What is wrong with The Extirpator

[Marius]

Hi

 

When I was a kid I had a tape "The Extirpator" ... I did not have much games, so I had enough time to play this game over and over again.

 

It is definately not the best game released for Atari 8bit, but for some (nostalgic) reasons I still love it. The music is great too ofcourse.

 

But now this:

 

Every Zone ends with one or more brick walls.

 

I experience two 'issues' with these walls:

 

1. Sometimes the bullets don't do a thing, so you can shoot what you want but nothing happens.

 

2. Even when you hit enough bricks, and they break out of the wall (so there is enough room to fly through) you still get hurt by the wall. Even when you are 100% sure the wall did not hit you.

 

I think these are flaws in the game. Especially issue #1 is a bit frustrating. It happens a lot... I finished the zone without being shot or hit, and then at the wall "the bug" occurs and there I lose almost all my shield, or even worse: I lose a ship.

 

On youtube there are not so many Extirpator movies, but I found one, in which you can see problem #1

 

The player shoots and shoots, but nothing happens first.

 

Before someone starts to say: you have to shoot several times on a brick: no... certainly not. In some other cases you even destroy two bricks with one bullet. It looks rather buggy to me.

 

Here is the youtube link... it starts around 1m10s ... it all happens around 1m12s

 

 

And the last:

 

In the hacked version of Steve Zipp. The PAUSE feature works...

 

On my original tape version of Firebird... the PAUSE feature fails. Is that known?

 

Greetz

M.

[Marius]

Oh I think i found the BREAK bug...

 

The BREAK key seems to be blocked, to prevent load errors on the tape (I think) and the BREAK Interrupt is not 'reset' as soon as the game starts.

 

After pressing RESET the game restarts (reset proof) now the pause feature works.

 

So it IS a bug on the tape version.

 

The other things are not solved yet

Greetz

M.

[+therealbountybob]

I don't remember about any bugs but The Extirpator was a one of my favourite 'budget' games, I posted it on the HSC play list

[SteveZipp]

Yes. I can recall cracking this game. My name in this mentioned in a picture of the game. Although it looks like it is text.

 

I fixed the pause bug, yes....

[Yautja]

About issue Nº 1, I think is due to guns getting *overheated*. In order to surpass that problem, you can press the space bar and switch to a second fire mode: from "L" (long distance mode) to "C" or "S" (close/short distance). I wrote something in my blog (use the translator tool, please): http://atariteca.blo...extirpator.html

 

- Y -

Edited April 29, 2012 by Yautja

[Fox-1 / mnx]

Yes. I can recall cracking this game.

 

Now that's a name I didn't expect to show up in an Atari forum after all those years :-)

[Stormtrooper of Death]

Yes. I can recall cracking this game. My name in this mentioned in a picture of the game. Although it looks like it is text.

 

I fixed the pause bug, yes....

 

Hi Steve Zipp, long time no C ! Seems like almost the whole old HTT crew is on this forum. Freddy (Frankenstein) is also member of this forum, in case you didnt know. (mocht je het nog niet weten.)

 

Ikzelf heb ook nog contact gehad met Prizm (Johan Otten)

 

Greetings from Richard V. / Stormtrooper of Death.

[SteveZipp]

Nice to hear from you all. Long time no see !

 

Extirpator was eigenlijk wel een klote spel, zeg! (Exptirpator sucked dick, acutally!)

Edited May 7, 2012 by SteveZipp

[Marius]

Nice to hear from you all. Long time no see !

 

Extirpator was eigenlijk wel een klote spel, zeg! (Exptirpator sucked dick, acutally!)

 

The title-tune is very cool. One of the best features of the game.

 

It was one of my first bought titles from my own earned money as a kid. On a tape. I remember very well that I had a very bad tape, I was really frustrated about that, I managed NOT to get it working on the day I bought it. Finally I copied the tape with a very good tape-deck on a good quality TDK tape, and then it worked. I still have that copy somewhere.

 

It is not really a very thrilling game indeed, although i have fond memories of it... once in a while I fire it up. I really like scene 5:2 where the ground-layers are this beautiful deep-red color.

[Fox-1 / mnx]

The game is ok-ish, except the up/down movement is too slow. Faster moving would add more action to it.

[commiegirl]

The game is ok-ish, except the up/down movement is too slow. Faster moving would add more action to it.

 

Slow up/down movement is fine at first, but eventually need a little faster moving....

[+Stephen]

The game is ok-ish, except the up/down movement is too slow. Faster moving would add more action to it.

 

Slow up/down movement is fine at first, but eventually need a little faster moving....

Is that a subtle hint?

[commiegirl]

Slow up/down movement is fine at first, but eventually need a little faster moving....

Is that a subtle hint?

 

I am not known for my subtlety, you should know that.

[+rdemming]

(Exptirpator sucked dick, acutally!)

 

If it really did that, then it would be good value for money

[Marius]

I am not known for my subtlety, you should know that.

 

Said by someone with a posts-counter=2

[SteveZipp]

If it really did that, then it would be good value for money

 

LOL!

[Magic Knight]

Gotta say its famous for having the A8 version of Rob hubbards classic Sanxion music and its quite a crap version im ashamed to admit....

 

If David Whittaker did the conversion (music) then it would probably be remembered better!

[Marius]

I disagree about the conversion. It is a very nice conversion IMHO and back in the 80's when I bought this game I was impressed by this music... And still from time to time I launch this game to listen to the music. It is definitely in my top 20 of atari 8 bit music!

[José Pereira]

I also really love the game and the music but I also have to say that bug or not our ship movement and some shoot/hit could be improved.

Maybe some of the coders could try to improve it...

[Mclaneinc]

If it really did that, then it would be good value for money

 

LOL.....A good old retro laugh...

[SteveZipp]

 

 

Now that's a name I didn't expect to show up in an Atari forum after all those years :-)

 

I understand that a lot of my old Atari friends hang out here!

[Nickolasgaspar]

I've finished that game ~10 times. The first time was by using a modified standard atari joystick with  quick-shot cell fitted on the white plastic stick. I used to leave the music roll until the demo loop . Then by pressing  reset I could enjoy the game while listening to the soundtrack(No sound FX).

At first I was trying to shoot everything on the screen, but when I read the goal of the game on the tape cover, I understood that it was a "fly through/escape" game and I started avoiding most of the "enemies". Trying to stay alive makes it a much easier game to finish.

[+CharlieChaplin]

In my opinion, the ship should be smaller and somewhat faster.

 

I still do not understand, why this looks like a typical shoot-em-up type game, when we in fact should avoid shooting and our main goal is simply to escape (would have prefered to shoot everything with quick lasers, photon torpedoes or whatever).

 

[Yautja]

6 hours ago, Nickolasgaspar said:

I've finished that game ~10 times. The first time was by using a modified standard atari joystick with  quick-shot cell fitted on the white plastic stick. I used to leave the music roll until the demo loop . Then by pressing  reset I could enjoy the game while listening to the soundtrack(No sound FX).

At first I was trying to shoot everything on the screen, but when I read the goal of the game on the tape cover, I understood that it was a "fly through/escape" game and I started avoiding most of the "enemies". Trying to stay alive makes it a much easier game to finish.

Has anybody been have to reproduce this trick using emulators? I gave it a shot with Altirra, without results.

Gary Rimmer, the author of the game, commented in this video: "I wish Firebird had done that (keep the music playing) on the original. It ads a lot to the game. I don't know how to do it, but from other posts I've seen it could be done".

 

 

[+CharlieChaplin]

On 5/5/2011 at 11:05 PM, Marius said:

Hi

 

When I was a kid I had a tape "The Extirpator" ... I did not have much games, so I had enough time to play this game over and over again.

 

It is definately not the best game released for Atari 8bit, but for some (nostalgic) reasons I still love it. The music is great too ofcourse.

 

But now this:

 

Every Zone ends with one or more brick walls.

 

I experience two 'issues' with these walls:

 

1. Sometimes the bullets don't do a thing, so you can shoot what you want but nothing happens.

 

2. Even when you hit enough bricks, and they break out of the wall (so there is enough room to fly through) you still get hurt by the wall. Even when you are 100% sure the wall did not hit you.

 

I think these are flaws in the game. Especially issue #1 is a bit frustrating. It happens a lot...

 

Well,

 

believe it or not, the "issue" with the wall was done intentionally!  Quoting the author G. Rimmer from the above mentioned youtube page:

 

"Hi, I was the author of this game. Lots of people have said about the poor collision detection. This was programed into the game for the wall. The detection for the wall was randomly accepted as a hit or not a hit so destruction was not certain. This was to make the game harder."

 

Pure evil I would say. And errrmm, I also read the sentence "this was done to make the game harder" in several other A8 programs - most of them do also contain some unfair elements/enemies/whatever.  Time to change that, e.g. give the Extirpator a proper + fully working collision detection, including the walls.