They're sitting on a bookshelf in three rows of 6 each, along with all my instruction manuals/posters, boxes, and the Lynx II itself. So it's sort of like a li
I bought Hairy Pothead & the Order of the Large Fries, er, um, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for GBA today, leaving me at least 2 games short of having every GBA game released this year (Stealth Fighter and M&Ms Break 'Em are the two I'm missing.) I'm not a Harry Potter fan, and am wondering why Rowling quit the series. She was raking in the dough. And why would you watch the movie if you've read the book that came out last year? Do they change the plot or something? Anyway,
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