Odyssey 2: Under Appreciated?

[mos6507]

Back in the day I had a 2600 and later a 7800 and an Atari 8-bit but I did a lot of window shopping.

 

I remember seeing the demo O^2 unit in the store and never really wishing I had one. The games just seemed to be too primitive (even by 2600 standards) and the sprites too big and generic.

 

I can't claim the same apathy about most other platforms I came across, like Intellivision, Astrocade, or Colecovision.

[Flojomojo]

I don't understand why some people don't understand PickAxe Pete. Is the concept of a high score difficult for classic gamers to understand? Is clearing rows of static space invaders inherently more interesting than this dynamic, fun game?

Every other platform game in the world has some sort of objective-- get to the top, get to the end, gather all the loot, kill all the enemies, etc. But PAP (hmm, now that's an unfortunate acronym) has no goal to work toward. Sure, you can collect a key and go to the next identical level if you want, but there's no strong motivation to do so, and you don't even have to work for that key... you just wait for it to randomly show up. And the gameplay sure is thrilling when your pickaxe disappears and you have to stand around waiting for a new one.

Your motivation is the number at the bottom of the screen. There's another number there which is the best anyone has done in that session. Try to beat it. Just like the arcade, except Pete lets you enter 6 characters instead of initials.

 

Running through the door happens to be the fastest and easiest way to rack up points. Going through the door resets the speed of the level so you don't get knocked over by a rock. The longer you stay in a level, the bouncier and faster everything gets. Every time you enter a new level, a piece of floor is taken away, making it that much riskier because the boulders are more likely to collide and reverse direction.

 

Pete only gets one life. Once you're in an open mineshaft with a lot of bouncing going on, the game gets white-knuckle tricky and you need to use the various jump and duck options presented to you. Sometimes, you'll need to fall to avoid the rocks -- fortunately you can't be killed when falling -- which means you'll have to fight to the top to get the key back.

 

If you're standing around waiting for the key, you're not far enough into the game to really get into it -- and from your lack of interest, it's unlikely that you're going to really get into this game. It's not like a Nintendo game where you play to get to the next level and the eventual ending. We'll have to agree to disagree on this, but in my opinion, Pick Axe Pete is one of the great "zoner" games a good player can get into and enjoy for long stretches and incredible scores, just like Pac-Man, Galaga, Tempest, and Defender.

 

The invisible mines are sheer brilliance, too. I don't know if the VCS could do the multiple boulders flying around in different directions, but it would be neat to see a Pick Axe Pete remake, even just in Flash.

[ZylonBane]

I don't understand why some people don't understand PickAxe Pete. Is the concept of a high score difficult for classic gamers to understand? Is clearing rows of static space invaders inherently more interesting than this dynamic, fun game?

I just explained exactly why some people don't understand Pete-- there's no clear objective. For an arcade game, this is bad design. In Space Invaders, the objective is exceptionally clear: Shoot the invaders to stop them from landing on you. Donkey Kong: Get to the top/remove all the rivets. Defender: Kill all the aliens/defend the humanoids. Asteroids: Shoot the rocks. Pac-Man: Eat the dots. Street Fighter: Defeat your opponent. Qix: Fill the screen. Pole Position: Win the race.

 

Pick Axe Pete: Score points????

 

I don't think so. If scoring points was fun, then the most successful game ever would be Score Points!, the game where you press a button to make your score go up. No, the function of points is to reward the player for performing well, but they're not in and of themselves a source of fun. Fun comes from gameplay, not an ascending number. The truth of the matter is that most classic games would be just as fun with scoring completely removed.

[ccc---]

*sigh*

 

You are trying to explain, that Pickaxe Pete sucks. So why did I play it back then several hours almost every day in the week for many months??? Does that mean that I am stupid? Did I not recognize that the game is crap? Were/are Videopac players just idiots and 2600 players intelligent? Or could it just be that you never played the game long enough to see its brilliance? Or, could it be that many people think that a certain game is great and others don't like it??? Different people have different tastes, maybe it's just that easy ... but please don't try to explain people who love the game, that it sucks.

Edited May 18, 2006 by ccc---

[kirin jensen]

Dieter, there's no point in paying attention to ZylonBane on this.

 

If you point out a game that was good on the O2, his reply will be, "That's only a good game on the O2 because that's the kind of game the O2 can do well."

 

Point out something the O2 can do that the Atari can't (say, multiple moving objects in multiple directions - without flicker) and he'll outright deny it or ignore your point.

 

Like I've said earlier in this thread, ZylonBane seems only to have faith in the superiority of the 2600 if the O2 is considered its inferior in ever way...including several imaginary ones.

 

And, yeah, unless you get to about the 500-600 point level, it's hard to understand how compelling this game can be. Which might be his problem.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Dieter, there's no point in paying attention to ZylonBane on this.

Actually there (almost) never is.

[ccc---]

Dieter, there's no point in paying attention to ZylonBane on this.

Actually there (almost) never is.

LOL

[supercat]

Well of course they did-- the VIC-20 only supported character graphics. The O2 version uses sprites, so there doesn't seem to be any technical reason for the stiff robot movement.

 

Actually, Amok was rather notable for the fact that the player as well as all the shots moved on pixel boundaries, and collision detection was also done on pixel boundaries. Although the robots moved rather jerkily, they were not simply drawn as characters; when I ran the game in slow motion using VICMON, the robots were actually drawn and erased a row at a time (rather than being done in character chunks).

[supercat]

Sure, UFO might flicker a bit on the 2600, but it's still doable.

 

Asteroids flickers at 30fps despite constraining the vertical motion of all the rocks. If the rocks were replaced by squares it might be possible to do a decent UFO! clone (using 30Hz flicker to get ten objects per line). Use one of the objects for the player ship and three for player shots, and that would leave six rocks per line when there were no saucers on screen. Hmm... that could actually be sorta interesting.

[+batari]

Let me in on this polyphonic stuff! Where? When? How?

The polyphonic stuff will be revealed in the forthcoming release of TETRIS for the Odyssey Called "Puzzle Piece Panik!" written by the author and great innovator of O2 software Ted Szczypiorski. with Mr Roboto pushing the O2/Videopac console to techniques that the programmers of the time did not even consider Ted has developed a way of producing polyphonic sound.

Sorry - I still don't see anything about Mr. Roboto that goes significantly beyond the design of the O2. All I see are multiple copies of the generic "human" character on a standard O2 grid.

 

So-called "polyphonic sound" is also nothing new for consoles and home computers that weren't designed for it. David Crane did it (quite impressively) on the 2600 in 1984 by modulating the volume register into a 4-bit waveform. Even the Apple II could do it back in the day with its 1-bit speaker register, using a sort of pulse-width modulation. I'll bet Ted didn't invent anything new; Whatever the O2 is doing is probably a similar technique, it just took until now for someone to actually try it.

[doug0909]

OK, I'll ask the stupid questions... What is polyphonic sound and what does this mean in terms of a mono sound chip on a video game system? Which 2600 games feature polyphonic sounds? Why not use the Voice on the O2 for this if it has greater range?

 

As for Pick Axe Pete, this thread has convinced me that it is more unique and brilliant than I realized before. So many of those old twitch games involved clearing dots or killing all the enemies to clear a screen... or there were role playing or strategy games where you needed a key or something like it to progress... With Pete, you need a key in a twitch game, and it is up to you whether and when you use the key in terms of trying to get more points.... It sure makes you think more than pacman or galaxian.... Just another example of a fun O2 game doing something unique, and something which homebrewers for other systems or pc remake people might want to take cues from.... But wait, if your goal in life is to prove that the O2 was inferior, how can you possibly borrow ideas from it???? It's like the U.S.A.'s current political us vs. them mentality has taken over this thread....

Edited May 19, 2006 by doug0909

[+batari]

OK, I'll ask the stupid questions... What is polyphonic sound and what does this mean in terms of a mono sound chip on a video game system? Which 2600 games feature polyphonic sounds? Why not use the Voice on the O2 for this if it has greater range?

 

As for Pick Axe Pete, this thread has convinced me that it is more unique and brilliant than I realized before. So many of those old twitch games involved clearing dots or killing all the enemies to clear a screen... or there were role playing or strategy games where you needed a key or something like it to progress... With Pete, you need a key in a twitch game, and it is up to you whether and when you use the key in terms of trying to get more points.... It sure makes you think more than pacman or galaxian.... Just another example of a fun O2 game doing something unique, and something which homebrewers for other systems or pc remake people might want to take cues from.... But wait, if your goal in life is to prove that the O2 was inferior, how can you possibly borrow ideas from it???? It's like the U.S.A.'s current political us vs. them mentality has taken over this thread....

Ployphonic sound is the ability to play 2 or more sounds at the same time. The 2600 has two sound channels, so it's already polyphonic without special programming or hardware, so lots of 2600 games have polyphonic sounds.

 

The 2600 game Pitfall II, however, used a special chip that, along with special programming, allowed one of the 2600's sound channels to modulate 3 sounds at once, and with the other channel, we got 4. The Pitfall II technique can be (and has been) done in software only, but not until recently.

 

I don't know much about the O2's sound other than the range is very limited and it's a single channel. But even this is more robust than the Apple II's, which could literally only toggle the speaker off or on at a fixed level - a square wave - and software had to modulate the square wave in a program loop to generate even a basic waveform. In other words, one bit. And if the Apple can do polyphonic sound, the O2 can too, and I can't imagine that you would even need the speech module.

[Foxsolo2000]

[

Hm... so you're still feeling bitter that the O2 didn't even have one single Adventure type of game?

 

What about Quest for the Rings? Wasn't that an Adventure type game?

[Cybergoth]

What about Quest for the Rings? Wasn't that an Adventure type game?

 

Looks like a silly board/video game hybrid to me on first glance.

[Foxsolo2000]

What about Quest for the Rings? Wasn't that an Adventure type game?

 

Looks like a silly board/video game hybrid to me on first glance.

 

Maybe to you but in the Uk it was vastly popilar and was one of the reasons why it sold so well here

[doug0909]

I hate to agree with the O2 bashers here, but once you ditched the game board, which most people did, QFTR was more of an arcade game (albeit a darn good one). You ended up with two people trying, competitively or cooperatively, to reach a ring. The ring was basically like an exit sign to the next screen..... That being said, I bet the O2 could support a great game similar to 2600 Adventure.... It certainly has the sound, graphic, and memory capabilities for it.... Throw in some Voice effects and some creative use of the keyboard, and it could be way better....

Edited May 19, 2006 by doug0909

[Foxsolo2000]

On a different note wasn't Attack of the Time Lords also called Terrahawks after Gerry Andersons puppet tv show of the late 80's? It had nothing to do with the show what so ever but it seems that it was called Terrahawks in the Uk and Attack of the Time Lords in the US

[jbanes]

It had nothing to do with the show what so ever but it seems that it was called Terrahawks in the Uk and Attack of the Time Lords in the US

Perhaps I'm not the only one who thinks of Doctor Who whenever "Time Lords" are mentioned? And I'm in the US!

[ZylonBane]

You are trying to explain, that Pickaxe Pete sucks. So why did I play it back then several hours almost every day in the week for many months???

I didn't say PAP sucks. I just described what it isn't-- a game with a clearly-defined player goal. Do you deny this? As for why you played it extensively-- well heck, people used to amuse themselves for hours by banging rocks together. I don't doubt some people managed to make a meaningful diversion out of this game.

 

 

Like I've said earlier in this thread, ZylonBane seems only to have faith in the superiority of the 2600 if the O2 is considered its inferior in ever way...including several imaginary ones.

You are clearly a fanatic, who apparently assumes that anyone who opposes you is just as much of a fanatic. Care to back up any of these claims with specific things I've actually said?

 

Here's a quote that I can assure you isn't imaginary: "Where Odyssey had any advantage at all in hardware was in drawing mazes and putting a few letters or numbers on the screen. Those turned out not to be overly useful in the market." -- Bob Harris (author of Killer Bees)

 

 

Actually, Amok was rather notable for the fact that the player as well as all the shots moved on pixel boundaries, and collision detection was also done on pixel boundaries.

I've never played VIC Amok, but that sounds like a cool little technical hack. Would work really well for a game like that too.

 

 

Which 2600 games feature polyphonic sounds?

Since the 2600 has a two-voice sound chip: all of them.

Edited May 19, 2006 by ZylonBane

[vdub_bobby]

Which 2600 games feature polyphonic sounds?

Since the 2600 has a two-voice sound chip: all of them.

Well, all of them that use both channels. I don't think Donkey Kong does, for one.

 

And the O2 seems almost expressly designed to make a kick-ass Adventure clone, at least graphically. Of course, most of the genius of Adventure is in the underlying logic, not in the graphics.

[jbanes]

You are clearly a fanatic, who apparently assumes that anyone who opposes you is just as much of a fanatic.

More likely he doesn't know you very well, is reacting strongly to your abrasiveness, and then is wondering why no one else sees his issue. Have you ever considered being a little more gentle with new posters?

 

Meh. I suppose not.

 

Here's a quote that I can assure you isn't imaginary: "Where Odyssey had any advantage at all in hardware was in drawing mazes and putting a few letters or numbers on the screen. Those turned out not to be overly useful in the market." -- Bob Harris (author of Killer Bees)

Hey! That's my link! Well, at least I know that someone clicks through to them.

 

Which 2600 games feature polyphonic sounds?

Since the 2600 has a two-voice sound chip: all of them.

Unless, of course, the game only uses one voice. Then it's monophonic.

 

Hey, look! Another link! (<-- I wonder. Is this guy listening to monophonic music or polyphonic music? The world may never know...)

[ZylonBane]

(<-- I wonder. Is this guy listening to monophonic music or polyphonic music? The world may never know...)

There's two notes displayed at a time... they could be playing simultaneously or in sequence. There's no time signature so we don't know the duration, but considering the time they're visible on screen, polyphony seems likely.

 

BTW, unless your name is Dieter Koenig, no, that isn't your link. I read that interview months ago, and found it again through a Google search.

Edited May 19, 2006 by ZylonBane

[jbanes]

(<-- I wonder. Is this guy listening to monophonic music or polyphonic music? The world may never know...)

There's two notes displayed at a time... they could be playing simultaneously or in sequence. There's no time signature so we don't know the duration, but considering the time they're visible on screen, polyphony seems likely.

So what you're saying is, given the probability distribution of the notes, we can compute a 75% probability of the smiley face listening to polyphonic music versus a 25% probability of monophonic music, subject to errors introduced by the Uncertainty Principle. Therefore it is most likely that the smiley is listening to polyphonic music, but there is no way to be certain unless we can observe the music itself. Once observed, our universe will diverge into two separate branches; one where the smiley was listening to polyphonic music and one where he beat the odds to listen to monophonic music?

 

Well, I'm glad we cleared that up.

 

EDIT:

BTW, unless your name is Dieter Koenig, no, that isn't your link. I read that interview months ago, and found it again through a Google search.

So what you're telling me is, you don't read my links either? Damn. And here I was hoping this was the alternate universe where at least someone paid attention.

Edited May 19, 2006 by jbanes

[ZylonBane]

Wow jbanes, yuor so smrt. I totally wouldn't have known what probability or the uncertainty principle were unless you'd helpfully hyperlinked them. Gosh.

[jbanes]

Wow jbanes, yuor so smrt. I totally wouldn't have known what probability or the uncertainty principle were unless you'd helpfully hyperlinked them. Gosh.

Um, yeah. That would be for the benefit of anyone who doesn't know and wants to get the gag. This is a public forum, remember?