Arno1978

February 3

On 1/28/2024 at 6:38 PM, Al_Nafuur said:

Maybe a case for @-^CrossBow^-

https://ivory-tower-collections.business.site/

This is excellent. I have 3 2600s. Two work, but one was sold to me as a spare model for repairs. While I'm *ok* at soldering, for these machines, it would be better to have someone skilled and qualified to test, tune, and fix them up. Thank you fro the link.

January 31

It's a funny pic, but at the same time what a horror show. Table and chair legs are weird. AI also doesn't seem to understand shoelaces. What the heck is that behind the lower right corner of tv? Is that dude being inappropriate? 🤣

January 29

In one way, I would love to see a new cartridge based console and see carts again with maps, manuals, etc. It is wishful thinking, as it's something I enjoyed in the past and in this day and age is just a novelty. Any current cartridge (homebrew) that is being made for existing systems are for niche fan groups. Those of us who are retro gamers and cherish our old consoles, we love homebrew. I plan on ordering Lode Runner for the Atari 2600. I have other versions, and don't need it, but it's just so damn cool.

There could be a resurgence of cartridge based gaming in the way of cards, rather than carts. There was a topic about Paper Carts that was started in the StellaRT club. Twenty some years ago, the gba also had a card-reader attachment that could upload an entire rom of a small NES game from 5 cards. I thought that was pretty darn cool.

I had this strange idea one day as I was reading about early video game console engineering and memory limitations. I wondered what it would have been like, if back then a company had a bunch of artists, musicians, and programmers spend a few years making banks of art - 4x4, 8x8 sprites, banks of music samples and beats, and banks of skeleton game engines - one for platforming, one for overhead rpg, one for racing, etc. Then release cartridges with 1kb of rom that literally was simply switches or jumpers in a sense that assembled a game together from the existing samples. Basically, the console was like a game maker utility where you built a game from existing digital assets. One might think the idea is limited.. and it is. However, seeing the creative programming techniques that programmers came up with to make hundreds of games on the 2600 - when the engineers had literally designed it to produce 10 or 12 combat or tennis variant carts, goes to show that even with existing assets, creative techniques could be employed to come up with all kinds of unique games. This isn't a VCS replacement, the idea is just a toy novelty. If Atari was to make a cartridge based VCS successor - perhaps to accommodate carts from past systems, then perhaps the above idea could be in a single cart that had a card reader. Entire games could be sold (or given away for free) on a single card. Cards could be just like cartridges - come with maps, manuals.. some kind of packaging. One could also design their own game and print their own cards at home or what have you. You could kind of get that experience where one single person created an entire game. It's a silly-ish idea, but it's fun.

January 28

Sorry for the late replay.. busy day. I looked at my set up. I use Launchbox which is a Mame frontend. (Forgive me. Not that familiar with Mame as I actually rarely play on my PC.) In the Launchbox folder I have an Emulators folder that has the CV bios file in it. Launchbox\Emulators\Coleco\colecovision.rom

Games are in folder Launchbox\Games\Colecovision.

I don't remember when I installed CV in Launchbox if there was anything else I had to do, but the games show up. I can click on them, and the option to play appears on the right hand side.

Not sure if any of this helps, but I hope you get your set up running so you can enjoy CV in your arcade cab.

January 27

So long as this doesn't interfere with making roguelikes, and that the original Rogue is always available, I don't think that this will make much of a difference. It is true that many Rogue fans and roguelike devs are protective of the open source nature of the game and derivatives. I'm a fan of Nethack. Super frustratingly difficult at times. If Nethack was a physical cartridge - it would have been thrown out of the window more than once. Yet, like a masochist, I keep going back. But if open source development would not have been a thing, no Nethack.

January 27

I had frustration with Colecovision myself. But I managed to get it and my favorite CV game Venture working. I'll be home later today and if you're still having issues, I'm happy to help, but I think Trebor's solution should work for ya. I do find that my own Mame installation seems to mess up paths for some reason after updating, so watch out for that. (In my case, I probably have something set wrong myself though.)

January 26

I wish Ebay would block scalpers. (I do understand the undertaking that would require). Same case with the limited run of Shantae Pirate's Curse for 3DS this morning. I sadly missed out on getting a copy. Already, scalpers had listings on Ebay. If they have an opportunity I guess. I don't understand publishers either sometimes. There were very limited copies of these cartridges - so maybe only allow one sale per customer, instead it was unlimited purchase amount. So of course scalpers grab as many copies as possible and true fans fail to legitimately secure a copy - having to either pay extra hard earned cash to these scum for nothing, or hope to acquire the game at some later date somehow.

January 20

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January 19

I'm 45 and started learning ASM about a year ago, but had to put it on hold due to work and study. That said I intend to pick it up again and continue. I originally wanted to code a NES game, but the 2600 always draws me toward it. I love the challenge of making a game out of such extremely limited memory and hardware limits. I previously had coding experience and made 4 games using Lua. A lot easier than ASM on a 2600 for sure. Still, the work on each game took a lot longer than I had anticipated each time. They did not become the games I was expecting. So not to ramble on about expectation, long story short, you gotta be patient, make prototypes, playtest, polish, and most of all just have fun. Really, just make the game you want to play yourself. Since it's a new language for you, you will encounter a lot of frustration, but you eventually start to see what works and what doesn't as you get more familiar. I personally find programming like puzzle solving and I love solving puzzles. There is nothing more satisfying than getting that one function to work and seeing it happen on a screen. This is one reason why I have about 200 prototypes that just have a few functions. 🤣 I was once making a procedural generation function which could take a screen full of stars and swirl them into a galaxy. It was going to be for an ascii space game I had conceived. Well. I can make nice galaxies.

January 19

So I'm wondering. To catch a criminal car, perhaps you have to get ahead of them and then in front of them which would count as automatically catching them. On the road might be the usual traffic and if you don't have your flashing lights on, you are driving perhaps just slightly faster than the speed limit - just like in real life. People tend to slow down underneath the limit when they see a cop driving behind them or next to them. Cops tend to speed a bit. Whenever you see a criminal car - however indicated - flashing or downward pointing arrow above their car - you turn on the lights. Turning on the lights also makes your car start to accelerate. Half of the regular road traffic will get out of your way, but some stupid drivers won't, so you have to dodge them. Depending on the code, the criminal AI could be a good driver and avoid all traffic. You just have to be good too and get ahead of them. Just like many such games of course - if you hit the sides, you slow down and so you have to catch up again. If you lose sight of the criminal - they've escaped and you take a hit. Maybe if possible, you could have a criminal leaning out of the window shooting at your or a criminal standing on the side of the road shooting at you. You dodge the bullet. Perhaps squish the standing criminal - just like in real life... for extra points. Other obstacles could be oil slicks on road which slow you down or bombs that criminal car lobs out of window. I know that may or may not fit in the limited code.

January 19

When I was a teen in the early 90s, I used to skip school and go to the local cafe/variety store that had a huge magazine rack. I never had much money to buy magazines, so I would thumb through them. Either that or the Coop. Computer Gaming World wasn't always on the shelf, but when it was I would thumb through. EGM and Gamepro were the 2 common and dominant magazines. Occasionally, there would be other magazine companies that would release a gaming magazine for a few months and then disappear off the radar. I had one issue of one of these magazines that had a lot of coverage of up coming Sega CD titles - some of which seemed to be prototypes and never heard from again. Gamepro was my favourite magazine. I found the ratings helpful. And it was through mostly Gamepro that I discovered games that were never available where I lived - at least I never saw a single copy. Strange that Kirby's Adventure was rated as one of NES's best games, yet I never saw it on a shelf or in a friends collection.

January 17

I had once thought of this long ago too before I heard of papercart, but what I imagined was an image of pixels - 128x128 with 16 available colours for each pixel. This would provide 8kb of space.. if my math is correct. 2 pixels would be one byte. Just need to figure out a way to scan all the pixels and interpret the colours. Easiest method is with a camera. It is a really cool idea. It would be the neatest thing to have an entire game on a paper card.

January 15

I've emailed him twice in the past few years, and never got a reply. I don't think he responds to anyone he doesn't know, or just too busy. I can't wait for the books. Adventure is one of my top 10 favorite games of all time.

January 15

The Donkey Kong Original Edition rom is easy to find. I would love if that particular version of Mario Bros was available as NTSC. I love Mario Bros. I even planned once doing a romhack of Mario Bros to make a sequel with what I thought would be the most likeliest of enemies. I tried to imagine I was working at Nintendo in the early 80s and I had been tasked to come up with a sequel. It was a fun little exercise. I planned an enemy that you had to knock down from the top platforms to the floor where it would sink away. You bopped it from the bottom first, it would shake then hang underneath the platform, then you jumped onto the platform and if you ran over where it was hanging, it would fall to the next platform below. If you didn't get rid of it quickly, it would spread out as an oil slick across platform - just like ice. There was also a spring robot, that would sit still for a second then when it's spring activated, it jumped quickly in the direction it was facing slinky style, then compress and wait another second before doing it again. There were 2 other enemies that I forgot, but I do have the details drawn and written down somewhere. Perhaps I'll make the romhack someday. If I should find my drawing which is in one of my notebooks, I'll post it here - or a better version.

January 14

While I have a NES with almost 100 games hooked up to a perfect little CRT TV, I've been playing NES titles on my modded GBA SP. I modded it with an IPS screen. I find the Classic NES Series well done - in terms of fitting the game on a lower resolution and still making it look nice. Been really enjoying The Legend of Zelda port. I forget that I'm playing on a lower res screen. In my opinion they did it well, but the game does suffer a bit more slowdown than the actual version, when too many enemies on screen. That said, it works so well. I'm still surprised that the GBA is a 20 year old system. With the modded screen it feels like the best portable handheld console. I would not be opposed to Nintendo re-releasing the unit with the IPS screen and also making as many Classic NES Series games as possible. Nothing will kill my love of my actual NES. But having a version on a small screen in my pocket was my ultimate childhood fantasy and now it exists.

December 31, 2023

35 minutes ago, Giles N said:

The Lynx was a monster of a machine - utterly brilliant.

The problem seemed they’d didn’t bother, or go the extra miles, to make game-companies interested in making games for it in the numbers of titles they needed.

This could’ve been adressed in many ways.

The Jaguar is said to have hardware difficult to get to grips with, even if its was powerful in and by itself.

If you don’t secure a steady stream of games (the Lynx should’ve been flooded with more simplistic colorful platformers and schumps for casual gamers, not only advanced super-scalers etc), why should people buy a console or give attention to a video-game company…?

Really good console with almost no games…?
Whats that…?

The 5200: cool console. Awful packaged joystick. Not backwards compatible with 2600.

What did they think…? That Atari had one and only one competitor on the market… themselves with the 2600?

Gaming companies just need to get the ABCs of video-gaming straight prior to anything.

I didn't word that right. You're correct with every point. Great machines. Few scant games and terrible marketing. I mean, I remember the ads. But neither unit was available where I lived and I saw no games on the shelves. The 5200 was available where I was, but I only saw a few at peoples houses. Again, no games on shelves either. They fell flat there.

December 31, 2023

I think a lot of what I'd say has been covered in the comments. Atari has had a spotty history. Poor console releases like the Jaguar and Lynx. No smooth, continuous catalog of games like Nintendo has had since 83. I remember when the VCS was announced a few years ago, I emailed Atari at the time to modernize some of their old classics. I had said, use vector graphics and make more modern versions of popular 2600 games. And this they did do (though I have NO idea if my email was even read or gave any inspiration to this at all). My idea was that those modern versions would be exclusive to the VCS - in that you had to own one to play those recharged games. It was an idea to help boost the new console and start building up its library.

I've been a gamer since 82 and have seen the industry grow exponentially since then. At one point, I got into development myself. Now, based on being a gamer, observation, and having attempted development myself, I find it's become an extremely difficult industry to make any sort of profit in, let alone getting more than a handful of players actually playing your game. There is so much competition out there on multiple, multiple market places and consoles. In this sense, Atari games will only for the most part appeal to Atari players. People who grew up with these games. To get your average every day modern gamer who has been playing Minecraft, Balder's Gate, No Man's Sky, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike, Battlefield, WoW, Super Mario Wonder.. this list goes on into the thousands of games, you need a unique IP that doesn't exist or if it's based on a past title - it still has to blow your socks off. A recharged Yars Revenge with updated graphics might be very fun and look excellent. In the maelstrom of popular titles - what will break the modern gamer away from them, to play the new Yars game?

From what I see, game development is like playing the Lotto. If you happen to have a very unique idea, the timing is just right, you actually produce a good, fun, mostly bug-free game, you distribute in the right channels, and the game starts picking up interest, you might just profit. When it comes to low budget indie games, the chances that you are going to make a profit are one in however many millions. Games like Minecraft, Baba Is You, Celeste, Iron Lung, Stardew Valley had all the proper ingredients. I've also seen many independent games that were just excellent and very fun.. never take off. There was always something missing with those titles. Either the timing was wrong - example: people have gotten their fill of Harvest Moon clones, or too expensive, too buggy, graphics didn't fit the game or looked amateurish, etc. I've seen a lot of very good, well made indie games that have no players. The same for AAA titles. Companies who have the funds to make AAA titles like Microsoft - have a much better chance at getting their game out there, but even then, those games can dwindle and die fast. So as I said, like the lotto: You buy 1 ticket, you have perhaps 1 in 50 million of winning the jackpot. You have the funds to buy 1 million tickets, you have a 1 in 50 chance.

For Atari to appeal to the modern gamer, it will be a very slow non-profitable start. It will be a slow build up, and when they finally have the funds to tackle an AAA title and publish it, even then they'll have to tread carefully and keep an eye on all fronts.

December 29, 2023

3 hours ago, Zoyous said:

They did - it was just all happening in their arcade division, specifically AM2. They didn't focus on 3D for the home because at that time in the early 90s, they were acquiring 3D tech from military contractors and negotiating with them to make it affordable for their arcade boards. They sold these cabinets for $20-50,000 and more. A lot of that was due to their hydraulic machinery but the 3D chips were also exceedingly expensive. Their consumer division didn't see a pathway to even bringing their sprite scaling co-processors into home consoles until late '91 with the Sega CD, which was an add-on three times as expensive as the base console at that point.

Thank you so much. I knew they were working with 3d in their arcade division, but I didn't know much more to the story. That is a very interesting bit of knowledge there. And I do remember the Sega CD being insanely expensive. They had a lot of neat titles lined up for it, but I think many of them didn't make it to market, or they didn't live up to expectation. It was quite a time.

3 hours ago, Zoyous said:

In what way? It's certainly part of a wave of disruptive tech, just like 3D was in 90s gaming.

It was a lazy comment. Part luddite. I find the use of ChatGPT mostly garbage I guess. I also prefer to read text written by an actual human (even if written poorly), rather than something edited or conceived by AI. You are definitely correct - it is disruptive tech. My opinion is: mostly not in a good way. I know that AI isn't really true AI - math and complicated algorithms in layer upon layer. Still I think there is a good use for it and there are things it shouldn't be used for. I could give many reasons why driverless vehicles should never be allowed on the road, but that's for a different thread of course. I don't want to stray from the main subject.

December 28, 2023

ChatGPT is garbage.

One of the biggest problems was deadlines in the early days. Designers and programmers were just starting to get the hang of 3d, yet were expected to pump out games in the same time span as 2d games. 2d games already had proper tools, programming guides/tricks in place, as well as being able to more accurately plan out the scope of a game. This was of course due to having 2+ decades of 2d dev knowledge and resources. Having a 3rd dimension, polygons, lighting and shadows, camera controls thrown in was a huge step.

Getting that same look and feel from 2d to 3d isn't easy either. Though Nintendo did a good job with Super Mario 64, it felt very different to Super Mario World.

Looping back to deadlines, Sega was also competing with Nintendo and Sony. It was a stressful race to get ahead of the pack in terms of a new console. Once a particular console was the main console that everyone played on, selling an alternative was much more difficult. If you had the right games, people might shell out an extra $200 to get the console and that game.

When Sega was head to head with Nintendo during the height of both 16 bit systems - SNES and Genesis, they seemed to put full focus into just 16 bit games. The Genesis hit the market in 1989. By 1990, they should have had a separate division prepping for upcoming 3d games and tech. Even in the 80s Sega was experimenting with 3d visuals. Of course it's easier to say this now looking back. The story was different in the thick of things back then.

3d in the 90s was rough and just beginning. It was more experimental. It was probably impossible to make a 3d Sonic game back then that was as awesome as say Sonic 3 and Knuckles.

December 20, 2023

This is a good question. For me it depends on specific mood. I don't know if it's ADHD or what, but my go to games change with the seasons and then repeat. Sometimes on my PC, I'll dive into Minecraft (old classic versions) and just explore the world. Or I'll play Doom 1 or 2 or Quake. Sometimes I take a nostalgia trip and play Soldat - an multiplayer sidescrolling shooter I've played since 2002. Occasionally I start a new fortress in Dwarf Fortress, but then too many migrants show up, and before I can smooth out the operation, a werepig or something appears that just decimates my population. On my consoles I might play whatever recent RPG I've been playing like Dragon Warrior series. I recently finished Earthbound and now playing Secret of Mana. I still need to finish Zelda Link to the Past, but I get far into the game, then get distracted and tend to start over again. Excellent game though.

Anyway, you said one game. So let's see... Team Fortress 2. I'm not good at it and tend to chat in it a lot, but I find it fun and a go to when I'm having a rough day.

December 20, 2023

I'm still amazed that the Amico bathroom weight scale clone console has been dragged out for so long. Even if they had enough funding to get units built, the lack of any unique game and its butt ugly appearance would appeal to no one, except the diehards. It would be better if the Intellivision 3 were made instead - to the same specs way back when, and let homebrewers go nuts on the thing. It would still be a very niche market, but I think would be more enjoyable than to put a modern computer into a bathroom weight scale and add mediocre games to it.

October 13, 2023

I found this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfenstein_1-D I remember when it first made news on the independent and experimental games sites. The poll has already answered the question, but still it's very interesting.

October 8, 2023

When I was younger, it used to be graphics and gameplay 50/50. Growing up I was addicted to video games. My parents wouldn't let me own anything until I was 16, so I got my fixes at arcades or on a friends NES or SNES. I was too young when Atari 2600 was popular, but did play some games and when you had basic graphics representing sprites and play area vs the more cartoony sprites and backgrounds in NES games, I leaned toward NES. We kids back in the mid 80s would mistakenly refer to the Atari 2600 as a 4-bit console. We didn't know what bits meant. I never lost my appreciation for games like PacMan which was one of the first game I ever played and played the arcade version numerous times, but growing up I was always drawn to the flashier and colourful graphics of the later 8-bit and 16-bit systems and later 64-bit systems. I really enjoyed Mario 64 on my N64 and Mario Kart 64. It was at that point when 3d graphics were starting to become mainstream and 2d was falling off a bit. When I got my first computer, I cursed its slow built-in graphic chip because I couldn't run Half Life at full resolution at a smooth FPS. So I too was chasing after better graphic cards which were always out of my budget. Then I played Half Life 2 on a friends computer who had all the latest bells and whistles and for the first time I realized how stupid the highest settings were. There was texture mapping and reflections on all of the wrong surfaces. I remember the worn rubber wheels of the buggy being shiny and reflecting light. So after that, the only purpose of a good graphic card was simply to maintain a steady FPS, not to crank graphics settings up to max. Now my current computer I find can display higher graphics settings than I care for. In the last 15 to 20 years, I also started to go backwards with my gaming interests. I went back to my consoles. I've been more interested in DOS games. Playing early arcade games that I missed out on. I really like playing roguelike games, including the original Rogue, and early titles like Nethack. In roguelikes, the graphics are just text characters on a screen, but they are very fun and equally frustrating.

All my life I only played games I considered fun - so of course gameplay was an important factor always. My interest in good graphics has dwindled. I certainly appreciate the graphics in some games, don't get me wrong. I love SNES rpg graphics. Right now though, I love using my imagination more than having an image constructed for me. It's abstract. I like many Atari 2600 games where you can barely make out what the sprite is, but they're fun as hell. I super love Adventure. I love when I defeat those big evil ducks with their square bellies. I really appreciate the homebrew devs that work really hard to make or remake titles and enjoy them too. But, now whether nice or not, the only purpose graphics serve is simply to indicate what I'm looking at. My imagination will do the rest.

October 1, 2023

One of my top favorite 2600 games is Adventure. The square avatar I guess could be considered a knight. Many people will recognize the little square guy if he's pictured with Yorgle, Grundle and Rhindle or at least one of the 3. A knight would be a great mascot for Atari, since 70s/80s were a great time for fantasy adventure games, and because Atari started in that era. The only thing is, I don't think any current character that Atari has could be recognized as a mascot. I never played Crystal Castles, so I didn't recognize Bentley Bear. Nowadays, people don't know which characters Atari owns and doesn't own. For a good while, even I associated PacMan and Frogger with Atari. PacMan is a very recognizable character and could be a mascot, but he's not Atari, despite there was an Atari licensed version of the game.

October 1, 2023

4 hours ago, x=usr(1536) said:

I get that Atari has IP with some value in the retro marketspace, but without new games they're heading straight for the tunnel painted on the canyon wall. Sure, base some new titles off of historical IP; there's no problem with that. But without non-retro games, the portfolio doesn't really have anything in it with broad appeal.

This is an absolute fact. It's an extremely difficult market now. While the bonus is that Atari is still a recognized name - the minute you mention Atari to anyone - the thought is "retro gaming". They have a strength in retro gaming. Unlike companies like Nintendo for instance, otherwise, Atari doesn't have a popular household presence. Nintendo kept going with their popular IPs. People still enjoy the latest Mario incarnations. Like links on a chain from past to present, they timed releases and hardware right for the current market. That's why they're still such a strong contender with under powered hardware. Other consoles have always blazed past Nintendo consoles, but Nintendo had enough successful IPs - they had enough to market to a broad audience, and their momentum hasn't stopped. Atari has been like a blind runner through the past 40 years - stumbling and running dead on into hurdles and falling flat. Now their momentum is but crawling along. Just like a train, it take a large amount of energy to start moving and gain momentum. So for a company like Atari - as I've said before, it's easy to ride on the coattails of the past and milk history for the last possible drops. There's nothing wrong in keeping the memories alive, but unless they have enough old IPs that can be modernized and still pay homage to their roots, then, exactly as @x=usr(1536) stated, they're going to have to have create new IPs and break into that modern market. Because of the extreme saturation of games out there on several platforms and market places, that's gonna be tough.

I did share an idea with Atari that is a way to resurrect CRT functionality - to replace dying CRT hardware, but that's still a niche market. Perhaps a very niche market. It could be somewhat profitable, but the profits would be slow and long term.

If one could come up with something at the right time that was revolutionary - like Minecraft was in 2009, that could be a really good jump start. Personally, I've been wanting to see a multi-user space sandbox that is as easy to play as MC, but one big giant universe of unique planets, space stations and what not. (No Man's Sky is close, but still off.) Then I'd build a secret base in a giant asteroid in some obscure asteroid belt, fill it with Tie Fighters and an old 80s arcade, and blast Led Zeppelin, CCR, and Stepenwolf all day. 😁 (Idea heavily inspired by Watts's base at the end of the book Ready Player One in the OASIS.)

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