Multi Carts

[Foxsolo2000]

This is a call out to all the 2600 collectors who own multi carts. I am looking to identify four games that are often listed on certain multi carts such as the Taiwan 8 in 1s, 64 in 1, 128 in 1 etc, etc or those who own the Atari clones that possess built in games. The games I am looking to identify are:-

 

1 Saturn 5

2 Treasure Island

3 Leevator Action

4 Space Trip

 

 

Some of these carts and consoles have game listings on the cart or come with a game list so someone should know what these games are. I discovered yesterday that the single cart version of Space Trip was in fact Space Tunnel but I need to know if the multi cart versions of Space Trip are the same. Somebody must know so please, lend me your thoughts

[Rom Hunter]

And if somebody has a 32 in 1 game cartridge with a Spectracube Invasion on it, please keep me informed!

 

[Foxsolo2000]

Sorry Rom, completely forgot about that one. I would like to know the answer to that one too

[D.Yancey]

Just guessing...Could Spectracube actually be The Challenge of Nexar by Spectravideo?

 

Leevator Action-Elevator Action clone?

 

I don't have the multicarts, so I'm just tossing this in the ring.

[Foxsolo2000]

Please do, all thoughts are welcome. I have entertained the same idea myself with Sectracube Invasion and two others have asked me that very same question about Leevator Action although someone else did say he thought it was most likely airlock or Keystone Kapers. Keep those thoughts comming

[Spirantho]

Elevator action is probably A Mysterious Thief or something. As for the others, remember these names should be taken with a pinch of salt. These are on the console with such fine classics as Climber (Spiderman), Build House (Master Builder) and my favourite, "Six Fuwvy Dolls"[sic] (Football - take a look at a screenshot and put yourself in mind of someone who knows nothing about American Football!).

 

 

If anyone's interested I can post a complete list of the 208 games I have and what they really are, but it may take some time.

 

Edit: Incidentally, it's clear the Tac-scan clone is not doing the proper number of scanlines, as it comes out in black and white, so my TV box thinks it's an NTSC signal (and it's not!)

Edited November 1, 2005 by Spirantho

[Foxsolo2000]

Please do. I believe that the 208 in 1 possess all the games I am looking for. I am especially interested in Space Trip as I know the single cartridge version and am keen to learn if it is in fact the same game. Thanks in advance

[Spirantho]

Please do.  I believe that the 208 in 1 possess all the games I am looking for.  I am especially interested in Space Trip as I know the single cartridge version and am keen to learn if it is in fact the same game.  Thanks in advance

 

You didn't see what the filenames for the above pictures are then....

 

Edit: Actually, it seems that IE and maybe other browsers are intent on hiding the titles of those pictures. Typical. The three pictures are Space Trip, Saturn 5 and Treasure Island respectively (it comes up when you hover the mouse on them in Opera).

Edited November 1, 2005 by Spirantho

[Foxsolo2000]

Thanks Spirantho although on my computer it just says attached image Anyway thank you again for uncovering this little mystery. Seems Space trip is not the same as the Taiwan single cartridge that I found (unless there were two versions released). Nice work. By the way there wasn't a Spectracube Invasion on that cart was there?

Edited November 1, 2005 by Foxsolo2000

[Spirantho]

Thanks Spirantho although on my computer it just says attached image   Anyway thank you again for uncovering this little mystery.  Seems Space trip is not the same as the Taiwan single cartridge that I found (unless there were two versions released).  Nice work.  By the way there wasn't a Spectracube Invasion on that cart was there?

 

Nope, sorry....

I'll see if I can sort out a list of what's on this machine...

[Spirantho]

Here we are.. this is my Cart Commander list of what's on the console and what its equivalent is...

Ian_Gledhill_208_in_1__II__Atari_2600_Media.zip

[Foxsolo2000]

Thanks Spirantho the info was very interesting. Although you didn't have Spectracube Invasion you did have a game called Spectra which I have contacted Rom about. Once again excellent work and thank you for your help

[A.J. Franzman]

Thanks Spirantho although on my computer it just says attached image  

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That's because the info about the image is coded into the TITLE field of the hyperlink while the useless "Attached Image" text is in the ALT field of the image (which happens to be the entire visible content of the hyperlink). Since IE only displays one "tooltip" for any given object, it must have a priority structure where more than one possible source of tooltip info exists. In this case, the HTML standard does not define which of the two texts should have priority, so browser makers are free to choose whichever they wish; IE gives priority to the image ALT text. In fact, displaying ALT or TITLE texts is completely optional - we're lucky we get to see any tooltip at all! If AA's attached image hyperlinks had some text in addition to the thumbnail image (such as a description or filename), hovering the cursor over the text portion of the link would reveal the hyperlink TITLE text. A better solution would be to put the image info into a TITLE attribute for the image, in addition to that of the hyperlink (and perhaps repeat it yet again in the image ALT text).

 

I believe displaying the ALT text is a bad choice by the IE programmers - ALT text is defined as "alternate text to serve as content when the element cannot be rendered normally". In other words, if you're seeing the image, there is no need to ever see the ALT text, as a tooltip or otherwise. The hyperlink TITLE should clearly take precedence in this case, if the image itself has no TITLE attribute. Just one more reason why Micro$haft sucks!

Edited November 2, 2005 by A.J. Franzman

[Spirantho]

Incidentally, while I think about it..

 

We should be careful about the names on these multicarts etc. It's clear there's a large amount of chinese whispers going on (except this time it's the Chinese whispering in English! ). The names are not consistent at all, but we can usually see where they come from.

 

For instance, I have a 208-in-1 at home which claims to have 320 games. In fact there's only 208 because the first 128 are identical to the second 128, but they often have different names. I can give examples when I get home if you like.

It's funny also how, for instance, my 208-in-1 console at home has "Six Funny Doll" on it whereas my console here at work has "Six Fuwvy Doll" so we can see how they've been copying each other!

 

Maybe I should try and dump the ROMs in these machines.... wonder if there's any difference between them....

[Luc]

Here's a scan of my multicart. I haven't gone through all the titles but just let me know if there's something interesting on it - I'll glady check it out.

 

Sorry for the bad scan btw.

[Rom Hunter]

Luc, there are indeed some interesting titles on it:

 

Spactr, Spectral Attack and Spectracube.

 

Can you find out which games belong to these titles and post us their screenshots?

 

That would clear up a lot.

 

Edited November 2, 2005 by Rom Hunter

[Luc]

Hi Rom,

 

I just checked the cartridge. It is very hard to tell which games they are, because the titles on the label seem to be in random order and the cart itself just cycles through games 1 to 32 in each bank. Selecting a game is done by switching the console off and back on (tiring!), so there's no way to be sure which game comes first in the selected bank. If I take a well known game (like Q*Bert) as a reference point, the titles that follow do not necessarily match the order of the titles on the list. I noticed however that there are lot of Homevision games on it, most of which I don't recognize (I'm not actively collecting anymore) and there are also a few well-known games with completely altered graphics (Atlantis and Pooyan to name but two).

 

Btw, is there a site somewhere which displays - preferably on one single page - screenshots of every known game for the 2600? That would help me a lot to name some of the games without having to navigate through all kinds of menus.

[Foxsolo2000]

There were a couple of Atalntis and Pooyan clones made into single cartridges, wolf fighting amd Ocean City Defender instantly spring to mind although there are others. Could you post pics of the games with the altered graphics as I am always interested in these clones. I too wish that there was a site which possessed screen shots of all the differnet screen shots. Maybe someone will one day get round to making one.

[Spirantho]

There were a couple of Atalntis and Pooyan clones made into single cartridges, wolf fighting amd Ocean City Defender instantly spring to mind although there are others.  Could you post pics of the games with the altered graphics as I am always interested in these clones.  I too wish that there was a site which possessed screen shots of all the differnet screen shots.  Maybe someone will one day get round to making one.

 

Heh.. been there, done that.

Do you have any idea how big the resulting document was?

 

Actually, I could've done it more efficiently, but even so, there's a lot of games out there.... and it still wasn't complete as we still don't know all the games!

 

And before you ask, no I can't give you a copy - it was lost in the Great Hard Disk Crash of 2004.

[Foxsolo2000]

Yes I doubt that any list would ever be complete due to the sheer volume of games involved. For the record I wasn't going to ask you for a copy as I thought I could have a crack at it myself as I have a load of pics myself that I have gathered over the years. I have nothing better to do with my sunday afternoons

[sku_u]

I have Saturn 5 as one of 4 built in games on a Rentacom 4-in-1 but it is a sealed copy and I would prefer to keep it that way.

[Luc]

Yes I doubt that any list would ever be complete due to the sheer volume of games involved.  For the record I wasn't going to ask you for a copy as I thought I could have a crack at it myself as I have a load of pics myself that I have gathered over the years.  I have nothing better to do with my sunday afternoons

958605[/snapback]

 

 

That would be great. Perhaps you could use smaller thumbnails and only show the actual screenshot when you click on one of them. Resizing a batch of screenshots can easily be done with Irfanview.

 

As for the pictures of the games on the multicart, I'll get them as soon as I buy new batteries for my digital camera. Don't expect any high quality pics though.

[Foxsolo2000]

I will probably start work on it on Saturday. Anyone want to add pics please do and I will sort them out whne I have time. Please note that this will not be a swift project but no doubt I will have a lot of fun doing it By the way thanks to everyone who helped identify the games in question. Appreciated

[Luc]

I will probably start work on it on Saturday.  Anyone want to add pics please do and I will sort them out whne I have time.  Please note that this will not be a swift project but no doubt I will have a lot of fun doing it   By the way thanks to everyone who helped identify the games in question.  Appreciated

958712[/snapback]

 

I think the screenshots on this page are great:

 

http://www.videogamecritic.net/2600.htm

 

The pictures are actually a lot bigger than what you see on the screen and most are less than 2,5 K in size. So even if you make a list with 600 games (if there are that many, I don't know), you would still only need 1,5 meg.

 

I'm going to start making screenshots right away.

[Luc]

Here's a file with screenshots of all the games I have (529 in total) in small, medium and large format. I have also included a text-file with all the names of the games, so that you can easily replace the hard-returns by some HTML-code if you want.