Cafeman

one idea of mine was called Firefighter. I probably will finish this eventually. It involves a helicoptor in an electrical storm over forests. You catch water to fill up the tank of the helicopter, then drop it on forest below which catches fire by random-like lightning bolts. This grew from my prior helicopter demo. I'll have flame FX on it too, as well as lightning and rain FX. Getting back to Adventure 2, it will definitely be more than 2600 Adventure with a different map and visuals. I'd have to play through Adventure again, taking notes as to exactly what I liked & didn't like about it. I know for a fact I'd have the character finding keys to get into castles, and have dragons and other creatures to battle/avoid. The mazes would be hedge mazes and rock mazes. I'd no doubt throw in several secrets, such as the 2600 Duck Dragon, just for kicks. But I'd add to the premise without making it too complicated, that's for sure. It'd have to be fun. I'd stick to the medieval fantasy setting. I haven't mapped it all out yet though because I'm not sure it's what I'll do. I'd take suggestions too. Keep the comments coming!

http://cafeman.www9.50megs.com/atari/5200d...Adventure2.html how's that whet you whistle?

I'm still shopping around for a good game to be my first 'real' game on the 5200. I tried to start of just making demo's, to learn the tricks of the trade, but I quickly grew bored with that approach. If I had a great game idea, it would make me want to work at it all the more. A sequel to Adventure seemed to garnish interest. I'd be interested in doing this, actually, using the same screen-flip kind of gameplay. I saw that someone else is busy working on a 5200 Airworld Swordquest game (yes, for the 5200!!). That would give us two RPG/Adventure games! I'm not going to do any arcade ports though. People suggested Disks of Tron, and Tron the arcade game, and some others. If ever, those will be later projects for me. Anyway, please give me some more suggestions for possible 5200 games.

Actually, I was thinking about doing an Adventure sequel on the 5200. Interest seems high in it. Just don't expect it anytime soon! I'd love to see ASM code examples using DASM for 5200 bin files -- can this be done?

Ken, this compilation sounds outstanding!! Everything you've mentioned sounds better than what I'd have ever expected. The one thing I have to bring up though is the emulation itself -- I hope that it is a different and/or better emulator than what we've seen on Activision Classics, because many of those games suffered from poor collision, omitted sound FX, and overall watered down gameplay. Any compilation I want, I want perfect replications of those great old Activision games, and no amount of extra goodies will really make up for substandard ROMs. I can play on my PC the Stella roms, they are pretty nearly perfect from what I can tell, so surely it can't be that difficult to aquire a better emulator is it?? I don't want to end this message on a negative though -- your efforts are greatly appreciated by all of us retro gamers!

quote You desperation shows, DEBRO. But, same feeling here. I can't fly out west to attend this show, too tied down with life right now. Here's hoping the show is documented properly!!!!

I think that Star Trek has pretty bad graphics. The gameplay is okay, but I easily tire of it, it's just not as much fun as the sit-down arcade version by far. IN fact, you can't even really use the main view-screen which takes up most of the screen, you really have to just watch the radar all the time. I never played Buck Rogers, but considering the superior Sega hardware of the coin-op, I wouldn't be surprised at a lackluster conversion. Congo Bongo is pretty crappy too, come to think of it. Many of the Atari games had great gameplay and visuals, such as: Defender -- It's very close to the arcade version. great action game! Tons of explosions, particles, and ships everywhere. I think Steve Baker did a great job on this and Stargate. Joust -- Also nearly identical to the arcade version, given the hardware differences. Zaxxon -- graphically awesome for the day, but the gameplay is watered down from the arcade version because there are NO land-to-air missiles in the fortress. Still a great game, I'd have freaked out to own it back in 1984! (I just bought it in the spring of 2001). Pac Man -- it's a bit stretched across the screen, but it's got solid no-flicker visuals and the intermissions! Great game. Ms Pac Man -- another awesome port, but its got some flickering ghosts that you will need to get used to. Still nothing as bad as the 2600 flickering. Jungle Hunt -- good amount of detail in the bgs. Plus you get the points on-screen for kills/jumps, which were always omitted in 2600/Intellivision games it seemed. Galaxians -- very good visuals, but the gameplay is boring IMO. Centipede -- The fatter graphics of the 5200 version are great, as is the excellent animation of the points, spider, fleas, and centipede itself. Frank Hauseman did this one, I think. Berzerk -- minimalist graphics just like the coin-op, but AWESOME title. Qix -- the best version of the day! I've heard that this game is in a different graphics mode than the Atari 8bit version, and that this is why the game is so much faster than that version. Minimalist graphics, but then again, just like the coin-op. The worst thing is the 2-Qix flickering. Kangaroo -- good visuals, but the gameplay is frustrating (jumps!) and a bit poor in its design, IMO. Activisions games were simple updates from the 2600 games, with more detail in the objects/bgs. For example, Megamania looks much better on 5200 than on 2600. River Raid's main difference (visually) is the 2-layer jagged riverbed. River Raid is difficult to play on 5200 due to the controller. Pitfall2 looks very similar to the 2600 version. HERO has more detail. Other than those, Miner 2049er is a great game, and you'll need to play it to really admire the game. Lots of variety, good visuals, many different color schemes. Okay, I'm done. I have other games but I can't recall them very well. To be honest, there are few games that I find down-right bad or ugly on the 5200. Kangaroo is pretty frustrating and not fun to me (bad music and sounds), and Realsports Soccer is dull to me (though I used to love it). Forget RS Football unless you have a 2nd player, as there is NO 1-player mode at all. Baseball is quite good though, and it talks.

I REALLY want that multi-cart. I really do. My problem is that I impulse-buy so many games that I never seem to have the $100+ dollars to make the purchase. I'm a terrible saver I suppose. Besides, for that kind of money, I'm always afraid my young kids will break the dip switches. If they did, I'd have to break their little necks...

LOL, I just found this thread, its lunchtime, and I'm eating a Big Mac Meal. Just finished the Baked APple Pie. MMMMM. Interesting stuff, especially the Blue Sky Rangers stuff -- where is that site?

I remember that the guy who won that contest wrote the solution on a scroll... creativity, you know?

HA! I'm not a good enough Crystal Castles player to have beaten either version! But I agree that the 2600 port is really good! It's one of the few 2600 games I still enjoy. Playing the game on Dreamcast's Atari Anniversary Edition GDROM, I'm really taken with it all over again. Good game, very enjoyable!

Thanks for the tip. But really, here's my take on this piece of hardware -- if I wanted to play 2600 games, the last place I'd do it is on my 5200, with those analog sticks!

I would have answered you over at Digital Press, but it appears I am banned there. I disliked that old Dig Dug game on 400/800 -- the 5200 one was very superior, and it made me think that the 5200 was a more powerful machine.

At home, it keeps giving me ROM errors and doesn't work. At work (Windows NT), it abends. SIGH.

I downloaded it a few days ago at home, but I got an error that a certain DLL was missing... I have Windows ME .. and have no idea how to fix it.

if it works, that's what I'll do. I downloaded MESS at home... but I couldn't get it to work with 5200 stuff. It kept saying I didn't have a ROM. I copied a 5200 .bin file into the 5200 roms folder, but it still didn't work. I'll mess with MESS again soon!

Anyone?

I hope somebody can offer a suggestion here. I just got my new PC (PIII 1Ghz running Windows ME). When I usethe VSS 5200 emulator that I got from Dan Boris' site, there is a constant annoying low-pitched hum sound generated in addition to the game sounds; so annoying I've started to use the -nosound option. I have a brand new soundblaster Live! and Altec Lansing speakers w/subwoofer. Funny, on my old 486 100Mhz w/a soundblaster, and Windows 95, it worked fine; on my pIII w/Windows NT it didn't make any sounds, but on this one, that annoying scratchy hum sound. Dan, is there anyway to upgrade VSS? Or is the problem my sound card settings? Or is there some way to tell what the problem is? Note that all other audio works fine, so I suspect it is a compatibility prob between VSS and sBLive! ...

Is there anyway to put those Arcadia Starpath Supercharger games onto the compilation?

Well, I have Konami Classics, Namco Classics, and atari and midway emus on my psx -- and it's fast enough to emulate those 68000 arcade coin-ops perfectly. I suppose the emulater is written more low-level than the 2600 one?

What platforms will this be for? Not for the PC, I'd hope -- people can honestly get all the free 2600 games they want on PC. But it'd be great to have on PSX or DC (yes, I said Dreamcast!) etc. And film footage (I can't see why it would need to be expensive) or other exclusive nostalgic material would make the game even more must-have. I wonder what price range you are thinking about? Infogrames / Hasbro / now it's "Atari" is coming out with a new disk this month of classic Atari coin-op games for the budget price of $14.99, for example. Don't underestimate what you've got there Ken -- get us a better emulator and some nice Activision games (including prototypes! Yowsa!), and some fmv (or even still shots, okay?) and interviews ... we'll all promplty toss the old version and buy it again. How many of 'us' there are ... I'm not sure. I sense a growing retro movement though -- look at Japan, where the NES is still all the rage. I wish Majesco would rerelease the 2600 / 5200 / Colecovision with multicarts!

schwing!!! I can't believe I'm reading this thread!! Ken, it's great that Activision is thinking about another CD. But you really need to rerelease the first one with a better emulator. That review by Mr. Hardie does say it all. I can't tell you how disappointed I was with the emu quality of those otherwise excellent titles. Ken, you also need to put FMV interviews with the activision original guys on the CD. Get Digital Eclipse to produce those sequences for you (if that is possible/allowed), I bet Charla would love to.

quote: Originally posted by Tempest: If you don't do Tron I'll do it as my second project. Hell, maybe we could work on it together? Tempest my, aren't we confident? I'm a bit intimidated by Tron. Like you said, if we did it wrong, we'd be hated and/or laughing stock. For one thing, what would be the best control? I think twin stick control like in Space Dungeon and Robotron would be best -- didn't the arcade Tron have a paddle rotary knob to aim your shots in the spiders and tanks scenes? Still, it'd be interesting. You basically have 4 screens. Which 2 screens do you want? The tank game is like a mazechase layout. The bike scene shouldn't be too hard, but may be tough to control with the 5200 sticks. The tons of spiders -- that might be hard, and the rotating breakout level, would take some work I'd think. Hmmm. Geo -- I think you amalgamized this entire thread into that game! Raptors and baseball!

I like the idea of 5200 Tron! Wouldn't that raise a few eyebrows!

I posted this at DP too, but few people respond there so... I still like the idea of doing an adventure/rpg style game, since that would fill a hole in the 5200's library. Here is what I'd like to work on, something like this -- What do you think of a game with page-flipped screens like in Adventure, Superman, and Pitfall, but this one is an adventure game with level-up attributes, raptors and other beasts, dark caves, grassy fields, plains, and forest screens. The emphasis is on stealth and strategy in finding 3 pieces of your communicator (shaddap! I know it's trite, but what else are you gonna look for?!!) by following the soft beep of your metal detector. If you are too loud while walking through certain scenes, you will alert the raptor of your presence, so it pays off to walk (not run) through that part. The strategy of learning *how* to more easily traverse screens is not immediately given away. In the dark cave screens, you must listen to the sound of your footsteps -- if the footsteps sound a certain pitch, it means you are close to a 'trap' -- if you set it off (or if you are on the screen too long), big monstrous eyes (the cave beast) comes after you. You must find the 3 pieces (as well as other power ups), level-up your strength (by eating food, and defeating enemies), defense, and agility, and figure out how to get to each screen via some puzzles. I'm calling it Survivor Theta as of now.... I will not explain why I'm calling it that -- if I make this, it'll be explained at the end of the game. I welcome honest feedback. (My first game is still gonna be a simple mazechase, just for the experience, though).