Psionic

Meh. I already ate...and 900+ pages is an awful lot of tacos. I don't know if I can handle that.

First time reading this thread...what did I miss? Is this thing basically the Coleco Chameleon, Mark II?

He was always a bit flaky, even ten years ago when the site was fully operational and business was booming, so nothing surprises me. It's too bad because it was pretty much a go-to place to get stuff once upon a time.

And most likely they're long gone. That site hasn't been updated regularly for quite a while.

Yes, I can put you in contact with Paul. Send me a PM.

Very true, I stand corrected. To be fair, when I spoke of "graphics" I was referring to the sprites specifically and whether they may have been directly copied pixel-for-pixel (or nearly so). As Thomas Jentzsch stated above, an analysis of the two binaries using CloneSpy apparently found no coding similarities. This is not all that surprising since the other programmer besides yourself who worked on this game at Roklan told me he never saw the demo version (which I assume was created internally at Parker Brothers). Based on your response, I assume you never saw it either (until now).

@solidcorp worked with Ed. He might know.

I figured that was developed at Roklan since a prototype turned up in a yellow Roklan shell a few years back. Ed Schneider was a Chicago-area programmer who worked on games for various publishers including Artworx and Atari. I believe he was involved with NuFX in their early years, which eventually became EA Chicago.

Anything is possible since they were a thoroughly crooked operation. One of the brothers who owned Syncro Software told me that non-payment of contracts for games they had developed for Zimag was a major contributor to Syncro's bankruptcy.

To be fair, it's unclear to what extent this game may have been expanded beyond this and by whom, but I'm still looking into it. For what it's worth, when I first spoke to him several years back, Dick Balaska told me that he thought Bob Curtiss had done most of the programming on Kickman but he informed me recently that Bob has since denied this and he may simply have been confusing it with Solar Fox. Those are the internal part numbers for the cartridge labels, not the catalog numbers for the games themselves. The proper ones can be found on the spines and UPCs of the game boxes. Wizard of Wor - 80000 Gorf - 80010 Solar Fox - 80020 Blueprint - 80030 Tunnel Runner - 80070 Mountain King - 80080 Omega Race - 80090 AtariProtos and Atarimania both have Targ listed as 80110 but I'm not sure where that number came from.

Not surprising since the Commodore 64 version also only allowed a stack of four balloons. At least in this 2600 port you can properly bounce balloons between the stack and the side edge of the screen to make them easier to control. On the C64, the falling balloons pass right through your stack and drift across the screen making them almost impossible to kick as several fall at once. They also don't pop automatically once you reach a full stack of four balloons unless you have a Pac-Man on your head which means you have to pop the falling balloons at the very top of the stack. So it actually ends up being harder than the arcade version. By comparison, this version is slightly worse in some ways yet slightly better in others. I think Namco was perturbed that they were not consulted in the beginning but they did have input into the development of Ms. Pac-Man and I'm certainly not aware of them ever suing. The partnership was ended, but I think that was due to Bally Midway really taking liberties with the license later on (in creating stuff like Professor Pac-Man). Seems about right. Obviously Alex showed the game to someone at Roklan and either gave them a copy, or simply left it behind when he quit and left for California. I would bet on the latter. Actually, Bill Adams told me that when GCC first brought Crazy Otto/Ms. Pac-Man to Midway, the first thing Mr. Ross did was ask him and the other programmers in-house "Why couldn't you guys come up with something like that?". Bill's response was "I didn't know we were allowed to!".

Is the reference to Roklan actually in the original source or is that a notation that Ken added when he was assembling it? Thomas first claimed it was in the code but then later recanted that claim. All I know is, Balaska told me he was sent out to Bally Midway in Chicago. That's where he claims to have worked on the game and also where he first met Bob Curtiss (who would later go on to work for Roklan and eventually CBS). He didn't seem to know who Roklan was, or that they had developed games for CBS.

Seems reasonable enough, although I question whether Roklan had any hand in this one at all. CBS obviously had a licensing agreement directly with Bally Midway from the get-go, and Roklan certainly developed 2600 games but never published any so there doesn't seem to be any reason why they would be involved. The Pac-Man license very well could've been an issue but it certainly didn't stop Commodore from releasing their version for the C64 with Pac-Men and ghosts intact. Like I said, it's a passable version of the game, especially considering it was developed in late '81/early '82 and was probably Alex's first VCS effort. But there are issues with the kicking mechanic which of course isn't used all that much since only one balloon falls at a time. It would be almost impossible to have more than one falling since the playfield is so short with so little void space above the cyclist. And normally I wouldn't think too much of the missing bonus rounds if not for the fact that CBS's own advertising literature seemed to indicate that they were included ("Challenge Racks, too!").

So that means with some optimization it should've been reasonably easy to squeeze in a very basic title screen of some sort, which Dick says he seems to remember doing. While it's definitely possible that this game could've been simply cleaned up a bit and released in its current 4K form, after playing it for a bit it's hard for me to believe that CBS would've done this. The first couple CBS releases were only 4K, but by the time they would've been publishing this game, 8K was not just an option but pretty much the standard. All of the later CBS releases were 8K, and of course a few of them utilized RAM Plus. Not only is the game missing a title screen and the (possibly) problematic Pac-Men are present, but more importantly the gameplay just seems lacking. Where are the challenge racks? Does more than one balloon at a time ever fall? Or have I simply not played far enough into the game? I can't help but think that your earlier assessment was probably correct (that we should see this as a 50% complete 8K game rather than a 95% complete 4K game).

I spoke with Dick Balaska today about this game. As I suspected, this was developed at Bally Midway not Roklan. According to Dick, when the game was handed to him it needed some work mainly involving code optimization but he doesn't remember specifics. I told him about the source code that was found and the problems with the resulting binary. He doesn't remember the game having these issues even when he started working on it, and it certainly wouldn't have had them when he was finished. Either way, the code that was found is most likely a very late WIP that Alex was still working on when he left Bally which had not been touched up by anyone else yet.

Well, this certainly would explain why CBS would've needed Balaska to work on the code before they could release this game, even if nothing within the game program itself needed to be altered. For what it's worth, the intro screen rolls on my 24" Sony Trinitron CRT (KV-24FV12 manufactured Jan. 2002) but I have a 13" Panasonic (CT-13R1V manufactured Nov. 1997) that tolerates it just fine. Yes, the ColecoVision port of Tapper was supposedly done there, for one. And obviously many of the Astrocade games were done internally, although a number of them were produced by Action Graphics and Dave Nutting Associates.

That much is obvious. The question is how the puzzle pieces fit together and what the timeline was for these deals falling into place. I really can't say since I've never spoken to anyone on the business side of things. For the record, the supposed Bally Midway releases from 1984 that you mentioned in your last post (i.e. the Sega games in white boxes like Spy Hunter and Tapper) were developed by Sega or by contactors under their employ. They were also fully marketed and distributed by Sega and have UPCs and catalog numbers that reflect this. Bally Midway's logo appears on the games but they had no direct involvement with them. I'm referring to games that were being developed during the 1981-82 time period, when Bally was still supporting the Astrocade. That makes a bit more sense. The only game that anyone from Roklan seems to remember Alex working on is Crazy Climber, and he did not finish that game. The story I was told was that he had been working on the game for quite some time without making significant progress to the point that they had to send someone to his house to see what the hell was going on. He apparently quit or was fired shortly thereafter and another programmer (Joe Gaucher) had to finish the game. I really can't say for sure without reaching out to some people for more info. But my opinion is that the bulk of the game programming was likely done at Bally Midway before Alex left to join Roklan. Alex basically said so himself in the 1983 interview he gave with Video Games Player magazine... "I designed Kickman for Midway a few years ago when they were thinking of entering the home video game market." Later in that thread, Bob Curtiss chimes in and says that he and Alex had developed 2600 games at Bally before joining Roklan. I would not dispute that CBS would've been the one to ultimately publish the game had it actually been released. But they had little if any involvement in the game's development and I'm not sure whatever changes Dick Balaska may have made would necessarily be in this version, since it was sourced from Bally or Roklan and not from CBS. Exactly, but of course Bally lost interest in supporting the Astrocade and sold the rights to Astrovision. One would then assume they similarly lost interest in publishing their own games for other home systems around the same time and sought other publishers (i.e. Roklan and CBS) for these titles. Coin-op was their bread and butter. They tried to form a consumer division and gave it a go but it just didn't work out.

Who was your friend? Did he work on any other games? Nice find. I suspect this is probably very similar to the 2600 version but hopefully you can get your hands on a VIC so we can see for sure. In the meantime, be careful with that exposed EPROM window and don't expose it to any UV light. I also would suggest removing it from the socket and dumping the contents to create a backup sooner rather than later. This is probably the only known copy of the game at this point, so it'd be a shame if it were lost.

Correct...and most of the info on the Atarimania site (including game credits) comes from other sources. The info originally came from the Digital Press Guide. The DP guys got in contact with Dick years ago. I followed up with him a few years later (he lives not far from me) and I asked him to explain his involvement (see my last post).

This game has a complicated development history and was supposedly at least started at Bally, although apparently Roklan and CBS may have had a hand in it at some point. Alex Leavens, Alex Nevelson, and Bob Curtiss were members of a group working on 2600 games at Bally in Chicago, at least initially. Tom DiDomenico and another programmer named Bob Fisher/Fischer (sp?) were also members of this group. Bill Adams, who worked on several coin-ops including Kick-Man, was their manager. Bill told me he lost several programmers to Roklan, including Curtiss and Leavens, but I don't know the specific details of their leaving and how it might've affected the development of this title. Given the date, it's hard for me to believe this was actually developed at Roklan despite what it says but who knows. Roklan does not have a Wikipedia entry, but you can find info on them here... http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/Roklan Dick Balaska worked for CBS in Greenwich, CT. He told me that he went out to Chicago at some point and put some "finishing touches" on the game, which might have been something as simple as the fixes that Thomas applied to this game or possibly something more complex like removing the Pac-Men and replacing them with something else. Either way that was the extent of his involvement, which is why this game wouldn't be on his list of credits on his website. This game was originally supposed to have been published by Bally themselves and was only acquired by CBS later on, so if this version came from Bally or Roklan it probably wouldn't have any of whatever changes Dick may have made to the code. In any event, it's nice to see this one finally surface.

What about people who didn't pre-order the game? I placed an order back on October 2 for one copy each of Knight 'n More and Muncher Mouse. Within a few hours, I received two separate automated (I presume) emails saying that one or more items I had ordered was currently out of stock. Is this order eventually going to be filled or am I out of luck?

Obviously he wants the unreleased ColecoVision version, not the Atari one which can be had for a lot less than $100.

Okay...other than those basically every set of screenshots came from a cartridge on a real Atari. The point was that real screenshots (and video) are easily found.

Since there's no ROM image in circulation, the game has only ever been played "on a real Atari VCS". Do a Google search and you'll find pics and video all over the web. Here's a full review that includes gameplay footage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV-t60elPUg

The expansion of Pitfall II did come about somewhat by accident. Tim Shotter was having a bit of difficulty porting the game to the Commodore 64 but Mike Lorenzen was able to complete the 400/800/5200 conversion very quickly and simply chose to use that extra time to his benefit and did something constructive with it. It wasn't originally planned though, and the management supposedly wanted Lorenzen to remove the extra world but he left it in as an Easter egg. If the story about the extra content in Pitfall II is true, then it can be assumed that they mostly felt the games were good enough as is and didn't want them altered significantly on different platforms for marketing reasons. Also keep in mind that most of the ports weren't coded by the original programmers and some of them were actually done outside Activision on contract, which is all the more reason they wouldn't have wanted anyone messing around with the game too much (apart from some basic graphical enhancements).