Raiders of the Lost Ark for the 5200

[MrTrust]

Allan Quartemain is in the public domain.  Make a similar game about him escaping Ming Solomon's mine.  Shuts the limit.  Goes perfectly with the mockbusters they made about him in the 80s.  I'm a shitty programmer, but I think I could come up with a solid design and work backwards from there if I get the time this summer.  Posted here to remind myself not to get lazy later.

[+x=usr(1536)]

55 minutes ago, MrTrust said:

Allan Quartemain is in the public domain.

This one is worth double-checking.  After the 1985 remake of King Solomon's Mines and 1986's Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, the rights to the character became complicated.  I don't know the specifics of the rights, but I do know that they prevented at least one film from being produced well into the late 1990s.

 

Of course, that doesn't prevent anyone from either just doing it outright and seeing what happens, or renaming the character to something like Ellen Dimebag and distancing themselves for a degree of CYA.

[Lynxpro]

On 1/6/2022 at 12:14 PM, Stephen said:

Legit question.  Why is it so important to have everything on the 5200 that is on the computer, especially when you have both?  I know of one game that took advantage of the analog controller, that being Star Raiders.  Absolutely everything else can be done on the computer.  What is this obsession with getting everything hardware and software from the computer over to the 5200?

 

Because the 5200 is a proper console. It has multiple fire buttons. It supports analog control. It has the best Trak-Ball controller, period.

 

I mean, you might as well as a Colecovision fan why they want MSX titles ported to it when they could easily buy a "proper" MSX computer. The Colecovision requires at least just as much work to port those titles and also requires a modern RAM upgrade to pull many of them off. That community gleefully embraces those types of projects.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Lynxpro

[Lynxpro]

On 1/8/2022 at 9:09 PM, MrTrust said:

Duuuuuuuuude.  You're talking about a massively time consuming and expensive project for a system with a much smaller fanbase, and the homebrew scene for it is basically one guy at this point.  What's the point unless there are people actively developing for it?

 

 

 

"Smaller fanbase"? Maybe in terms of the sheer number of people using free ROMs but not when it comes to actual selling homebrew cartridges. Who buys modern game cartridges more? 5200 enthusiasts or A8 enthusiasts? It's pretty obvious what the answer is when viewing the contents of the AtariAge Store. Or Good Deal Games' store.

[BIGHMW]

6 minutes ago, Lynxpro said:

Because the 5200 is a proper console. It has multiple fire buttons. It supports analog control. It has the best Trak-Ball controller, period.

Those reasons right there, are why I chose to keep my 5200 and get rid of my XEGS. That, and also, only the 5200 has Tempest, the XEGS does not. As a matter of fact, when I heard from the guys who worked on putting out Tempest say that it will never be available for the XEGS that made my decision that much easier when I decided to fold up The Atari Report as to which one of the 4 I would keep if it came down to one of them.

 

Plus there are many titles exclusive to the 5200, and, many of the 8-bit conversions from the A8 to the 5200 are vastly improved versions of the originals, in fact that's why many (but not all of them) of those same 5200 ports were converted over to the A8/XL/XE. Yes Big Sexy may not have thousands of titles but she does have over 400 of THE BEST TITLES on her, and thanks to guys like Paul Lay @playsoft, Steven Tucker @classics, @Wrathchild and many others that lineup will grow and continue to. Besides, who has time (especially me at 55) to play all of them?

[Lynxpro]

On 1/9/2022 at 7:51 PM, A Black Falcon said:

 

True... but on the other hand, the best thing that could happen to 5200 homebrew, quality-wise, is more RAM.  And since the 5200's RAM chip is socketed, a homebrew upgrade to expand that amount of RAM to an amount that would let it play any A8 software is possible and would solve the system's main hardware problem.  External plug-in RAM expansions are also possible, with limitations, and could potentially get a larger userbase due to ease of use, but an internal one would be better.  The amarket for this would be pretty small either way, why not just do the better one...  Of course you'd have to open your console to do the upgrade, but as apparently all 5200s have this chip in a socket, so presuming that is accurate it wouldn't be too bad.

 

Greater availability of bank-switching for larger homebrew games would also be important of course, we see with Magical Fairy Force how limiting 32KB is (the game is quite good, but suffers in some ways from the size limit), but that is doable now, I believe.  I guess people could alternate make Atarimax-only games, but that would be unfortunate, a standalone cart option is always better. What's really needed is more system memory, and it's possible, as people on this forum have said every once in a while.  It's certainly unlikely to happen since putting that project together would be very difficult and expensive, but it sure would be incredible if it could.   What we have is great, it's just hard not to wish for the ability for some of the A8's more advanced stuff to run on the 5200, which I also prefer over the A8 computer.  It's fine either way but it's nice to dream, you know?

 

More RAM would theoretically make it easier to port games to the 5200 since it would reduce the need to bankswitch and thus have to rewrite a bunch of stuff. Although I've been told that even with more RAM, the modern A8 Space Harrier wouldn't work due to the lack of read-write lines in the 5200's cartridge port. That's a common complaint. So such games would have to be loaded in some other manner, theoretically. I'm not going to wrap my head around how the AtariMax SD Cart gets around those limitation. I've also seen comments elsewhere that there's way to just use more GLUE logic in a cartridge to help with such limitations.

 

Curt wanted to do a RAM upgrade that would plug into the ANTIC socket and also provide the option for a PIA to support SIO. The RAM would've been something like 128K, 256K, or 512K. But of course, he was still bogged down with trying to finish the 7800 XM project prior to his untimely passing.

 

Someone else is working on a RAM upgrade project. But it would plug into the CPU socket and basically turn the 5200 into a 130XE. The games wouldn't load through the cartridge slot and who knows if anyone would actually take the time to support actual 5200 features like the controllers [multiple fire buttons, the keypad, the other buttons, analog support, etc] if that board was embraced. Especially if it had DB9s - no, I'm not going to call them DE9s, so frak "you" very much in advance - to plug in bog standard Atari 2600/A8 joysticks. The developer states 512K RAM would be the max. My gut tells me a lot of enthusiasts wouldn't view such an upgrade as a real 5200 at that point and a lot of critics would just say "why don't you buy an A8 instead?" Regardless, it's impressive and ambitious if it ultimately works when completed. However, I think for something like that to succeed, it would have to load most games through the cartridge slot and use the standard controllers. And I'd imagine standardizing the upgraded RAM mapping would be critical for homebrew and mod devs to support it. 

 

Something I've wondered about is whether an A8/5200 emulator could be used somehow to natively change the various mappings and export executable code simply from running a ROM file...  I type that as not being a programmer. Or a sorcerer. At least not on Tuesdays.

[Bill Loguidice]

1 hour ago, BIGHMW said:

Those reasons right there, are why I chose to keep my 5200 and get rid of my XEGS. That, and also, only the 5200 has Tempest, the XEGS does not. As a matter of fact, when I heard from the guys who worked on putting out Tempest say that it will never be available for the XEGS that made my decision that much easier when I decided to fold up The Atari Report as to which one of the 4 I would keep if it came down to one of them.

 

Plus there are many titles exclusive to the 5200, and, many of the 8-bit conversions from the A8 to the 5200 are vastly improved versions of the originals, in fact that's why many (but not all of them) of those same 5200 ports were converted over to the A8/XL/XE. Yes Big Sexy may not have thousands of titles but she does have over 400 of THE BEST TITLES on her, and thanks to guys like Paul Lay @playsoft, Steven Tucker @classics, @Wrathchild and many others that lineup will grow and continue to. Besides, who has time (especially me at 55) to play all of them?

I'm confused by your statement. The Atari 8-bit has a very good Tempest homebrew.

I like and have the 5200, but the system size and controller situation is not ideal. I'd always recommend an Atari 8-bit computer first because you can do so much more with it, but certainly having a 5200 as a companion is not a bad thing.

[thegamezmaster]

Curious what it would look like. And how does it play. Hm.

 

[+Stephen]

11 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

I'm confused by your statement. The Atari 8-bit has a very good Tempest homebrew.

I like and have the 5200, but the system size and controller situation is not ideal. I'd always recommend an Atari 8-bit computer first because you can do so much more with it, but certainly having a 5200 as a companion is not a bad thing.

Yeah - pretty dumb move when the only way to get something working on the 5200 is to have a cart burned (or a multi-cart) when the computer has a dozen easy ways of getting the newest games on it as well as thousands of non-game apps.  Analog control on the 5200 was used in I believe 3 games and we all know how much the non-centering sticks suck.  Trackball - we have it for the computer.  Analog controls - we obviously have it on the computer, games just need coded to use it.

 

The only reason I have a 5200 is to collect dust on a shelf because I felt the need to get one of every console Atari made.  I have literally used it twice in 15 years.  I've never stopped using the computer I have had since 1982 and am still amazed at all the new demos, games, and especially Sparta DOS X development still going on for them.

[MrTrust]

1 hour ago, Lynxpro said:

Who buys modern game cartridges more? 5200 enthusiasts or A8 enthusiasts?

 

Couldn't tell ya'.

 

1 hour ago, Lynxpro said:

It's pretty obvious what the answer is when viewing the contents of the AtariAge Store. Or Good Deal Games' store.

 

Yeah, I don't know that that's a very good barometer.  A lot of A-8 physical releases don't get sold through either of those stores, and if there's a bunch of 5200 stuff being sold elsewhere and that's not conversions of new A-8 homebrews, I'm not aware of it.  I'd be interested to see it, though, if you can point me in that direction.

[www.atarimania.com]

While Tempest may be a big name and have great playability on the 5200, it also feels horribly outdated. Artistically, the options screen is just a mess and the general presentation would need a major revamp to make a decent impression on the 8-bit in 2022. If you have an A8, just go for Tempest Xtreem and you're set.

 

If by the "many titles exclusive to the 5200" you mean the games by Mean Hamster Software, A8 users have titles with the same concept but better graphics and playability. Considering the steady supply of new homebrews, we're really not that desperate to get anything that feels inferior. 

[BIGHMW]

51 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

If by the "many titles exclusive to the 5200" you mean the games by Mean Hamster Software, A8 users have titles with the same concept but better graphics and playability.

Not just the Mean Hamster catalog and Tempest,  but also Pac-Man Plus, Hangly-Man, a better looking (and playing) Super Breakout, Castle Blast, Klax, Irata's Quest, Paul Lay's @playsoft's brilliant A8-to-5200 conversions of Asteroids (he also improved the defense systems to work instant as opposed to that 500 ms delay) and Yar's Strike (originally done by Lennart Bown @Thelen) in which is a nice takeoff on Yars' Revenge that I had requested for a conversion 2 years ago and still play to this very day, and (at the moment) @Ryan Witmer's homebrew, Rob 'N' Banks, in which is his take of Lock 'N' Chase, and finally, Rasteroids, in which is an attempt to bring Asteroids' vector-style graphs to Big Sexy, and, the AtariAge finished version of Xari Arena, in which is available in the AA store.

 

That list of exclusive titles is also right here:

 

 

As for the improvements that the 5200 versions have of their A8 counterparts, read here:

 

 

[Chris+++]

 

Also, the 5200 is cool! C'mon...the shiny black plastic and the huge cartridges are damn nifty.

An ephemeral detail, perhaps, but we '80s guys dig cool science-fictiony stuff.

 

[BIGHMW]

1 hour ago, www.atarimania.com said:

While Tempest may be a big name and have great playability on the 5200, it also feels horribly outdated. Artistically, the options screen is just a mess and the general presentation would need a major revamp to make a decent impression on the 8-bit in 2022. If you have an A8, just go for Tempest Xtreem and you're set.

I played Tempest Xtreem (the working demo of it) when I had my XEGS and yes it even works with the trak-ball (I plugged in my CX80 to see if it worked like Tempest on the 5200 does with the CX53, and it did!) but it just didn't feel official enough, there were some elements it could've used (the music was great but she could've used some sound fx for firing and the Superzapper, and also the shooting through the tunnel before you get to the next level), and some I would've wanted omitted, like the power-ups (Gunner Droid, etc.), and it just lacked some of the qualities that Keithen Hayenga's version had in her. Yes she had (slightly) superior graphics, but she just didn't feel right. Great to play though.

[BIGHMW]

1 minute ago, Chris+++ said:

 

Also, the 5200 is cool! C'mon...the shiny black plastic and the huge cartridges are damn nifty.

An ephemeral detail, perhaps, but we '80s guys dig cool science-fictiony stuff.

Here here. I too, am from the '80s. Went to high school back then (Erikson Center, along with a certain soon-to-be famous '90s internet model) I remember seeing all the Atari 5200 ads playing on Radio 1990 on USA weekday afternoons in 1983 when I first had cable back then, yes the commercials may be cheesy when looking back retrospectively nowadays but they were THE thing back then. Radio 1990, (WWF) Championship Wrestling and Starcade (the video arcade game show not the Jim Crockett/WCW wrestling PPV from then, that was Starrcade, with TWO r's), anyhow they were all the rage in yours and my day.

 

As for titles the 5200 (and yes even the A8) does not have, yes I also own a ColecoVision for those, what were once adversaries are now allies 40 years later, and this fall we celebrate 40 years of both the 5200 and ColecoVision and the birth of the "third-wave" (as Electronic Games magazine called them) wars.

[rayik]

On 3/1/2022 at 10:31 AM, Stephen said:

Analog control on the 5200 was used in I believe 3 games and we all know how much the non-centering sticks suck. 

 

Analog control was used on a lot more than 3 games.  Off the top of my head: Super Breakout, Missile Command, Gorf, Star Wars Arcade, Pole Position, Galaxian, Kaboom, Centipede, H.E.R.O., River Raid, Star Raiders, Rescue on Fractulus.  I'm sure there are more.  I have an digital stick and so many games I want to play need analog.

 

Very true about the non-centering sticks.  They are bad.

[phuzaxeman]

On 3/1/2022 at 10:31 AM, Stephen said:

Yeah - pretty dumb move when the only way to get something working on the 5200 is to have a cart burned (or a multi-cart) when the computer has a dozen easy ways of getting the newest games on it as well as thousands of non-game apps.  Analog control on the 5200 was used in I believe 3 games and we all know how much the non-centering sticks suck.  Trackball - we have it for the computer.  Analog controls - we obviously have it on the computer, games just need coded to use it.

 

The only reason I have a 5200 is to collect dust on a shelf because I felt the need to get one of every console Atari made.  I have literally used it twice in 15 years.  I've never stopped using the computer I have had since 1982 and am still amazed at all the new demos, games, and especially Sparta DOS X development still going on for them.

The fact that you mention there's only 3 games using analog controls tells us you're not familiar with the games.  For 99% games, the analog works great for me on the 5200.  The trackball on the 8bit is different than the 5200.   To say the 5200 controls suck says you probably don't know how to use them.  I've got the scores to prove the 5200 sticks work well on many games.  

 

I used the 800XL from 1984-1992 a ton.  And I am one of those people that have 1k+ games.  I know it well and I've played it more than the 5200. 

 

But the 5200 in 2022 is a gem especially for those that grew up with it.  Today, I find it easier to load up games than the 8bit. And frankly, I play the 5200 much more even though I love my trusty XL.

Edited March 7, 2022 by phuzaxeman

[BIGHMW]

21 hours ago, phuzaxeman said:

But the 5200 in 2022 is a gem especially for those that grew up with it.  Today, I find it easier to load up games than the 8bit. And frankly, I play the 5200 much more even though I love my trusty XL.

Here here!!! I also grew up with (and still play) Big Sexy since getting my first one for my 17th birthday back on May 19, 1983. My (now-late) mother finally bought the idea that her getting me one would definitely save her $$$ in the long run, every time I hit the start button in thre controllers it was yet another quarter saved that otherwise would've gone into an arcade coin-op.

[Keatah]

Yup! The more I played at home the more I saved. Soon enough "going to the arcade" became a chore and I lost interest in the whole scene. I even began to despise it.

[BIGHMW]

9 minutes ago, Keatah said:

Yup! The more I played at home the more I saved. Soon enough "going to the arcade" became a chore and I lost interest in the whole scene. I even began to despise it.

Admittedly, and, coming from me, I actually got better in the arcade on the coin-ops of my 5200 titles because of playing those same games at home on Big Sexy, as my scores rose at home, so they did the same at the arcade. The 5200 carts eventually served me as training grounds for the grueling challenges that the arcade versions had, and playing the 5200 versions made me much more mentally sharper and more in focus and obviously it carried over to whenever I popped in a quarter, in which I hardly did back then considering I could always play those same games at home with arcade-quality graphics!!!