Pitfall Harry

You can find a scan of the manual for Decap Attack here: http://www.segaage.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Search.Results&Man_Rarity_ID=0# Upon clicking the above link, click on the M button ( M for manual) at the far right of the screen on the line for Decap Attack. You'll have to click on the navigation arrow to read one page of the manual at a time, but at least it's all there.

I really like it! It's got a certain microgumby quality to it.

Links? I dont think I have ever seen this happen.... I don't want to single anyone out, because it could be an honest mistake. But when I see a half dozen of them going on at the same time, whoah! That just ain't right. There out there. If you use the eBay search tool and type "Atari 2600 Frogger," you're bound to find one in less than 20 seconds.

It really irks me how growing numbers of eBay sellers of Atari games are showing a stock photo of the very-hard-to-find Starpath release of The Official Frogger with their listings, but what they are actually selling is the common-as-dirt Parker Brothers version of the game. Some of them are so-called "power sellers," who really should know the difference. I wonder how many collectors who are still searching for the Starpath release at a good price (like me) get all excited when they see the Starpath stock photo of Frogger alongside a Buy It Now price of $7.99?

There's only so much program you can squeeze into a 4K ROM. It was an astounding achievement at the time (1981) that a world with 255 jungle scenes could be created for an Atari 2600 video game.

It looks great! But you really ought to correct the "We're be..." grammar error in Pitfall Harry's text greeting.

I've beaten the game, on all its levels. But then, I've been playing 3-D TTT since before it even made its debut as a 2600 cartridge game. I dedicated the entire summer of 1989 to developing a computer program to play "unbeatable" 3-D TTT. I never quite achieved that goal, but I did come fairly close to it. The program I wrote does an exhaustive game tree search for "winning combinations," which is a succession of 3-in-a-rows that force the opponent's options down to a single move (the block) to avoid losing on the next turn. The computer immediately follows one 3-in-a-row with another, then another, until eventually, the computer finds a move that creates a 3-in-a-row in two different paths simultaneously, which forces a win on the next move. Sometimes the winning sequence of forced 3-in-a-rows is as much as 21 moves per side deep. But no matter how deep the search had to be to force a win, if it existed, then my program would find it. The forced-win search algorithm lies at the heart of my program, although other strategic elements were necessary to program. I had to rely on my own personal experience with the game to program solid opening game play, and I had to develop a game scoring heuristic to determine the computer's best move when no winning sequence was found. If you read the instruction manual for 3-D TTT, you will see that the Atari 2600 is capable of only 9 move lookahead on its most advanced level. With my program's ability to sniff out winning sequences 21 moves deep and beyond, the Atari 2600 version was no match at all for my program. To be fair about it, though, 1991 computer technology (a 10 MHz 80286, equipped with a 30 MB hard disk and a full megabyte of RAM!) is an awful lot of muscle to pit against a 1977 vintage Atari 2600 that wheezes along at 1 MHz on 128 bytes of RAM. Not megabytes. Not kilobytes. I mean, the Atari 2600 has only 128 measly BYTES of RAM! How anybody could have ever gotten this machine to do anything at all with only 128 bytes of RAM to work with never fails to astound me. Considering the limitations of the eras, Carol Shaw's 3-D TTT programming accomplishment far exceeds my own. Also, my program is not very special at all. The game of 3-D TTT is now completely solved and has been since as early as 1976 (Google search on Eugene Mahalko, Oren Patashnik, and Victor Allis, for more details). Then again, my 3-D TTT program will always be special to me, because what I learned about the game as I developed my killer program made me understand the game at a far deeper level than I ever had before. It was only after my programming project was completed that I had developed skill enough at the game to be able to consistently beat the Atari 2600, unaided, at its highest level of play. It's an unending source of personal pride for me to be able to demonstrate mental abilities that surpass that of a 4K ROM from 1979 and 128 bytes of RAM.

Let me guess. The wife is saying something like, "So, a small child misplaced a grown man's toy that he couldn't be bothered with putting away for safekeeping." In the eyes of the small child, the cartridge is just a toy. In the eyes of the wife who "does not understand," the cartridge is just a toy. But in the eyes of the grown man who can accurately assess the developmental age of his grandson, it is the most important thing in his world. There's probably a lesson to be learned in there somewhere.

I took a moment today to re-read my contest solution walk through with fresh eyes, having stepped away from it for some 14 months now. I laughed. Holy mind melt! What was I thinking?! My memory reeled to the 1960's, to the countless TV Batman episodes I found myself slapping my head in amazement over. Batman had an other-worldly knack for divining precise meaning out of utterly vacuous clues. For example: Batman and Alfred are in the Batmobile, where Batman has a handful of coins and a clue from the Riddler that reads, "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no tales. It all makes sense when you add it up." Batman: Penny... Penny... Cent... Red cent... Copper! It's made of copper! Alfred: And 'copper' is another word for 'policeman'! Batman: And no tails means heads. Police... Head... Quarters! Alfred: [speechless now. In awe.] Batman: Four quarters and one penny equal 101 cents, so... Police headquarters, room 101! Let's go. There's no time to lose! My contest walk through is eerily similar. The question has been raised, "Could this contest possibly have been solved, without knowing the answer ahead of time?" It was my goal to make this contest self-contained, that it could be solvable by careful study of the image, dogged application of logic, and educated trial and error. Clearly, I failed to meet this objective. But I knew it was hard -- really hard -- even as I devised this puzzle. Some of the folks who have haunted this web site for a number of years may recall the "Pitfall Harry's Mystery of the Map" puzzle contest I created in 2002. It too, was intended to be a stand-alone puzzle that could be solved by careful study, dogged application of logic, and educated trial and error. My 2002 puzzle contest was solved (believe it or not), but may have gone unsolved had it not been for a parallel set of auxiliary clues I published as the contest progressed. The auxiliary clues were designed to steer the puzzle-solving collective clear of logical pitfalls and towards the solution. Solving the simpler auxiliary clues gave valuable insight into solving the larger, harder, map puzzle; the auxiliary clues made it possible for people other than Batman to divine solutions from seeming nothingness. Knowing all of this, I crafted a set of auxiliary clues for my Private Eye puzzle contest, too. The auxiliary clue set goes a long, long way towards narrowing the cavernous leaps of logic that are necessary for solving the puzzle. I published the first few of them, but nobody took them seriously. Or maybe so, but no one seemed to make any real effort to assimilate them. At the time, I took that to mean no one was interested in the contest whatsoever, especially since it was brutally difficult and no prizes were offered to compensate for time spent. So, I stopped publishing them. I naively thought there was a community of gamers who took on puzzle challenges for the sheer bloody fun of it. Now I must kick myself. Because the best part of this puzzle contest was the auxiliary clue set. If I find them, I'll post them. But after days of searching, it appears the auxiliary clue set is indeed lost. Without the auxiliary clues, I wonder if I can still solve this puzzle? Probably. But a month later I'd have to ask myself, "Was it worth the effort?" I set the bar too high. My puzzle contest was a failure, and rightfully so. I'll just have to do better next time. I'm sorry I let all of you down.

Solution.pdf I wrote a puzzle game a year or so ago for the "Contests" forum. The puzzle is still there, but I don't believe anyone ever solved it. I spotted the solution walkthrough I wrote for it in the "Are You Sure?" eye-blink before clicking OK and vanishing it forever along with a directory of other old files. As long as it survived I thought I'd post it.

Or somebody could whack you in the head with a 2x4 before you sit down to play. That'll make the quicksand harder to see.

Gremlins is a fun game. Just remember: don't play it after midnight, and don't let the label get wet.

There's another way to tell. You could invest a little money into a cartridge ROM dump setup, and then compare the dumped code to the code for each of the two versions. Granted, you can't take that sort of thing to a flea market, but it will save you time if you have to test a dozen or so carts before you get the version you want. Having a ROM dumper is cool for a host of other reasons, too.

I have one. It's broken. I have forgotten the details of the extent of its malfunction. But if it's broken, it gets tossed onto the heap of dead consoles in my garage. It will stay there until I get around to fixing it in my retirement years, or until I come to my senses and throw it out.

Just for the record, I never called myself an expert during all of this. I'm not sure where that came from. ..Al There are no "experts." That said, you are as qualified to authenticate an original Atari 2600 game box as anyone else has a right to claim. That makes you an expert, de facto. Deal with it.

Hey, homer! Is there any chance you might consider extending your list to include more sales? I sold a loose Tunnel Runner back in 2001 for $3, and I'm wondering how high up the list that would be.

No it's not. In fact, such a thing wouldn't have even been possible for the Atari 2600. The reason the NES toploader played everything is they just removed the Lockout-Chip. Atari 2600 games have to be changed themselves to account for PAL/NTSC differences, while in the NES the console did (most of) that work. That being said, if you can play a PAL Atari 2600 game in an NTSC country or vice versa, it depends more on the TV you use than it does on the console. It's quite common among PAL TVs, especially newer ones, to accept NTSC as well. For NTSC TVs to accept PAL is less common. Often the only way to find out if it will work by trying it. And if your TV doesn't play the PAL game, go run out to a thrift store and pick up an old CRT TV. Look for one that has a vertical hold adjust knob. You won't be able to watch airwave TV with it without a converter box, but it will allow you to play PAL and NTSC games. They're dirt cheap right now. Find one at a yard sale, and they might pay you to cart it away.

So in the gameplay do you draw little lines over the screen? Like this? It''s a puzzle game, with two game variations. You don't have to solve the first to figure out the second, but it helps.

That was fun. Tanman, I hope you had as much fun watching that auction close as I did.

It's like watching a bag of popcorn in a microwave near the end of its cycle. Will it pop a few times more, or is it over?

What? There are 13 known to exist. The "under 20" thing is fuzzy, meaning someone is leaving it open to possibility that there could be more than the 13 known. It is not known that there are 5 people keeping quiet, or any other number. Any number could be out there, or not. In truth, it could be any number above 13 that exist, as no one can prove or disprove how many there are out there that are unknown. Since 13 are known at this time. The word "known" is really the key here. Not too hard to understand. You're really overthinking this. EDIT: I just re-read that. I sounded sort of like a Monty Python sketch. Right. Now you are wandering into the murky waters of epistemology, which questions whether knowledge itself is even knowable. If it is not, how can we know this? I'm not over thinking it, I'm just trying to figure out if those who have it come out and try to sell theirs will they each still be worth around this much, not as much as Tanmans cause he has the box but minus whatever value the box adds. I'm retired, so if the value of this will stay almost the same no matter how many come out and sell theirs then its something I can buy right now, but is it cause no one else wants to sell theirs or is it cause its really worth this much. Thats what I'm curious. Even if there was 100 of them out there, is the price still over 5k or whatever the others are worth Where the price could go in the future is really anybody's guess. If new discoveries are found SLOWLY, I would imagine the price would remain high and steadily march higher. But I can't know for certain. Neither can anybody else. On the other hand, if this auction triggers an avalanche of "quiet" collectors coming forth to auction their secret copies of Air Raid, increased supply will surely be recognized by the sharp-eyed collecting community, and the Law of Supply and Demand will play itself out in terms of a lowering price trend.

What? There are 13 known to exist. The "under 20" thing is fuzzy, meaning someone is leaving it open to possibility that there could be more than the 13 known. It is not known that there are 5 people keeping quiet, or any other number. Any number could be out there, or not. In truth, it could be any number above 13 that exist, as no one can prove or disprove how many there are out there that are unknown. Since 13 are known at this time. The word "known" is really the key here. Not too hard to understand. You're really overthinking this. EDIT: I just re-read that. I sounded sort of like a Monty Python sketch. Right. Now you are wandering into the murky waters of epistemology, which questions whether knowledge itself is even knowable. If it is not, how can we know this?

Huh. I didn't know the Intellivision Keyboard was rare. I've had one in my garage for over 10 years now. I guess I should open up the box and give it a look. You may be thinking about the wrong keyboard. The Intellivision Keyboard Component is what's rare: The widely released Entertainment Computer System/keyboard expansion is not: Ah. I've got the widely released Computer System Keyboard Expansion. Thanks for the clarification.

You should automatically think 19. You already know 20 is out of the question, because 20 is not less than 20.

It is impossible to implement a random sequence using a deterministic algorithm and finite memory. On that basis, the best H.E.R.O. could ever do is generate pseudorandom levels. But I'm sure that's not what you meant. When you select Game 5, the first level H.E.R.O. serves up is level 17. Always. Beat that level, and then the next level H.E.R.O. serves up is pseudorandomly selected from all the levels greater than or equal to a certain threshold. I forget what that threshold is, but I think it is either Level 9 or Level 13. Let's say the threshold is Level 9. Then any Game 5 game you get after beating the initial Level 17 game can be any level other than games 1 through 8. The pseudorandom algorithm H.E.R.O. uses to select the next Pro level you will see can be any combination of parameters such as time it took you to beat the last level, numbers and types of beasties you killed, number of times you fired your laser, number of times you switched direction, etc.