New Game: Ace 2600

[Cassidy Nolen]

Its basically Street Racer. There was a Bally version of it called Asteroid. Screenshot in Van Burnhams book, I think.

 

Would not be hard to get a hack of that. FWIW, I think there was one at Videotopia, and Maybe COSI in Ohio.

 

Of course you could always get Curt to take a screen shot! Anyone remember what that green one went for on ebay a few years back? Think it was like 3K!

 

Cassidy

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

I'd try the game .but Cyberstella keeps crashing my comp.

 

You should try Z26 then. Cyberstella is somewhat outdated, as there is currently no active developer for it.

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Godzilla]

so no screen shots or actual evidence as to what type of game this really is? scrolling? non-scrolling? (check my earlier post, one site lists it as scrolling,)

racing? dodging?

[Rob Mitchell]

Depending on the feedback how people like it and how the DC controls are received, I might continue working on it like adding more features and so render it more unique.

 

Keep working on it! I love DC games!

 

Rob Mitchell, Atlanta, GA

[mos6507]

so no screen shots or actual evidence as to what type of game this really is? scrolling? non-scrolling? (check my earlier post, one site lists it as scrolling,)

racing? dodging?

 

I think you are talking about Ace, but if you mean Space Race, I've played it and have a pretty good memory of it.

 

The spaceships look like christmas tree outlines with two zigzags instead of three. Al Alcorn showed me a sample board and the shape is embedded in the board in diodes.

 

You can move your spaceship forwards or backwards. You roll over at the top back to the bottom and get a point if you do that. I don't think I tried to reverse rollover by backing up. Probably wouldn't work.

 

There doesn't appear to be much in the way of acceleration when moving from a stop.

 

So the race aspect has mostly to do with evading the star patterns. The star patterns are like two interlaced starfields that scroll left and right, crisscrossing eachother. There is enough space between them to find pockets that you can slide into. It's thematically the same as Freeway or Frogger (without the horizontal movement).

 

I wasn't positive but I think that the stars wrap around on the horizontal rather than getting spawned randomly.

 

I remember the sound effects for the ships being more electronic sounding than like rockets. It sounded like a muffled high-pitched Indy car or something, two speakers with independent sounds on each.

 

I forget exactly what happened when you get hit by a star but I vaguely recall the screen flashing in reverse (black becomes white, white becomes black).

 

For 1973 it's a pretty advanced game given most of the arcade business was just Pong clones. Not as advanced as Computer Space, of course.

 

Like Avalanche, the gameplay was ahead of its time, only being fully appreciated when the Activision equivalent (Freeway) came out.

 

Personally, I'd like to see an attempt to port this, maybe using a variation on Freeway (but a whole new codebase probably wouldn't be that hard) and also an attempt at Computer Space.