lucifershalo Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 First I have to say that I am an Atari 2600 man so I like to discover their conversions for other consoles I tested some today on the TI99 and what a disappointment music and game noises are not better, if not worse than 2600 graphics are better but sometimes so badly wrong in Dig Dug , all the characters so largely fat in Jungle Hunt, your character seems to be a paper doll simply pined on the vines, the crocodiles are fatter than my labrador and in general, overall for Pac Man and Ms Pac Man, they are so sluggish maybe it is because I am in Pal 50Hz (I suppose) but I dont have that impression with other games what do you think? BUT Defender is quite good, clear not too crowded fast , but not too much, great! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 I really don't play my Atarisoft games that often. I think they did okay on Pole Position II and Picnic Paranoia... my favorite 3rd party developer was Funware... by far and away. -Henhouse -Video Vegas -Ambulance -Rabbit Trail -St. Nick Of these, Henhouse and St. Nick are my favorites. If you haven't played Henhouse, do yourself a favor and GET IT!! St. Nick is truly twisted... Witches sneak into Santa's workshop and create havoc and mayhem. I really think the developer must have been high. =) Great game, nonetheless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucifershalo Posted February 15, 2011 Author Share Posted February 15, 2011 Ambulance is "short"but fun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucifershalo Posted February 15, 2011 Author Share Posted February 15, 2011 Furthermore Atarisoft games don't like the speech module you have to unplug it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 First I have to say that I am an Atari 2600 man so I like to discover their conversions for other consoles I tested some today on the TI99 and what a disappointment music and game noises are not better, if not worse than 2600 graphics are better but sometimes so badly wrong in Dig Dug , all the characters so largely fat in Jungle Hunt, your character seems to be a paper doll simply pined on the vines, the crocodiles are fatter than my labrador and in general, overall for Pac Man and Ms Pac Man, they are so sluggish maybe it is because I am in Pal 50Hz (I suppose) but I dont have that impression with other games what do you think? Although they may not be arcade quality, surely you can't say that the 2600 games are better than the TI Atarisoft versions ? The bonk.....bonk....bong and flicker of the 2600 Pac-man is better than the TI ? 2 level Donkey Kong ? And on and on and on. I have played the Atari soft titles on the TI, C64 and the originals on the 2600. The TI and C64 are neck and neck, sometimes one is better than the other but they both leave the 2600 behind in game play, graphics and sound. Don't get me wrong I have a 2600 and like to play it on occasion but it is what it is..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucifershalo Posted February 15, 2011 Author Share Posted February 15, 2011 First I have to say that I am an Atari 2600 man so I like to discover their conversions for other consoles I tested some today on the TI99 and what a disappointment music and game noises are not better, if not worse than 2600 graphics are better but sometimes so badly wrong in Dig Dug , all the characters so largely fat in Jungle Hunt, your character seems to be a paper doll simply pined on the vines, the crocodiles are fatter than my labrador and in general, overall for Pac Man and Ms Pac Man, they are so sluggish maybe it is because I am in Pal 50Hz (I suppose) but I dont have that impression with other games what do you think? Although they may not be arcade quality, surely you can't say that the 2600 games are better than the TI Atarisoft versions ? The bonk.....bonk....bong and flicker of the 2600 Pac-man is better than the TI ? 2 level Donkey Kong ? And on and on and on. I have played the Atari soft titles on the TI, C64 and the originals on the 2600. The TI and C64 are neck and neck, sometimes one is better than the other but they both leave the 2600 behind in game play, graphics and sound. Don't get me wrong I have a 2600 and like to play it on occasion but it is what it is..... Donkey Kong is from Coleco/CBS, not Atari Dig Dug, Ms Pac Man and Jungle Hunt , if not graphically better, play and sound better on the 2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
S1500 Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 IMO the Atarisoft releases were the best cart-based games available on the TI. It beat the snot out of the TI-made game titles. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 My only beef with the Atarisoft titles is with Donkey Kong. Why include all four levels then gimp the third by not having any springs? What's the point of the level then? It's really frustrating. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 I don't know... Alpiner, Parsec, Tunnels of Doom.... I'd take any of those over any Atarisoft cart. Just my 2 cents. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Donkey Kong is from Coleco/CBS, not Atari Dig Dug, Ms Pac Man and Jungle Hunt , if not graphically better, play and sound better on the 2600 Uh Fact check.... DK by Atarisoft (the maker we were talking about) for the TI and C64 (as well as other ?) As far as what is better ? You're entitled to your mistaken beliefs Perhaps it is your 50 Hertz console that is causing problems or maybe a die hard love of the 2600. At any rate your just flat wrong my friend IMHO. The only true turds I know of for the TI by Atarisoft are Picnic-crap-a-noia (sorry Mike) and what ever the hell that little defender type clone game was. But that may have more to do with my inability to play them than anything else. At any rate.... bonk bonk bonk, eat those rectangles lucifer Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucifershalo Posted February 15, 2011 Author Share Posted February 15, 2011 Donkey Kong is from Coleco/CBS, not Atari Dig Dug, Ms Pac Man and Jungle Hunt , if not graphically better, play and sound better on the 2600 Uh Fact check.... DK by Atarisoft (the maker we were talking about) for the TI and C64 (as well as other ?) As far as what is better ? You're entitled to your mistaken beliefs Perhaps it is your 50 Hertz console that is causing problems or maybe a die hard love of the 2600. At any rate your just flat wrong my friend IMHO. The only true turds I know of for the TI by Atarisoft are Picnic-crap-a-noia (sorry Mike) and what ever the hell that little defender type clone game was. But that may have more to do with my inability to play them than anything else. At any rate.... bonk bonk bonk, eat those rectangles lucifer someone is looking for a fight the DK, I was talking about the 2600 version Dig Dug, Ms Pac Man and Jungle Hunt on TI99 are sluggish (Defender proves that 50hz has nothing to do with it), and the introduction music is crap Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Dig Dug, Ms Pac Man and Jungle Hunt on TI99 are sluggish (Defender proves that 50hz has nothing to do with it), and the introduction music is crap It's probably just your 50 hertz machine if you don't like the music (plays to slow.) As far as your PAL machine... If a game is framing from the VDP then it would run sluggish if it were designed for NTSC and running on PAL. If you are playing cart dumps instead of the carts then beware that they are not all the same as the carts. Some have bugs and/or operate a bit differently. They were dumped, disassembled and changed to run from memory not bank switched cart space therefor possibly different from the original. Maybe you are comparing apples to oranges As far as picking a fight ? I wasn't the one who came into the house of TI dogging out the games.... That was you. if you remember . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Some of the Atarisoft titles did cut some corners, particularly in the sound effects: weren't there enough audio channels on the 99/4a to play the ghost and dot-eating sound effects at the same time in Ms. Pac-Man, for example? But these are only small complaints. I actually like the Atarisoft titles, and I only wish that Robotron had been given an official release. I'd love to play that on the real hardware! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Since we have the game now... it would be possible to put it onto cart, I believe... if nothing else, reverse engineer it starting with graphics and moving towards gameplay. With out technology and tools today, we could make a Robotron 2084 game that SMOKES every other one out there.... =) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 [quote name='jaybird3rd' date='Tue Feb 15, 2011 1:13 PM' timestamp='1297797204' I'd love to play that on the real hardware! You can ! Google Hummingbird EPROMS and Bob will sell you an EPROM for around 5 bucks. You will need a bank switching board (perhaps an old Atari board will work.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lucifershalo Posted February 15, 2011 Author Share Posted February 15, 2011 Dig Dug, Ms Pac Man and Jungle Hunt on TI99 are sluggish (Defender proves that 50hz has nothing to do with it), and the introduction music is crap It's probably just your 50 hertz machine if you don't like the music (plays to slow.) As far as your PAL machine... If a game is framing from the VDP then it would run sluggish if it were designed for NTSC and running on PAL. If you are playing cart dumps instead of the carts then beware that they are not all the same as the carts. Some have bugs and/or operate a bit differently. They were dumped, disassembled and changed to run from memory not bank switched cart space therefor possibly different from the original. Maybe you are comparing apples to oranges As far as picking a fight ? I wasn't the one who came into the house of TI dogging out the games.... That was you. if you remember . I am playing the real carts and I like TI and its games just disappointed and clearly some people agree that Atari went cheap with their TI adaptation Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Dig Dug, Ms Pac Man and Jungle Hunt on TI99 are sluggish (Defender proves that 50hz has nothing to do with it), and the introduction music is crap It's probably just your 50 hertz machine if you don't like the music (plays to slow.) As far as your PAL machine... If a game is framing from the VDP then it would run sluggish if it were designed for NTSC and running on PAL. If you are playing cart dumps instead of the carts then beware that they are not all the same as the carts. Some have bugs and/or operate a bit differently. They were dumped, disassembled and changed to run from memory not bank switched cart space therefor possibly different from the original. Maybe you are comparing apples to oranges As far as picking a fight ? I wasn't the one who came into the house of TI dogging out the games.... That was you. if you remember . I am playing the real carts and I like TI and its games just disappointed and clearly some people agree that Atari went cheap with their TI adaptation OK lucifer we will drop it. Glad you like the TI. As far as being cheap ? I would say that the name of the game back then was get it out fast, before interest faded. That was epidemic for all computers and consoles. The boxes always out shined the actual game be it Atari, TI or anything else;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 I really don't play my Atarisoft games that often. I think they did okay on Pole Position II and Picnic Paranoia... WTF?!? Really? Those are easily the worst two IMO MOST Atarisoft titles on the TI rock. Donkey Kong is incredible. Centipede is amazing, easily my favorite conversion ever and I thought it even featured true analogue play with the rollerball, but after a quick game, I guess it doesn't. Still has an arcade feel to it though. Defender is great, plays well and is among the few conversions on any platform that's actually playable (yes, the screen kinda stutters, but so do MOST versions of Defender). Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man are outrageously good conversions. Dig Dug rocks (bad pun) - but I agree about the characters being too fat. Moon Patrol kicks ass, 'cept for maybe some shoddy collision detection. Jungle Hunt is near perfect. And then there's Shamus and Protector. Shamus is a good Berzerk-like clone and Protector is what... like Defender meets Parsec maybe? Latter two are 'okay' IMO, but the ones I play the least. Pole Position sucks by default (don't care for 3D driving games on early systems), but I just got through playing it and it doesn't seem "that" bad I guess all things considered. Might be ugly, but the gameplay seems decent enough. The first couple of levels on the Pac-Man games seem slow, but they do eventually speed up. Yeah, I'd easily say TI Atarisoft titles rank among the best 3rd party stuff available. Absolutely love 'em! ('cept Picnic Paranoia, even as a "collector" I didn't want that POS tainting my other carts). When games look, play and sound like they could have been written in BASIC is where I draw the line on a cart from Atarisoft. Oh and not sure what kind of TI you have, but on my silver model, Atarisoft carts operate just fine with the Speech Synthesizer plugged in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Well, I have to say... There is no other good racing game on the TI, so that one was the only one I played as a youngster... Perhaps the nostalgia clouds my judgment on that one. =) I own almost all the Atarisoft carts... They're good games and I'm glad to have them... That being said, the Atarisoft titles aren't my favorite overall, but they're quite good. Anyone here have a copy of Moon Patrol? Interesting scrolling in that one. I think the mountains in the background are actually SPRITEs.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Anyone here have a copy of Moon Patrol? Interesting scrolling in that one. I think the mountains in the background are actually SPRITEs.. I have all the games I commented on, 'cept Picnic which I sold off a while back Okay, just checked out Moon Patrol again on a real TI. Its backgrounds scroll pretty damn smoothly with a nice parallax effect. Rear background scrolls perfectly smooth, while the foreground is a *little* jumpy. Hardly though. You think the tips of them are sprites or something? No way. I think that they'd scroll more smoothly if so and wouldn't be as large either. Gotta be some crazy bitmapping (the TI can bitmap, right?) going on with some fancy machine or assembly language moving or redrawing it methinks. Sprites on the TI always seem to have this silky smooth floaty/airy quality to 'em. Sure seems to me the rocks, your buggy and the enemies may all be sprites. I'm no programmer though, so I'm sure someone will blow those ideas out of the water and I remember something about there being a limit to how many sprites can be on-screen at once. My least favorite aspect of the Atarisoft games is the fact they didn't come with end labels - so I made my own using a label maker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 4 SPRITEs on a horizontal scanline is the limit... The great thing about Moon Patrol is that looks smoother on the TI than on any other system. =) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc.hull Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 I really don't play my Atarisoft games that often. I think they did okay on Pole Position II and Picnic Paranoia... ('cept Picnic Paranoia, even as a "collector" I didn't want that POS tainting my other carts). Oh thank you..... Picnic Shit-o-la is indeed the crappiest POS ever to be encased in plastic. In fact I would wager that TI not only has better games than the 2600 but we also have the worst ever in the incredible chunk of dung. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Opry99er Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 Wow... that's not exactly a glowing endorsement... =) I kind of thought that about a few of TI's games.... but never about Picnic Paranoia. I really hated Zero Zap and The Attack... wanna talk about BASIC-esque? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GratedTopping Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 My thoughts: "Ms. Pac-man" was quite nice on the TI. "Moon Patrol" was the best in the line and a great conversion. The thing I disliked most with that was that even a slight touch to a crater and you lose a buggy. Aslo, the tire didn't pop-off the buggy when you crashed. "Donkey Kong" was certainly better than on the Atari 2600 + it had all four levels (though it surely should have had the springs). The worst from Atarisoft were "Picnic Paranoia" and especially "Pole Position". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
InfernalKeith Posted February 16, 2011 Share Posted February 16, 2011 No one has yet mentioned an obvious truth -- that Parker Brothers' TI conversions were light-years ahead of both TI AND Atarisoft in terms of looks, sounds, and gameplay. Q*Bert, Popeye and Frogger are all fantastic! I wish that team had been doing the Atarisoft conversions. Of the Atarisoft games, I think DK looks the best, but gameplay is definitely lacking. Some of the others, like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, are so sluggish, I've never spent a lot of time with them. Picnic Paranoia woulda been an impressive game from a kitchen-table software guy, but not from Atarisoft. Great premise, bad execution. I haven't tried the Robotron conversion, how is it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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