Atari/Legends Flashback Expansion Builds

[rocketfan]

Nexus 1.7 is uploaded.

 

Spoiler

https://archive.org/details/nexus-1-7

 

Here are the notes from the readme:

 

=========== Changes for 1.7 Nexus March 2024
Add new Sections:
   Commodore 64 - Classic home computer and rival of Atari 8-bit computers from the 80's with a vast game library.
   Vic-20 - Early Commodore 8-bit home computer offering with minimal graphics capabilities.

Additional Games:
   -A number of new early msdos games were added. Multiple of these were Atarisoft games added for their historical value.
   -Added a dozen new Colecovision homebrew games.  Mapped up to jump action for two of the games.
   -Added two ps1 games.

Other:
   -Change Colecovision to use custom Gearcoleco core.  Suppports two button games.  Difficulty switches bring up number pads.  
    Start is second action by default.  Select remembers last selection of number pad and defaults to "1".
   -Performance of dosbox improved slightly.  Sound for early DOS games which used PC speaker made tolerable. 
   -Fix bug in import for square box art as done for PS1.
   -Fix "10 minute freeze" problem for Atari Flashback 50th anniversary and later.
   -Using paddles in left hand port and main controller in right hand port for navigation is better supported.  Menu will now back you
    out to the main selection menu. This change unfortunately does not apply to the AFB9. 

 

As far as I can tell so far the "10 minute freeze" problem is not happening.  I hope it's true for others as well!  Like every update lately, the testing is more on the new content.  If you see problems please post about it.

Special thanks to Dr. Axxon for the new art/themes for Arduboy, PS1, MSX, MSDOS, C64, VIC20, Supervision, and Bump N. Jump!   

Edited March 24 by rocketfan

[Batchman]

Downloading the latest. Thanks for all your hard work, and please pass on thanks and fond memories to your consulting physician!

 

Looking forward to trying the updated version, and seeing how things go!

[wilfwilfus]

13 hours ago, rocketfan said:

Nexus 1.7 is uploaded.

 

  Reveal hidden contents

https://archive.org/details/nexus-1-7

 

Thanks @rocketfan & Dr. Axxon, downloading now!

[OrangeKryptonite]

13 hours ago, rocketfan said:

Nexus 1.7 is uploaded.

 

  Hide contents

https://archive.org/details/nexus-1-7

 

Here are the notes from the readme:

 

=========== Changes for 1.7 Nexus March 2024
Add new Sections:
   Commodore 64 - Classic home computer and rival of Atari 8-bit computers from the 80's with a vast game library.
   Vic-20 - Early Commodore 8-bit home computer offering with minimal graphics capabilities.

Additional Games:
   -A number of new early msdos games were added. Multiple of these were Atarisoft games added for their historical value.
   -Added a dozen new Colecovision homebrew games.  Mapped up to jump action for two of the games.
   -Added two ps1 games.

Other:
   -Change Colecovision to use custom Gearcoleco core.  Suppports two button games.  Difficulty switches bring up number pads.  
    Start is second action by default.  Select remembers last selection of number pad and defaults to "1".
   -Performance of dosbox improved slightly.  Sound for early DOS games which used PC speaker made tolerable. 
   -Fix bug in import for square box art as done for PS1.
   -Fix "10 minute freeze" problem for Atari Flashback 50th anniversary and later.
   -Using paddles in left hand port and main controller in right hand port for navigation is better supported.  Menu will now back you
    out to the main selection menu. This change unfortunately does not apply to the AFB9. 

 

As far as I can tell so far the "10 minute freeze" problem is not happening.  I hope it's true for others as well!  Like every update lately, the testing is more on the new content.  If you see problems please post about it.

Special thanks to Dr. Axxon for the new art/themes for Arduboy, PS1, MSX, MSDOS, C64, VIC20, Supervision, and Bump N. Jump!   

Amazing! Thanks so very much for all the work you put into this. Downloading now!!!

[rocketfan]

5 hours ago, Batchman said:

please pass on thanks and fond memories to your consulting physician!

He says you are welcome! 

 

BTW - the release notes didn't give the results of the paddle investigation.  GenXGrownup did us a real solid by looking at that, and AtGames for making what improvement they could.  Looking at the updated firmware, to me it appeared the paddle linearity fix came with the new retroplayer application (which is the front end for the emulation).  So, that part has been brought into the Nexus build and at least for the Flashback X and forward you should see an improvement in your paddle response.  I used the GenXGrownup tape with marks on the paddle experiment to convince myself.  One change that came with that was to update basically all the paddle games from extension .a26x to the extension .a26p.  The .a26p is tied to the newest retroplayer.

Edited March 24 by rocketfan

[rocketfan]

Another helper from the early days @Fred_M has provided these resources.  Not 100% sure these were what was being looked for, but I'm posting here in case they could be useful to anyone.

 

Control_Legends.rar

 

[Batchman]

OK, got the new version installed and hooked up.

 

The first thing I learned is that the paddles still don't work ... if you forget to plug them in!

 

Tried Astrosmash, and it did nothing! So I sighed, and pulled up Breakout. And it did nothing.

 

Then I glanced at my little console, and noticed the paddle cables hanging down, but not coming back up. Forgot to plug the things in! Sheesh!

 

Now the paddles seem to work well on both Astrosmash (which I don't *think* came with the Flashback) and Breakout. And having verified that, I now have to go to sleep so I can get up for work tomorrow. Soon I'll have to go scrolling through the homebrews to see if I can spot any new games! I love to see the incredible things people have managed to do with this console!

 

Thanks for all the great work, Rocketfan!

[magnusfalkirk]

Downloaded the latest build and reformatting a micro-SD card to put the build on and then install in my FB9. Thanks for all of this Rocketfan, especially the ability to easily add more games on our own!

[magnusfalkirk]

@rocketfan I have a question about the Nexus Build vs the Legend Build that has bothered me for a long time now. Why is it that the Nintendo and Sega sections of the Nexus Build don't have the games number of games in them that they do in the Legend Build? On the Nexus Build, discounting the Game and Watch, The Virtual Boy and the Pokemon Mini, the Nintendo section has 107 games. The Sega section has 98. On the Legend Flashback Build the Nintendo section has, discounting the same three sections, 2,809 games. The Sega section has 1,120. Why such a big difference between the two builds? Just curious

[Batchman]

Because the Nexus build uses the Atari joystick, which only has one button? They find work-arounds on occasion to cheat and allow two buttons here and there, when the joystick only has to handle 2 directions, but only so many games will work with such limited controls.

 

If I misunderstood your question, I apologize.

 

[edit]BTW, this is why I am considering buying a Legend Flashback, as well, but I try to talk myself out of it because I already have 3 Atari Flashbacks, a Play Station Classic, and a Legends Ultimate, and I really should stop.[/edit]

Edited March 28 by Batchman

[rocketfan]

@magnusfalkirk Yes to what @Batchman said.  I grew up with Atari, so I have an irrational love of playing games with Atari Joysticks!  Also, the Atari flashbacks have the difficulty switches and now support paddles pretty well.  I do a lot of experimenting with emulation on different devices, and IMO these Atari flashbacks do offer a very good experience for Atari 70's and 80's content.  However, if I take a console on vacation with me it's usually the Legends Flashback just because it does support a ton more content and plays great with actual Sega (well aftermarket in my case) game-pads.

 

On the Atari units we just made a big effort to restrict most of the sections to one-button content so that if you open up a game you can pretty much be guaranteed you can play with the one button stick.  I'd bet with Nexus you have the biggest collection of one-button arcade games ever identified - if that's something to brag about.  I still play Arabian sometimes - but then I clear my recently played list. LOL.

 

Some sections (Gameboy) have never really been filled out even to that extent, and some of the newer sections were not filtered so carefully mainly because of time.  I happen to really like Colecovision, so when the point was made that some games could be played better with the "up" hack I was sort of really into that idea.  🙂

 

[TampaBay]

@rocketfan Thanks for all your work on this!  My version 1.6 has been awesome. 

 

I haven't yet downloaded the new version, but in general, what's the update procedure?  I imagine you don't just wipe your current thumb stick and install the new one, or you'd lose any configuration customizations?  Or is that the procedure!? 😀

[rocketfan]

On 3/30/2024 at 1:50 PM, TampaBay said:

I imagine you don't just wipe your current thumb stick and install the new one, or you'd lose any configuration customizations?

That's the safest way to get everything working as intended, though I would recommend use a new drive then if you want to pull anything from the old one you always have that option.  Example:  if you added a bunch of games you just copy the needed files plus cut and paste the related all-games.ini entries.

 

However, if you have done anything major you want to preserve that, then you could pick and choose from the new version using the list below:

 

Download the 1.7 version and unzip it someplace.  For actual content and emulation changes copy over only the following from the new distribution to the old.:

/startup.sh

/emulator

/rom

/rom_c64

/rom_vic20

/rom_cv

/rom_msdos

/rom_ps1

 

And if you want the other theme changes:

/rom_arduboy

/rom_msx

/rom_ jumpnbump

 

I would say the first 6 items on the list above (up to rom_cv) are more or less mandatory for things to work together as expected.  After that, totally optional.  For example, if you already added some ps1 games it might make better sense to keep what you have and just bring in the couple of new games added.

[rocketfan]

BTW, happy Easter out there.  Or if you are not into that, then happy first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.  🙂

 

 

[TampaBay]

20 minutes ago, rocketfan said:

That's the safest way to get everything working as intended, though I would recommend use a new drive then if you want to pull anything from the old one you always have that option.  Example:  if you added a bunch of games you just copy the needed files plus cut and paste the related all-games.ini entries.

 

However, if you have done anything major you want to preserve that, then you could pick and choose from the new version using the list below:

 

Download the 1.7 version and unzip it someplace.  For actual content and emulation changes copy over only the following from the new distribution to the old.:

/startup.sh

/emulator

/rom

/rom_c64

/rom_vic20

/rom_cv

/rom_msdos

/rom_ps1

 

And if you want the other theme changes:

/rom_arduboy

/rom_msx

/rom_ jumpnbump

 

I would say the first 6 items on the list above (up to rom_cv) are more or less mandatory for things to work together as expected.  After that, totally optional.  For example, if you already added some ps1 games it might make better sense to keep what you have and just bring in the couple of new games added.

Awesome,  thanks so much.  Perfect.  On second thought, I probably will just start fresh with the new version, unless I can think of anything major I've added / customized.  I was mostly thinking of fixed joystick mappings, but I'm sure any manual joystick mappings we fixed together along the way are in the new version anyway.  Thanks!

[TampaBay]

By the way, since we were chatting about the paddles recently in some comments above, I wanted to mention a little experiment I did.

 

I have an old Flashback 2, which for those not familiar has "Atari on a Chip" hardware, so the games are not emulated.  I took the paddles from the Flashback 12 Gold and connected them to my Flashback 2. The paddles from the Flashback 12 Gold work absolutely perfectly and amazingly well on the Flashback 2. The difference is not even close.  Zero lag, super smooth, no jitter.  Using the paddles on the Flashback 2 is like an extension of your hand. I still will use those paddles on my Flashback 12 Gold as well, but if I want to play Super Breakout or Warlords, which are the games on the Flashback 2, I am definitely playing them there.  Now I might even think about doing the cartridge mod for the Flashback 2.

[OrangeKryptonite]

Rocktfan, I have two questions:

 

#1 - Is this the build that used to have movies and karaoke but they were removed to save space? If that's so, is there a way to add them back and is there a source to get them?

 

#2 - Are you aware of any joysticks or gamepads that actually have multiple buttons that could be supported on this build? Just asking because this is by far the best and cleanest emulation front end that I have ever used and I am enjoying it so much! Was wondering if there might be some sort of option in the future to support some sort of gamepad with more buttons so we can expand the library of games to support the ones that require more buttons.

 

[MrChickenz]

On 3/22/2024 at 7:44 PM, rocketfan said:

 

@MrChickenz - Omega Race and Space Fury work perfectly fine (IMO) with the up direction on the joystick for thrust

That’s awesome!

[rocketfan]

On 3/31/2024 at 10:08 PM, OrangeKryptonite said:

I have two questions:

#1 - Karaoke was put back in in the previous update, and is still there in the 1.7 version.  TBH, when I dug out my AFB9 it had an old version with some of that stuff on there and made me want to bring it back.  Also, in truth I have been having better luck with large uploads, so it's not as much a problem as at one time.  The video game related movies are cool in their way, but they massively blow up the size of the build for just a few low quality movies.  Also, the playback was lacking controls and they did not play well on AFB98 for whatever reason.  In the end, I'm not interested in adding back the films, but you could do it yourself.  The video files go in the amv section just like games.  I can tell you roughly the type of conversion I was running.  Something like this in linux: 

 

ffmpeg -i Atari_DigDug.mp4 -vf scale=640:480 -b:v 1000k  -ar 22050 CrazyAtariDigDug.mpg

 

I'm sure there are Windows utilities to do the same sort of conversions, but I'm no expert in that world.  For widescreen content you would use 720x480 or similar.  The .mpg format is compatible with the core,  -b:v 1000k sets a really low video bit-rate, and -ar 22050 a lowish audio rate which was needed for smooth playback through the core.

 

#2 that's a tougher question.  Now several cores, at least 5200, 7800, Colecovision, let you (optionally) use the fire button of the second controller.    That same mod could be added to other cores, but just hasn't.  A couple of people have built custom controllers with just an extra button that ties in to a second 9-pin connector which just closes the right pins (8 and 6 I believe) on the second port.  Also, if the system type (like Colecovision) does not need the start button, that can be used - although the position is awkward for anything where you have to use it very often.  I do find it OK for like the smart bomb in Defender though.

 

For real Atari 2600 hardware you can hook up a Sega genesis pad and use it.  I have done it myself - they work!  Some folks have done mods to games which allow two button games to be played on a 2600 with those Sega controllers.  There is a big thread somewhere here on AtariAge about it.  Sadly though, the pads don't come close to working on the flashbacks.  I'm not sure why, if the flashbacks work with original Atari Joysticks and Paddles you might think it should work - but it does not.  I'm more a software guy.  Maybe someone out there understands the hardware and knows why?  For one thing though, I think the signal levels from the Flashbacks are just not the same.

 

I try to remember the main goal on Atari flashbacks was not supporting random emulation, but supporting 2600 games using something close to original Atari Controllers and paddles.  It's not perfect, but they did pretty well. 

Edited April 2 by rocketfan

[rocketfan]

Thinking about the movie topic this morning.  If someone can figure out converting the movies into graphics something like an 8-bit video games I would sure put that in!  Like really chunky and pixelated and  in 8 colors but with the original soundtrack.   Maybe AI could do that - like "Filter this movie so it looks like a cartoon in the style of Jumpman Junior".  LOL.  That would be cool and might even be a good use for AI!  Also, a movie made into an 8-bit game graphics would be super tiny in terms of storage.  👾 🙂

 

[magnusfalkirk]

On 3/28/2024 at 11:11 PM, rocketfan said:

@magnusfalkirk Yes to what @Batchman said.  I grew up with Atari, so I have an irrational love of playing games with Atari Joysticks!  Also, the Atari flashbacks have the difficulty switches and now support paddles pretty well.  I do a lot of experimenting with emulation on different devices, and IMO these Atari flashbacks do offer a very good experience for Atari 70's and 80's content.  However, if I take a console on vacation with me it's usually the Legends Flashback just because it does support a ton more content and plays great with actual Sega (well aftermarket in my case) game-pads.

 

On the Atari units we just made a big effort to restrict most of the sections to one-button content so that if you open up a game you can pretty much be guaranteed you can play with the one button stick.  I'd bet with Nexus you have the biggest collection of one-button arcade games ever identified - if that's something to brag about.  I still play Arabian sometimes - but then I clear my recently played list. LOL.

 

Some sections (Gameboy) have never really been filled out even to that extent, and some of the newer sections were not filtered so carefully mainly because of time.  I happen to really like Colecovision, so when the point was made that some games could be played better with the "up" hack I was sort of really into that idea.  🙂

 

@rocketfan Thanks for seconding @Batchman answer about why there are less Nintendo and Sega games in the Nexus build than in the Legend build. I've got the latest Legend build for my 50 game version if the Legend Flashback and am amazed at how many more games there are in the 1.7 version vs the 1.6. Thanks again for all you and Dr. Axxon's work

[TampaBay]

With all the hype surrounding the introduction of the 400 Mini, I've seen tons of game reviews for Atari 8-bit, and have been playing several of them on Nexus.

 

I'm surprised that not once has anyone in the reviews or YouTube videos mentioned the awesome basketball game "One on One: Dr. J vs. Larry Bird", especially since it was a critical and commercial success.  It's not part of any of the Nexus game collections, is it?  It's on my portable setup and it's still fun to play!

 

 

[rocketfan]

10 hours ago, TampaBay said:

It's not part of any of the Nexus game collections, is it?

Look in the XEGS section!  The one I have been seeing I never remember playing is Wavy Navy.

[TampaBay]

12 minutes ago, rocketfan said:

Look in the XEGS section!  The one I have been seeing I never remember playing is Wavy Navy.

Thanks! I'll take a look.

 

Ha, I saw that Wavy Navy game a few times in reviews too, and I don't recall it from back in the day either!

 

[TampaBay]

11 hours ago, rocketfan said:

Look in the XEGS section!  The one I have been seeing I never remember playing is Wavy Navy.

 

That XEGS section is awesome!  I have no idea how I've never looked in there before or noticed it.  One on One plays so great!  Then I was just doing the Pole Vault in Summer Games!

 

What are those versions of the games?  Are they any different than what you might find in the other 8-bit sections?  I'm so curious about all of this now!  For example, is there a technical reason why One on One would only run in the XEGS section?  Either way, very cool!