MantaNZ

Oooh another 3DO nut! I put an ODE in mine. I was playing through Snow Job, which is pretty fun, but I'm gonna have to check out those games for the heck of it ?

Top Gun: Fire at Will on PS1. Don't ask me why ? I did actually kinda enjoy it, funnily enough. 2.5/5 (to me that's average, so there :P)

Hi folks, I hope this is okay to post here - I couldn't find a more suitable thread. Anyway, a bit of self promotion - I've started a YouTube channel focussed on retro gaming (will be a lot of Sega and Fountain/Acetronic/Radofin stuff as that's what I mainly collect). Here's the channel intro and once I'm out of lockdown and my boy can go back to daycare I will be releasing videos weekly. Thanks folks!

Clearly I meant wee boy. LOL

I write very part time (TV show) but I'm working full time on a racing game for PC and console. Well, I would be, but we're in lockdown at the mo and I have to wrangle the week boy whilst his mum works. Haha.

Bit late here (only a decade, though - LOL) but things turned to shit and I ended up having to move back to NZ... anyway, long story short - it never happened but I ended up getting into game development. In a nutshell, 2009 was the worst year of my life. Lost my dad and things went downhill from there. The magazine was one of my "looking to a brighter future" moments but I couldn't get my shit together! A friend and I have contemplated getting it done over the years, but there are so many great retro mags already these days, plus I now have a wee boy AND I need to concentrate on making games!

Sorry mate, I didn't have notifications on for this thread. Yeah, Hobby Module, Chess, Draughts and Backgammon were not released as Fountain as far as I am aware, but were sold here (ones I have are both Radofin). So technically my Fountain title collection is complete because I have all the games on the double carts separately, haha.

Damn, if you'd found 101 and 103 you could have traded something for my 102, LOL. I recently acquired Backgammon. Oddly enough, it's spelt correctly on the cart but Backgamon on the box. Scored Draughts last year too so just a matter of time until I find Chess, 101 and 103! Not holding my breath about the hobby module.

I can't get it to open but I'm guessing that's pinwhiz's old site. Had loads of info and pictures. He's probably the biggest Fountain collector in New Zealand. He has everything bar boxed Chess and 103, I believe. I'll ask if I can get the stuff from the site EDIT: I just read the title. I don't think that was his site.

I know two people with these, damn it. I just need this, Chess and carts 101 and 103, which were only released in New Zealand and have two games each on them, selectable by a switch! So yeah, it turns out I didn't even have the entire "Fountain" range. Stupid rare double carts...

They did the soundtrack for the Rombo movies, right?

I know this thread is now legally old enough to have sex in my country, but I wanted to add NHL Rock the Rink to the list. It looks and plays great even in the future of 2020!

Have you played Tempest 3000? I’ve never even seen a Nuon but I REALLY want that game, lol.

Damn, nice work! Such a great game.

Oh, right, I think I get ya. So to get single lines of colour I’d just decrement by 2? Thanks for the info!

Cool, will check it out

I had an Amiga 500 (but was late to the party - it was 1992) but was always interested in the ST, same as I was interested in the Amstrad and Speccy when I had a C64 and saw all the reviews of various game versions in magazines (I think I only ever saw one Speccy and one Amstrad in NZ). I don't get the 'wars' over it - though we did have a few debates at school over which was better, C64 or Amiga (pretty much the only systems kids in NZ owned, other than Sega consoles). Silly really. I've still never had an ST and I really want whatever model it was that had the awesome sound - proper chiptunes, unlike the Amiga's cheating use of samples, haha.

Awesome I look forward to finishing it. TBH I'm using it as a stepping stone to get into C64 development, then I'll pick up 68k asm and get back into Mega Drive dev. I've done some stuff on the Mega Drive in C but I really prefer the idea of asm. I like to know what's going on under the hood. But yeah this course has actually got me thinking about making an absolute beginner's course for C programming. Now, I'm no C master - far from it - but I more than know the basics and as someone who struggled for a LONG time to get to grips with programming I think I could really help other people like myself. So many 'beginner's courses' seem to be very difficult unless the beginner is a natural. So I was thinking a total noob friendly course that introduces variables and maybe moves no further than for loops (hard to believe I struggled with them at one point) so people would be able to then move onto other 'beginner' courses.

Yup, same one I just made the 'rainbow'. I feel there are a few things that aren't quite explained (or possible I missed them as I have the attention span of a gnat) - like he talks about using # to denote a literal value and $ to denote hex but there's no explaination about #$ - I assumed $FF on its own would be an address and #$FF would be a literal hex value and I was right but I could see people who'd never touched on coding before getting very stuck in a few areas. He also uses a few higher level language examples that people simply wouldn't understand if they hadn't coded before and doesn't explain them (like != and ==). It's fine for me but the course is supposed to be for total beginners. Also, we draw 192 scanlines but only half of that are 'painted' - 96 lines of colour fill the screen. I googled this and found it's what's known as a two line kernel, so an explanation of that would be nice - I was scratching my head, looking at the code and wondering why if I'm looping over something 192 times, I only see 96 lines. As I said before though, it's quite likely I just missed said explanations! LOL. I also wish the slides etc. were available as a download for future reference, but other than these points it's a pretty solid course and I'm stoked it exists.

Oh cool. Same course or one of the x86 asm courses? Or are there other 'retro' CPU asm courses on there I missed? Thanks! It's super interesting hardware. The way things are drawn is totally different from anything I've worked on before. It's really fun I think it will even help with might higher level language stuff.

I have one and it is amazing. Also, I heard a rumour that they will be giving the Amiga 500 the same treatment... here's hoping... EDIT - if there is an Amiga coming, I hope it's a mini first, like with TheC64 as I don't have the desk space for a full sized Amiga!

First question - do you know how to code in 6502 assembly? I assume you don't as otherwise you'd know what is and what isn't doable. If I'm right, learn and start with Pong or Breakout. Every game developer needs to start somewhere. I've been making games for years and I've only just started with assembly coding and there's no way I'd start on a project that ambitious! If I'm wrong and you can code and have the skills to get it done, then do it and impress us all

This is amazing!

Yeah, I bought the 64GB version on launch. Can't say I've needed the extra space... I think you're right to wait.

Okay, I've tried a few times in the past and failed but I finally have my head around how asm works (thanks to studying computer science and touching on it at uni) and I found a Udemy course on how to program in assembly by making a 2600 game - seems pretty good, so far though I don't assume it will get into super advanced techniques. I'm just stoked there is a course like this available in 2020 (and I've actually learnt new stuff in areas I thought I had covered). Now it's not my chosen console but it's a good place to start as many other systems have some sort of 6502 within. I reckon the limitations of the system will make things very interesting and fun! So yeah, I'm just gonna mess about making a few silly small games and demos and I'll be sure to show them off here and drop by for advice Wish me luck!