"Jinks"?

[+davidcalgary29]

Has anyone actually seen or played a "Jinks" proto for the 8-bits? I'd love to see if this could actually be worse than the 7800 version!

[Tempest]

Has anyone actually seen or played a "Jinks" proto for the 8-bits? I'd love to see if this could actually be worse than the 7800 version!

 

No but I'm fairly confident that a 2600 and 8-bit version exist. They will be found eventually.

 

Tempest

[Schmutzpuppe]

I think it isn't that bad.

If you like to test/play it you can download it here: www.atari8bit.de/games_210.atr

[+CharlieChaplin]

Hello !!!

The A8 version of Jinks is not a prototype !! it is an official version from AMC-Verlag (Wiesbaden/Germany) released in 1991. Wanna know some background ?!? Ok, somewhere in the 80`s (around 1985) atari gave orders to Rainbow Arts to program that game (the A8 home-version). Rainbow Arts however asked AMC-Verlag to do it for them. So the AMC programmers started their work - and when they finished it, they gave Rainbow Arts a 48k version of Jinks...

 

Guess what - when Rainbow Arts received the game, they complained that they wanted a cart version and since they did not want to use bank-switching carts, the game had to be reduced to a max. of 16kbytes. So the AMC programmers sat down again and shortened the game (killed the title picture, killed the title music, killed many levels, etc.) until it had a length of 16k. Around 1986 the 16k (A8) version of Jinks was finished and Rainbow Arts should have produced a cart then.

 

But they (or Atari?) never did. So the game was almost never published. Around 1990 AMC asked Rainbow Arts if they could get back the rights for their A8 version of Jinks. And after one year of discussions, AMC-Verlag got the rights back. They released the game on diskette in 1991, with the addendum of a simple text-title and a nice intro-music (but it was still the 16k version of the game, since the 48k version got lost somehow).

 

Afaik, the game features 4 levels of play (which get more difficult, when you play them the 2nd, 3rd, ... round) and simple 4-color-graphics. thus, the 7800 and the C64 versions are much more colorful. But since I never played these versions, I cannot tell if the A8 version is better or worse than these other versions. But I guess, it is worse - in my eyes the A8 version is extremely boring (but it might be that Jinks is quite boring on any system), has only 4 levels and merely consists of older game principles (like Breakout, etc.). in other words: I don`t like the A8 version of Jinks !!

 

Well, in 1998 Armin Stuermer (the chief of AMC) died and I got all the AMC heir. Since all AMC games were/are copy-protected and I am not a hacker/cracker, I simply gave ABBUC the right to publish these games on their magazines... greetings, Andreas Magenheimer.

[Bryan]

Here's the file for those having trouble with the link:

games210.zip

[Tempest]

So this 16K version would have been the official atari release?

 

Tempest

[ndary]

Here is the full story of Jinks from Andreas Megenhimer, (he is close to AMC)

 

Atari (around 1984 or 1985) placed an order to Rainbow Arts to program this game. Rainbow Arts however gave the order to AMC-Verlag to do it.

 

The guys of AMC first programmed a 48k game - but then Rainbow Arts told them that they wanted a cart and thus the game should be no longer than 16kbytes (to fit into a cartrige) . So the AMC programmers shortened the game extremely and delivered the 16k version to Rainbow Arts.

 

This version had only 4 game-levels, no sound, a simple text-title but was

finished so far. Alas, Rainbow Arts never made the cart available (or

maybe Atari never did?), so the game was never released.

 

In 1990 AMC asked Rainbow Arts if they could get the rights for their game back and after a year of discussions, AMC got the rights for their

version back. They added a sound (but kept the 4 levels and the simple

text title) and besides the copyright notice "AMC-Verlag" they were also

forced to mention Rainbow Arts somewhere (although Rainbow Arts did

nothing with that game!). so after all, in 1991 the game Jinks was

released by AMC-verlag on diskette. this is the 30k version that is avialble to download from the web.

 

The original 48k version was even longer and had more levels plus a painted title! but it does not exist anymore... AMC programmers can be contacted but they do not have a copy of the original 48k version or the delivered 16k version.