Atari 2600 Tarzan released!

[carlsson]

Perhaps the author of the page wasn't aware about the unreleased A8 game. Their own website seems somewhat incomplete and not methodically updated, to put it in nice words. Given that the page lists several other A8 games, it seems plausible that they developed both the ColecoVision and Atari 8-bit versions.

[Raiu]

7 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

I was playing this quite a bit last night as it really is fun.  I think I was able to get through about 4 times before my timer ran out.  The hunter is ruthless at that point since if you get shot right in front of him.. that's it because he shoots again just as you get up due to the timing being the same. I was able to land a punch on him once to get out of the loop but lost a lot of time in the process. 

 

My only complaint is how dark the last 'boss' screen is on the palette to the far right.

 

Anyway, here is the best I've manage to get when playing last night. I started from game 1.

 

Damn, that's good. I thought it was fun... until I got to the wall-climbing section, which ultimately killed me.  Those rocks seem to be entirely random and extremely frequent, and the closer I got to the top the more likely I was to get knocked all the way back down to the bottom. I got through two screens of them but then ran out of time on the third.  I didn't even know there was a "boss screen".  (I didn't think to record my score, since I hit the joystick button afterwards to see if there was a continue feature, but it wasn't anywhere near 40k. I don't even think it was 5k)

 

... anyway, I think I would have loved this forty years ago, at least up until the climbing screen.

 

Edit: Playing it a second time, I didn't realize you can still jump and punch on the climbing screen!  That makes things much easier.  Saw and beat the "boss" this time, though I don't know exactly what I did to beat him (?).  Couldn't get through the second loop, though. I got the Gimla section much more often (and I can't seem to get through that without falling in the water and losing a lot of time), and I ran out of time on the multi-floor part with the golden apes and the cages.  Final score: 14880.

Edited June 4 by Raiu

[+-^CrossBow^-]

2 minutes ago, Raiu said:

... anyway, I think I would have loved this forty years ago, at least up until the climbing screen.

There is a trick on the climbing screen that I learned pretty quickly. Always go towards and stay under the top most shown ledge that the rocks can hit and bounce off of. If you stay centered under that as you climb up, the rocks will always bounce off it and go off to the side of you.

 

But the really interesting part is when you get to the top. I found that again, if you stay just under that top ledge and wait for a rock to fall. Then start to move up, it seems the game stops the rock falls once you get past a certain point at the top and it is pretty much just after that top ledge. So again, get under that top ledge to safely climb up and then wait just under it so that you can scoot straight up and over that ledge and be on the clear.

 

Also, you can jump while on the climbing part. You will fall down a little bit when you grab back on, but it is the only way to safely get away from falling rocks in your path in time. As you go through sets and it increases the difficulty, those rocks begin to fall faster and more frequent. But again, once you get past that certain point along the top, they stop falling it seems.

 

[+wavemotion]

Got a chance to play a bit - pretty fun and really nice music!  Still struggling on the vine-to-tree transfers.

 

I added the original Tarzan (aka JANE) banking to StellaDS 7.2c and it's on my github site... in case you want to play this in the original Klingon.

 

[Tempest]

I've found that moving at a diagonal helped me get through the boulders.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

27 minutes ago, Tempest said:

I've found that moving at a diagonal helped me get through the boulders.

I do that along with jumping to get across quickly and get under that ledge I spoke of. Again, once you are under it, you should be safe all the way to the top.

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Quick correction: Tarzan is 16K (not 12K). While the 4th bank contains a lot of redundant data (at the same addresses!), the code it is not identical to the 1st bank.

 

Sorry for not correcting this earlier.

 

BTW: Probably obvious and noticed somewhere already, but the game has 4 initial difficulties, selected via joystick up and down.

Edited June 5 by Thomas Jentzsch

[Rom Hunter]

On 6/3/2024 at 11:09 PM, Tempest said:

I was just asking Frank about this the other day.  Glad to see it finally got released for everyone to play.

 

Kevin's write up is pretty amazing so mine feels kind of redundant but you can read it here: http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/tarzan/tarzan.htm

 

I also took a look at the Atari 8-Bit proto: http://www.atariprotos.com/8bit/software/tarzan/tarzan.htm

Tempest,

You forgot to link your Tarzan header to the Tarzan page.

Also, the 'prototype box' is an image out of the Coleco press kit.

I wouldn't count that as a real box. 

[+Living Room Arcade]

I was looking at Atari 2600 videos on Youtube and I saw a video for Tarzan and I was like, "Tarzan?"  Then I saw this thread! 

 

Wow, after 40 years, we're still getting new games!  Thanks so much, you guys, for doing this!  

 

Screenshot

Spoiler

Edited June 5 by Living Room Arcade

[Tempest]

3 hours ago, Rom Hunter said:

Tempest,

You forgot to link your Tarzan header to the Tarzan page.

Also, the 'prototype box' is an image out of the Coleco press kit.

I wouldn't count that as a real box. 

That's because there are two different Tarzan protos.  Where there are multiple protos I don't link to a specific page in the header.

 

Ah ok, I'll update that to read 'Prototype Artwork'

[moycon]

It's amazing to think that after all these years new Atari 2600 games are seeing the light of day!  What a cool looking game. 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

17 hours ago, wavemotion said:

Got a chance to play a bit - pretty fun and really nice music!  Still struggling on the vine-to-tree transfers.

I once faced a pair of vines (over the pond) which could not be caught. I tried several time (using rewinds), but no change. So I had to go swimming. Did anyone face this too?

17 hours ago, wavemotion said:

 

I added the original Tarzan (aka JANE) banking to StellaDS 7.2c and it's on my github site... in case you want to play this in the original Klingon.

 

The next Stella release 7.0 will contain JANE (and WF8) too.

[Tempest]

14 minutes ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

I once faced a pair of vines (over the pond) which could not be caught. I tried several time (using rewinds), but no change. So I had to go swimming. Did anyone face this too?

 

You can't jump vine to vine like in Jungle Hunt, you have to jump from the tree to first vine to the center tree to the second vine. Or do you mean that you couldn't catch the first vine at all?

 

I did encounter a bug where the game freaked out after I pushed reset too many times on the start screen (I was hitting the wrong key and thought I was hitting select).

[Thomas Jentzsch]

7 minutes ago, Tempest said:

Or do you mean that you couldn't catch the first vine at all?

Exactly.

7 minutes ago, Tempest said:

I did encounter a bug where the game freaked out after I pushed reset too many times on the start screen (I was hitting the wrong key and thought I was hitting select).

Interesting. I may have a look.

[ubersaurus]

On 6/3/2024 at 8:40 PM, Tempest said:

@ubersaurus do you know if 4D did the Atari 8-Bit version as well?

The 4D stuff came from Henry Will's notebook if I recall - I don't remember that he wrote about the 8bit version and who may have been doing it. I could ping Lawrence Schick about it but I'd be surprised if he remembers by this point.

Edited June 5 by ubersaurus

[+somebooks]

oh wow! thanks to all who made this happen!

very excited to read through that article and play this tonight.

[Tempest]

1 hour ago, ubersaurus said:

The 4D stuff came from Henry Will's notebook if I recall - I don't remember that he wrote about the 8bit version and who may have been doing it. I could ping Lawrence Schick about it but I'd be surprised if he remembers by this point.

It is kind of odd that he was unaware of it, but if they were using the CV version as a reference then they might not have cared about the 8-Bit version.  Still, I would think the 8-Bit version had to have been in development at the same time as they're practically identical and both have an 84 copyright. 

[+Al_Nafuur]

@Thomas Jentzsch have you done a disassembly for the PAL60 version or did you "hacked" the colors in the binary?

 

[Thomas Jentzsch]

28 minutes ago, Al_Nafuur said:

@Thomas Jentzsch have you done a disassembly for the PAL60 version or did you "hacked" the colors in the binary?

 

That latter. Interested?

 

BTW: Attached is a slightly updated PAL-60 version which fixes some colors I missed before. I also changed one color conversion value, because Tarzan uses a lot of beige/brown/yellow values which the PAL palette lacks. Before $fx ("beige") was converted into $1x ("yellow"), now into $2x (brown). You can notice this by the now different tree trunk colors.

Tarzan (F6) (PAL60) (V1.1).bin

[8bitPoet]

Wow! This is astonishing for an Atari 2600 game programmed in 1983. I especially appreciate the soundtrack. Different themes for different screens helps break up the monotony of a looped melody. They also reproduced the sound of congas. I'd sure like to know how they got that sound. It would work well for a game I'm currently working on.

 

[Rom Hunter]

8 hours ago, Tempest said:

That's because there are two different Tarzan protos.  Where there are multiple protos I don't link to a specific page in the header.

 

Ah ok, I'll update that to read 'Prototype Artwork'

Here's another one:

 

Screenshot differs from the proto, btw.

Edited June 5 by Rom Hunter

[Tempest]

25 minutes ago, Rom Hunter said:

Here's another one:

 

Screenshot differs from the proto, btw.

Yeah it looks earlier.  The lake is square and the trees/background is a bit different.  Interesting. 

 

That description doesn't match the final game though.  It's kind of similar but different.

[+Al_Nafuur]

5 hours ago, Thomas Jentzsch said:

That latter. Interested?

I would like to have a look if there are ~40 bytes free to add PlusROM HSC support.

 

 

 

[sprrwhwk]

Thanks to all who worked on this game and made it available 40 years later.  This would have been a popular game on the VCS / 2600 had it been released a tad bit earlier.  I'm going to have a crack at it now.  🕹️

[Thomas Jentzsch]

7 hours ago, Al_Nafuur said:

I would like to have a look if there are ~40 bytes free to add PlusROM HSC support.

Ah, OK.

 

I have attached my disassembly. Since it is not fully analyzed by far, please make sure that you do not change any addresses. There is a large free block in the 1st bank (search for PlusROM).

Tarzan_F6.asm