Internal Atari email about Crystal Castles & Millipede (

[Inky]

Interesting. The stupid thing is that this kind o"rush to market" mentality is still going on.

 

Where I worked over the summer doing CBT's, for Microsoft none the less, we had a meeting one day, turns out our bosses wanted 40 courses done in about 2 months. (It takes 2 weeks just to do one).The lot of us developers just just looked at each other and thought, WHAA???? Are you guys crazy?? What ever happend to Quality Assurance??...Yeah, we can finish them, they just won't work....

 

Don't even get me started on deadlines...

 

The company I work for introduced a new insurance product called Vision. It was a fully 32 bit app. Well, the decision makers gave a date for it to be released. When it was, over half the features in it (and there are TONS in this product) wouldn't work. They'd give a message 'not yet implemented' just because the people 'upstairs' would rather deliver a half-assed product on time, rather than a trustworthy product a little late.

[oesii]

So hey, there are two different versions of Millipede floating around?  Is the General Computer translation currently available on the Internet, and it so, how does their version and Atari's compare?

Hope that helps.

 

 

Thanks for the game Thomas, for some reason or another I had never tried out that prototype. I also prefer it to the Atari release although it could use some smoothing out. I mainly like it because of the sounds and the character animation. I guess that showed Atari that your shooter didn't need to be an ugly block?

[Inky]

I have to say, it's pretty sweet...

[Big Player]

I really like the 2600 version of Millipede, it's a much better port than Centipede.

 

Well now I must add the CGC version is better than the Atari version.

 

Did it use the extra RAM in the superchip? If not, it looks like they did more with (slightly) less.

[Scott Stilphen]

Both versions are 16K.

 

The GCC version looks nicer (that title screen is sweet), but I prefer the Atari version. The graphics are a bit smaller so the screen doesn't look as 'crowded', and it's easier to locate the DDT boxes. Plus it just plays better IMHO.

[Goochman]

2 comments:

 

1. We never have time/money to do it right the first time but we always have time and money to do it over

 

2. Where is the GCC Milipede Rom?

 

 

Software dev will never change no matter what - just get faster at what you do

[Thomas Jentzsch]

2.  Where is the GCC Milipede Rom?

Right in this thread! Just go back one page.

[Tempest]

I'm going to update my page tonight, but after playing with the GCC rom for awhile (all this time I assumed it was the Millipede 1.1 rom that Dave mentioned in an interview) I can say that both are good, but nether is better. They both have their good points and bad points.

 

For those who have played the GCC version in depth can you tell me if:

 

1. There are mosquitos and dragonflies in the game

2. Do the difficluty switches do anything? (did they do anything in the Atari version?)

3. Are the point values the same as the Atari version?

 

I plan to play it more tonight, but I can't get far enough on the emulator at work to answer these questions (not that I should be playing Millipede at work mind you).

 

Tempest

[Goochman]

I was going to ask the same question. It appears the GCC veriosn doesnt have the fly waves.

 

I like the Atari version better - screen is cleaner and colors are crisper IMHO.

[broncoman]

im sorry im still learning but what is gcc version what does that mean ?

[MegaManFan]

im sorry im still learning but what is gcc version what does that mean ?

 

Just another company that was trying to bring Millipede to the market. They thought if they made a home version of it Atari would license it, but Atari had no intention of doing so. And personally, having not played the GCC version, I really can't fault the Atari version. Is it blocky? Perhaps, but it plays well and all the action that should be there IS there. It's got good sound too, Paul Slocum quality.

[Agent X]

I enjoyed Crystal Castles on the 2600 as well. I didn't think it was bad--in fact, I thought it was one of the better ones. Sure, the maze layouts are nothing like the arcade game, and you can't walk behind the maze walls, but considering the limitations of the hardware I think they did a good job. The enemies look good, and they behave very much like their arcade counterparts. The enemy variety was one of the most appealing aspects of Crystal Castles, and the programmer nailed it pretty well (except that the ghost is missing altogether if I recall correctly).

 

Now, onto Millipede. I had the ROM image of the GCC version it for a while, but never knew it was a SuperChip until now, and so I thought it was a bad dump or something and never really played it. Well, I finally tried it on PC Atari Emulator and...WOW! This is quite a bit different from the released Millipede! In many ways this is better than the released game, especially in terms of the sound effects. The Atari sounds were decent enough, but the pitch is wrong on some of them (such as the extra life music). Some aspects of the graphics (such as your character) look better on GCC's version, but others (such as the beetle and DDT capsules) look better on Atari's. The GCC version plays fairly well, but it's missing the ability to choose your starting score (higher scores increase the difficulty). As someone else pointed out in this thread, the bee wave seems to be missing (I did see the mosquito wave, though). The striped mushrooms on GCC's version stand out a bit more, but the smaller size of the Atari version's mushrooms and millipedes effectively makes the playfield bigger. Finally, GCC's version doles out extra lives every 10,000 points (instead of every 15,000), which seems like it could make the game easier in the long run.

 

I'd really have to play the GCC version some more to come to a final conclusion on which one is better. For now, I prefer the version of Millipede that was actually released, mostly because the gameplay seems more accurate to the arcade game. The GCC version does have some appeal, though. It would have been nice if both teams could have somehow combined their efforts into a single game containing the best qualities of both versions.

[Xot]

No doubt about it, it is in fact the GCC version.

 

Is there a ROM dump of this around somewhere? I'm a big 'pede fan and would love to see this 'alternate version' of 2600 Millipede.

[oesii]

Before Thomas chides you , look at the 1st page of this thread where he attached it to his post..

[Big Player]

Xot, see Thomas Jentzsch's post on page 1 of this thread for the GCC ROM of Millipede.

[NE146]

This is very intriguing!!! An alternate Millipede? Man I'm glad I clicked this thread!