Lucky Chase - A new port of Lock N' Chase for the Atari 2600!

[+RaymanC]

Hello Friends!!

 

Here is Lucky Chase!! A new port of the arcade game Lock N' Chase for the Atari 2600!

 

 

I have attached the NTSC and PAL60 versions for you to download and play!

 

If you find any bugs, please let me know.

Enjoy!!

 

Carlos

RaymanC

 

 

Lucky Chase NTSC RC3.bin Lucky Chase PAL60 RC3.bin

[BIGHMW]

Guys this is BRLLIANT!!! BY FAR THE BEST version of Lock 'n' Chase ever produced for the 2600, she even works on my Flashback 9, the perfect accompaniment to @splendidnut's jjust-as-brilliant Chaotic Grill! (his 2600 rendition of Burgertime), if I ever do bring back The Atari Report then this game will be on the top of the list of those on the 2600 Edition to review if and when I do!!!

[+TrekMD]

Wow, this looks fantastic!

[+x=usr(1536)]

The game is excellent.  Thank you!

 

One thing I want to mention: it does not run from a Concerto on my 7800.  Works fine from a Harmony Encore on the same machine, but the Concerto results in the following:

 

 

I would have used a direct capture, but my upscaler doesn't see a valid video signal when this is happening - hence the photo 

 

Pretty sure this is a Concerto issue since the Harmony has no problems, but figured I'd mention it anyway in case someone else ran into the same thing.

[+Trebor]

35 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

Pretty sure this is a Concerto issue since the Harmony has no problems...

It requires DPC+ support which is present under Encore but not Concerto (yet).

[Prizrak]

Awesome port/remake! I played yours and thought it was really nice, popped in the original lock 'n chase and was shocked how much improved yours is with DPC+. I uploaded this to PlusCart thinking it was standard bank switching till I tried it and realized where the magic was at. Never ceases to amaze me what we can do with 40+ year old hardware and know every nook and cranny of this old girl. This to me is a much as an improvement as a the Burger time remake.

[BIGHMW]

1 hour ago, Prizrak said:

Awesome port/remake! I played yours and thought it was really nice, popped in the original lock 'n chase and was shocked how much improved yours is with DPC+. I uploaded this to PlusCart thinking it was standard bank switching till I tried it and realized where the magic was at. Never ceases to amaze me what we can do with 40+ year old hardware and know every nook and cranny of this old girl. This to me is a much as an improvement as a the Burger time remake.

Agreed. It's like both @splendidnut's Chaotic Grill and Lucky Chase were almost meant for each other as far as the 2600 goes, the same thing holds true for the late Ken Siders' Beef Drop and @Ryan Witmer's Rob 'n' Banks for the 5200/A8 as well. Two Data East classics that are pretty much almost like "sister" games, can't play one without having the other in the lineup too.

[+johnnywc]

Looks and sounds great!   

 

I must admit I never played Lock N' Chase back in the day (lol it took a few games before I realized you can press the button to make the red barriers  ).  The game plays very well, but it seems that you get infinite lives?  I got killed about a dozen times and my game never ended, plus the two squares in the left bottom corner didn't change (I assume those are the life counters).  Besides that I didn't see any issues.  

[Raiu]

.... all I know is that I'm really bad at this.  I have no idea what the things in the middle do (the moneybag and the hat?) because they disappear before I can get to them and/or I die on my way to them.

 

Looks nice, death animation is way too long considering how frequently it happens.

[+johnnywc]

21 hours ago, johnnywc said:

The game plays very well, but it seems that you get infinite lives?  I got killed about a dozen times and my game never ended, plus the two squares in the left bottom corner didn't change (I assume those are the life counters).  Besides that I didn't see any issues.  

Okay, I found the issue.  Since I'm usually developing instead of playing games  , my Developer settings were set to "Developer" instead of "Player". 

 

 

In my Developer settings, the "[*] Drive unused TIA pins randomly on a read/peek" was checked.  Disabling this fixes the infinite lives error (and also I noticed that the score color gets corrupted too if this setting is enabled).  Typically this means that you are assuming that unused TIA bits are 0 when reading a register when in theory they could be 1.  I'm sure an expert like @Thomas Jentzsch could give more insight into this phenomenon.   

 

Hope that helps!

John

 

[+RaymanC]

9 hours ago, johnnywc said:

In my Developer settings, the "[*] Drive unused TIA pins randomly on a read/peek" was checked.  Disabling this fixes the infinite lives error (and also I noticed that the score color gets corrupted too if this setting is enabled).

That's good to know! Thanks John!!

[+RaymanC]

11 hours ago, Raiu said:

I have no idea what the things in the middle do (the moneybag and the hat?) because they disappear before I can get to them and/or I die on my way to them.

Take any of them before they disappear to win bonus points!!

[+SpiceWare]

15 hours ago, RaymanC said:

That's good to know! Thanks John!!

 

This issue usually means you accidentally left the # off of an immediate mode instruction, such LDA #1 or CMP #1.