Disk version of Space Bandits (MBX)?

[PeBo]

Found it on whtech EA games 0021-9, but it has a corrupt title screen, and has audio issues.

 

Are there any other EA/3 or EA/5 copies out there or is the whtech disk the only one??

 

Also, are any of the disk versions of Arcturus playable?

I have several copies, but they all seem insanely slow or crash within a few seconds of start. I know this one is resource heavy, so I'm trying to determine if all the copies on disk are problematic, or if my problem is trying to load them from a nanoPEB CF (I think my nanoPEB's 32k is a wee bit wonky)

[+Ksarul]

In the case of Arcturus, the versions that have been floating around on disk have always been a bit broken. Acadiel did a direct read of his cartridge and Tursi went through it to move the part of the code that was executing out of the DSR space somewhere within the 32K space (and clean up all of the pointers to it). That's the version that is now in the multicarts--and it works perfectly.You could probably create a standard disk version with a loader to lob it into 32K space from disk instead of from cartridge and it should work. . .Space Bandits may have other issues, but I can't answer that one for sure.

[ti99iuc]

I found these in my personal DB offline.

 

maybe you could try them hoping they are not the same versions than yours:

(Eng) - (Game) - Arcturus - (1983) - (XB+32k) - (by Bill Bies).zip

(Eng) - Arcturus - (1983) - (EA5) - (by Bill Bies).zip

(Eng) - (Game) - Space Bandits - (1983) - (XB+32 + MBX) - (by Milton Bradley).zip

(Eng) - Space Bandits - (1983) - (EA5 + MBX) - (by Milton Bradley).zip

Edited February 25, 2016 by ti99iuc

[PeBo]

I found these in my personal DB offline.

 

maybe you could try them hoping they are not the same versions than yours:

 

 

The file named « (Eng) - (Game) - Space Bandits - (1983) - (XB+32 + MBX) - (by Milton Bradley).zip » contained a copy that works perfectly under emulation, will try it in the console tomorrow, but I'm sure it will work.

 

Molte Grazie!

Edited February 25, 2016 by PeBo

[PeBo]

In the case of Arcturus, the versions that have been floating around on disk have always been a bit broken. Acadiel did a direct read of his cartridge and Tursi went through it to move the part of the code that was executing out of the DSR space somewhere within the 32K space (and clean up all of the pointers to it). That's the version that is now in the multicarts--and it works perfectly.You could probably create a standard disk version with a loader to lob it into 32K space from disk instead of from cartridge and it should work. . .Space Bandits may have other issues, but I can't answer that one for sure.

 

I'd probably be better off to simply get one of the multicarts that contain it that to trying to continue getting a disk based version to work.

 

schmitzi sent me a copy of Space Bandits that has no sound issues (well minor glitches at the start, but the copy I was using only had speech and no other sounds, so this is a major improvement) ...ALL the ones I've tested so far though (I'm amassing quite a collection), have the corrupted title screen. I'll see if the ones sent by our friend in Italy are the same.

[+InsaneMultitasker]

 

I'd probably be better off to simply get one of the multicarts that contain it that to trying to continue getting a disk based version to work.

 

schmitzi sent me a copy of Space Bandits that has no sound issues (well minor glitches at the start, but the copy I was using only had speech and no other sounds, so this is a major improvement) ...ALL the ones I've tested so far though (I'm amassing quite a collection), have the corrupted title screen. I'll see if the ones sent by our friend in Italy are the same.

This one has sounds and the title screen looks ok. There is some glitch with the player selection but once you enter a name, it is fine. See if this gets you any closer. I took these off one of my old EA5 game compilation disks. Files are zipped - run from DSK1.

LOAD1.zip

[sparkdrummer]

PeBo,

 

Attached is a disk with all MBX games except Baseball. It has an Extended Basic LOAD on it with menu. I briefly tried them all and all seem to work, with the exception of the opening speech on all games is garbled - I think this is because of the limitations of the space available with 32k.

Also - I put my copy of ARCTURUS on the disk. It seems to load and play just fine. A side note is using the I key for forward motion and to speed the game up and the M key to slow the game down and actually will put it in reverse!

 

mbx.dsk

[PeBo]

Thanks to all.

 

I now have 3 working copies on Space Bandits (and yes, opening speech seems to be an issue with all the disk versions of the MBX carts.) Ironic that the point of the exercise was to create a single disk with all the MBX titles (the ones that don't need the MBX system anyway), with a simple XB loader whereas now I've discovered that several folks beat me to it.

 

Follow up question: Does Starship Pegasus (the MBX arcade game not the Not-Polyoptics adventure game) exist as a dsk or TIfile?? can only find the bin, and none of the MBX compilation disks seem to have it. While the cart was never officially released (correct??), I thought I'd ask since I can't run a bin file on the console (and have no burning knowledge/skills - yet)

 

One of the Arcturus from the ti99iuc works for a few minutes then freezes. I can still shoot, and sound effects continue, but the background stops and no further ships appear. This seems to be the same problem I have with all my other copies as well. BTW, the file entitled « (Eng) - (Game) - Arcturus - (1983) - (XB+32k) - (by Bill Bies).zip » contains a disk entitled « arctaurus » but it is just a blank 180k disk.

 

Happily the Arcturus from Sparkdrummer works fine under Classic99, so I'll try that one in the console this aft, and perhaps my search is over.

 

Being a major zaxxon fan back in the day, I've been hoping to try this one ever since I re-entered the TI fold last year. The ultra-rare carts don't appear for sale very often, so I keep d/ling disk versions looking for one that will work longer than a minute or two.

 

Maybe this is the one.

 

Thanks again to everyone who posted files.

[+Ksarul]

You're right about how hard it is to find Arcturus cartridges--I know of less than ten of them within the community. . .and only one copy of Killer Caterpillar in the side port cartridge is known to be floating around. . .

[PeBo]

As I said earlier in this thread I was looking for working disk based MBX games because I was working on compiling then under a single load program.

 

Well, we already have an elegantly functional and efficient generic loader, with only a dozen lines and for which it is quite easy to add additional titles by changing little more than adding to the DATA lines.

 

What we REALLY needed was a poorly written, unnecessarily large loader and where adding additional titles is a complete pain in the ass.

 

Luckily when it comes to completely inefficient and bloated basic code, I am a master.

 

I managed to improve on the outstanding generic loader by creating one with over 70 lines of code and 10 dimensioned variables (whether they were needed or not), It also makes it nearly impossible to add additional titles without changing several lines of code throughout the program, is completely unsuited to anything but MBX games, and redefines nearly all of the 14 character sets for no reason whatsoever.

 

But why create a bloated, limited loader when we already had such a brilliant tiny one you ask????

 

Because just like butts, sometimes bigger is better!

 

AND to demonstrate just how inefficient I can be, I've attached a 180k dsk of proggies that you all already have, just to show off my 4k load program.

 

Now aren't you all glad I don't write XB programs very often anymore!

MBX_custom.dsk

[sparkdrummer]

Outstanding!

[+Ksarul]

The key here is that you had fun doing it, PeBo--and it resulted in something that others might have fun with too, so double bonus!

[+acadiel]

In the case of Arcturus, the versions that have been floating around on disk have always been a bit broken. Acadiel did a direct read of his cartridge and Tursi went through it to move the part of the code that was executing out of the DSR space somewhere within the 32K space (and clean up all of the pointers to it). That's the version that is now in the multicarts--and it works perfectly.You could probably create a standard disk version with a loader to lob it into 32K space from disk instead of from cartridge and it should work. . .Space Bandits may have other issues, but I can't answer that one for sure.

 

Yep, most of the other versions I've seen floating around are EA/3 ones. The sidecar version I have uses The Picador (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B009N0C51K/ref=dm_ws_tlw_trk5), an awesome Sousa march, for the theme music. (You can thank my 15-year-old French Horn player daughter for showing me Sousa, otherwise I'd never have known.) I'm not sure what the EA/3 ones are using for theme music. Makes you wonder if Bill Bies' EA/3 was a "prototype" version before the EA/5 sidecar one was released. I think all attempts to find the guy have failed through the years, much like Charles Earl of Telco fame.

[+acadiel]

You're right about how hard it is to find Arcturus cartridges--I know of less than ten of them within the community. . .and only one copy of Killer Caterpillar in the side port cartridge is known to be floating around. . .

 

I wonder how many "shells" for those sidecar carts that Exceltec made were made to begin with. There couldn't have been that many. The only real place in TI catalogs I've seen them sold were in the old Unisource (?) catalog. It makes you wonder if they just trashed the rest of the sidecart shells and PC boards or if they're in someone's basement still somewhere in the DFW area. Unicomp is another good business to try and track down, as well as whomever was behind Exceltec.

[+Lee Stewart]

... I think all attempts to find the guy have failed through the years, much like Charles Earl of Telco fame.

 

I actually found Charles Earl about a year ago on Facebook under “Charles Earl Photography”. He confirmed to me that he was, indeed, the author of TELCO. I then sent him another FB message telling him a little about this forum and asked him a question about TELCO. He has not responded, so he probably does not have any interest in getting back into it. I'm pretty sure I mentioned finding him last April, but I haven't looked. BTW, his website is www.charlesearl.com/.

 

...lee