Which port would you like to see next for the SGM

[opcode]

As for arcade games, if the game uses a Z80 CPU (like Donkey Kong, for example) then it can be ported more or less easely to the ColecoVision, especially now that we have the Super Game Module which gives the console more RAM to work with.

 

I wish it was that simple, as we would have 3 or 4 arcade ports every year if that was the case.

[Pixelboy]

I wish it was that simple, as we would have 3 or 4 arcade ports every year if that was the case.

 

Yeah, I know. I was just trying to stay concise.

[slab0meat]

Very late to the party, but I voted for Pengo. If Snokie isn't an option, I'll take a different penguin.

[VectorGamer]

We really need Bosconian

[ColecoDan]

We really need Bosconian

 

I thought people said Star Com was very similar to Bosconian. If that is the truth then done!

[VectorGamer]

I thought people said Star Com was very similar to Bosconian. If that is the truth then done!

 

Well what frakin' good is it if only a choice group of people with deep pockets were able to get their hands on it? We need a Bosconian for the masses!

[tomjscott]

I never even heard of Star Com, but Bosconian was one of my all time favorite arcade games so I would definitely be interested in getting my hands on a Colecovision version.

 

Just found Starcom Coleco video and yes it looks like a clone. Is that available now?

Edited April 22, 2013 by tomjscott

[ColecoDan]

Well what frakin' good is it if only a choice group of people with deep pockets were able to get their hands on it? We need a Bosconian for the masses!

 

Good for me since I was in the group

 

You never know Collectorvision seems to be starting to re-distribute some of their older games maybe they will eventually redistribute the Star Com without all the 30th anniversary hoopla that was around it that increased its price this time around.

[ColecoDan]

I never even heard of Star Com, but Bosconian was one of my all time favorite arcade games so I would definitely be interested in getting my hands on a Colecovision version.

 

Just found Starcom Coleco video and yes it looks like a clone. Is that available now?

 

According to J-F the Star Com colecovision version was supposed to be similar to Bosconian, now since I have never played Bosconian I can not really comment on if it is close or not even in the same neighborhood therefore saying J-F is crazy if it is not.

[NIAD]

As CollectorVision mentioned, StarCom may one day see a re-release on the ColecoVision, but it would be retitled/repackaged as Bosconian so as to differentiate it from the special CV 30th Anniversary StarCom release.

 

The programmer, bfg.gamepassion, did a very good job with the game. It was not ported from another version, rather programmed from the ground up by studying the arcade game... just like Coleco programmers used to do.

[+grips03]

StarCom has a scoring bug and it doesn't support the voices. Perhaps if they re-release they could SGM enhance it with the voice sound effect

[kaz321123]

The sound effects/voices in Bosconian were SO fun to listen to.

 

My friend and I in high school used to play this game and others frequently in a 'battle of classic games'. He'd pick 5 of his 'best' and I'd pick my 5, and we'd sometimes play for money or w/e.

 

Well point is, we'd often joke while playing Bosconian, rewording what we thought the voices were saying.

 

 

"Spy ship sighted" we would always instead say "Apple Cider!"

 

"Alert, Alert"=we thought sounded like-I lied, I lied

 

And then of course when the game first starts...the game says:

 

"BLAST OFF!", to which we thought sounded really hilarious. Sounded like a 'Censored' solitary activity people are known to do alone

 

 

The other voice was: "Battle Stations", which actually sounded just like that.

[Pixelboy]

StarCom has a scoring bug and it doesn't support the voices. Perhaps if they re-release they could SGM enhance it with the voice sound effect

 

Just a note: The extra sound chip in the SGM doesn't really help with voices. It's still too CPU-intensive to do voices at the same time as running the game.

 

EDIT: This makes me wonder: Would it be possible to do the CV equivalent of the Intellivoice module? I see this possibility where the SGM's plastic casing could be re-used (with a different color to make it distinguishable from the SGM) with totally different electronics inside that would be dedicated to speech synthesis.

 

Sounds like a cool homebrew project to me! I'd even be tempted to finance it, if someone out there was interested!

Edited April 22, 2013 by Pixelboy

[+grips03]

Could the voices be added between levels, like "Blast off" and then level starts?

[Pixelboy]

Could the voices be added between levels, like "Blast off" and then level starts?

 

You can play voice samples whenever you want, but you have to freeze the game while the sample plays.

[VectorGamer]

The sound effects/voices in Bosconian were SO fun to listen to.

 

My friend and I in high school used to play this game and others frequently in a 'battle of classic games'. He'd pick 5 of his 'best' and I'd pick my 5, and we'd sometimes play for money or w/e.

 

Well point is, we'd often joke while playing Bosconian, rewording what we thought the voices were saying.

 

 

"Spy ship sighted" we would always instead say "Apple Cider!"

 

"Alert, Alert"=we thought sounded like-I lied, I lied

 

And then of course when the game first starts...the game says:

 

"BLAST OFF!", to which we thought sounded really hilarious. Sounded like a 'Censored' solitary activity people are known to do alone

 

 

The other voice was: "Battle Stations", which actually sounded just like that.

 

I thought "Alert, Alert" was "Alive, Alive" and "Blast off" was "Lock On"

 

Any version ported to the ColecoVision should contain the digitized speech and make it just as unintelligible as the arcade game.

[tomjscott]

I thought "Alert, Alert" was "Alive, Alive" and "Blast off" was "Lock On"

 

Any version ported to the ColecoVision should contain the digitized speech and make it just as unintelligible as the arcade game.

 

I hate to be the only one in this, but I never had a problem understanding what it was saying. I do agree that the voices need to be in there. That, plus the unique background sound was what gave the game a sense of urgency. I always felt on the edge of my seat kind of fear that I wouldn't be able to quite destroy all the bases and fighters before getting destroyed. Watching the Starcom version doesn't quite convey that same feeling.

[opcode]

Indeed, the SGM cannot help much with voices. I am planning to port Bosconian from the MSX, which includes the Blast Off voice. Voices during gameplay unfortunately aren't possible with our current hardware. I usually prefer to port arcade games straight from arcade code, but in Bosconian case, the MSX version is almost as good as we can get.

 

About having a voice chip, some iterations of the SGM included an Oki ADPCM sound chip for voice, but I dropped that in the final version to keep costs down. And truth be told, speech chips (like the one used in the IntelliVoice) suck, sorry for saying that.

Creating a new version of the SGM would be possible, but that would conflict with my plans for the CV2, as whatever we add through modules would need to be added to the CV2, and the CV2 already includes an OPL4 chip that is capable of not only play sampled sound, as it can play 24 channels of whatever sound you want, so no need for ADPCM stuff.

 

Edited April 23, 2013 by opcode

[Pixelboy]

About having a voice chip, some iterations of the SGM included an Oki ADPCM sound chip for voice, but I dropped that in the final version to keep costs down. And truth be told, speech chips (like the one used in the IntelliVoice) suck, sorry for saying that.

 

Well, yeah, it does suck technically, but speech synthesis (the way the Intellivoice does it) also sounds so retro-eighties, in a cool sort of way. It's something like listening to old vynil records, it really takes you back to the good ol' days.

 

Creating a new version of the SGM would be possible, but that would conflict with my plans for the CV2, as whatever we add through modules would need to be added to the CV2, and the CV2 already includes an OPL4 chip that is capable of not only play sampled sound, as it can play 24 channels of whatever sound you want, so no need for ADPCM stuff.

 

Well, I was thinking of something that's not really a new version of the SGM per say, but something that would ONLY contain the speech electronics, no extra RAM or MSX sound chip. Really, it would just use the same casing to reduce production costs. But you're right, it would conflict with the CV2, if the CV2 doesn't have a front expansion port like the original CV console. It would mean that whatever game designed for use with the speech module could only be played on an original CV and not on the CV2.

 

So basically, what you're saying is that we'll need to wait for the CV2 before we'll hear any non-game-freezing speech samples in future homebrew CV games.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzl5m4VxxEA

 

That's the MSX version? It looks pretty good, action-wise. The scrolling in particular looks near-perfect.

[ColecoDan]

Well, yeah, it does suck technically, but speech synthesis (the way the Intellivoice does it) also sounds so retro-eighties, in a cool sort of way. It's something like listening to old vynil records, it really takes you back to the good ol' days.

 

 

 

Well, I was thinking of something that's not really a new version of the SGM per say, but something that would ONLY contain the speech electronics, no extra RAM or MSX sound chip. Really, it would just use the same casing to reduce production costs. But you're right, it would conflict with the CV2, if the CV2 doesn't have a front expansion port like the original CV console. It would mean that whatever game designed for use with the speech module could only be played on an original CV and not on the CV2.

 

So basically, what you're saying is that we'll need to wait for the CV2 before we'll hear any non-game-freezing speech samples in future homebrew CV games.

 

 

Pixelboy your idea would also mean that you couldn't use the SGM with the voice expansion either unless you were going to make sure the voice had an expansion slot out the front so you could attach the SGM but then that would go against being able to use the SGM as the container which was your original idea to cut costs.

[Pixelboy]

Pixelboy your idea would also mean that you couldn't use the SGM with the voice expansion either unless you were going to make sure the voice had an expansion slot out the front so you could attach the SGM but then that would go against being able to use the SGM as the container which was your original idea to cut costs.

 

Right. But you know, there are plenty of "voice-enhanced" games that could be done with just 1K of RAM. I look at such Inty games as Bomb Squad or Tron Solar Sailor, and those could probably be done on the CV with 1K of RAM. I'm not sure how much "voice data" would need to be kept on the cartridge though...

[ColecoDan]

Right. But you know, there are plenty of "voice-enhanced" games that could be done with just 1K of RAM. I look at such Inty games as Bomb Squad or Tron Solar Sailor, and those could probably be done on the CV with 1K of RAM. I'm not sure how much "voice data" would need to be kept on the cartridge though...

 

Good point you could still do games that don't need the SGM. I just figured that most programers might start switching to SGM type games. Except for the stubborn ones that want to fit everything into 1K.

[opcode]

Good point you could still do games that don't need the SGM. I just figured that most programers might start switching to SGM type games. Except for the stubborn ones that want to fit everything into 1K.

 

Ha!

 

About plugging multiple SGMs, that would be possible with an expansion port bay type of connector, were you can have a box with multiple expansion ports connected to the CV expansion port, so that each "expanded" expansion port could accept a different SGM. But as I said, why do that with the CV2 just around the corner (which in homebrew parlance means 5 years from now).

[jblenkle]

Speaking of connectors, on the side port of my ADAM I have a multi-edge connector that allows me to plug in three devices. I've got a speech synthesizer and midi interface plugged in and would consider plugging the SGM in there, but as the connectors are the same I would need a gender changer so I could plug them together.

 

Is there such a thing that would be workable?

 

 

Ha!

 

About plugging multiple SGMs, that would be possible with an expansion port bay type of connector, were you can have a box with multiple expansion ports connected to the CV expansion port, so that each "expanded" expansion port could accept a different SGM. But as I said, why do that with the CV2 just around the corner (which in homebrew parlance means 5 years from now).

[san-d-2000]

Talking about port, would love to see Tron ported.