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New Atari 5200 Prototypes


Tempest

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Thanks to the generosity of Ianoid, we now how eight new Atari 5200 prototypes to play with.  Most of these are very late WIP versions so even I haven't figured out what the differences are yet, but there are some interesting ones in here.  The most interesting is Dig Dug 097 which doesn't have collision detection yet and you can't pump.  You can be killed by the rocks however and then you get to see a strange Ready Player One screen.   I'll be putting up pages about these over the next few days, but I wanted to get these out there so everyone could look at them.  Let me know what changes you see.

 

Here's what's in the file:

 

Asteroids (unknown) - Seems complete but tests different.  I had trouble getting the button inputs to work so I think the programmer was tweaking the debounce code

 

Berzerk (unknown) - A very very late proto.  The only difference I see is the lack of a copyright on the title screen

 

Dig Dug 097 - As mentioned above, a mid-level WIP

 

Joust 163 - Close to the final but there's no Williams copyright on the title screen, the lives icons face the correct way, and you can move right away when you start a new life (otherwise you had to push the fire button).  These changes are same as the final Atari 400/800 version so maybe that version was actually ported from a WIP 5200 version?

 

RS Baseball (2-11-83) - Very early and much slower

 

RS Baseball (7-6-83) - Mid/late level WIP

 

RS Soccer (8-26-82) - Has code differences but I can't tell what they are

 

Sport Goofy (3-28-83) - Late WIP has a few minor differences in the HUD and the splash screen says 1982!

5200 Protos.zip

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My preliminary pages are up now but I still have to do more analysis.  So many of these are very late WIP without visible differences.  I need someone to look at the code and see what the heck is going on behind the scenes.

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46 minutes ago, Crimefighter said:

What was the deal with the 400/800/XL/XE getting a very inferior version of Qix compared to the 5200?  And which version came out first? 

I wouldn't say it's inferior, it's just different.  I grew up with the 400/800 version and loved it, I still do.

 

I have no idea why they did two different versions, but I would assume the 400/800 version came out first and was in development before the 5200 version.  It seems that many of the early arcade ports for the Atari 400/800 weren't as polished as the ones that came out for the 5200.  I think it was because they were really pushing the 5200 as the 'Personal Arcade Machine' whereas they tried to downplay the Atari 400/800's game playing capabilities because they wanted to push it as a serious computer.

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Some more Ianoid dumped.  An early version of Moon Patrol (slightly earlier than the 9-19 version I previously documented), a new intermediate version of Spitfire, and a late WIP of Robotron (not sure what the differences are).  I'm not sure if the new undated Robotron prototype is earlier or later than the 10-12-83 one I've already documented.  It's probably from within a day or two of it either way.

 

Moon Patrol (9-14-83).bin Robotron (Unknown).bin Spitfire 9-30.bin

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