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Danger Zone - converted from the NES version used in the "Top Gun" game. Settings are: AUDCTL=$10 (Engage 16-bit mode but at the standard 64khz clock) 0 - $Ax (pulse wave) 1 - silent 2 - $Cx (mod 3 bass aka RMT C) 3 - $Ax (accompaniment/harmony for channel 0) This is one of the more creative ways to get a NES style pulse wave on POKEY. The trick is, use $Ax distortion reverse 16-bit mode at the standard 64khz clock, playing the first channel while silencing the second. This gives you about an octave's worth of pulse notes covering the third octave. You are limited as to what notes can be played, so the original NES tune had to be transposed down two semitones to fit properly. The other limitation, is that you are required to use the standard 64khz clock here, not the 1.79 clock. This means you are forced to use $Cx distortion for bass sounds in the other channel. topgun-dzone.asm topgun-dzone.s topgun-dzone.xex

This approach seems like a good way to disappoint users of two different consoles at the same time.

The only thing that could save the jaguar has saved the jaguar. Time

So, some more music for your listening pleasure. This is some music from an upcoming 7800 game called "Robots Rumble". Music #1 Settings are: AUDCTL=$F1 (engages 9-bit poly, 16-bit mode, 1.79 mode on channels 0 and 2, and 15 khz base clock) 0 - $8x @1.79mhz (Reverse 16-bit warbling guitars) 1 - silent 2 - $Cx @1.79mhz (hi-pitched arpeggio) 3 - $Cx @15khz stable bass There are two guitar settings used in the Distortion $8x channel with 9-bit poly: First setting: Frequency $00 is played in channel 1, while a frequency is played in the first channel. These are very buzzy guitar sounds. This happens in the middle of the tune Second setting: These are the warbling guitars. The table is in my current POKEY notes table, under reverse 16-bit settings, $8x poly 9. The warbling effect is introduced by varying the frequency of the second channel up or down by several steps. The greater the variation, the faster the warble, until eventually noise is introduced. There are actually two warbling tables used. With the second one, playing an $Ax square distortion in the second channel will actually introduce a harmonic atop the guitar. robots-music1.xexrobots-music1.srobots-music1.asm

I can imagine a Tomb Raider level where Laura uncovers 1196 Borregas Ave. She goes in the main office and Sam's in there throwing Jag's against the wall. She goes in another room and testers are all sleeping under their desks.

Found the book in PDF form on 99er.net - enjoy!

Another one ... the new title theme for the 7800 game E.X.O. Settings: AUDCTL=$61 (1.79 on 0 and 2, engage 15khz clock) SKCTL=$8B (engage two-tone mode, 1.79+15 mode) 0 - $Ax (high pitched saw sequence) 1 - silent (frequency carrier for 0) 2 - $2x bell lead @1.79 mhz 3 - $Cx stable saw bass @15khz As with the E.X.O. Area 5 tune earlier, the two-tone modulation produces a high pitched saw wave. Other modulations are introduced to mimic a delay/echo effect. The 15 khz mode also allows for the stable $Cx bass as well, while the $2x triangle wave at 1.79 mhz handles the lead very well. exo-title4.asm exo-title4.s exo-title4.xex

Just pre-ordered my copy. ??

Hi all, Updated release (in the first post) with the following changes: Added settings page Added hard mode, show wordle (for uncompleted game) or any word entries (change in settings) SaveKey/AtariVox/High Score Cart support to store statistics Updated fonts Cleanups Lots of changes internally to incorporate the hard mode - made some changes to the way I store and check words and keyboard use states. This one is just about in the bag now - might add a couple of final touches but if you have any feedback please let me know. I have some ideas for an updated wordle game (different mode of play) so once this is finalised I'll jump into adding the required stuff for that. Will most likely be a different release which you will understand why soon ?

"Centipede" has been modified for the PlusROM High Score Club. Thank you (again!) @DEBRO for the perfectly labeled and commented disassembly. The source code with the PlusROM functions for the HSC backend added can be found at the PlusROM example/hacks github repository here: https://github.com/Al-Nafuur/PlusROM-Hacks/tree/main/High Score Club hacks/Centipede HSC As always, PlusCart user can find the PAL, PAL60, and NTSC versions in the PlusStore directory "Public ROMs\PlusROMs\High Score Club" The NTSC version can be played online in javatari.js. The ROM-file can also be played with Gopher2600, or the newest version of Stella. The "PlusROM High Score Club" page for "Centipede": https://highscore.firmaplus.de/?game_id=50

Fast Food : 3,042

A kart driven by a chibi Alien or Predator would be extra cute.

Next time there should be bonus points for outlasting the intellivision. Who knew Mouse Trap was pushing the limits of the technology! It was ahead of it's time in so many ways...

BUZZ BOMBER - DISC LEVEL - 143,100

Currently we are working on the level design process - it's already fun!

Hellway 2 Players Edition I am opening this topic as a personal development blog, of a derivative work of Hellway. The final objective is to make a true multiplayer version of Hellway, with each player having a consistent view of the world and their cars interacting. This is possible because the game state of Hellway is deterministic. It is like the screen is just a view of a world, and completely consistent regarding position and time. I am doing this by drawing 2 screens, alternating between left and right side each frame. From all my tests, the game is perfectly playable and a constant 30hz flicker totally ok. I am planning to evolve the game physics for the 2 players every frame, so the game keep the same control responsiveness. To make this solution work, I had to remove one car lane, remove parallax, and remove the end game decimal counters, but the essence of the game is fully kept. The way I shift everything is quite unusual, for the sake of simplicity I do 10 HMOVE with the value of 8, moving everything half screen, while keeping the relative position of everything intact. The playfield borders I use async playfield, but for the lack of cycles, I just do it once in my 3 lines kernel, I write once, and erase once before it leaks to the other side of the screen, and that explains the border pattern you see. Since the screen is flickering and the colors have less intensity, dark mode became the default. I considered making a horizontal engine to avoid flickering, but this would mean to rewrite everything. Each lane currently works as a free vertical canvas area, where any car pattern can be draw. An horizontal engine would have a limited set of patterns, loosing the game identity in the process. Hellway 2PE does not try to replace the original, which runs without flicker, have detail statistics, border effects and a plus cart version. It tries to run well enough and allow two people to play together, with the trill of the chase and overtake. It is also to be a technical challenge for me to run the 2 games at the same time without additional hardware. Links: https://github.com/opbokel/hellway2pe (Git Repo) https://github.com/opbokel/hellway2pe/blob/main/bin/hellway2pe.asm.bin?raw=true (Binary, always the latest version) https://javatari.org/?ROM=https://github.com/opbokel/hellway2pe/blob/main/bin/hellway2pe.asm.bin?raw=true (Javatari link) Main Road Map: - Use the directional to change car type for each player - Process player 2 controller and game state. - Collision Part 1, the second player should crash with the environment. - Process players relative position. - Recreate the hud to display information for both players. - Recreate Score screen with relevant information for a 2 players game, without additional RAM usage (currently broken from the removal of decimal counters) - Collision Part 2, the player behind crashes. - Collision Part 3, a players while invincible by a checkpoint, can "kill" a non invincible player - Solve consistence in random game modes. - Any other adjustment, fine tuning and feature... I am trying to answer 2 things with this post: - Do you think the game still playable at 30hz? Everybody that can do a quick test (real hardware or not) please post your experience on this early version. Your opinion is much appreciated! - Is it the first split screen game with players interaction? After some research I found some example of games, but none of them the players can direct interact. They play the game at the same time and have separated scores and screens, but cannot kill each other, crash into each other or see the other player in their own screen. If you know any game that does this, please post. Thank you all!

Hi! I'm extending my The Children game, and I want to release it for the 5200. The new features include a timer, two characters for (single user) colaborative resolution on some puzzles (like in Millie and Molly), and more. It will also include different sets of old puzzles, including Catrap (the same set used in Pitkat) and Pitman (the original game for the Sharp MZ-700). But I'm facing a problem for the Pitman set: it uses different rules about how gravity works, because it allows some objects to be suspended at the start of the level, but they fall when you move out of the column they are (or when you jump up in the same column). There are four ways to solve this: Change the puzzles with suspended objects (there are 6 puzzles out of 50). Remove the puzzles with suspended objects (leave only 44 puzzles). Mimic the gravity logic from Pitman (modify the game). Do not include Pitman set of puzzles at all. What do you think? About option 3, as a player, how would you feel if you find that the game rules you are used to change?

I don't really count games like Pitfall The Mayan Adventure as a plus or minus in the Jaguar's favor. It was just a game that rounded out a library, not led it, so it was neither here nor there all things considered. It was simply an OK port of an OK game, and, like every other version except for the preferred 60 fps Genesis version, ran at 30 fps, which does make a difference for gameplay, but really doesn't materially affect the game one way or the other for the vast majority of gamers, especially back in the day. Again, I'd argue that on a system like the Jaguar with so few released games back in the day, every title, good, bad, or average, stands out way more than on better supported systems (and the good games get talked about way more than average, even if they're simply "good" and not "amazing"). I'm sure comparatively speaking, few Genesis, SNES, PS1, GBA, etc., owners are thinking much about the average games in their libraries like Pitfall The Mayan Adventure.

Today I checked TEBE's sample code for VBXE and modified Gack a bit based on it. Currently, the main character looks like his prototype from ARCADE, but probably also his opponents and backgrounds;) (the game requires 128KB RAM) b.xex

The UberGROM is an Atmega running on the cartridge port. However, an ATMega at 20MHz is not fast enough to provide the ROM side in real time. You have to present your data to the bus within about 300ns of the enable line going low, which is tricky for this series of MCU. It's been a long time since I looked at the feasibility so I doubt I have the numbers anymore.

In the first article, they refer to the TI 99/4, as the first 16-bit home computer using the TMS 9900. But they show a picture of a TI 99/4A. Guess only us nerds will notice.

This is in the works. I'm doing this for the Neo Geo first since it's a bit easier will less components. Here's a video of me using a Neo Geo CD pad plugged into my WIP BT adapter and using it via bluetooth on RetroArch: Proof of concept

Winner of the Lovebyte 2022, oldskool 128B, coded by superogue. Without undocumented codes https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=91099 var RTCLOK2=0x14 var ROWCRS=0x54, COLCRS var tmp=0x80 var PCOLR0=0x02C0 var COLOR0=0x02C4 var COLPF1=0xD017, COLPF2 var VCOUNT=0xD40B var SOP=0xEF90 var SPB=0xF1A4 main { //gfx mode E a=0x0F call SOP //draw highways { a=ROWCRS x=a a+COLCRS tmp=a a&1 hc_centre=a y=a a=x a&8 !={ hc_centre=a=5 } a=x a-COLCRS a!! a&tmp a>> a>> a>> a>> a>> c- a-1 a?? c-?{ a=tmp } a>> a&0x1F a>> x=a a=y PCOLR0,x=a a=highway_colors,x a?5 !={ y?1 !={ a=y } } call SPB a=y } n-? COLOR0++ y=2 //animate city traffic { a=VCOUNT x=a a-RTCLOK2 a&0x2F a-0x2C a=y c+?{ a=0x1C } COLPF1=a a=x a+RTCLOK2 a&0x1F a-0x1C a=y c+?{ a=0x16 } COLPF2=a } v-? } data highway_colors { 5 1 1 2 1 1 hc_centre: 1 1 1 1 3 1 1 5 } https://github.com/zbyti/k65-playground/tree/main/src/a8/interstate

I believe the original arcade was Budweizer beer but it was changed to soda so they don't appear to peddle beer to minor. According to the manual the bartender is a soda bandit and the bonus round has Mountain Dew.

My Parents always told me it was root beer... but I think you are right! I HAVE BEEN DECIEVED FOR 40 YEARS!!!

I received and assembled the Attack From Mars pinball machine from A1UP. Guys, this thing is nice! What a perfect compliment to my other arcade machines too. I've seen some of the complaints, and yeah, the color depth of the screen could be better, but it still looks good, it is in HD (there's an HDMI cable that runs the video). The audio is fantastic, definitely the best of all the machines so far, because frankly, some of the upright cabs have terrible audio (My new T2 is the weakest so far), but this pinball machine has loud and clear audio. Not a ton of bass, but that's absent in every cab I've bought. The only complaint I would say right now, is the audio is out of sync a bit with the solenoids. You'll feel the solenoid pop when you press the flipper buttons (which is really cool!), but a fraction of a second later you hear the audio version of the flipper noise, so it's like you hear the flippers twice. Back to the good stuff, I love the polished steel look to all the trim and the legs, very fancy. And the screen shield is really clear, almost looks like glass. It also has my favorite pinball game of all time with High Speed II The Getaway, and that was a big factor in my decision to purchase this unit. I'm going to have so much fun with this thing. Awesome purchase, I would recommend to anyone that likes 90's pinball!

Checkout @speccery's StangeCart. I believe it is an example, from a hardware perspective.

It took me some replays to beat the 2000 score. After that, it felt like meditation....great game. New score for me: 6310

A lot of this stuff, including all the crazy decisions made buy TI, are chronicled in Albright's The Orphan Chronicles. A fascinating read. Names are named and no blushes are spared! TI was greedy - the vertical integration idea is great if you're selling your chips to the wider market. Then you're getting your own chips supplied for cost, and other, external customers are providing the profit margin. However, when they're not selling (and the TMS9900 wasn't) then your chip costs have to be soaked up by the end product that you are selling (the 99/4). If I remember, the 9900 cost TI about $7.50 1979 dollars to sell 'to themselves'. They would have been better saying screw it and just put a Z80 or 6502 in it for a buck. I think there was all sorts of accounting shenanigans also going on to give the illusion that the 4A was profitable, when it actually was not. Also the power supply recall issue (IIRC). Eventually it was all uncovered and the axe fell swiftly. It's all in Albright's book.

Or Atari Karts with Bently bear, Skylar, babe-Zool, Bugsy, Bruce Lee, Mutant penguin, Kasumi ninja and other strong playable mascot characters we have learned to love over the years…

Just finished up a TI version of Wordle in XB. Doesn't do spellchecking but works fine none the less. It's on Github here if you want to take a look: https://github.com/CheungChang7/TI99_HOMEBREW/tree/main/WORDLE Also moved Frogger to its own directory, so it's now here: https://github.com/CheungChang7/TI99_HOMEBREW/tree/main/FROGGER

I for one can't stop dreaming of Silk Worm, it's an outstanding vertical shooter (incredible on Amiga, very good on C64), for me personally much more tempting than R-Type alike "cosmic" shooters. There was an attempt made by @Eagle about 10 years ago, but in 2019 he admitted it would require complete rewrite with new approach (the chances seem slim for it to happen, I guess). (attached xex is newer version and has added background gfx made by Vidol) For comparison Amiga, C64 versions: SilkWorm.xex

I'm currently going through my own personal "playtest notes" - adjusting enemy placement, colors, things like that. It's a tough game, but as before I'm allowing continues at the start of your current stage, with the score being set back to zero, so I think someone should be able to muscle their way through the game (and practice the hard parts), while making a 1 Credit Complete playthrough still a pretty big challenge. The later stages get pretty tricky, but you do get an extra life after each boss (to say nothing of a "free" life if you're hit with a full meter). The bosses themselves can be hard, but, like the rest of the game, combining aggressive attacks with bouts of patience and caution should result in a swift defeat. Even I got stuck on some of the later bosses until I remembered to fly around them to draw away fire before going in for another attack. The temptation to simply charge in is very much there, but don't complain that the bosses are too hard if that's the only thing you do . I also tried another graphical "stress test" to make sure MARIA can handle two players with full rage meters in a bullet-filled boss stage - I'm testing on a Concerto and physical 7800 and it seems to be ok - in practice the worst case scenario (every enemy, bullet, and both players on a single line with two full meters) would be nearly impossible to recreate, even on purpose. Even then, I'm double buffering so I believe the result would just be some slowdown, and this would hardly be the first shmup to have that . I tried a few of the busier spots and didn't see anything like that, but of course your mileage may vary. On that note, as I mentioned in an earlier post I'm compiling a little "how I did it" postmortem for anyone interested. I don't think I'm doing much that's terribly new or unorthodox as much as keeping in mind the limits I have. The biggest "trick" I think I did for the game is the scrolling, which I covered the basics of in an earlier post. My level data has a few little tricks, but again, nothing super sophisticated. For anyone interested, let me know if you have any particular questions about how I might have implemented a feature in the game, and I can hopefully give a more detailed answer in a future post. I'm also working on things like the instruction manual - outline places for the controls, mechanics, enemy bestiary, and of course a purple-prose-y epic storyline for this little game about dragons fighting on semi-surreal landscapes!

That was definitely a problem, but not one unique to TI. And, well... TI at least successfully LAUNCHED a microcomputer, and one that was fairly successful for a time(though certainly their quietly-murdered business microcomputer was the machine they actually needed). Most other companies with minicomputer divisions failed even that, with one very obvious exception. I feel they deserve more praise for overcoming the minicomputer inertia far enough to actually try and sell personal computers. The smartest decision made in IBM's microcomputer project was setting the team up on the opposite side of the continent from the rest of the company. Someone at IBM recognized that this emerging threat to the minicomputer industry was not something they could stop, but IBM's minicomputer division had enough clout to make life very hard for IBM's microcomputer project if they could get anywhere near it. So while other companies cancelled microcomputer projects because they were "a fad", mandated performance-crippling sacrifices, and forbade them to have 80-column displays to prevent them from being usable in a business environment... IBM released a good(-ish) machine that did a lot of what a business considering a minicomputer would want at a fraction of the price. (IBM would, of course, bring the PC team back home after launch and place them within reach of the minicomputer division, leading to the AT being crippled in an attempt to protect IBM's minicomputers. Whoops.) Point is... had TI similarly insulated their home computer division from the reach of the dreaded data systems division.... well, we might be talking about the foundation of a standard instead of a largely-forgotten also-ran.

Got my adapters yesterday and was able to pair a PS4 controller. I really wanted to pair my M30 but can’t seem to find it. Anyway it seems to work well so far with minimum lag. I’m trying to configure the adapter from my PC through the blue retro site and once paired I keep seeing errors around “GATT Server is disconnected, Cannot retrieve services”. *edit* After the 10th attempt it finally pulled up the config, BT FTW

HERO: 58,105 Small improvement. Keep making bad errors.

HERO (Speed run levels 1-4, 1 life ) : 20,300

Aww man! It seems I showed up late to the party and all the obvious game choices for the bonus were already taken, so I guess I'll go with Beat 'Em & Ea... just kidding! I'll choose the candy bar from Jawbreaker The manual makes no mention of exactly what kind of candy bar they are, but they look a lot like a Skor bar based on the art on the back of the box and those were pretty popular back in the early 80's so I feel like it's fairly safe to assume they're supposed to be a Skor bar.

After 13 hours I'm glad to announce that I finished the NES versions of The Pandora Incident.

I'm pretty sure it was Jack whom declared war on the TI-99/4A and everything else on the home computer market. Tramiel learned all about vertical integration from TI after they used it to nearly destroy Commodore's calculator business in the 1970s. Tramiel purchased MOS technologies to control the 6502 brain-trust and CPU supply, in order to build a computer company with vertical integration, just like one of his competitors -- TI. Commodore sold 6502s to Apple and Atari, and made most of the Atari game cartridge ROMs. I believe they would have happily supplied 6502s to TI for the right price. MOS was shipping CPUs to everyone with money. In the end TI needed to execute around their vertical integration to compete with Commodore. The VIC-20 and C-64 destroyed the competition because they were cheap, better designs, and they were opened up to developers. The TI-99/4 was doomed when the eight bit TI CPU failed to materialize. The decision to shoe-horn the 16-bit 9900 into the TI-99/4 was the death blow. They should have shifted gears and just built a no-shit 16-bit low cost computer around the 9900. They didn't. The shoehorning was permitted because TI had no forward vision (1978) in the personal computer market which didn't yet exist. The TI-99/4 was intended to be a toy computer...a video game with a keyboard. Something closer to a Speak and Spell than a real computer. It was quicker to just shoe-horn in the 9900 than to start over...and it didn't matter because the TI-99/4 was rushed to market as a toy computer. I'd suggest the lack of vision at TI prevented them from being greedy because they couldn't see five years ahead. Had they known they could have produced an industry standard 16-bit personal computer well before IBM.

That 6 week exclusivity deal Sega had for the Saturn version, turned out to be worth every penny ?

They could do a special edition, where Lara Croft attempts to penetrate the grave that Atari dug for itself. ?

Thank you! Ok, So I've decided to *not* pack castle layout data, for two reasons: 1) I need the scrolling updates to happen as quickly as possible, and 2) I don't want to use up RAM as I'm trying to stick to stock configuration. Bonus Reason: It makes hacking levels that much easier The castle layouts will be in ROM, and the game will pick randomly from them (the same way Intellivision Cloudy Mountain does the overview maps). However *my* overview map *will* be randomly generated (with some rules as to not create unwinnable situations). The enemies/objects will be randomly placed within the castle once you enter.

I was looking at the Popeye credits this morning, and I realized that @sramirez2008 was somehow not included in the Popeye credits. That hit me pretty hard, because he's been there from the beginning. He also returned to retest after making some refinements for savekey and AtariVox devices. This has been fixed. Thanks again everybody! --Darryl

Short update: Made cell membrane match the Tissue foreground color in both Intra and Exo play modes (tying things together nicer) as well as the tissue "bumps" in the Intra screen above the cell membrane.

When this is completed let me know so I can add it to PlusCart. Was trying to follow your updates and keep the cart updated by couldn't keep up with you lol Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

I captured that video with Mednafen, although I typically use Handy for testing and screenshots since Handy has the built-in rudimentary debugger (perfect for assembly hackers ). Has anyone else noticed that Mednafen doesn't use pure black for 0/0/0? I'm guessing it picks some median value for each Lynx palette combo, as all the colors look a little washed out compared to Handy. I guess the real test is how it looks on a real Lynx though. Anyway, here is a screenshot showcasing new sprites when the small invaders break formation and attack!

I am now at the point where I am trying to maximize the available vram buffer space for the 9918, F18A, and 9938 configurations. The interpreter uses a block of contiguous 512-byte buffers in VRAM to manage the game story, and the more buffers, the better. The extended character set and 80 column image table chew up more space than the previous interpreters, particularly for the F18A setup. I could set FILES to 2 or possibly 1, if I disable the transcript option and close/re-open the game file when saving/loading the game state. The interpreter has been working acceptably (so far) with 19 game buffers in the unoptimized F18A version. The interpreter configures vram at startup, based on VDP detection and (maybe) user over-rides to force 40 columns and/or the standard characters set. This is the layout I think will work to make best use of memory..? (I purposely selected the value >37C0 to represent the disk buffer vdp boundary, to account for nanopebs and a few devices that consume additional VDP memory at startup)