The Atari 400 Mini is running ROMs too FAST!

[Steverd]

I was just making a video of time a few dozen ROMs/Bins/XEX and notice the mini is running

the games way faster than they should be. Anyone else notice on their ROMs?

I've tried different settings: 400, 800 etc and that didn't effect the speed any.

Is there a setting I missed to slow the games down to 'normal' speed.

Using NTSC, couldn't test PAL on my TV.

Thoughts?

 

[+LS650]

I have to say I haven't noticed that at all.  I owned a 400 and then an 800XL for several years in the 80s-early 90s.  I've spent a few hours playing a variety of favorite games I used to play quite a bit BITD, and they all play about the same as I recall.

 

I thought Galaxians might be the one exception: I found when I was playing it that it seemed faster than I remember, but I did well and scored fairly decent numbers, so maybe I'm wrong on that one.

[Steverd]

59 minutes ago, LS650 said:

I have to say I haven't noticed that at all.  I owned a 400 and then an 800XL for several years in the 80s-early 90s.  I've spent a few hours playing a variety of favorite games I used to play quite a bit BITD, and they all play about the same as I recall.

 

I thought Galaxians might be the one exception: I found when I was playing it that it seemed faster than I remember, but I did well and scored fairly decent numbers, so maybe I'm wrong on that one.

 

Galaxian.rom was definitely one that is running faster. Also check out the Zaxxon.bin - so fast. Moon Patrol rom is faster to name a few.

 

 

[+LS650]

I have played both Zaxxon and Moon Patrol, and they seemed fine.  It would be interesting to hear what other players think.

[doug0909]

If you're over 50, everything feels like it's running too fast...

[+Torq]

I've noticed this a couple of times in the music (title screen, intro, etc.) in a couple of games.  Most notably Pole Position and Ghostbusters.  It doesn't happen every time, even if just using the same ROM file.  And its sometimes made "better" by switching the emulation mode from, say 800 to 800XL.  Or playing something else, and then coming back to it.

 

Since it was sporadic, I assumed it was somehing like the emulator somehow getting started at the wrong refresh rate.  A game that used a VBI to run the music (or at least, change the notes), would seem faster on a 60Hz configuration than on 50Hz.  If it wasn't sporadic, I'd have assumed I'd run a PAL ROM that was also using the VBI for such events (though I've definitely done that too).

[pjedavison]

Not seen this at all, and I've tried quite a few games at this point. The only thing that is faster than it "should" be is loading, and that's a deliberate choice that doesn't affect the speed of the games themselves once they're in memory.

[THX-1138]

Seems fine to me, I play Galaxian quite a lot.

[dgrams2000]

I don't know enough about atari game speeds from yesteryear to know the difference.  But there were changes within on the C64 minis that affected speed.  Mostly when you are talking differences between ntsc and pal settings.  Had a few games running way too fast there and then tweaked settings in the system which fixed speeds...  so maybe ntsc/pal stuff once again?

[Spanner]

Yes its probably a NTSC/PAL thing going on, the emulator could be trying to detecting what game is NTSC or PAL and getting it wrong, thats why it should be in the cfg file so if its a mistake it can be changed easily in the cfg file...

Edited April 7 by Spanner

[Steverd]

Add Frogger rom to the list, I will make a side-by-side video today from my Atari 800XL and the 400 Mini.

Then I will know if I'm just old or crazy or both, LOL.

Thank you for all of the comment!

[WozNYC]

On 4/6/2024 at 7:25 PM, Steverd said:

I was just making a video of time a few dozen ROMs/Bins/XEX and notice the mini is running

the games way faster than they should be. Anyone else notice on their ROMs?

 

Atari 400 owner since 1980. Noticed this immediately running a few games from USB. Shamus is one of them. Walking speed and knives are too fast. I've been playing this game for 40+ years and still play it on a real 800XL and 130XE as well as MiSTer. Also, some games like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man show odd colors. Reds look purple, yellow Pac-Man looks pinkish. I obviously have other ways to play these games but I thought the Atari 400 Mini was cute. I hope they sort it out eventually through firmware.

[+Torq]

I've seen some odd color-shifts in a few games.

 

Sometimes this has come with changing the emulation mode (e.g., from 800 to 800XL).

 

In one case, which I can't currently reproduce, the version of Parker Bros. Frogger, that still plays music all the time, renders the logs and crocs in green, where in other cases it will be brown (400 Mini is doing brown, Altirra under Crossover on macOS is showing green ... though Altirra lets you remap the palette to adjust for such things).

[WozNYC]

20 hours ago, Torq said:

I've seen some odd color-shifts in a few games.

Sometimes this has come with changing the emulation mode (e.g., from 800 to 800XL).

You are correct. Changing emulation to 800XL fixed the weird colors.

I didn't remember the color differences in CTIA vs GTIA being so stark.

 

Also, changing emulation to 800XL also seems to have fixed Shamus running too fast.

I do have to change display height to 212 and vertical offset to 14 or the screen gets cut off.

 

I've also had much better luck with xex files than atr. Many disk images boot me back to the menu.

 

They should make 800XL the default, not 800.

Edited April 10 by WozNYC