e1will

Congratulations, Al! I haven’t read all the details yet but it sounds like this is something you’re excited about, so I’m excited for you.

I can add a data point to this discussion. My game has long been available as a ROM you can buy, and people do indeed willingly pay $20 for it. Not a ton, obviously, since it's an original title (not much built-in nostalgia) and it is the Atari 2600 we're talking about. But definitely non-zero! And I'm happy to pay $20 for ROMs myself (depending on the game, of course.) My most recent purchase was Qyx from Champ Games and it's been worth every penny and then some. It's a great game with some really cool enhancements that the original arcade version didn't have. So my answer to "Does anyone actually pay $20 for ROMs?" is... yep, sometimes!

This is a bummer, but I suppose it was inevitable. But kudos to Al for giving everyone a chance to get a copy of them first! Many times in life you don't get a heads-up that something cool is going away, it just disappears, so I'm glad there's at least a grace period for getting these. A lot of these ports were just brilliantly done, and you could really see the love of the originals from the effort put into them.

Yeah, sorry about that... looong story with the website but I hope to get it back up in the not-too-distant future. Thanks for the assist!

I am liking the additional maze capability. In maze 2 you can trap the bugs in various corners, which is fun. One interesting quirk I noticed was that occasionally the vegetables in the special round are all eggplants. I've never seen it do that with a different kind of vegetable, although I have seen half eggplants, half carrots.

Looks and plays great!

I finally had a chance to download and play this. What amazing work! I love this. This was one of my favorite games in college and you've captured the feel of it so well. I look forward to seeing the mothership!

I'll see if I can find her contact info (it's been a long time!) and let her know.

I didn't get to see it live, but I really enjoyed the replay! I kept wanting to offer hints. ? It had not occurred to me that the shield looked like a dreidel, but you're right, it kinda does! However, there is - and I am not making this up - an actual dreidel later in the game.

I may have made the Easter Egg too hard to find. Anyone else find it?

I've been reading up on CDFJ and the bus-stuffing approach recently. I'm tempted to play around and see if a less flickery Super Pac-Man might be possible using these newer tools. What you've done with Mappy and Galaga certainly makes me think it might be! Every once in a while I want to play Super Pac-Man on the Atari and am frustrated when I realize I can't! (Yet.) Although if you ever want to beat me to it, go for it! I know you would nail it.

Well, thank you for the kind words! I am glad you like it. As a huge fan of Ladybug, Mappy, and now Galaga/Galagon, it especially warms my heart to hear that.

If I haven't said so already, this game is a very impressive technical accomplishment, and (even better) it's loads of fun. It does an excellent job capturing the essence of the arcade version. Perhaps my favorite touch is the "clank" noise when a bell falls on the heads of one of the pink guys. It's just the perfect sound for that collision, even better (imo) than the sound for that in the arcade version. I know it's waaaay past time to offer a bug report, but just for posterity's sake I thought I would mention a weird occurrence that happened when I was playing tonight. I was just about to collect one of the objects that the red guy was hiding behind, and the "hurry up" text appeared, and the mouse character just froze and became invincible! I couldn't move him, but all the enemies went right through him. After a while the green coin came and ended the game. I saved the game state just in case anyone's curious to see what I saw. Anyway, this is a great game and I love it. mappy_20180606_NTSC.st0

The orange box that surrounds you is an "object" in the game's code. So whenever you're in one of the dark mazes, any two other objects will cause the blinking, since it blinks if there are three "objects" in a particular room.

I had hoped someone would create Galaga for the 2600, and John was the right person to do it. Well done.