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The "Coleco conspiracy" - why not Atari?


Dauber

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12 hours ago, Zonie said:

I would like to see someone take the original and ONLY do the following, as I don't have the programming skill on the 2600, or I would:

  • Change the background to Black
  • Change the walls from Orange to Dark Blue
  • Change Pacman to like what zzip said above
  • Keep it 4K, and no new tricks. Only what was known at the time.

Release the ROM, and then we could all play it and give an honest response, would those of us who hated it in 1982, like this one?

 

  • load Pac-Man into Stella
  • hit ` to enter the debugger
  • type the following commands in the prompt
    • rom ff32 00 84
    • rom ff2b 42 a8 4c 28
    • rom fdb4 7c
    • rom fdba 7c
    • rom fdbc 7c f8 e0 f8 7c
    • saverom

Commands entered into Stella:

image.thumb.png.85dd9a45948fe4696da80d4c3c272e02.png

 

First ROM command changes background and maze colors

 

Second ROM command changes the 4 ghost colors*

 

Next 3 ROM commands change Pacman's graphics

 

results of saverom:

Pac-Man color graphic hack.a26

 

I did the color changes last year after a discussing about Pac-Man during a @ZeroPage Homebrew stream, so just had to locate the graphics in the ROM.

 

 

* yep, the ghosts in 2600 Pac-Man are different colors. They're set to FC, EC, DC, and CC which don't look very different from each other when flickering at 15 Hz over the blue background.

 

image.thumb.png.14644ff8f5503e3ff5d4512d6a6f2d0a.png

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On 9/16/2024 at 11:05 AM, Hawkeye68 said:

I asked about it on the forum before and didn't get a reply.  I figure it must have, as most of the internet images are not the slow original version.

 

I've attached it.  Notice how the ghosts move in almost slow motion after you eat a power pellet and how slow the score display is when eating a ghost.  This really detracted from the feel of the original game.

Pacman Orig 1982.XEX 8.06 kB · 8 downloads

Huh, I distinctly recall having two different versions of Pac-man and Donkey Kong on disk.  The speed / difficulty seemed different for both of them.  I was really good at the one version of Pac-man, but terrible at the other, as it seemed the ghosts no longer followed the same pattern, though I can't recall if they moved faster as well.  The DK version was all over the place and I couldn't ever pass the stage with the bouncing springs.

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On 9/12/2024 at 6:56 PM, GoldLeader said:

No conspiracy AT ALL.  Of course Donkey Kong on Atari 2600 is going to look worse.  Just look at the machine specs.  There's even whole articles on the internet about how hard it was to get those girders Angled properly on 2600 (a true feat,  nothing low rent about it),  and not everyone knew how to program Atari carts in those days,  it was a pretty specialized skill.

 

Now, that said,  could some Coleco 2600 games have been better?  Yes,  if they had bigger budgets, more time, and of course if they knew then what we know now (everything from programming tricks to ARM and DPC+ etc. that didn't exist back then)...

 

Now Intellivision games on the other hand (heh)...**Runs off**...

 

 

PS: OK,  Re-reading original post,  I was a bit off topic,...but Yeah,  also completely agree Pac-Man was simply the product of Todd Frye...

Just one of the many accounts regarding the girders. 

0_Screenshot_20240517_161034_com.google.android.apps.docs.jpg

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13 hours ago, SpiceWare said:

 

  • load Pac-Man into Stella
  • hit ` to enter the debugger
  • type the following commands in the prompt
    • rom ff32 00 84
    • rom ff2b 42 a8 4c 28
    • rom fdb4 7c
    • rom fdba 7c
    • rom fdbc 7c f8 e0 f8 7c
    • saverom

Commands entered into Stella:

image.thumb.png.85dd9a45948fe4696da80d4c3c272e02.png

 

First ROM command changes background and maze colors

 

Second ROM command changes the 4 ghost colors*

 

Next 3 ROM commands change Pacman's graphics

 

results of saverom:

Pac-Man color graphic hack.a26 4 kB · 6 downloads

 

I did the color changes last year after a discussing about Pac-Man during a @ZeroPage Homebrew stream, so just had to locate the graphics in the ROM.

 

 

* yep, the ghosts in 2600 Pac-Man are different colors. They're set to FC, EC, DC, and CC which don't look very different from each other when flickering at 15 Hz over the blue background.

 

image.thumb.png.14644ff8f5503e3ff5d4512d6a6f2d0a.png

@SpiceWare Thanks Darrell. OK. Downloaded it, Played it and found I had Puckman in my file list too.

Yeah, I can honestly say, It wasn't great, but if the colors were changed, I could have tolerated it much better.

 

Edited by Zonie
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20 hours ago, SpiceWare said:

* yep, the ghosts in 2600 Pac-Man are different colors. They're set to FC, EC, DC, and CC which don't look very different from each other when flickering at 15 Hz over the blue background.

I think they chose four very similar colors because the energizers were made from the Shot sprite corresponding to the ghosts' Player sprite.  That makes the energizers change colors rapidly to match the four ghosts as they flicker, but ... honestly it doesn't look that bad on your hack. (Of course, the ghosts being different colors also matters less since they don't have different algorithms to match those colors)

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Didn't know you could update the ROM from Stella!  :)

 

Have used Stella to figure out what needs changed but used an editor with a disassembly to make ROM changes and then reassemble using the dasm toolkit......this method is a hell of a lot easier - especially with bank switched games.

Edited by davyK
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23 hours ago, SpiceWare said:

* yep, the ghosts in 2600 Pac-Man are different colors. They're set to FC, EC, DC, and CC which don't look very different from each other when flickering at 15 Hz over the blue background.

 

Fascinating information, thanks for re-posting it here.

 

It looks pretty good under emulation on today's perfect LCD monitors.

 

But how would it have looked from a RF switch-box on a 25" television?

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2 hours ago, davyK said:

Didn't know you could update the ROM from Stella!  :)

 

Have used Stella to figure out what needs changed but used an editor with a disassembly to make ROM changes and then reassemble using the dasm toolkit......this method is a hell of a lot easier - especially with bank switched games.

 

Can also edit the rightmost column of the disassembly in Stella. Here I've filled in the eye in the binary value, but haven't yet hit enter:

Screenshot2024-09-24at9_57_02AM.thumb.png.f4bb7a00210448cb885eeb0b705caf92.png

 

 

 

After hitting enter:

Screenshot2024-09-24at9_57_17AM.thumb.png.a096ca725a9963b2453cd78cf90c6686.png

 

This also works for disassembled code, I've changed the lda #$51 to $52, but haven't yet hit enter for it to take effect.

 

Screenshot2024-09-24at9_59_16AM.thumb.png.e41437763cfa01f85cfba116dff81b44.png

 

NOTE:  It does not work for the .byte statements below it. Need to either run the program longer so those bytes are used by the program, which lets Stella figure out if its code or graphics, or use the ROM command in the prompt.

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22 minutes ago, Hawkeye68 said:

Fascinating information, thanks for re-posting it here.

 

It looks pretty good under emulation on today's perfect LCD monitors.

 

But how would it have looked from a RF switch-box on a 25" television?

 

just tried on my C=1084S, it looks good except for the red ghost which is too dark.  Need to change the 42 in this ROM command to increase the luma value:

  • rom ff2b 42 a8 4c 28

 

I tried 46, which looked much better on my display.

 

Pac-Man_color_graphic_hack_red46.a26

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23 minutes ago, SpiceWare said:

 

just tried on my C=1084S, it looks good except for the red ghost which is too dark.  Need to change the 42 in this ROM command to increase the luma value:

  • rom ff2b 42 a8 4c 28

 

I tried 46, which looked much better on my display.

 

Pac-Man_color_graphic_hack_red46.a26 4 kB · 0 downloads

The fact that there were four distinct shades of yellow in the original release makes me suspect that different colors were at least tried.

 

Supposedly Frye was told that he couldn't have a black background.  I wonder if he just gave up trying different colors on anything other than black?

 

TV sets varied wildly back-in-the-day.  Some were bad quality, many were old, and even the good ones were rarely adjusted properly.  And of course some kids had to play on spare TVs that were B&W.  Perhaps Atari was trying to avoid complaints about visibility, so Frye just relented and made them all one color that tested well across the board.

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Hawkeye68 said:

TV sets varied wildly back-in-the-day.  Some were bad quality, many were old, and even the good ones were rarely adjusted properly.  And of course some kids had to play on spare TVs that were B&W.  Perhaps Atari was trying to avoid complaints about visibility, so Frye just relented and made them all one color that tested well across the board.

 

True, I never realized before looking at the ROM that the ghosts were different colors.

 

Don't think B&W TVs were a factor though, Pac-Man was released when they were still checking the TV Type switch. I played it like this many times on my 12" B&W TV ;)

 

image.thumb.png.fc87a725b9fc00e92c9dd46b500acd63.png

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Completely avoiding the technical aspects and challenges of porting arcade games to the Atari 2600 - even to my 9 year old eyes and ears in March 1982, that port was as lazy and off-putting as a port I've ever seen.

 

Ms. Pac-Man was leaps and bounds better, and was only released 4 months later. IT was obvious that Pac-Man was rushed, and made on the cheap.

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10 minutes ago, John Stamos Mullet said:

and made on the cheap.

I wouldn't say that.  Frye got a million dollar bonus for his "groundbreaking" work on that game, much to the chagrin of other developers at the time.  I believe this is discussed in Howard Scott Warshaw's Once Upon Atari DVD.

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1 minute ago, Stephen said:

I wouldn't say that.  Frye got a million dollar bonus for his "groundbreaking" work on that game, much to the chagrin of other developers at the time.  I believe this is discussed in Howard Scott Warshaw's Once Upon Atari DVD.

I would imagine that was likely tied purely to sales numbers on name recogintion of the game alone, and had literally nothing to do with the quality of the product.

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I think the $1m+ he got was because of the sales and nothing to do with any technical achievement.

 

 

It did rather well....  7million carts in the year it was released.   AT $30 a time that's approx $97 per cart - close on $700m adjusted for inflation. ie in today's money.

 

2600 games were expensive. Even more so in Europe - it was a straight dollar to pound conversion - I remember Defender costing my parents £30 in 1983. £99 sterling today.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Atari_2600_video_games

Edited by davyK
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That black background / blue maze hack makes a hell of a difference to the look and playability if not the accuracy - you can see the ghosts properly. It's still a pretty basic port but it's there with a 2 player mode and at least looks a bit more like Pacman.   And yes - filling in the eye makes a difference for the better too - I really didn't think it would until I saw it running in stella.  :)  Funny - I had never really noticed it before.

Edited by davyK
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3 hours ago, Stephen said:

I wouldn't say that.  Frye got a million dollar bonus for his "groundbreaking" work on that game, much to the chagrin of other developers at the time.  I believe this is discussed in Howard Scott Warshaw's Once Upon Atari DVD.

It was groundbreaking all right!    They broke ground in the Alamogordo landfill to bury the carts next to ET :)

 

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40 minutes ago, davyK said:

I think the $1m+ he got was because of the sales and nothing to do with any technical achievement.

 

 

It did rather well....  7million carts in the year it was released.   AT $30 a time that's approx $97 per cart - close on $700m adjusted for inflation. ie in today's money.

 

2600 games were expensive. Even more so in Europe - it was a straight dollar to pound conversion - I remember Defender costing my parents £30 in 1983. £99 sterling today.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Atari_2600_video_games

I paid $37.95 for Pacman at JCP, which was the first store in my area to advertise it in quantity.  $126 today!  Price dropped down to $30 fairly quickly after all of us early buyers had been gouged.  Funny that the text in the ad refers to the vitamin as an "apple."  Another ad written by a non-player!

pm.jpg

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17 hours ago, Hawkeye68 said:

I paid $37.95 for Pacman at JCP, which was the first store in my area to advertise it in quantity.  $126 today!  Price dropped down to $30 fairly quickly after all of us early buyers had been gouged.  Funny that the text in the ad refers to the vitamin as an "apple."  Another ad written by a non-player!

It must have dropped much further than that since I have a Pac-man cart in my collection.   I wouldn't have paid more than $5 for it.    I don't remember how I got it though, maybe it was a gift?

 

17 hours ago, Hawkeye68 said:

pm.jpg

It's kind of odd remembering that JCPenney once had a decent toy and videogame section!   Shortly after they dumped all that and sold only clothing and housewares.

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19 hours ago, zzip said:

It's kind of odd remembering that JCPenney once had a decent toy and videogame section!   Shortly after they dumped all that and sold only clothing and housewares.

We have a chemist chain here in the UK called Boots. That's where I got my 2600 back in '82.  :)   They went on to sell the 8bit micros as well - they had an impressive demo area with all the computers set up running games.  All long gone now - there's an in-house optician now where the games section was.

Edited by davyK
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On 9/25/2024 at 9:33 AM, zzip said:

It's kind of odd remembering that JCPenney once had a decent toy and videogame section!   Shortly after they dumped all that and sold only clothing and housewares.

 

My JCP also sold Atari 8-bits and software. They were part of the camera department since I guess it didn't fit anywhere else.  They would sometimes put good things on sale/clearance so it was always worth checking.

 

It seemed JCP, Wards and Sears were competing to sell everything from cradle-to-grave in the 70s.  Auto service, life insurance, you-name-it.  Only JCP is still here, so I guess it was the right decision.

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29 minutes ago, Hawkeye68 said:

My JCP also sold Atari 8-bits and software. They were part of the camera department since I guess it didn't fit anywhere else.  They would sometimes put good things on sale/clearance so it was always worth checking.

Mine was the same,  the 8-bits were definitely not with the videogame consoles (which were in the middle of the toy section)

 

35 minutes ago, Hawkeye68 said:

It seemed JCP, Wards and Sears were competing to sell everything from cradle-to-grave in the 70s.  Auto service, life insurance, you-name-it.  Only JCP is still here, so I guess it was the right decision.

True..  t seems like every few years JCP announces they are changing things up yet again so it kind feels like they don't really know what they should be doing,   but as you point out, they have outlived most of the competition so they must be doing something right

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