Bop & Wrestle question concerning Atari 800XL with Rambo XL

[TheGreatPW]

Hi everyone,

 

I'll admit, I enjoyed this game and appreciated the details and many animation frames of the sprites as I don't recall too many games that featured so many moves with the characters especially on an Atari 8 bit computer. 

 

Plus I loved wrestling games and with only Mat Mania Challenge (7800), Title Match Pro Wrestling (2600 and 7800), Pro Wrestling (NES), and Wrestlemania (NES) available to play at the time, I couldn't get enough of wrestling games so this game got played a lot along with the others mentioned.

 

The game was best enjoyed on the 130XE because of the extra memory.   It was almost impossible to play on an Atari 800XL.  I was wondering would the extra memory chips like Rambo XL be supported on the 800XL for this game?

 

Atari never released a sanctioned memory expansion for the 800XL and I'm curious if memory expansion like Rambo XL would work with the program?  I prefer having my 800XL available over the 130XE so wondering if finally getting expanded memory like Rambo XL or ICD's 1 meg expansion would be worth it.  However, if expanded memory is only worthwhile for programming, I guess that's a good reason why I never bought one.

 

One of the letdowns of expanding an Atari 800 to 64K was that it didn't guarantee that the games at the 64K for the XL & XE level would work on it.  I remember friends complaining about that way back when.

 

Anyone ever try this on an Atari 800XL with expanded memory?

 

 

Edited October 22, 2022 by TheGreatPW

[Atari8guy]

Fire it up in Altirra and give it go with many different memory expansion options.  

 

I remember beating this game while playing it back on my 800XL and it really putting the 1050 through it's paces....

 

 

[TGB1718]

You can select XL/XE mode with U1M installed and the expanded memory includes the extra

64K that is in a 130XE (plus a lot lore  ) so your game should run as you expect.

[tjlazer]

I remember wondering why the game was so slow to load and needing constant disk access on my 800XL.  And on my 130XE I was surprised to see it loaded much faster.  I agree, the game is almost unplayable on the 800XL!  You have to have a lot of patience!

[Mrshoujo]

If the game worked better on the 130XE, then an 800XL with a RAMbo XL 256K Upgrade would run it as well since the memory banking scheme is the same.