Has anybody discovered who programmed these games?

[+Allan]

Has anybody discovered who individual programmers programmed these 5200 games?

 

Battlezone -- Possibly Alan Merrill

Berzerk -- (GCC)

Dig Dug -- (GCC)

Frisky Tom -- Unknown

Jr. Pac-Man -- Unknown

Kangaroo -- Unknown (GCC)

Looney Toons Hotel -- Unknown

Ms. Pac-Man -- (GCC) Steven Szymanski

Pole Position -- (GCC)

Roadrunner -- Possibly Lorie Shaffer

Vanguard -- Unknown

 

It's sad that Super Breakout and Pac-Man still remain a mystery.

 

Edit:

 

Thanks to Dutchman2000 we got Pac-Man and Super Breakout. Only 14 left.

 

Another Edit:

 

Thanks to Tempest for a few more.

 

Another thanks to Cafeman for Ms. Pac Man

 

Another edit: From the GCC website: Berzerk, Dig-Dug, and Pole Position done by GCC. Vanguard not done by GCC.

 

Allan

Edited October 7, 2008 by Allan

[Dutchman2000]

I can list the ones I know:

 

 

Pac-Man -- James Andreasen, Alan Murphy (Graphics)

Super Breakout -- Alan Moss

[+Allan]

I can list the ones I know:

 

 

Pac-Man -- James Andreasen, Alan Murphy (Graphics)

Super Breakout -- Alan Moss

 

Fantastic! Thanks Dutchman2000.

 

Allan

[Tempest]

Battlezone -- Possibly Alan Merrill

Joust -- Steven Szymanski, Allen Wells, and Pete Gaston

Moon Patrol -- Scott Smith (Programmer), Courtney Granner (Graphics), & Robert Vieria (Sound)

Roadrunner -- Possibly Lorie Shaffer

Robotron: 2084 -- Judy Bogart

 

 

Tempest

[+Allan]

Battlezone -- Possibly Alan Merrill

Joust -- Steven Szymanski, Allen Wells, and Pete Gaston

Moon Patrol -- Scott Smith (Programmer), Courtney Granner (Graphics), & Robert Vieria (Sound)

Roadrunner -- Possibly Lorie Shaffer

Robotron: 2084 -- Judy Bogart

 

 

Tempest

 

Cool, Thanks Tempest. Cafeman said that Joust and Ms. Pac Man where done by the same person in this thread:

 

www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=70693&hl=GCC%20%205200&st=25

 

Allan

Edited May 7, 2008 by Allan

[+Cafeman]

Yes, about a year or 2 ago, I talked with the Joust/Ms Pac guy via email. I'll check later to see if I still have the email, I had forgotten all about it until this memory jog.

[Rybags]

Kangaroo - I don't think anyone would own up to it.

 

Road Runner - Wha? Does it actually exist, even in Alpa/proto on the 800/5200?

 

Super Breakout - I haven't looked at the code, but could it be a port from the 2600 version?

[+Allan]

Road Runner - Wha? Does it actually exist, even in Alpa/proto on the 800/5200?

Yes, it's in the Atariage database for download.

 

Allan

[Tempest]

Super Breakout - I haven't looked at the code, but could it be a port from the 2600 version?

 

The 5200 version was a straight "port" from the Atari 8-bit version.

 

Tempest

[Rev]

i wonder where these people are now?

[+Cafeman]

Yes, about a year or 2 ago, I talked with the Joust/Ms Pac guy via email. I'll check later to see if I still have the email, I had forgotten all about it until this memory jog.

 

Amazing. I found the emails with Steve. Here they are in their entirety but don't expect too much info... this is from June 2005:

 

Email1. After I contacted Steve asking if he was the one who did Joust 5200 (I found him via some pics he posted, unrelated to vintage gaming). His reply:

 

Thanks! I didn't imagine I'd run into a fan when I posted those pictures. I

also was a BIG fan of the arcade Joust - it was one of those few games that

really did something different with how you controlled and fought.

 

Your review of Joust is fair. The Pterodactyl was problematic because of the

hardware limitations, so rather than make the regular gameplay pay for

something that was on the screen rarely, we did a minimal implementation of

the 'pterry'. I don't recall the difference in the hatching sequence that

you mention; but it has been a few years, so I'll take your worked for it.

 

Feel free to _ask_ any questions you want.Whether I'll remember enough to

answer them after 20 years is another matter.

 

BTW - I also worked on the 5200 version of Ms. PacMan (as well as several

titles for the 7800)

 

Email 2. Check out his embedded replies marked by [szy] after my questions:

 

[szy]The technical questions are too long past for me to remember much. a few

replies below:

 

Joust 5200 is very well programmed. There are tons of birds on screen, yet

you only have 4 players and 4 missiles. I'm wondering what graphics mode

you used and how you got all those birds. Specifically --

 

1. I believe you coded the game in a pixel mode, Antic E is what it looks

like. That's the higher resolution 4-color mode. I'm not sure what you

recall (I've been coding 5200 stuff the past few years so the Antic

specifics are still in my head), but Antic 4 is a common character mode

(5-colors) and Antic E is probably the most common Pixel graphics mode.

You probably used Antic 4 for Ms. Pac-Man. Did you use Antic E for Joust?

 

[szy] don't remember.

 

2. Reusing players and missiles -- I'm just guessing that you used one

Player for the main bird (wide missile for the lance?), and one player for

the 2nd player. This leaves 2 players left for the enemy birds. I'm

assuming you only have 2 on a horizontal strip at one time, and through the

code controlled their ascent / descent to control flickering? Does this

sound correct, and what other details can you tell me about how you got all

the birds on-screen. If memory serves, every once in while you'll see some

flicker but it isn't constant flicker like in some games.

 

[szy] we did not use missiles for the lances - each bird was a single

graphic element. I do think you are right, we dedicated 2 players to the 2

player birds and time-shared the remaining 2 players for the remaining

opponent birds. As to lack of flicker - that's GCC's coding. While I have

forgotten the details, We discovered some tricks to time-share sprites in a

way that minimized flicker. The most famous example was robotron 2084 which

no one believed we could do because of the number of elements in the game. I

know we used one missile for the pteradactyl, and at least one for the eggs.

 

3. The eggs -- are they missiles, or background pixel graphics? They bounce

awfully nice. How'd you do that?

 

[szy] eggs were at least one missile - they may actually have been 3

missiles time-shared. The bounce was just basic physics (coded very

carefully to be fast enough).

 

4. Did you get help on the art or sounds? I'm assuming GCC had 1 guy become

the sound & music expert & do all the games' audio -- is that true?

 

[szy] Are our peak we had 2 sound artists and 3 graphic artists on the team.

We never got help from outside.

 

I'll leave it at that for now. Feel free to get as techie as you want (in your replies)

 

[szy] want and ability are 2 things :-)

 

In fact ... if you still have source code lying around, I would love to peruse it some day.

 

[szy] _someplace_ I know I have a listing of Ms PacMan. Not sure about

Joust.

 

 

And finally, Email3. A few more questions. Steve couldn't remember much, its been over 20 years after all!

 

 

1. You replied "I don't recall the difference in the hatching sequence

that

you mention; but it has been a few years, so I'll take your word for it"

 

==> Yep, in the arcade, the egg would hatch into a little guy, and a

riderless buzzard would appear and fly towards him. You could run him over

(just like collecting an egg) before the bird got to him & he mounted it.

 

In the 5200 version, the egg hatched directly into a buzzard rider and just

sat there for a few moments. But the same rules applied as with flying

buzzard riders -- it you hit it too low, you'd get killed. Hope that jogs

your memory -- and it was a fine trade-off in my opinion.

 

[szy] Ah! now I recall. Yes, the issue was having the additional aminations

for the birdless rider and the riderless bird (plus the increased sprite

count to have both on the screen, particularly since they had to end up on

the same rows).

 

2. Other than some tech questions which I already sent an email about, I

was wondering if you remembered who at GCC programmed which Atari 5200

games.

 

[szy] I'm asking around.

 

 

Were the games created for the Atari 8bits and ported to the 5200,

or vice versa?

 

[szy] Actually they were separate efforts. The machines were different

enough that it wasn't connecting the development. We'd share some of the

graphics and music work; but the engineering was completely separate (so,

for instance, I did not do the 2600 Joust).

[+Allan]

Thanks for the post, Cafeman.

 

Allan

[+Allan]

I found the list below on the GCC website. So at least we know which company did what. Now we need to fill in the names.

 

Millipede (ours),

Joust (ours),

Dig Dug (ours),

Mario Brothers (not ours),

Kangaroo (not ours),

Xevious (ours),

Berserk (ours),

Baseball (not ours),

Pole position (ours),

Jungle Hunt (don't remember),

moon patrol (don't remember),

Choplifter (ours),

Pengo (not ours),

Robotron (ours).

 

Edit:

I just noticed in another of their pics that they had the box for the 5200 Kangaroo (with different artwork than the released box) so Steve must have made a mistake with the above list.

 

Allan

Edited October 7, 2008 by Allan

[Tempest]

I found the list below on the GCC website. So at least we know which company did what. Now we need to fill in the names.

Millipede (ours),

Xevious (ours),

Jungle Hunt (don't remember),

moon patrol (don't remember),

Robotron (ours).

I think they're getting 5200 and 7800 mixed up. All of the above games were done by Atari.

 

Millipede - Steve Crandall

Xevious - Jim Huether

Jungle Hunt - Allen Merrell

Moon Patrol - Scott Smith

Robotron - Judy Bogart

 

Now the 7800 versions of these games were all done by GCC (never heard of a 7800 Jungle Hunt though).

 

Tempest