King Atari Posted February 21, 2002 Author Share Posted February 21, 2002 I would have liked to see Elevator Action ported to the 7800. Any idea on how that would have turned out? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted February 21, 2002 Share Posted February 21, 2002 Glenn Tower Toppler (or Nebulus as it was originally called) was designed and implemented on the C64 first. The Commodore version was excellent - superb music and graphics - much better than the 7800 version... Whilst the multilayer scolling is nice - its only one playfield, with overlaps (the tower bases etc) as sprites, not parallax which is scrolling with 2 overlapping playfields. True overlapping parallax is VERY rare on 8bit machines - most had only one playfield - a few 8bit (Menace) and C64 (Hawkeye) games faked it pretty well - but you have to wait until the PC Engine to see an 8bit one playfield system really make you believe it has an extra layer (Lords of Thunder etc)... sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gunstar Posted February 21, 2002 Share Posted February 21, 2002 While I haven't seen the C64 version of Nebulous yet, I do know that I love the 7800 version and think the under water scrolling looks fantastic and does portray a certain illusion of depth, whether it's true parallax or just DLI's or sprites or whatever. Any one know about the Atari 8-bit version? I'm not sure if it was ever released, but I know they were working on one for the XEGS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Perpetua Posted February 21, 2002 Share Posted February 21, 2002 There is also a secret maze game built into thr Sega MAster System. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 Gunstar, I have Tower Toppler on the XEGS - not very good I'm afraid - monochrome sTeVE [ 02-21-2002: Message edited by: Jet Boot Jack ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kingpong Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Agent X: I must have been one of the only people back in 1987 who (as a 15-year-old kid) actually liked the fact that the 7800 had some nice conversions of some of my favorite arcade games. There were at least 2 of us who felt that way (though I was 11 or 12). After reading the article on the 7800 in Electronic Games in 1984, every time I went to the store for the next 2 years I was looking for the 7800 - no clue at the time that there was a crash. Finally the thing came out and I got it for Christmas in 1986 (one of the 1984 systems of course - I wondered why they put a sticker over the text about the keyboard expansion...), and I loved it. Exactly what I wanted in a gaming system. It wasn't too long after that until the real crash happened, when the NES garbage started pushing out all the Atari stuff in the stores. Never could fathom why anyone would want those awful Nintendo games. Thankfully word of the PC Engine and Mega Drive started surfacing before too long, and the crash was over. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted February 22, 2002 Author Share Posted February 22, 2002 I know 2600 games went down to 99 cents at the time the NES reigned as video game king, were 7800 games this cheap, too? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemmi Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 quote: Originally posted by King Atari: I know 2600 games went down to 99 cents at the time the NES reigned as video game king, were 7800 games this cheap, too? well some places like Biglots here in michigan had a ton of 7800 games around 1990 or so for $1 to $3 and i got commando and alien brigade there for $3 (i wish i would have bought them all now) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted February 22, 2002 Author Share Posted February 22, 2002 Awesome, I can a new copy! Any chance O'Sheas sells the red end label copy ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemmi Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 quote: Originally posted by King Atari: Awesome, I can a new copy! Any chance O'Sheas sells the red end label copy ? i have no idea about that, there was a thread that talked about the red end label for ballblazer, and if i remember correctly it might be just pure luck to find one, ohsheas was mentioned in it and i dont think anyone has gotten a red end from them yet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 I'd just like to qualify a couple of points I raised earlier in this thread... About the NES: "It has a higher screen resolution that is useable in games and easier to program tile graphics." The 7800 games are almost always in 160X192 mode - NES games are always 256X?. So despite the 7800's variable programmable resolution is there - non one really used it - so 7800 games look blocky "It has great sprite hardware and background graphic management." The tile based graphics system of the NES is a different design paradgim than the 7800 system. Most 7800 games have minimalist backgrounds, NES games (albeit platform games mostly) like Megaman have wonderful backgrounds. Managing tilesets and sprites on the NES is VERY easy - and is such a common technique on consoles (from the Intellivsion to the SNES) that the different design of the 7800 was not really explored in its life time - if it could offer richer experiences, no one every leveraged that power. I know I always prefered working on characterset/tile systems to bit mapped or line RAM systems... NES sprites may flicker, but they were easy to use, to position, move and animate - NES games feature lots of moving chracters, sometimes quite large... It has RAM (!). The 7800 has line RAM, the NES has video RAM - the difference is worlds apart. Modern systems with unified memory pools (GC/Xbox) have blown the need for video RAM away, but 8bit systems with limited construction costs benefited from the seprate video RAM/main memory model. devoting 2K to the screen enabled the NES to be VERY flexible to program. Of course if Atari had equipped the 7800 with the 5200 RAM model things would have been perfect - the 8bit was the first machine I ever knew to have such a sophisticated RAM system - it was truly awesome!!! sTeVE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted February 22, 2002 Author Share Posted February 22, 2002 Yeah, picking up 7800 Double Dragon for $1 would have rocked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HawgWyld Posted February 22, 2002 Share Posted February 22, 2002 quote: Originally posted by Lemmi: i have no idea about that, there was a thread that talked about the red end label for ballblazer, and if i remember correctly it might be just pure luck to find one, ohsheas was mentioned in it and i dont think anyone has gotten a red end from them yet Didn't realize that was so rare. Hmmm! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 I've got to confess, JetBoot that I'm not a programmer. Not enough to comment on what you write about. I do know that, having owned a 7800, an NES and and SMS simultaniously that there were things I liked about all three systems. I also know that the 7800 sure seemed to be able to pull off NES-style games when needed and that a lot of the bad 7800 titles seemed reflective of crappy programming. I also know that the people I've conversed with who've programmed the 7800 and the NES have said that each has strengths, with the 7800's being in manipulation of moving objects. "The 7800 games are almost always in 160X192 mode - NES games are always 256X?. So despite the 7800's variable programmable resolution is there - non one really used it - so 7800 games look blocky " Now is this a 7800 limitation of a limitation of programmers? :-) "The tile based graphics system of the NES is a different design paradgim than the 7800 system. Most 7800 games have minimalist backgrounds, NES games (albeit platform games mostly) like Megaman have wonderful backgrounds." Can you clarify what you mean by "minimalist" backgrounds? If you mean, minimal detail, I'll give you to a point. Still, when you play ALIEN BRIGADE, COMMANDO, IKARI WARRIORS, SCRAPYARD DOG, XEVIOUS etc, I don't see "minimalist". :-) "Managing tilesets and sprites on the NES is VERY easy - and is such a common technique on consoles (from the Intellivsion to the SNES) that the different design of the 7800 was not really explored in its life time - if it could offer richer experiences, no one every leveraged that power." Hmm ... I thought SCRAPYARD DOG was programmed using this technique. "NES sprites may flicker, but they were easy to use, to position, move and animate - NES games feature lots of moving chracters, sometimes quite large..." Yes. Though in fairness, the 7800 could animate large numbers of objects without screen flicker or slowdown. Xevious, Desert Falcon, Dark Chambers and others all come to mind. I've seen NES games flicker with only a couple of onscreen sprites. The 7800 did (to me) seem stronger than the NES or SMS in that area. "model. devoting 2K to the screen enabled the NES to be VERY flexible to program." I'm gonna please ignorance on this because I'm not a programmer. But IIRC, the NES had 2K of onboard RAM with 2K of video RAM. The 7800 had 4K of RAM, of which memory could be allocated to the screen. Again, I'm not a programmer but I remember reading about this somewhere. The NES was an awesome system with great games. But I'm not sure I agree with the statement that it was "an overall more powerful system". There were things I really liked about the 7800. The large palette (which, when used, was awesome), the ability to move large numbers of objects. Someone else made a good point about the 7800 in that a lot of the games seemed to be ports of systems with weaker sprite capabilities and smaller palettes - ala the Commodore 64. I did find that, when a good programmer got control, they could produce stuff that rivaled your average NES game. I mean, is ALIEN BRIGADE gonna be mistaken for an ATARI 2600 title? What about SCRAPYARD DOG? COMMANDO? One of the things that's unfortunate about a lot of Atari's later systems is that programmers didn't stick with them long enough to figure out how to push the system and make a great game. :-( You see evidence of what the systems are capable of but all the elements never seem to come together. JINKS managed voice synthesis yet the game sucked. COMMANDO had wicked music. TOWER TOPPLER had a cool perspective. BALLBLAZER had wicked animation. DESERT FALCON had fast scrolling. It's too bad someone didn't sit down and tie it all together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HawgWyld Posted February 23, 2002 Share Posted February 23, 2002 quote: Originally posted by King Atari: Awesome, I can a new copy! Any chance O'Sheas sells the red end label copy ? Actually, I have the red label and I got if from O'Shea a couple of years ago. I guess, then, it's just the luck of the draw. And, speaking of "Ballblazer," I also have to add my two-cents on it -- what a game! What a damn great game! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jetboot Jack Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 Mark, I agree the 7800 - could have been great I just think the fact it never reached any crtical mass in the market that no one ever got a chance to make it shine SMS or NES could have done any released 7800 game well IMHO. Im also SURE the 7800 could have produced great versions of SMS/NES games - just no one tried... the 7800 has a 320X192 mode - why did no one use it?? Maybe to difficult to use, maybe no incentive to use, or as you say the ancient titles the system was infected with didn't need it Video RAM - the 7800 has enough for a couple of scan lines Tiles - SMS and NES video hardware breaks the screen up into 8X8 tiles - each with a RAM location. The 7800 breaks the display into 1 pixel high lines, and has enough video RAM to create 2 - one being drawn and one being loaded with data. The basic concepts are very different - the 7800 effectivley has bitmapped line RAM and the NES a character based screen. Both have +ve and -ve issues - just the previaling methodology on 8bit consoles and computers was that games were done in character modes for the most part - or if not then fully RAM mapped bitmap modes (like the XL systems)... sTeVE [ 02-23-2002: Message edited by: Jet Boot Jack ] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemmi Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 HEY king atari, good deal games has some 7800 games alittle cheaper then oshae's now http://www.gooddealgames.com/inventory/7800.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jahfish Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 i can warmly recommend gooddealgames .... i just got some nice items from michael. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clint Thompson Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 Ball Blazer was a blast! I remember it being a 2 player only game though, or can you play the computer? Also, Tower Toppler was a very good game! I was always wishing(Man, I need some NES style controllers instead of this stick dong thing Well, come to find out, they had the Euro-style controllers that were like NES (which I've yet to get) I haven't played Double Dragon on 7800 yet, though I hope to soon find out and play it! *still need a 7800 again even, anyone have one for sell?!?! * Ok, my 3 cents Clint Thompson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
King Atari Posted February 24, 2002 Author Share Posted February 24, 2002 Thanks for the Link Lemmi! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DracIsBack Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 'Tiles - SMS and NES video hardware breaks the screen up into 8X8 tiles - each with a RAM location. The 7800 breaks the display into 1 pixel high lines, and has enough video RAM to create 2 - one being drawn and one being loaded with data. The basic concepts are very different - the 7800 effectivley has bitmapped line RAM and the NES a character based screen. Both have +ve and -ve issues - just the previaling methodology on 8bit consoles and computers was that games were done in character modes for the most part - or if not then fully RAM mapped bitmap modes (like the XL systems)...' It's funny, when I got my first copy of SCRAPYARD DOG it was defective (long annoying story about how I had to get ATARI to send a replacement I'll share it another time when we have an 'Atari's awful customer service' thread), One of the interesting thing about this cart was that it would play for a second and then all of the elements of the game (the background bricks, the sprites, the ledges etc) would start titing all over the screen. I'll take your word about the 7800's style of graphics but this game sure seemed to emulate tile graphics extremely well - as evidence by the defective cart. Cheers. M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 @ Jet Boot Jack: The 320x192 mode was used in 7800 games, but only for text display. The introductory text in Karateka uses this mode for example. And several other games also use the 320 pixel resolution for displaying the score and status, while the rest of the screen is done in 160 pixel resolution. The reason for this is probably that the colour selection is very limited in these modes. You could easily do a high resolution chess game display with monochrome pieces, but games like that probably wouldn't have helped much to convice people that the 7800 is the more powerfull video game system. As for tile based / screen RAM based displays: The beauty of the 7800's approach is, that the MARIA could do both. You would have to add quite a bit of extra RAM for a really usefull screen RAM display though. You can set up the Display List to generate graphics line by line and read the data from the RAM, where you can manipulate it during the gameplay. But you can also set up the Display List in blocks of up to 16 scanlines, where the MARIA would read the data for the next line automatically. This combined with the indirect mode, where the data that the DL points to is interpreted as an index into a character/tile set, allows you to get a tile mode with 8x8 pixel tiles. But you could also get 4x16 pixel tiles or 16x2 pixel etc, depending on the screen mode. The only drawback is that all tiles would refer to the same palette. But you could either use the 160x4 screen mode, where you get 12 colours for your objects, or you could set up seperate DL entries for each tile, which would allow you to select the palette individually. Adding sprites to either type of display is more complicated than on the NES/SMS though, since you have to define them for each line-block seperately. But this also is the reason, why you can have so many sprites in one line. So, if you really wanted to, you could use the 7800 in much the same way as the other video game systems. Unfortunately that didn't seem to have helped the 7800 back then either. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gregory DG Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 I also had a bad copy of Scrapyad Dog. Luckily I bought it from O'shea's for 80 cents, so I just bought another one. I wonder if there was a large percentage of bad Scrapyard Dogs? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 Some time ago I got two PAL copies of Crossbow in a trade. Both of them showed a similar problem like your Scrapyard Dog cartridges. So I decided to open one up. As it turned out it had the solder jumpers for the bankswitching wrong. Atari had closed jumper W1 instead of W2. Due to this the game wasn't able to switch to the proper graphics bank and would show random stuff from a different bank. After changing the jumpers the game worked as it should. Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lemmi Posted February 24, 2002 Share Posted February 24, 2002 They probably got all the parts for the scrapyard dog game from a scrapyard Maybe thats why they named the game scrapyard dog Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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