High Score Competition (Dec: Lunar Mission 2)

[pixelpedant]

5 hours ago, globeron said:

Pipes i probably never seen

 

Yes, Pipes does not survive.  Probably was never undertaken. 

 

Six of Funware's seventeen announced games do not survive at all, though five of those are attested in VIC-20 versions under the Creative branding (at that time, Funware's parent company).  The Funware branding was only used for TI-99 products, after the company's acquisition by Creative in mid-1983. 

 

I'm doing a deep dive into Funware right now, as may be obvious from this.  I'll be putting out a two-part series on Funware's games (and company history) shortly. 

[pixelpedant]

Well, that's now up.

 

This one just talks about Funware's commercially released games and early history. 

 

I'll get to their unreleased games (including Lobster Bay) subsequently. 

 

 

 

 

[globeron]

Thanks for the video and I like the joke about the order of letters in ST. Nick.

[pixelpedant]

68,200 this time, but again dying on level 9.

 

 

Think that'll probably be my final score.

[Count9929A]

37800

 

[Count9929A]

57700, MAME, 60hz

[pixelpedant]

Following up on that video on Funware's officially released cartridges, here's one on all their unreleased games (announced titles and prototypes):

 

 

 

Mainly motivated by Lobster Bay having been a real winner for me. 

 

[Count9929A]

74600, level 10; MAME, 60hz

[+arcadeshopper]

74600, level 10; MAME, 60hz

Are you using beginner or ?

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[Count9929A]

10 minutes ago, arcadeshopper said:

Are you using beginner or ?

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk
 

yes Beginner level. it's visible in the upper left corner

[pixelpedant]

I'm betting nobody's going to beat that score in the next one day. 

 

In any case, Lobster Bay has been an excellent pick.  I've enjoyed it a lot. 

 

And it certainly served my broader purposes.  Motivating a deep dive into Funware and their unreleased games. 

[globeron]

On 8/30/2021 at 11:55 AM, pixelpedant said:

I'm betting nobody's going to beat that score in the next one day. 

 

In any case, Lobster Bay has been an excellent pick.  I've enjoyed it a lot. 

 

And it certainly served my broader purposes.  Motivating a deep dive into Funware and their unreleased games. 

Glad they did not release 'Pipes' for TI after watching this video: 

 

 

The other one Crisis Mountain looks fun.

(Maybe a next project for @Asmusr)

 

[pixelpedant]

Yeah, out of the planned ports, likewise, Crisis Mountain is the only one I came away feeling like might have been really nice to see.  Astroblitz could have been fun though too.

[pixelpedant]

 

Looks like the scores for Lobster Bay were:

 

------------------------

Count9929A: 74,600
pixelpedant: 68,200
jwild: 59900
globeron: 41,600
roadrunner: 13,500

------------------------

 

With Count9929A as our winner and game-picker for September. 

 

[Count9929A]

Let me say once again that the Lobster Bay find was truly a godsend, it would have been a shame that our community was deprived of such a fun game. Many thanls to Touchan (by the way, is he in this forum?). I really enjoyed august competition and I am willing to continue playing Lobster Bay to discover even more. My skills (english in particular) are not enough to write a good manual for it, but I am ready to help someone better than me in writing, by providing all the info and the tricks that I have learned about this game.

 

As for the September Game of the Month, my choice fell on a title that always fascinated me but I was never able to play:

Computer War

Thor Emi

 

I think it's widely available in both cart & EA5 formats. The original release was maybe on disk, in EA5 format, but surely someone who knows more than me can correct me.

Hope you will enjoy it!

[globeron]

Good choice, love the game!

 

Here are the  Final Grom files, works in Classic 99

 

 

compwarD.BIN

 

compwarC.BIN

 

 

 

 

First try 950.  Classic 99 and with "PS-type controllers",

 

I need my normal Suzo The Arcade joystick for this to play this game.

 

 

 

[globeron]

9300 (reaching level with 4 missiles)

 

If you score all puzzles there is a perfect bonus of 1000 points. I only managed to do it in 1st level.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[globeron]

 

It is hard to see the difference between a 4 and 9.  I think my previous score were 450 and 4300 actually.

 

But also not sure if this is 15,450 or 15,950

It seems per level the perfect bonus increases with 1000. Eg. Level 3 earns 3000 solving the puzzles.

 

 

[Count9929A]

First score 1350, just to enter. Not easy.

A question for the expert of TI99 history. As far as I know, this game was originally released on floppy, as EA5 file. However there are cart dumps (for both FG99 and MAME), and those dumps do not require the 32k mem. This make me suspect that Computer War was released commercially also as a cartridge, but I have never seen one. Do you know more about the history of this game?

[globeron]

In another thread is the module.

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/249296-computer-war/

 

[+arcadeshopper]

First score 1350, just to enter. Not easy.
A question for the expert of TI99 history. As far as I know, this game was originally released on floppy, as EA5 file. However there are cart dumps (for both FG99 and MAME), and those dumps do not require the 32k mem. This make me suspect that Computer War was released commercially also as a cartridge, but I have never seen one. Do you know more about the history of this game?

I have one

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[+OLD CS1]

On 9/5/2021 at 12:16 PM, arcadeshopper said:

I have one

As do I.  I looked long and hard to finally snag one for myself.  Though I think the MicroPal is the common one, right?  ISTR Thorn Emi made the original release and that cartridge is rare as hen's teeth -- is that the one you guys are talking about as a side cart?

 

 

[Count9929A]

3 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

As do I.  I looked long and hard to finally snag one for myself.  Though I think the MicroPal is the common one, right?  ISTR Thorn Emi made the original release and that cartridge is rare as hen's teeth -- is that the one you guys are talking about as a side cart?

 

Please forgive my poor knowledge!

Before starting the competition, I thought that all three Thorn Emi games had never been released as cartridge, but only in floppy disk (by Arcade Hardware). Then I became suspicious that a cartridge version of Computer War was produced for commercialization (because  both MAME and FG99 dumps do not require 32K, hence their are GROM-ROM, and in my small experience GROM-ROM dumps derive from physical carts).

Both you and Arcadeshopper showed me that indeed the Micropal cart is well known. I didn't knew that there is also a vary rare version produced by Thorn-Emi. Thanks!

 

And what about "River Rescue" and "Submarine commander"? Their MAME dumps do require the 32K.

[ti99iuc]

2 hours ago, Count9929A said:

Sia tu che Arcadeshopper mi avete mostrato che in effetti il carrello Micropal è ben noto. Non sapevo che esistesse anche una versione molto rara prodotta da Thorn-Emi. Grazie!

 

E che dire di "River Rescue" e "Comandante sottomarino"? I loro dump MAME richiedono il 32K.

The Thorn Emi Games was considered as unreleased games but they exists in a disk format, here you can also find the manual and some additional info if it can help.
https://www.ti99iuc.it/web/index.php?pageid=database_cerca&archivioid=275#.YTcu7Z0zaUk

 

At least I have also seen original Thorn-Emi cartridges for TI99 of the Submarine Commander and River Rescue but I consider them as prototype and very rare, maybe the only one copy I ever seen around internet. Them was also a kind of sidecar cartridges (connecting in the expansion port of the TI99 and not in the standard cartridge slot).

there is also this additional thread in AA you can read:

Additional Infos you can find in the nice webiste of Stephen @blackbox Shaw
http://shawweb.myzen.co.uk/stephen/timram05.htm#thorn

Edited September 7, 2021 by ti99iuc

[+mizapf]

2 hours ago, Count9929A said:

And what about "River Rescue" and "Submarine commander"? Their MAME dumps do require the 32K.

They contain a GPL program that copies the rest of the dump into the 32K memory expansion, which is obviously a machine language program.