RealSports Soccer Prototype

[Tempest]

Does anyone have more info on this RS Soccer prototype for the Atari 8-Bits?  Where did it come from?  Why does it have a much nicer title screen than the 5200 original?

 

https://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-realsports-soccer_4315.html

 

[+Stephen]

Never saw that before - cool looking startup screen with custom font!

[www.atarimania.com]

This version has been in the wild for zillions of years, it probably got leaked out in the mid-eighties like many other titles.

[Tempest]

7 hours ago, www.atarimania.com said:

This version has been in the wild for zillions of years, it probably got leaked out in the mid-eighties like many other titles.

Do we know anything about it?  Is it an official proto or just a nice looking hack?

[baktra]

Most likely a proto. One is wondering how they would translate the rich keypad controls with many kicks to the one button control scheme.

 

The game looks surprisingly good, yet still shows implementing a good full soccer on 8-bit Atari is mission... impossible.

 

https://atariage.com/overlay_page.php?SoftwareLabelID=656

Edited June 7 by baktra

[www.atarimania.com]

Considering the title appeared in catalogs and was assigned a proper RX number, I always thought it was the real deal but there were so many weird things going on that you never know...

 

There's also another file said to be "FIXED BY THE GHOST GENIUS" with a glitchy title screen and a typo (it says TWO PLAYESR), no idea how they differ.

[Tempest]

I suppose it could be a legit prototype.  Atari did do a brand new title screen for RS Tennis when they released it a year later than the 5200 version.  I'm curious as to what the deal is with the 'glitchy' version.  I'll have to ask John Seghers if he knows anything about it.

[www.atarimania.com]

Just some additional information about the file on our site...

 

You probably noticed the annoying message before the intro screen. This is because the game was lifted from a non-DOS format Howfen menu. I had to transfer the program to a boot disk first before the executable could be created. That "Insert blank disk..." bit appears to be written automatically and wasn't on the "original" file. I couldn't locate a "clean" version of the game  but there's one somewhere, I'm 100% sure I had it on a standard disk back in the day.

 

On a side note, did anybody ever write a program to directly convert a Howfen file to a DOS executable? The only ones I saw always seem to require an extra step (that is converting the file to a boot disk). That would be a life changer.

[Rybags]

If such a think doesn't exist, in the modern day we have other options, such as set a breakpoint in emulation then write out the relevant memory part/s when the load has finished.

With that in hand, it could be as simple as adding the relevant executable payload bytes

[Scooter83]

I'll have to try my prototype out and report if it looks identical on the boot screen. But that's the cartridge label that is in line with what atari used for prototypes and in house works .

[Dutchman2000]

25 minutes ago, Scooter83 said:

I'll have to try my prototype out and report if it looks identical on the boot screen. But that's the cartridge label that is in line with what atari used for prototypes and in house works .

Is this dumped?

[Tempest]

1 hour ago, Scooter83 said:

I'll have to try my prototype out and report if it looks identical on the boot screen. But that's the cartridge label that is in line with what atari used for prototypes and in house works .

Awesome!  Please dump this if you haven't already.  A nice clean proto rom would be nice.

[Scooter83]

Its on my to do list for as dumping. Satan's Hallow, 1450XL Communicator ( ive seen a 1400 floating around but not sure a 1450), Final Legacy Revision 5.3 from the creator himself.( I believe this one was dumped at one point before becoming publicly available for purchase years ago from how I understand it. ), POP Demo (Point of Purchase), Tennis, Death Star ( Star Wars game) are on the to do list for as carts are concerned.

[Tempest]

Does your RS Soccer proto look the same as the one thats out there?

[Dutchman2000]

19 hours ago, Scooter83 said:

Its on my to do list for as dumping. Satan's Hallow, 1450XL Communicator ( ive seen a 1400 floating around but not sure a 1450), Final Legacy Revision 5.3 from the creator himself.( I believe this one was dumped at one point before becoming publicly available for purchase years ago from how I understand it. ), POP Demo (Point of Purchase), Tennis, Death Star ( Star Wars game) are on the to do list for as carts are concerned.

I released a disk version of 1450XL Communicator

[Tempest]

Can anyone tell me what the controls are?  How do you select different kicks or change people?

[Tempest]

I *think* I figured it out?  It's kind of hard considering my keyboard doesn't 100% line up with a real 800 keyboard.

 

Player 1 Switch Player (basically the first five keys in each row on the left side)

1 2 3 4 5

Q W E R T

A S D F G

Player 1 Kicks - Ground - Z  Low - X  Med - C  High - V (the bottom four keys on the left)

 

Player 2 Switch Player (once again the five keys in three rows on the right side)

I O P Up Arrow Down Arrow

K L ; Left Arrow Right Arrow

9 0 CLEAR INSERT

Player 2 Kicks - High - [   Med - ]   Low - ?   Ground - ATARI?  (the bottom four keys on the right side)

 

I can't find the ATARI key equivalent on my emulator but given the order of keys I'd bet that's the ground kick key

 

[Supergun]

On 6/9/2024 at 9:24 PM, Scooter83 said:

I'll have to try my prototype out and report if it looks identical on the boot screen. But that's the cartridge label that is in line with what atari used for prototypes and in house works .

I’m bumping this back to life.

 

Scooter83 did you ever get around to dumping the EPROMs on this cartridge? They have an almost identical version in the database, but it’s a .xex file and I’d really like to have a standard .rom file for this game.