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Kiwi fruit=good.
If you want Jack to be healthy, it is. Today I added the first of what I hope to be eight fruits for Jack to collect. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I couldn't do it because I didn't know how, so I asked for help and got some on the Discord forums. It had to do with bitwise operators. I had been confused and thought bits were bytes. I never can get the difference between the two. If the people named it two completely different things, then perhaps I would get it, but 'bit' sounds like 'byte'. And it just throws my mind off. Anyway, I could make it sixteen fruit, or any number of fruit I want there to be. For now though, let's just stick with eight.
Kiwi fruit adds five points to Jack's health. So now I need to make the level bigger and see if I can get a different song to play when climbing the stalk. I expect a full-blown battle between me and the computer for song adding (due to me having to store it in bank 1 as opposed to bank 0), but first I have to compose a song.
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Project Update (Revised)
My newest thoughts about Night Driver Arcade.
Please comment respectfully. This is not my job. I don't get paid to do this. Please do not ask me to write code. If I find time to write code, I will do it. And if I never find time, then I never will. Please understand and be respectful when you comment. Thank you.
EDIT: I revised this update and am now reposting it. Here is the revised update.
It's been about six weeks since my last blog entry. Here is an update on the status of the project.
ELIMINATING RETROGRADE MOTION
SpoilerShortly after releasing the last blog entry, an exciting breakthrough was made that by running the game at 60 fps, we can eliminate an unwanted high-speed road phenomenon called retrograde motion. Still untested, if it proves to be true, we will be making a racing game free of retrograde motion through the full speed range from 0-350.
ELIMINATING FLICKER
SpoilerIn any design endeavor, one has to make trade-offs. The more time that I spent on this project, the more that I felt that what was really most important to me is eliminating the flicker. Therefore, we will be changing our design from a 7 pair/14 pylon configuration to a 4 pair/8 pylon configuration (see photo). The 4/8 configuration has the tremendous advantage of being nearly 100% flicker-free.
DECIMAL COMPUTATIONS
SpoilerHow to perform decimal computations in bB? Following the advice I found in this post, one method is to use integer math.
Example:
Suppose we want to calculate SPEED OF CAR * 0.1266
Using integer math, we can divide by 8 because 1/8=0.125
(SPEED OF CAR)/8 = SPEED OF CAR * 0.125
The error is only (0.1250-0.1266)/(0.1266)=-1.26%.
I currently use integer math to do some of the decimal computations in Night Driver Arcade. (Thank you, @lord_mike, for posting this great suggestion.) I'm also considering using other methods such as implementing look up tables and building BCD calculators in bB.
THE CURRENT WORKING GAME DESIGN
SpoilerThe major points of the current working game design are as follows.
- A 4 pair/8 pylon road configuration to eliminate flicker.
- Running the game at 60 fps to eliminate retrograde motion.
- Making the reaction time of our home port be the same as the arcade version so that driving at the same speed "feels" the same in both versions.
- Scaling the road data (video-captured from MAME) to make the horizontal speed of the Mad Bomber in our home port be the same as the arcade version.
- Lowering the horizon to make the pylon density in our home port be closer to the arcade version.
Thus, the game design evolves and matures and comes closer to the arcade version in many ways.
UPDATED PROJECT GOALS
SpoilerI have greatly simplified my project goals. I guess I'm just being realistic about how much time I have to put into this project. My project goals are now as follows.
- Only the home port of arcade Night Driver will be included in this release of Night Driver Arcade. No alternate game modes. No special features such as Instant Replay. No mini game. Just the home port. The ROM may be around 8k and it may not even need the Superchip.
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No menus. A game select matrix. It will probably have about 9 game variations as follows.
- 1. Novice - standard track
- 2. Novice - mirror track
- 3. Novice - random or alternate track
- 4. Pro - standard track
- 5. Pro - mirror track
- 6. Pro - random or alternate track
- 7. Expert - standard track
- 8. Expert - mirror track
- 9. Expert - random or alternate track
- When you power it on, you will see the iconic s-curves of the arcade attract mode. After the s-curves, the screen will go blank and the words "GAME OVER" will appear for a moment. The s-curves and "GAME OVER" screen will continue to alternate until the player starts a new game.
- Hopefully, the game will be using two 6-digit scores. (Thanks to @Karl G for posting this great minikernel!) If successful, the second score will be used to show TOP SPEED as in the arcade version.
If you read this far, thanks for reading. I hope to have more progress to report and more demos to share in the future. Happy holidays!
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Happy Holidays Bubsy fans!! Here we are at the end of this year and it has been exciting times for Bubsy with the Purrfect Collection looming on the horizon for 2025. None of the previews that I've seen have Bubsy: Fractured Furry Tales which is a shame as it was Bubsy: FFT that originally introduced quite a few to the Bubsy franchise.
Yesterday there was a new interview with the director of Bubsy FFT who was someone that the Bubsy Fan Blog has enjoyed interviewing and delightful to talk to since. So here is more Faran Thomason which is always a good thing, and Arcade Attack Retro Gaming Network featured one of my Bubsy FFT speedruns from 2014. The current world speed record was made in 2022. Since that time great efforts have been made for mapping Bubsy FFT and people have been playing, so I'm sure that will change soon. Good to see FFT getting some love.
So here was the interview as mentioned on the Atari Jaguar forum here on AtariAge:
It was fun to read in the comments Andrew Seed, the programmer of Bubsy FFT, added to all this:
What I love about the internet. Sometimes social media can be rough, but other times you can meet the people who make these games and write the game music. I contacted Will Davis, author of the music for Battlemorph on LinkedIn and he wrote me back after a while. He sent me this SoundCloud entry that has TRACK NAMES!!
I've played Bubsy FFT a few times in this year, but mostly with the Game Drive CD support from Saint and getting Battlemorph working enough, I've been working to get through this game at last! Also had to get a Jaguar repaired as I wore it out working for the Bubsy speedrun. Been a good Jag so repairs had to be tried.
Speaking of Atari Jaguar, and a game that Faran also helped playtest and develop, it was a real treat to see the source code posted on the Internet Archive for Cybermorph and to hear the original voice samples and even unused samples:
Love how that history is saved and what Internet Archive has made available. Maybe one day the development disks/discs will appear for Bubsy of all the various systems.
Let's keep our fingers crossed. So in the meantime, have a great close of 2024, enjoy time with family and friends, and keep it up, just keep it up!
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Stella/2
I recently did an podcast that was simulcast on Retro Bliss Gaming and Mike's Gaming Gala. At the beginning I talk about how I'd stopped playing Atari in the early 80s because of computers (my first was a VIC 20 in December 1981) and that I got back to the Atari by porting Stella to OS/2. I typically refer to my port as Stella/2.
I saw this user comment on Mike's simulcast:
and wanted to address it, but I no longer have a YouTube account so am replying to it here. Perhaps tarstarkusz will see it.
Stella was on the scene at least a few years before 2000 as I joined the Stella team in the mid-to-late 90s. I didn't recall exactly when, so I did some research.
I remembered there was a review of an early version in OS/2 e-Zine. The site's long gone, but I found the review via Wayback Machine. Clicking the home link on the bottom-right reveals the review was published in Volume 2, Number 5 on May 16, 1997.
Screenshots of the review in case Wayback Machine goes offline again.
A few things I noticed in the review:
- it's for Stella v0.61
- my email address used to be spice@ibm.net, at the time I accessed the internet using IBM's OS/2 Warp Internet Access Kit.
- my GeoCities address was SiliconValley/Pines/2281 (archive at Wayback Machine)
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review has links to a number of screenshots, such as Space Invaders:
I then found this site which has a couple versions of my port of Stella available:
- stella070.zip - version 0.7
- stella11.zip - version 1.1
Both contain a file called stella.inf, which is an OS/2 Help file. I was able to view them on my Mac by downloading the Windows program iview and running it via Whisky.
Contents of help file from version 1.1, Stella/2 Version History is at the bottom:
Top of Stella/2 Version History page:
Bottom of Stella/2 Version History page:
So my first release of Stella/2 was September 15, 1996, about a week before OS/2 Warp 4 was released.
Version 1.1 was my final release of Stella/2 as I'd switched to Mac OS X after a friend gave me an old PowerMac G3.
I was able to use iview to export the full version history of my port of Stella/2:
Stella_11_os2_version_history.txt
The stella070 archive also has a file called stella.txt which contains:
Stella is Copyright(c) 1995, 1996, 1997 by Bradford W. Mott.
So work on Stella started sometime in 1995. From here it was late 1995:
QuoteStella: A Multi-platform Atari 2600 Emulator
In late 1995, Dr. Mott started working on Stella, a multi-platform Atari 2600 emulator, to allow Atari 2600 games to be played on modern PCs running Linux. Since its original release, numerous people have contributed to porting the open source emulator to other platforms and have refined the code to create a highly accurate Atari 2600 emulator. Stella has seen active development for over twenty-five years. Stephen Anthony currently leads the development efforts on the open source project. - 658
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Prelude #4 of10 using MMS and Yamaha TG-33
I opened up one of those PDF files that's been in the document folder for-what and for-how-long, I know not. A couple of clicks later I'm looking at a document titled "TEN ORGAN PRELUDES for Liturgical Services" by John Lee. (Who knew someone other than Bach wrote preludes). #4 was chosen for entry into the MIDI Music System software to get a feel for making volume and tempo changes.
The Yamaha TG-33 has been feeling a little bit neglected lately, hence the effort to use it for this composition. As we know, not all synthesizers are created equal, the MIDI Implementation Chart is a good place to find out which controls are available. The TG-33 has 7 controls that can be changed by typing "Pn,val" into MMS.
n
0 = Bank Select MSB
1 = Modulation Wheel
7 = Volume
16 = Vector X
17 = Vector Y
32 = 32 Bank Select LSB
64 = Sustain
There is also the Velocity that gets sent with each NoteOn command that might affect the volume. It does on some, but the Factory Organ patches didn't respond to velocity changes, but then again, the organ patch on CARD VC3301 STAGE volume changed. A Velocity change would have to be made in each Voice. The Volume control (7) seemed the better option.
NUM04.atr NUM04.MUS
The volume controller sets the volume on all notes on the MIDI channel. The MMS Voices 1 - 4 hold the music's note data. Voice 5 makes the tempo and volume change. Rests are used for timing. All five Voices are set to channel 1 for playback.
Audacity was used for recording. After upgrading, it took me about a day to figure out that permission had to be set to allow access to the sound digitizer. But that's another story.
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GHOSTBUSTERS! Hahahaha...
Last week on Old Games on a Weekday, I took a break from streaming my in-progress game of Nethack to play some Ghostbusters, specifically the Atari 8-Bit version. Still a fun game! 😄 I played two games, and you'll have to watch to see if I can still sneak past the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. 😆
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Fall in PA
It’s been unusually warm and pleasant in October here in PA. I spent some time cleaning up landscaping, taking care of 100,000 leaves, and bike riding. Western PA has many trees, trails, trains, rivers, and bridges. I snapped a picture of myself out on the trail because I thought I might soon have a heart attack from the exercise. Thankfully I didn’t. But I spied the various E bike riders with some envy, it might be time to upgrade.
The trail is along the Youghiogheny River, aka The Yough. Pronounced “The Yokk”.
I clearly have a young buck running around, and he nearly destroyed my young maple tree. I put a PVC wrap around it the next day.
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ITC Game Gear HD Added to the Collection
Finished this up earlier this evening. This has been a project that has been worked on and off again since PRGE. But first some quick background on this Game Gear...
I originally purchased this GG off Ebay where it was clearly stated as Not Working - Parts Only. However, from the pictures shown of it powered out, I had a pretty good feeling that it was something I could fix by simply replacing all of the capacitors as I've gotten a number of GGs working again doing this. The seller had a make offer option with a $35 BIN price. I made an offer for $25 and they accepted. So for just over $30 shipped I was able to get a pretty good deal here.
A word about a tip when buying consoles like this from ebay. Make sure to check the sellers other items they have sold in the past or have currently up for sale. The reason is that consoles listed in parts only condition from sellers that deal in tech like this, will usually not be fixable because the seller has likely already taken parts from the system to fix others they have sold and so they sell the left overs as parts only systems. The seller of this GG I could tell didn't normally deal in video game tech, so I stood a good chance on this GG being all there and fully intact.
When it arrived it only gave a white screen, but if you held the screen at the right angle, you could just make out game graphics. This was good as it meant the main logic on the system was functional and the lack of actual usable video and sound just meant it needed some TLC to replace the capacitors throughout. Sure enough an afternoon spent on that and the GG was back to working 100% in stock condition again. I could have sold it easily for twice what I paid at that point but had other plans.
For some time now BennVenn has offered replacement LCD kits for various handhelds. But since this year, he has had new HD IPS screens for the GG available. These newer screens have better scaling that allows for more screen to be filled without the usual image tearing and shimmer of pixels that would normally occur with these updated LCDs due to the odd resolution that the GG puts out. So I was anxious to try out these new screens for myself. And... I present you the newest member of the Ivory Tower Collections!:
Here is the inside of this GG with the new capacitors installed and new screen in place. These newer screens are easier to install as compared to older ones that had more point to point wiring required. Now most of them use flex ribbons that line up better to the points needed to install them into place.
The new kit uses a touch sensor that I've installed at the top center of the case shell. This sensor opens up an on screen menu to change some of the LCD functions and to change the output between the IPS panel and HDMI....yes HDMI.
There is an optional HDMI output kit that you can purchase that is designed to work with these newer kits. Installing it is very straight forward as the bracket for the HDMI port is designed to fit over a large boss post on the bottom rear of the shell that wasn't used much. This makes alignment easy and it is a snug fit.
It does of course require some case shell modification in order to access the HDMI port. So some cutting and fine detailed filing work was needed. Especially as this was a brand new shell. The port is a full size HDMI port and is recessed in far enough that a standard HDMI cable will be flush with the plastic when inserted.
Another cool feature about these newer screens is that they auto detect when playing Master System games with a Master Gear like converter on the GG. The screen will change scaling modes and resolutions to allow SMS games to nearly fill the entire screen. This is a big upgrade compared to the older LCD kits where there were always significant borders around the edges of the game play view. Here you can see I'm using my BackBit Pro with the SMS adapter on it, into a master gear converter. It sticks up quite oddly but at least the color matches pretty well and SMS games look fantastic on this new screen!
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Echoes of Wisdom part 2
A YouTube video about Echoes of Wisdom used the phrase "outsmarting the developers", which I think really encapsulates how players feel when they first use the spider to crawl up a wall "escaping" the normal path boundaries. Of course it's all an illusion. The developers knew this was possible and created the game to encourage exploration outside the "normal" boundaries.
And while they are subtle, the walls are still there. It's impossible to escape the Sauthorn area until you've closed the Sauthorn Ruins rift. You can only create 3 echoes and the cliff & forest around the area is just a little taller than you can reach. (And even if you were able to, apparently there's an invisible wall around the area.) Once you close the rift you can explore the whole of Hyrule - except the three Goddess rifts don't exist.
Given this, I suspect that 99% of the "discoveries" made by players were anticipated by the developers. This may even include the "bad warp" glitch which allows players to warp to the end game after completing the first rift. The reason I think this might be true:
- One of the objectives of the game seems to be to give the player the feeling they have "outsmarted the developers" (even when they haven't).
- The glitch does exactly what the speed running community would want - skips over the majority of the game.
- The process to trigger the glitch is very specific and yet was discovered shortly after the games release (intentionally leaked maybe?)
On the other hand, the speed running community has years of experience finding glitches and this glitch seems to have similarities to other glitches (where multiple game driven actions are occurring simultaneously).
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I am done, completely done, with Taco Bell. Every time I go there they fuck something up. The rice is not cooked enough and crunchy, or so old it is just a paste. It is disgusting and Taco Bell might as well remove it as an ingredient since all but a handful of its stores ever get it right.
The speed of service is atrocious. I have sat in line behind three cars for 30 minutes and watched as small orders were passed out the window. I have waited inside the store for just as long for a three-item order. There is no sense of urgency. There is no care.
They do not want to serve you. They want you to use those damnable kiosks. They want you to use the shitty app which I cannot use on my de-Googled phone even if I wanted. I worked behind the register for four years. Not only do I not feel like I need to take my own orders, I am also not a five year-old who thinks it is really cool that I made the machine "beep" all by myself.
The dining room is always, and I mean always, dirty.
As a former Taco Bell employee, someone who was proud of my job and my work, I can no longer defend this place. All but a couple of the people who work there simply do not care about the job or their work product. They suck and they produce products that suck. In this way, Taco Bell has decided upon its clientele and I am not part of it.
As the fast food experience continues to evolve, or devolve, into less of an experience, I hope any of these restaurants who do not put their customers and product value as top priorities just plain fail. This is an industry trying to commit suicide and we should just let it.
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Blue Max for C64 crashing
I recently noticed that Blue Max for the C64 will fail when I play it repeatedly on my NTSC C64 with the U1541 II used as a disk drive.
the pattern is
- Wongo loads the game in an NTSC environment
- Wongo chooses his options from the in-game startup menu
- Wongo plays and loses
- Wongo presses fire to play again
Repeat
Usually by the time I unlock the final mission, I know I'm getting close to a crash. At some point, I will die or land then press fire to start again or take off and the crash happens. The on-screen text seems to be orange with a dark gray background (I don't know if that is meaningful). The READY prompt is usually there. I think one time it let me type, but usually a reset is required. Everything on the screen except READY is garbled characters that seem randomly placed on the screen. For the above occurrence, the READY prompt was not visible.I think I have repro ready here: Blue Max Crash Repro Files
Files in this directory
FileName / Type / Description- AnotherCrash.vsf / snapshot / game has crashed dying on final mission
- BeforeCrash.vsf / snapshot / Start of final mission, can repro a game exit/crash by landing/dying after bombing white buildings
- BlueMax.d64 / C64 disk image / Will repro the problem, +10 crack version by Remember
- BLUEMAX1_NoRepro.T64 / C64 tape image / Could not repro the problem when loading a tape, +10 crack version by Remember
- crash settings.ini / Vice settings file / Just choose Machine->Model->C64 NTSC
- crashed.vsf / snapshot / game has crashed after completing the final mission successfully
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PRGE 2024
"Oh Shoot!" was setup to play at the 2024 Portland Retro Gaming Expo! That's pretty exciting! I wonder who all played it and what they thought of it.
The game is officially WIP status but I think it's done. I don't think I'll be changing a single bit at this point.Thanks to @Atarius Maximus for these photos.
You can also see video coverage of it:
Go to 1:36:00.
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RF Revisited
Sometime back, I blogged up a blog about RF.
In it, I mentioned that I use a Sony TU-1041U tuner to convert RF to composite video. You can also use an old VCR to do the same thing, or buy a questionable modern RF demodulator online.
Note: it has to be a demodulator. Not the more common modulator, like Radio Shack used to sell. (Ah, Radio Shack... how we miss you.)
Here's mine, next to my 7800 for scale:
Besides being much more compact than a VCR, it's just much, much cooler! Also, the picture quality is excellent. (Although garbage in, garbage out, so you still need good RF going into it.)
It still kind-of needs its own space though, since the 7800 doesn't really fit on top of it:
But you can actually just stash it away somewhere, unseen. You never need to adjust anything with it, so it doesn't even have to be readily accessible. Although because it's cool looking, I usually have it sitting out where I can see it.I was looking up prices for these on eBay again recently, and found Sony made another tuner. A consumer model. Waaaaayyyy back in the early 80's.
And since the price was right...
Oh, yeah! The Sony VTX-1100R, baby! Now that is a proper piece of 80's electronics. I didn't take a picture with the front door open, but rest assured, there are more buttons and a couple of dials inside.
This was some very early home AV-system-centric gear. It has two RF inputs (for cable/TV/games), three sets of composite + stereo inputs, three sets of composite + stereo outputs, plus MPX jacks for future (probably never realized) surround sound gear.
Oh, and one of the outputs includes component. Yeah. Component. I haven't looked up what kind of Frankensteinian cable would be needed for it though. Will have to do some digging.
Man... I'd hate to imagine what this cost back in the day.
I picked it up for $35. The listing showed it as a VTX-1000R, but it's actually a VTX-1100R. I'm not complaining that the lister got the model wrong (I didn't pick up on it in the pics anyway), but I don't think they were paying a great deal of attention, since the two "issues" they mentioned were both explained in the manual (which is easy enough to find online). That helped me knock the price down a little.
Once I looked up the manual, I realized I was going to need the remote, too. Fortunately, another eBay listing had one:
They just don't design stuff that cool anymore. Yes - that's all stainless steel. Not plastic. It actually cost more than the tuner did, and the seller left some corroding batteries in it (from 2011).
Fortunately, there was no permanent damage, and I was able to clean it up and it worked with fresh batteries just fine.
Now, the tuner itself is HUGE. Huge, and heavy. The way they used to make home electronics!
How huge? Well... it's big enough to sit one of these on top, with room left over!
I should probably look up the weight limit on my table...
They look like they were made for each other! And almost certainly, This isn't the first time someone has paired these together. Although it may very well be the first time in the last 40 years.
And yes – I actually have a 5200 now, thanks to a very generous donation from Chris Walton (along with a near-complete library of vintage games for it).
So I've decided to *try* working my way through the 5200's library and blog about it. I don't know if I'll make it or not. The first thing I have to do is get the controllers working (or working better). Of the three included with it, one appears to be near-new, and "seems" to work okay, but I'll have to try out some more games to find out for sure (plus, I've got a Test Cart on the way from AA by way of PRGE - thanks again Chris!)
Oh... right, so after all that - how does RF look?
Well, the VTX tuner doesn't actually work. It's "stuck" on Aux input, and the channel display isn't working at all (40-year-old technology FTW).
So, back to eBay, and another $15 for an original service manual. Another project, for another day.
Meanwhile, I'm using the TU-1041U, and the RF actually looks great! Very crisp, and the graphics (so far) look great. How the games play... that remains to be seen.
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Quicksand
I made something awfull today in the town.
First, I turned the road to quicksand. You heard me. QUICKSAND!
Somehow, the spell only works on me but I don't complain. I like swimming in quicksand.
That was great.
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Woebegone: An “The Oregon Trail” Homage - DevLog: Day 18 (08/27/24) - Lost on the Trail ...
I wanted to drop a quick update on this, as it has been two months since my last post.
I'll start that by saying that this is not a dead project, nor something I've abandoned.
Being "lost on the trail" is less being "lost" and more some (pleasantly but unexpectedly) extended travel, starting with visiting home for the (British) Silverstone F1 GP (where I grew up) immediately after my last post, and various excursions and sojourns since, along with a barrage of "summer activities", that only left a couple of days to do any useful coding. Now that's done, I have a few weeks before our fall travel begins and will be seeing how much I can get done in the mean time.
What I Worked On
Most of the two days were spent playing around with various approaches to handling the actual game, and especially how to implement its model and calculations. That included one wine-soaked evening's contemplating "maybe I should just do all the math/game-logic in BASIC"; a thought that was quickly put to rest. Then I played around with the OS' floating point routines, followed by creating some of my own math functions in 6502 assembly. And finally experimenting with an internal integer-only model, coupled with some 6502/macros to handle clean division and multiplication (which is probably the route I'll take, by adding them to my related utility/includes project).
I also spent some time trying to improve the initial graphics, including animating the oxen/wagon. As I've said before, I have no artistic ability - thus this proved extremely frustrating. It was not helped by my simply either not getting along with the available tools, or them just not being native to the platforms I'm using - and issues arising as a result. For example, I could use "Mode 4" here - in terms of what it does and how it does it - but on an Apple Silicon Mac, on the latest (non-beta) OS, it doesn't respond to clicks until I move the mouse (I expect it is an issue with a dependency, rather than the "Mode 4" code itself, but I've not had time/inclination to get to the bottom of it). Other tools require Windows, and are x86 builds - which then exhibit various oddities when run under Windows 11 ARM and Microsoft's x86 emulation.
I decided to put together my own character/tile/map editor (despite the tools I've already built/posted for working with the output of other programs), for Mode 4/5 and regular 1-bit/pixel modes, using a modern, cross-platform, framework (likely Tauri, since I've done enough with Electron for a lifetime) and that will be able to run in a browser from the web, or as a native desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux. I'm not going to spend more time on "graphics" until that's in a useable state, but will work on the "game" internals of Woebegone in parallel.
What's Next?
- Finish up the "title screen" aspect of this, including the cleaner, neater, clearer, bottom-panel
- Finish decision making on internal model/math, and code up any necessary support routines/macros
- Work on my character editor (subsequent "*" items are dependent on this being functional, if not "finished")
- Animate the oxen/wagon*
- Improve the parallax effect on the mountains/hills (will have two "distances" of hills/mountains, rather than one)*
- Add scrolling landmark entry and bit-shifted (soft-sprite) elements (technical validation)*
There probably won't be much "visible" progress in the code (unless you want to peruse the repository) beyond the title screen aspect for a couple of weeks or so. So, once I'm at that point, I'll do another build and then things should be less staccato through the end of the year.
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I went Googling for help in 2024 and couldn't find anything useful. They all tell you to click on the three dots near the top right corner, but they don't tell you to scroll down with your mouse scrollbar.
How do I get to my Google Chrome Settings?
Click on the three dots near the top right corner, then scroll down with your mouse scrollbar and you'll see Settings all the way down near the bottom of the list.
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Okay so ever since the 2600+ came out and my desire to want to be a part of the 2600/7800 community started, i came to the realization that obviously these days its extremely hard to get some of the more obscure or sought after 2600/7800 titles i wanted to play on my system without getting a custom cartridge, which honestly is really fun sounding! I can have my own copy of a game like "Red Sea Crossing" or prototypes like "Sinistar" and even hacks like "Wolfenstein 2600" with the exact kind of label i wanted and since as of now i live in the same town as AtariAge themselves, i could get this game by the next day after shipping for a fairly tempting price.
And the best site to get most of the work done for me was labelmaker2600.com, it had nearly all the 2600 Atari cartridge templates and it was easy to use, i was quite satisfied with it. But it missed my favorite label! And of course there were other third party publisher labels i wanted to replicate. Like Activision, so i'd like to show you the label and style i'm talking about.
The "2600 Red Label/Jr Style" from the mid-late 1980's to early 90's
It's a bit bland and for those who were atari fans in the 80's is kind of seen as the "Budget/Dollar Store Era", but i felt that especially the Logo/Header and the red coloring were truly fitting for the console, and i loved how well they would mesh on the shelf, i really loved how the end labels had the system listed + Catalog #NO with the name boldly in the top.
I thought since the 2600+ was bringing the 2600 and 7800 together again and bringing new life to both platforms, i thought this kind of 7800 esque 2600 logo + Distinct Red Labeling was something i wanted to standardize with a template so anybody with a basic photo editor such as myself could make a custom label, send it to AtariAge and get it back with the confidence that it would unify their game collection, that may be a very neurodivergent thing to want to do, but yeah it is... So what?
So i whipped up something in about 30 minutes as a concept for people to mess around with and emailed the owner of the 2600labelmaker website with my idea, posted the question on atariage and left it there for the month of June.
I eventually got a reply from the owner of the website, but due to the fact that i haven't gotten a response yet on if i should publicly state what he said i will say that it was on the table at one point but isn't possible for him to do, please dont message him about it though. If i get anything i will let you know. So unfortunately i was left with this very off, quick reconstruction from a JPG of a 2600 Red Label, in gimp, made in 30 minutes as a proof of concept that honestly needed far more work than i put in it even as a proof of concept and thus i left that there...
You may notice that the font from the original red labels and mine are different, even that 2600 logo above that i used as an example has a different font if you look at the 6 in 2600, so here comes a little interlude about how hard i tried to search for this mysterious font and how it proved fruitless.
Essentially it is a custom hybrid of sorts of Futura Bold and Futura Bold Condensed, slim 0s, the number 6 with an oval hole. Minor differences, this seems to trip up a lot of people not just myself as seen below with this custom Donkey Kong cart, this is just a very mysterious custom typeface that i have yet to find a perfect match of
But the weirder thing is the 2600 Jr box and oddly Midnight Magic on the 2600 use the standard Futura Bold font...
and oddly the current day atari uses the unknown typeface to this day for new 2600 releases, which iimplies they at least have a high quality image of the "2600/Atarian Futura" font or the 2600 logo in that typeface, but i never bothered to ask aboout this.
Okay all of that aside, despite not finding the exact font, me and (mostly) a user on the AtariAge discord (DragonGrafx-16) found one close enough, and when i found out about the Midnight Magic thing, i felt at peace finally, so here it is again.
How lovely, i apologize for kinda tommy tallaricoing your contribution, but if i knew your user here, i'd just @ you instead with sole credit, my mother is indeed very proud.
Okay ENOUGH, for real...
In between my rabbithole for finding this typeface and that original attempt in june, i decided to use what was available to me at the time with the 2600labelmaker's silver label generator and Frankenstein my own hybrid label! Effectively meeting the best of both worlds.
The Silver Label is a beloved template for 2600 carts, it co-existed with the red label for awhile but Silver came before Red! So it's extremely iconic and uniform, and seemingly much more prefered to the red label
and i do like this label, however i think the silver better fits the 7800 and i feel like it'd be too similar to that console's label, even if the red label format was the exact same as the 7800 label, the coloring made it stand out, taking the red from the logo/banner and making it THE label for 2600 in my opinion, not to mention the end labels, while i liked their boldness, i preferred the extra details on the end labels of the red carts, makes them fit nicely on a shelf to me.
But i did like the rainbow header and a few other features on the Silver Label so i decided to try to mix a bit of the late silver label with the coloring and end labels of the red labels after being inspired by the labels made by @ZippyOasys to make this middle ground label, and i was very happy with the results
i would like to make alterations to the design and font choices but this was very satisfying to make and to see the results of.
And eventually around this time i also decided to use my printers scanner at the time to scan two of my red label games, which at the time were my only ones, but honestly i'm glad i chose the two i did, Dark Chambers and Ikari Warriors, it seems like with the final 90's games they changed the logo again so it was really interesting to see the differences between the two, although i wish i had done a better job of keeping them fully aligned in the scanner as i still feel like they were crooked, as with a lot of the JPGs i used as reference material.
This image is almost 77 MBs.... Sadly my printer no longer works so i'm afraid i can't try again or add scans of other games, but i am glad to have scanned them at all at this quality.
Also around this time i toiled around with tackling my favorite style of activision labels (The Blue Ones) and trying to make them fit this kind of "New Hybrid Style", unfortunately as far as i know, Gimp doesnt seem to have shape tools or something so it took me a while to get this down to a point i was satisfied with, and eventually i just used it as the artwork for the 2600labelmaker and just made the background blue, although i am pretty pleased with the end labels.
i couldn't find the exact font that the blue labels use, which i will put down below but i think i did my best to show this idea of a less boring Blue Label Activision template concept.
Again, designed for Atari style 2600 carts in mind since, those are the ones i'd expect most to use for custom carts, as AtariAge does. I do hope to revisit this idea eventually, as i did want to experiment with alternate color choices instead of blue for certain games like Black for Ghostbusters or Green for Pitfall!
And as a one off i did a quick label for a hypothetical demake of the Sunsoft NES Batman game in the hybrid red label for 2600 since i felt like something like that would make total sense as some kind of late era 2600 batman game, then somebody told me that somebody already did their own demo of that, so i presented them what i made. But i'll post it here too because you can never have enough images.
I did not make an End Label for that was the most time consuming part, and when i made this label, i didnt know that game existed so i didnt think much of it and by the time i did i was likely already tired, much apologies to the atari wizard behind the game.
But in August i decided after making my best PNGs of the 2600 logos as i will post both PNGs one more time below (you havent seen the other one so) based on the cartridge scans i did before, i thought i should try to make a template to AtariAge's specifications including bleed and cut dimensions, now maybe i could've made the bleed a different color to make it less confusing but i'm never sure about much of anything really, so, while i still feel like theres much to improve on with the current template i am excited by the results and propositions that this endeavor may provide, i just dont think i can do this alone.
And with enough teasing and motivational speech, i bring you the label template as of now, Main Label 1.1 and End Label 1.0
AGAIN i need to say this includes "Bleed" so it may look like everything is too small, this is not how it would look on a cartridge, see the atariage store's custom cartridge listing for more info, i will say i wish i put in sample front label text (obviously in a lower opacity to make it easier to write over) and the end label has a few errors in terms of how i used too much bold fonts or non bold fonts intermixed with eachother, its a mess basically 😅, but i hope to get an updated 1.2/1.1 versions of the labels with tips from the community on my thread in the 2600 forum here, its gone stagnate with replies since june and i really need help with my skills to help advance progress on it, i am also hoping to do more "Hybrid Label" tests as well, i dont see that going way.
But thats my progress on trying to DIY this. Thank you for reading my blog entry, more will come soon, i recommend following the blog but mostly my thread on the 2600 forums dedicated to the template, thats where i will mostly be posting this stuff in or updates on that mostly. Send your tips there too!
But thats all. Thanks again.- Read more...
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I have recovered the Instruction Manual for Connect the Dots off an old dead hard drive I had thought was lost forever. It's been lost for 21 years. The manual is making its online debut today.
Without further ado, here is the Instruction Manual (see attached image files)...
If you don't already have a ROM image of the game, it can be found at larger ROM collection internet web sites. Or you can just grab a copy of it right here.
-Ben
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Latest Entry
My Favorite Atari Games
Dragster
Haunted House
Moon Patrol
Yar's Revenge
Video Pinball
Ms. Pac Man
Surround
Pac-Man
Berzerk
Outlaw
Jungle Hunt
Missile Command
Maze Craze
Warlords
Circus Atari
Centipede
Combat
Asteroids
Joust
Galaxian
Crystal Castles
Dig Dug
Lost Luggage
Fast Food
Fast Eddie
Frogger
Q-Bert
Montezuma's Revenge
Congo Bongo
Donkey Kong
Pitfall!
Pitfall II
Space Jockey
Sky Jinks
Enduro
Oink!
River Raid
Frogs and Flies
Dragonfire
Atlantis
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Latest Entry
Part 1: The Setup
Windows NT 4.0 is very interesting, but equally confusing.
Researching what parts were required to get the most out of this operating system while remaining period-correct was a time consuming process. Again, when we're working with a topic this niche, it's very difficult to find any pertinent information. Who documented CAD workstations in the 90s? Very few, as it would seem. Depending on who you are, the project would stop here. For me? This makes it that much more interesting. It's like a mythical being or MacGuffin; it exists, but hardly anyone has thought to research it.
These are the specs we're going to be looking at - they're subject to change:
- Intel VS440FX (Socket 8 Motherboard)
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Single Pentium Pro Clocked at 150Mhz
- this is a modest estimate based on my preliminary test bench results. If my host computer can handle higher clock rates, this will be upgraded in a similar manner to a real workstation of that era.
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Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold 28 MB
- I know, it seems like an odd choice for an NT focused build, as it's a card known for its DOS and early 9x performance. I have my reasons, which I'll get into later.
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Matrox Millennium II 8 MB
- This card was revered because of its excellent 2D acceleration and support for very high resolutions up to 1600x1200, and even 1920x1200 in operating systems such as Windows 2000.
- It absolutely has 3D capabilities, but they aren't stellar by any means, even for its time. For 3D CAD/rendering, its doable but not ideal. However, gaming is entirely hit and miss, even when keeping the limitations of NT in mind with its lackluster DirectX support.
- The card supports up to 16 MB, but NT 4 apparently has problems with this.
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512 MB of RAM
- The maximum supported by this motherboard. I wanted to go with 1 GB, and had previously on my testbench running an Asus board of the same era. However, I ran into problems with emulation speed that I've attributed were most likely due to its far more complex design. Regardless, I imagine I'll have a hard time actually using all this RAM even if I went out of my way to. The operating system only idles at around 20-32 MB based on my previous testing.
- 24X CD-ROM
- Dual 3.5 inch 1.44 MB Floppy Drives
- 18 GB IDE 5400 RPM Hard Disk
That just about sums up the specs I've decided on for now. We'll look at any potential upgrades later on after running some benchmarks. I've also considered running Raid 0 on this emulated machine, but I think I'll instead save that for a later NT Server project. 18 GB should still go a long way.
Here are the various tasks that will be pitted against the machine:
- Video Production/Editing
- Audio Production/Editing
- Music Production
- 2D & 3D CAD
- OpenGL Gaming
- Game Making
- Microsoft Office 97 Pro
- Internet Browsing
It's a decently extensive list, but my research suggests this machine will be up to the task. What's honestly been the most difficult part of this project thus far is finding software. A lot of these products, especially those created for enterprise level 3D rendering & urban planning, have simply been lost to time. Many of them haven't been archived, unfortunately. This is really a huge part in why I've begun this project, as I want to draw attention to a forgotten era of computer-aided-design. One that was extremely important in regards to productions such as "Toy Story" - the first fully 3D animated feature-length film. Will that happen because of my efforts? Only time will tell..
Regardless, my next entry will focus on the installation process of the operating system, and some basic information you should know if you ever decide to work with NT 4. Thank you for reading.
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Latest Entry
Early Artworks and first levels
Back in the days (2011-15), we used visualbb to start assembling the differents levels.
The first level was slightly modfied so that each different level have a different challenge for the gameplay.
The background used the extra possibilities offered by the SARA chipset and thanks to Michael « SeaGtGruff » Rideout.
severals levels later, the maximum capacity of the standard kernel of 32Kb is close to be reached.
We also tried to make our customed cartridge and for quite a long time, the programmation was stopped: we had to know if that we could make cartridge by ourselves. If it was doable, the limit of 32Kb would have been compulsory. Unfortunately, our friend Yann didn't succeed to transfer our program onto old legacy cartridges (bought nearly 50 carts on flea market for it).
After a long period of doubt, we decidated to give up doing our cartridge. The game was then extend to 64Kb and is still at that size for the moment.
Note: this content is repost from our dedicated website http://www.drakhansnight.com
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Latest Entry
Worm War I, Chapter 1: The Battle Begins
Dark space. Almost no one dares to enter here, at least not humans. Who knows what evil lurks in the galaxy? Aliens are all around you, ready to strike... double agents with a twisted sense of morality.
However, there is one regular runner of the cosmos that venture into these unknown areas. A group, actually.
They're the Robot Force.
The spaceship Wingman zoomed into the vast blackness, traveling approximately 90 miles per hour. Not many roller coasters could reach that speed, let alone a car itself. Traversing the empty void, planets scarce in this region, the crew didn't mind being bored.
Because this crew weren't your "Star Trek" type of stern. They were party animals.
A robot painted a deep jet black had one hand on the yokel, and another hand on his hip. His eyes were non-existent, as in that area of his "face" was instead a glassy visor, reminiscent of Ray-Bans. "Fantasy" by Aldo Nova blared through the Sony Walkman hooked up to the Wingman's speakers. The booming rock music pleased a robot colored a lighter shade of blue, with a head slanted downwards like a backwards baseball cap yet the same Ray-Ban replacement for eyes, who was glancing downwards at his handheld device, perhaps displaying the planetary traffic or some other form of navigation. A female robot, looking like the black one yet with a pink and red color scheme, was sitting at a terminal somewhere near the back of the ship, scrambled codes flashing all around the screen. Suddenly, she jumped to a start when she realized something, after carefully relating words to numbers and vice-versa, as the decoded message became clear.
"Captain TOM!" the girl shouted, over to the front of the ship.
Captain TOM turned around and gave a petulant sigh. "What is it, RUBY?" he moped.
"I've found a transmission from a planet named Teriyaki! An invasion is happening!"
"...yeah, okay. You know I'd rather chill and cruise the space-ways than save people. Pick up some alien babes. You know, fun stuff."
"TOM, this is serious! These people are in great danger, and you value laziness over heroics?"
"We're only here to document the galaxy. That's why Dr. Activision sent us into space. Heroics are just a byproduct."
The blue robot perked his head up from the handheld upon hearing Captain TOM display such dumbness.
"No it's not! You get more out of it than anything else!"
"Well, it's been a ****ing burden on my life," said Captain TOM. "I'd rather get more out of watching Mystique all night."
"Galaxy integrity is the most important thing of all," DAN said. "Anything else is the media lying to you. As I always say, the media is the enemy of the people."
"So, what, Starship 2000 isn't Hugh Hefner's House of Hoes like they advertise themselves?"
"JUST GET TO TERIYAKI, CAPTAIN TOM!!" RUBY and DAN shouted simultaneously. Captain TOM gave out a depressed yawn.
"All right, fine. But you better leave me alone after this." He turned over to the automatic navigation system, and in a most deadpan voice, "Clara, set the course for Teriyaki."
Meanwhile, on the planet of Teriyaki, trouble was brewing. Teriyaki was sort of "neon Asian," with a Shinto flair and Edo period loveliness. Citizens wore kimonos, there was a chain of gas stations called "Pagoda" that literally looked like a pagoda, and true to form, delicious, delicious teriyaki was served in every restaurant (the best being Matsuri Bar.) But danger lurked in a high mountain overseeing the main city, where a strange saucer had crash-landed a few days earlier.
A hissing voice that echoed with demonic reverb said, "Jewelee, are we ready to attack now?"
This inquiry was followed by a similar-sounding voice, but feminine in gender, whispering "Yes we are. Our sticky slime will trap ALL the Teriyakians in place. We'll storm the Feudal Shiro and overthrow the emperor. Nothing will ever stop us. NOTHING!" She began an evil laugh.
The voices belonged to giant, sentient worms, looking like prehistoric creatures with a modern-day twist. The male was green with a peach underside, and Jewelee was magenta with a black underside. Their sharp teeth could rival vampires', gnashing at anything and everything (omnivorous.) And of course, a pore on their undersides could produce a slimy, sticky secretion, which was almost like Crazy Glue in that there was no escape once you were caught in it.
From the corner of his eye, the male spotted something landing far away in the city.
"Jewelee, there's something coming," he said. "Seems like a... spaceship!"
Ponch slithered to the base they'd made in the mountain cavern, where a large supercomputer the likes of ones from the 1950s resided. Slamming his body into the large button on one of the panels, the computer analyzed the data being sent to its systems. Then, at the sound of a tone, it showcased information about the newcomer to the planet.
"Ah," Ponch said. "It is indeed a spaceship. It's called the Wingman."
"Interesting," Jewelee said. "Tell me more."
Ponch slammed onto another button on the panel, and up on the screen came profiles of the Robot Force.
"Says they're lead by robots. TOM, the Captain. DAN, the Commander. RUBY... she doesn't have a title, but she's still brave." A pause, then "TOM seems like a fine specimen. It says he's in the right mindset to be a captain, but has a bad case of his ego. Stubborn, too."
Jewelee chuckled. "He will be a perfect asset to us."
The Wingman touched down on the runway in the Teriyaki Spaceport. Captain TOM exited the spaceship first, trying to look as badass as he could. Following him was RUBY, watchfully patrolling the area for signs of an invasion. Finally, Commander DAN stomped downwards, fed up with Captain TOM. He shook the black bot, trying to get his attention.
"Here's another problem, TOM: You are too caught up in your looks," DAN said.
"No, I'm not," TOM snapped at DAN. "Now shut up and act natural, or else the invaders will see us."
"You have no idea what you're saying, do you, TOM?" RUBY asked, before TOM shot her a glare that made her change the subject.
"OK, RUBY, do you have any idea where the invaders are located?" he asked.
"The report said they were somewhere in a mountain. Before you ask me for any specifics, I don't know where."
"Fine by me." Captain TOM cracked his knuckles. "Okay, guys. Let's go get those sons of bitches."
"That's the spirit," said Commander DAN. And immediately, the bots rolled out.
A few minutes later, the Robot Force were in the main stretch of Teriyaki's major city, Sukiyaki. Aliens wearing Japanese headdresses greeted the trio.
"Hello, visitors!" one said. She had blue skin, darker than Commander DAN's color, and they were wearing a purple kimono adorned with roses.
"Yo," Captain TOM said, in his best "cool" voice. "I'm Captain TOM from the Robot Force. You heard about the invasion?"
"Oh, that!" the alien said. "Listen. We caught sight of a giant saucer crashing into one of our mountains. Ever since then, every night, giant worms have been pillaging our city. See those blocks?" The alien pointed to enormous monoliths standing in the city, blocking major tourist attractions. The trio turned round and surveyed the sight. "Those have been set up by the worms. Somehow, you've got to stop them. Have you fought aliens in the past?"
"Yeah," said Captain TOM. "We stopped some loony from stealing the Rajah stone on the planet Evonar."
"Great!" said the alien. "You'll be perfect for the job." She began to wave goodbye, but Captain TOM stopped as Commander DAN and RUBY were walking off.
"By the way, you look totally hot. Have any idea where the nearest club is? I'd like to chill with some Japanese aliens," he said. The alien blushed. Captain TOM waved goodbye back as he followed DAN and RUBY, who were angrily glaring at him.
Captain TOM led his crew throughout the streets of Teriyaki, humming half-heartedly to himself, as he really wanted to get the job over with and go have some fun.
Kind of young, kind of wow, Teriyaki. Kind of free, kind of now, Teriyaki.
Meanwhile, Commander DAN and RUBY were fiercely insistent on finding the worms and kicking their tail ends. They continued down the lighted roads, as the fronts that lined the path died down. No one would go beyond this point, in fear of getting kidnapped by gang members, drug dealers, or worse.
And Captain TOM didn't know what he was in for.
He turned to his comrades and gave a frustrated sigh. "Seriously, guys, I don't see any worms here."
"They come out at night," said RUBY. "And it's sunset now!" She pointed to the magenta and orange sky. "See?"
TOM hung his head low. "All right, we'll wait until the sun sets. Gonna be up all night--"
Suddenly, a strange probe descended from the sky. Commander DAN and RUBY looked up and saw it, rotating like a gear, as a green light flickered on from its bottom and bathed Captain TOM.
The duo pointed, admonishing "Captain TOM! Look!"
Captain TOM jerked his head up, but it was too late to run. He was frozen in fear as the green light raised him off the ground with its mysterious magnetic power. TOM began to scream for help as he was dragged up into the sunset sky, away from his crew.
"DAN! RUBY! HELP ME!!" he shouted. Commander DAN and RUBY tried running after the probe, down the vacant streets, but stopped at a steep cliff, where the probe shot up into the air and into the mountains in the distance.
"Crap! TOM's been abducted!" Commander DAN said.
"This is what he gets for being such a jerk," RUBY said.
"But who knows if he's going to rescue himself? We've gotta help him!" said DAN.
Meanwhile, Captain TOM was panicking, not daring to look down, as he very much was afraid of heights. He couldn't believe he, the leader, had to be the one to get captured. Why couldn't it be RUBY? In video games like "Donkey Kong," the girl was always the one in distress. Why the dude, the tubular dude? Not enough time to think, as he was being carried superfast into the mountains above.
Where's my jetpack? If only I had it... Captain TOM loved to soar around in his jetpack back on Earth, before the space missions. He rarely got a chance to use it anymore. And this would've been a great situation to use it.
Eventually, the probe descended on the mountain range. Captain TOM had a new problem: he was stranded nearly a hundred feet above Teriyaki, and his friends. How was he going to get down? Besides walking down the mountain trail, which would be very, very tiring for his poor feet, which had done a lot of walking already.
Just as he was about to think of ways to escape, something got on him. Something very wet and sticky. The next thing he know, he was unable to move, covered in a gross, greenish-white fluid. It was almost like rusting; which one was worse he couldn't decide, right now, at least.
"Ewwww!" he shouted. "What is this? Mucus?"
Then he heard it. A slithery voice unlike anything he'd heard before.
"Surrender now, little Captain TOM," it said. "In our power."
TOM gasped as Ponch inched his way over to him, baring his fangs. Normal worms weren't even supposed to move that fast! What was going on?
"What the hell do you want from me?!" Captain TOM demanded, terrified. "Who ARE you?!"
"I am Ponch, a worm from the planet Polychaete. Me and my brethren have been horrified at the way people universally treat worms. They try to exterminate them and consider them 'pests.' Well, say no more, galaxy. You are going to get what's coming for you."
Jewelee slithered out, followed by another, nasty-looking worm. Looking down at Captain TOM like the Council of Elders at Zod, Non, and Ursa, they savored the moment of seeing their prey in complete terror. TOM was twitching, his body immobilized by the slime.
There's three of them now?
Ponch and the other worms closed in on Captain TOM, circling their target, enjoying the last few moments of his existence... or at least, his current self. Then, suddenly, they lunged in on him and bit him viciously with their sharp fangs.
A burst of pain shot through Captain TOM's nerves, as he felt the bites sinking in his metallic skin. He was in so much agony that he couldn't open his mouth to scream. How he wished he were back with Commander DAN and RUBY. Had his insolent behavior really gotten him in this much trouble?
Then, he began to feel very, very weird inside. Almost like his legs were melting, dissolving, into one. He looked down and saw his black legs becoming a shade of lime green, and twisting into a tail, as he dropped down to the ground, unable to break the fall. His arms retracted into their sides as he hyperventilated and started flailing around, in so much pain he could barely think. He felt his back lower and curve, and his mind started instantly panicking, terrified of what was happening to him. His neck began to retract into his body, as his head mutated into a pointier, skinnier, linear one with facial features. There wasn't a mirror to showcase these changes, but TOM knew very well that his "mouth" on the side of his face was growing. And the only thing he could do with this actual mouth was scream in horror, as his captors laughed wickedly. As his transformation completed, his mood began to change; he was suddenly gripped with a ravenous urge to kill. His old self tried to hold back this change in personality, but there was nothing he could do as the evilness murdered what was once Captain TOM in his mind.
Ponch laughed. "Now, with Captain TOM on our side, we will conquer Teriyaki... then the world!" Everyone in the mountain laughed, including Captain TOM.
"Yes," he hissed in a harsh tone reminiscent of vocal fry. With the newly-transformed TOM on the worms' side, there would be seemingly no way for the planet of Teriyaki to win.- Read more...
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Recent Entries
Latest Entry
Atari 400 mini .zip of a lot of games
Here is my collection of games for the new 400 Mini released by Atari. Great system, I like it a lot.
Anyway the link to Atariage forum:
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Latest Entry
A New Addition...
I recently purchased an Atari 130XE package deal NTSC tested passes PBI salts A8picoCart SIO2PC w/cables and an assembled Fujinet 1.7 Atari 800 800XL 130XE 65XE XEGS on ebay. (Thank you shawnj03 and voidabone) These, combined with my linux based tnfs and 576NUC+ give me my own local Atari network. The A8picoCart give me access to the Mac/65-DDT environment for learning and developing assembly and perhaps Action! as well. Plus, with two networked Ataris I hope to play with the Fujinet's networking capabilities in the programs that I develop - but that is a long term plan. Buying is fast, learning - not so much. Back to the man-cave! (https://tinyurl.com/ykdaph4w)
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I am done, completely done, with Taco Bell. Every time I go there they fuck something up. The rice is not cooked enough and crunchy, or so old it is just a paste. It is disgusting and Taco Bell might as well remove it as an ingredient since all but a handful of its stores ever get it right.
Fortunately, there was no permanent damage, and I was able to clean it up and it worked with fresh batteries just fine.
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