Asteroids video problem

[Blacklight]

I posted about this before but no one really responded.

I have two copies of "Asteroids". This problem occurs with both cartridges in both my regular Atari 2600 and my Atari 2600 Jr. The TV is an Envision Flat panel from a few years ago.

 

The problem is that the screen jumps up and down by a couple of centimeters in time with the flickering of the asteroids, shots, and ships. It makes the game almost unplayable (and very siezuer inducing). The cartridges have both been cleaned properly and are spotless. I don't have this problem with any of the other 100+ games in my collection. Do any of you have any idea as to what's going on? I know a lot of you are a LOT more tech savvy than I am when it comes to these things.

 

*Edit* I just discovered another very interesting issue with the "Asteroids" cartridges. I decided to try to switch the TV mode from Color to B/W and it doesn't work. Everything just stays in color. So I thought my switch was broken. Until I started plugging games in and trying the switch. The switch switches perfectly between black/white and color in all my other games.

 

This is a strange issue. What's going on here?

Edited September 13, 2012 by Blacklight

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Regarding the switch: This is not supported by Asteroids here, so everything is fine.

 

The screen jumping could be due to you using PAL carts in an NTSC TV. What's the color of the copyright text at the beginning? It should be orange and not violet.

[Blacklight]

One cartridge has NO copyright text.

The other one has the copyright and It looks orange/violet to me. It's almost a purpley red. My TV is cheap and really doesn't handle colors very well. The backlight is very poorly designed and is on the dim side making it hard to really tell. (Cheap Envision piece of crap)

Then again, I'm also colorblind so I'm going to have to ask my wife when she gets home. Is there any way to determine this by looking at the cart itself?

Edited September 13, 2012 by Blacklight

[eolcott]

I have come here, 10+ years later, to report that I have experienced the same thing!

 

I recently purchased a CX2600-A and eventually got an Asteroids cartridge. Immediately I noticed something wrong, it looks like the vertical hold was off, or something wasn't syncing properly. The asteroid sprites also looked like they were badly interleaved...

 

I took the cartridge apart and cleaned it spotless, then tried again and got the same result. I figured something was wrong with the console or the cartridge was a PAL version or a bad burn or something. The rest of my cartridge library worked without this issue, so I figured the cartridge was to blame. I returned it to the store and found another Asteroids cartridge similar to it - only to experience the exact same issue!

 

The first cartridge had an opening screen with ©1980 Atari for a few seconds, the second did not, so they were obviously slightly different versions, however both of them had the same shuddering effect.

 

So far, I've come to the conclusion that this manufacture of the CX2600-A is somehow incompatible with the Asteroids cartridge code. Anyone have any idea if this is the case and why this would be? It's a bummer not to be able to play Asteroids on this 2600, but now I'm more interested in the HOW and WHY...

[+MrZarniwoop]

With the original 2600 Asteroids, there's a programming issue that doesn't happen on most CRTs but can occur with analog-to-digital conversions trying to sync the video to some modern displays. Basically, real analog video is more forgiving with a real CRT in maintaining a stable picture than trying to plug into a modern digital LCD screen that's digitizing an unstable video signal. This cartridge, and some other games, have trouble locking into a start/end of a picture on some modern LCD panels.

 

A few options:

 

1. Use an old school CRT TV.

2. Use SpiceWare's fixed Atari 2600 Asteroids ROM file or Omegamatrix's fixed menu version on a Harmony, or PlusCart(+) cartridge, or similar flashcart.

3. Mod the 2600 for AV or RGB, and use a better scaler like a Framemeister or RetroTINK that may handle wider tolerances.

4. Play with an emulated console like the Hyperkin.

 

Details about the issue here.