Why is Air Raid worth so much

[Mr. Postman]

Has a box or even an instruction manual been found for Air Raid?

 

 

I'm sure I read that one person in the past claimed to have owned a boxed one. I believe that's how people know it's named Air Raid in the first place, correct? I'm not to sure though, the name could be completely bogus. I'm pretty sure many Brazilian pirate games never came in a box in the first place.

[jboypacman]

Games are only worth what people are willing to pay for them.One game is worth more to someone then it is to a other person.When someone pays a high price for a classic videogame on e-bay alot of times that becomes the value point of the game for example i have seen people pay $100 or more on ebay for Chase the Chuckwagon when it turns up on there because 1)they need it for there collection or 2)they think they can hold on to it and sell it or trade it later on.If i ran across a copy of Air Raid i would buy it but not at the prices its goes for normally thats money i could use for other and cheaper Atari games i need.

[+batari]

Air Raid has come down a bit in value. If I could find one cheap I would still pick one up but it would be about the only PAL cart in my collection.

It's probably NTSC, actually, but has more scanlines than normal so it rolls on some TV's.

 

SIF = 240 scanlines

NTSC = 480 scanlines, 60Hz

PAL-M = 525 Scanlines, 60Hz (PAL-M exists only in Brazil and Laos)

PAL/SECAM = 576 scanlines, 50Hz

 

In general I've never had an NTSC television that wouldn't Play PAL-M games, but it wouldn't surprise me that there would be many that couldn't display them properly. It's a common mistake that people make assuming that PAL-M and NTSC are the same. Even here on our own Atariage.com, the site claims that NTSC is 525 scanlines as opposed to the 480 that it is and also claims that PAL is 625.

 

Is there something I'm not understanding? You learn something new everyday so please fill me in if I'm mistaken.

As far as scanlines go, Air Raid just about right in the middle between NTSC and PAL. At 580 scanlines (total, not just visible) it's 55 more than NTSC and 45 less than PAL. Or around 54.3 Hz.

 

Although it is slightly closer to PAL in this regard, it does seem to have NTSC colors. If we use PAL colors, things don't look right.

[Mr. Postman]

Air Raid is really a unique game. Much better than Space Jockey IMO. I'm starting to believe that since pirate companies sometimes got a hold of prototypes, that This might have been a Vidtec proto that crossed paths with the Pirate company Men-A-Vision. Either that or Men-A-Vision really did make this hack themselves, but it's truly a darn good hack in that case.

 

 

Either prototype that got a pirate release or vintage hack that's more fun than the original. Interesting game all around.

[A.J. Franzman]

NTSC = 480 scanlines, 60Hz

PAL-M = 525 Scanlines, 60Hz (PAL-M exists only in Brazil and Laos)

PAL/SECAM = 576 scanlines, 50Hz

Maybe you are confusing visible with total scanlines here. NTSC has 525 total scanlines, PAL 625, PAL-M 525 too.

Let me see if I can clear this up without introducing any new errors!

 

NTSC, PAL-M:

525 total, 480 visible scanlines @ 30 frames / 60 interlaced fields per sec.

(Atari 2600 = 262 total lines, 192 visible, @ 60 noninterlaced frames per sec.)

 

PAL, SECAM:

625 total, 576 visible scanlines @ 25 frames / 50 interlaced fields per sec.

(Atari 2600 = 312 total lines, 228 visible, @ 50 noninterlaced frames per sec.)

 

The actual amount of "visible" scanlines in PAL and NTSC television signals varies somewhat from set to set; the numbers given are only what the standards say should be visible. Also, the actual number of total and visible scanlines produced by the 2600 console is determined by each game cartridge. A few percent more or fewer here should not cause problems with most televisions, but PAL sets must have even numbers or colour will be lost.

 

As the designers intended, the Atari 2600 consoles produce half the "standard" number of scanlines, rounded down, for a noninterlaced image which sacrifices vertical resolution but allows faster/smoother motion to be shown. It was discovered just a few years ago that some programming tricks can be used to double the vertical resolution (384 visible NTSC or 456 visible PAL scanlines) and produce a true interlaced picture. I don't know if any games yet released or in progress make use of this technique.

 

You may have noticed that the Atari numbers of total scanlines are exactly half those of the standards, rounded down, but the Atari numbers of visible scanlines are much less than half those of the television standards. This is mostly by arbitrary convention, to give game screens a ~25 scanline black border at the top and bottom of the image which does not matter if it is covered up to greater or lesser degrees by different TV sets. Although it's generally OK if your favorite movie or TV show is cut off a bit at the edges (they are made with this in mind), having your score, player sprite, enemy sprite, radar display, etc. in a video game be hidden behind the edge of the screen is generally unacceptable.

Edited July 10, 2006 by A.J. Franzman