Home Vision (updated list on first post!)

[Rom Hunter]

For everyone who's interested, here's a scan of Tanks War from Home Vision:

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...ERSION_ID=15663

 

Edited February 25, 2006 by Rom Hunter

[staberinde]

For everyone who's interested, here's a scan of Tanks War from Home Vision:

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...ERSION_ID=15663

 

1024251[/snapback]

 

Cool!

 

But you are still missing a scan of Teddy Apple and Wall Break on your site!

Edited February 25, 2006 by staberinde

[Rom Hunter]

For all Home Vision fans, here's Teddy Apple:

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft-TYPE...T_ID-10545.html

 

Rarer than Air Raid.

 

[Spirantho]

Crikey.... where on earth did you find that? Is it yours? Where from?

 

NIcely done! Now just find Go Go Home Monster.

[Rom Hunter]

It's from one of our Atarimania team members.

 

Let's pray he finds a Go Go Home Monster some day.

 

[Foxsolo2000]

Nice find Rom, another step closer to total closure

[Lucky Man]

Rom,

 

I figured it was time to revive this great post. Besides, I have a question about the following games:

Dragon Defender

Farmyard Fun

Motocross

 

I know you think these were originally programmed by Home Vision, but do you have any idea who the first company to release them was? You have Dragon Defender listed under Taiwan/Suntek and Farmyard Fun under Taiwan. Atariage has both of these listed under the company Ariola with a picture of the Taiwan release. Any idea if these are the same company? And I know the Quelle version of Motocross is the most common, but they didn't put out anything original, did they?

 

Thanks,

Lucky Man

[Rom Hunter]

Lucky Man,

 

Dragon Defender (SS-021)

Motocross (SS-022)

Farmyard Fun (most probably SS-034)

 

are all Suntek releases.

 

The Quelle series and Taiwanese TP-6xx series came later.

 

Although still not found as Home Vision carts with Home Vision titles, I dare to say that Home Vision was the original manufacturer of these three games, but that's only because Thomas Jentzsch found Home Vision data inside the Motocross ROM.

 

Anyway, it's either Suntek or Home Vision who presented these games first.

 

And Quelle didn't put out any true originals (the same goes for ZiMAG/Emag/Vidco).

 

BTW: only the Taiwanese PGP2xx series was supposed to be distributed by Ariola, so the AA statement that both the TP-6xx and PGP2xx series were distributed by Ariola is far too short-sighted.

 

Here are the titles that were 100% distributed by Ariola in Germany:

http://www.atarimania.com/lst_soft.php?MEN...n_sauver=Search

 

Edited November 21, 2006 by Rom Hunter

[Eckhard Stolberg]

Farmyard Fun (most probably SS-034)

 

Although still not found as Home Vision carts with Home Vision titles, I dare to say that Home Vision was the original manufacturer of these three games, but that's only because Thomas Jentzsch found Home Vision data inside the Motocross ROM.

I also think that Farmyard Fun was programmed by Homevision. They probably did the game for ITT Family Games to be released in their Pumuckl series. The main character in Farmyard Fun (and Zoo Fun) looks exactly like Pumuckl did in the German TV series of the early 1980s (red spiky hair, yellow shirt, green trousers and bare feet). Also the game plays the title melody from the TV series. Therefore I think the game was supposed to be a Pumuckl game.

 

ITT Family Games had a Pumuckl license and got most of their games from Homevision. It would fit the picture, if Farmyard Fun also originated there. And if Farmyard Fun and Zoo Fun were created as contract work for ITT, it would explain why no-one has found Homevision cartridges of these games yet.

 

BTW, Ariola is what later became the Bertelsmann Music Group. Ariola still exists as a BMG label. They officially distributed the Activision and CommaVid games in Germany. They are not the same company as Suntek.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

[Rom Hunter]

Farmyard Fun (most probably SS-034)

 

Although still not found as Home Vision carts with Home Vision titles, I dare to say that Home Vision was the original manufacturer of these three games, but that's only because Thomas Jentzsch found Home Vision data inside the Motocross ROM.

I also think that Farmyard Fun was programmed by Homevision. They probably did the game for ITT Family Games to be released in their Pumuckl series. The main character in Farmyard Fun (and Zoo Fun) looks exactly like Pumuckl did in the German TV series of the early 1980s (red spiky hair, yellow shirt, green trousers and bare feet). Also the game plays the title melody from the TV series. Therefore I think the game was supposed to be a Pumuckl game.

 

ITT Family Games had a Pumuckl license and got most of their games from Homevision. It would fit the picture, if Farmyard Fun also originated there. And if Farmyard Fun and Zoo Fun were created as contract work for ITT, it would explain why no-one has found Homevision cartridges of these games yet.

 

BTW, Ariola is what later became the Bertelsmann Music Group. Ariola still exists as a BMG label. They officially distributed the Activision and CommaVid games in Germany. They are not the same company as Suntek.

 

 

Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

My thoughts exactly.

 

[Lucky Man]

Great! Thanks for all the info, guys!

 

 

Rom, I don't know how you keep all this information straight.

[Rom Hunter]

I archive and compare.

 

[Rom Hunter]

After the incredible Suntek find, I've updated the Home Vision list (see post #1)

 

[Foxsolo2000]

Excellent work Rom. Mind you aside from the identity of Go Go I would love to know more about that possible unknown Home Vision game on the first post you discovered so long ago

[Rom Hunter]

News about Words-Attack from Sancho:

 

Because of the fact that it is the last 'old era' Atari 2600 game nobody seems to know how to play exactly and because I had the firm believe that there was still a game element (perhaps a word vocabulary?) hidden inside this game, I asked Nukey to examine the contents of the ROM and he found out the following:

 

From all indications, it looks like an unfinished game. There's at least 1 routine that is never called at all ($F2A4-$F2BF), it's corresponding data table ($F994-5)...as well as over 2 pages (!) of data that is NEVER used by anything ($F9C2-$FBFF). In addition, there's over 2 pages of unused space ($FC00-FDFF, $FF85-$FFFB).

 

It would have been pretty simple to add data tables to make up a valid "word" pool (i.e. shooting the letters to build specific words - scoring a given amount for doing so). The game appears to be a framework for doing that...but I have no clue what all that unused garbage data is for. Removing all of it doesn't affect the game (that's over 1k of free space in all!).

 

...it seems pretty clear that IMO it was just a WIP that was abandoned when it became clear that such a game isn't very fun. Odd that it ended up on a cartridge tho.

 

BTW there are 6 bitmaps that follow the score digits. It appears that these were intended to be placed in the score before a game is begun (i.e. putting "digits" A-F into the score when the cartridge is loaded). Currently, the values $00, $19, and $83 are put there for both scores. The program is designed to replace leading zeros with blank spaces...but the score display is F'ed - it can only display 4 digits (the middle 2 graphic bitmaps are stored too soon...wiping out the first 2). By editing the intro message table...changing:

	   .byte $00; |		| $F90D
   .byte $19; |   XX  X| $F90E
   .byte $83; |X	 XX| $F90F

 

to this...

	   .byte $EF; |		| $F90D
   .byte $DC; |   XX  X| $F90E
   .byte $BA; |X	 XX| $F90F

 

...you'll end up with a reasonable facsimilie of nomevision 83'.

 

NOTE: because of the timing problem, the "nome" half will not be shown.

 

It seems obvious that the blank space character exists 3 bytes too soon (they are virtually the only 3 bytes shared in the entire thing, and the blank space is the only character not set to be at a multiple of 8 bytes). So more logically, bytes $FF7D-$FF7F could just have had only the high bit set at one time (turning the n into h)...and the blank space was moved from offset $80 to $7D for some other reason.

 

 

There you go: an unfinished Sancho game, most probably originally made by Home Vision:

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...ERSION_ID=15914

 

Thanks Nukey, for solving this 25 years old riddle!

 

Edited August 6, 2007 by Rom Hunter

[Foxsolo2000]

Incredible!

[Omegamatrix]

I just loaded it up in bithacker and there it is!

Edited August 6, 2007 by Omegamatrix

[Nukey Shay]

The garbage routine/data might have existed for some reason, but I don't know what. Anybody have a clue what all that junk might have been intended for? Is it really "unused", or is it accessed somehow?

 

BTW there's no timing glitch when positioning the sprites. A seperate routine exists to write those first 2 characters' pointers with the number of lives + a blank space. It still makes the logo impossible to display (as far as I can tell), but there's why. Sorry about that.

 

"Solved"? Nah...it just raises more questions.

Edited August 7, 2007 by Nukey Shay

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The garbage routine/data might have existed for some reason, but I don't know what.

Did you check if maybe words have been encoded in there? E.g. as pointers to the letters?

[Nukey Shay]

I don't see how...given the values that appear there (almost never = an offset to a sprite...and not enough range to cover all the letters). It's probably reaching to suggest a compression scheme too.

I was just wondering if anybody had already looked at it. The other discussion where you found the logo is quite old.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...st&p=170898

(Thanks RH for the link)

 

Anyway, here's the disassembly I threw together (plus a test binary that has all of it removed).

Wrdatack.zip

Edited August 7, 2007 by Nukey Shay

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Anyway, here's the disassembly I threw together (plus a test binary that has all of it removed).

Thanks.

 

The code at LF675 IMO proves that the unused code @$f2a4 belongs into the binary and is not an artefakt from a different ROM.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Another interesting thing I found:

 

The garbage between $f9c2 and $fbff contains only 36 different values. So that could be 10 digits plus 26 characters.

 

The quantity distribution seems to confirm this theory. There are 574 values, $AA is obviously a space (73 of those), thus leaving 501 values.

 

The frequencies of the most often occuring values are 16.8% ($a0), 9.6% ($8d), 8.0% ($c3), 7.0% ($c1), 6.8% ($c4), 5.6% (d4), $5.4% ($c6), 5.0% ($d3), $4.6% ($c2), 3.8% ($cc)...

 

This matches quite well the frequencies of the english alphabet (from two sources):

e 12,41/12,51%

t 8,90/9.25%

o 8,13/7.60%

a 8,09/8.04%

r 7,13/6.12%

i 6,46/7.26%

n 6,41/7.09%

s 6,41/6.54%

h 4,73/5.49%

l 4,10/4.14%

 

Since we have only 500 values, the matching can't be perfect, but it could be different language also.

 

EDIT: After several attempts I have not been able to create any text that makes sense. So probably my theory is wrong.

 

Or incomplete!

Edited August 7, 2007 by Thomas Jentzsch

[CincYnoTi]

In the screenshot on atarimania, the words "SANCHO" and "COPY" are shown. It looks like the same letter graphics are used in the playfield ("Y" and "A" and "C"). If you can find the word SANCHO in the code, could that give you a start at deciphering which values correspond to which letters? Such as:

 

$d3 = S

$c1 = A

$d4 = N

? = C

? = H

$c4 = O

[Thomas Jentzsch]

In the screenshot on atarimania, the words "SANCHO" and "COPY" are shown. It looks like the same letter graphics are used in the playfield ("Y" and "A" and "C"). If you can find the word SANCHO in the code, could that give you a start at deciphering which values correspond to which letters? Such as:

 

$d3 = S

$c1 = A

$d4 = N

? = C

? = H

$c4 = O

Thanks, but (un?)fortunately Sancho isn't stored encrypted.

[ianoid]

Although this list is fascinating, I'm really hoping to see a list of confirmed Homevision cartridges (made by Homevision), because as a collector that's what I'm looking out for (although I can tell that with the hype this kind of research generates, I'm not going to be first in line spending wise.)