A Sprite

The men above me are wise, and have almost all the good ideas already, but if there's room for one more - What if the evil sword kills you, and the game keeps going? What if you are lost to madness, doomed to kill everything, to try to fill an emptiness inside? Including a princess... It's as simple as negative numbers for hp, and a quick palette swap. The sword becomes useful, but might cost you your soul. Is it worth the price?

The question now becomes what sounds represent the creature? The environment?

Our baby aborted itself.

And now that I think about it, running without stopping would increase your scent, wouldn't it?

I think it would depend on how it's done. Say each cell of the map grid (RAM hungry, I know) stores a scent value. A certain amount of scent is laid down in the players current cell. Each turn or step, the scent in each cell decays and/or propagates to the neighbouring cells. A player could choose to "lay a trail" off in one direction, hang about there, then double back. The Wumpus / Freddy Kruger / Kandarian Demon might follow the trail to the scent laden area, then get lost there for a while. Maybe. Gotta work up some code to test out this idea. Perhaps different monsters might each have a different sense to use? Or game difficulty would determine which sense the critter gets? Species. Since we're freed of a visual display, and a hud, we have the chance to create a high suspension of disbelief. But not all players are created equal, so perhaps we could allow the players to choose their own difficulty unconsciously, by the goals they set for themselves. I.E. With a perfect run, missing no shots at all, and finding a few secrets, (such as enemies who kill each other for you?) you can kill every monster, and win a time for having done so? Which leads to - How are we approaching a basic win situation? My original design was for one enemy, one bullet, with the emphasis being the tension of not firing until you were sure, because one miss would kill you. But that was because I thought I might be limited to whatever a novice could do with gamemaker. As for scents in the cells, could the player mask their scent via environment manipulation/items, and create a new game play mechanic? Wouldn't it be kinda awesome for the Atari 2600 to have a stealth game thrown in with the survival horror?

Bump. Apologies, but I had to add Zillion (Impossible Mission meets Metroid) and Streetfighter 2 (Heavy on sprites and no tiles needed either) to the list before it could be official.

I can't program a cable box, much less a video game. Really, I just hope I've given something back to the community to make up for all those freebies you guys throw at guests - if 2600 is where you see the game, go for it. One joystick solutions are fine, and perhaps inventory could be accessed by spinning the stick in a circle once or twice, since it's not a motion likely to be accidental? Sound yes, scent, I have reservations - half the fun would be you don't know whether it knows where you are, and a scent trail would lead to a linear chase, wouldn't it? Perhaps it can notice if you've altered the environment?

Wow. I didn't expect any replies, much less ones this well thought out... I was hoping that a two joystick control scheme could be used, with one joystick being used to explore a 3d space, much like a mouse, but with some kind of sound feedback based on texture and distance? Like, if you tapped on a wooden table, it would sound different from a metal tray on that table? And a surface that's right in front of you would return a tap faster than one you have to reach for. The other controller could be used to move foward left, right, and down, with the button being used to manipulate what ever you're holding? Kinda like Doom meets Myst by way of Hunt the Wampus and Dungeons of Daggaroth? That brings back memories. I forgot about that one, thank you. How much? Could it be possible to do little things like, say, you suddenly hear a woman humming a tune, and unnerve the players until they realize it's the character they're playing? Or have sounds like a car rushing past, and a dog barking in the distance as you get near an exit, just to remind everyone there's a world they're locked away from? I'd love to hear more ideas... Don't be afraid to shoot down my bad ideas, or steal any good ones.

Is it true that nothing we can see is as terrifying as what we imagine? Imagine a black screen. Imagine that you can hear your heartbeat, and your footsteps. Imagine you're not the only one... You can tap on the walls and the furniture to make out shapes, and doing so means you have to stick out your hand... Unless you pick up a stick. You pick up a gun, and you have no idea how many bullets it has.. As "it" draws closer, (or she, or he, you don't know), your heart beats faster, and you're faced with that most primal of choices - fight or flight? And here's where I must apologize, for I'm not a programmer, and I have no idea how much 3d data a classic console could contain in order to give back accurate feedback to the user, or whether this is even a good idea, to handicap the player - would they accept it? But I can't let go of the idea, or rather, it can't let go of me. This is an exorcism, of sorts - you see, I'm handicapped... I'll spare you the tragic details. I'm just curious as to whether this would have been a 5200 game worth playing? It seemed like the best use of a non-centering joystick was to keep people from getting lost...

I've never been to a board before where the truth was so highly prized or quick to be posted. Thank you for the correction - I had thought Jack Tramiel forced 3rd parties to use the smaller sizes.

What about Double Dragon? It's not a good port for either system, but it shows off their weaknesses...? ( limited cartridge space and 2600 sound vs low resolution)

Apologies... the_horror_of_legoland.bmp

For Zookeeper, couldn't the action be limited to caging snakes, which have the benefit of being easy to render in line/block form? Would it be possible to make each segment of them advance one square on an unseen grid as background information, and if so, how much would the small jumps in animation affect gameplay? If your eyes haven't turned to dust by now, this is my first post here. I lay no claim to being a programmer. In fact, I probably have no idea what I just said.