Lord Helmet Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 Some of the discussion in the PB Frogger Vs Starpath Frogger got me thinking: Back in the day, did you really give a crap about the flicker in games??? I noticed it, as I'm sure everyone else did, but it never bothered me. I always just assumed it was the atari working too hard It was just a part of playing games. I never got a headache or anything else from playing a game with flicker. Hell, Adventure didn't even bother me. Yeah the stuff blinked when there were too many objects, so I just tried to get as many objects into one room to see how bad I could get it to flicker. It was kind of like hacking the game....making it do something it wasn't supposed to do. I can appreciate the programmers that figured out ways to reduce flicker. Those games do look better, but did I care in 1982? Hell no! I didn't even care in 1992 when SNES Zelda flickered and slowed down! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jetset Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 I did sometimes. Frogger didn't bother me because it was such a great conversion. Defender didn't bother me flicker-wise, but the ship disappearing always bugged me. Then there's PacMan. Sheesh. It's like they *wanted* the ghosts to flicker. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2600lover Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 Yeah Pac-Mans bad. But I just got used to it. Dont really play it any more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted August 17, 2006 Author Share Posted August 17, 2006 That's kind of what I mean...Yea Pac-Man flickered...but you probably played the hell out of it I knew it didn't look like the arcade game...but it WAS pac-man at home. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 on an ol tv its barely noticeable. it was never an issue for me back in the day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 That's kind of what I mean...Yea Pac-Man flickered...but you probably played the hell out of it I knew it didn't look like the arcade game...but it WAS pac-man at home. I never liked 2600 Pac-Man, even back then. Hell, Munchman was better Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Nathan Strum Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 It depended mostly on how bad the flicker was. I never even bought Adventure because the flicker drove me crazy in the store. Same with Defender. And then of course, there was Pac-Man... But some games with flicker never bothered me. Frogger, Gorf, Reactor, Gyruss. If a game was fun enough, and the flicker was handled well, I never even thought about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lauren Tyler Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 I never really cared about flicker really, for some reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phaxda Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 I didn't care about it in any game...except Defender. It just drove me completely nuts and I was so happy that I had 1 5200 to play it on. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Godzilla Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 i loved the 'invulvernability while shooting' in defender (i didnt call it flicker.) :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATARIPITBULL Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 Yeah Pac-Mans bad. But I just got used to it. Dont really play it any more. Yeah, Pac-Man & Defender gave my eye's a good work out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+FujiSkunk Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 (edited) Flicker never really bothered me. I guess I didn't even notice it for a long time, because even after I discovered how most games would only do four colors per scan line, and how some games seemed to break that rule, it wasn't until much later that I associated the extra colors with the flickering. Minor anecdote about Pac-Man-: On the Christmas when I was given my first 2600, I also received a little Zenith black-and-white TV to play it on. The flicker of the ghosts actually made them look purple to me on that TV. So, I got to play the game in color after all... sort of. Edited August 17, 2006 by skunkworx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lord Helmet Posted August 17, 2006 Author Share Posted August 17, 2006 i loved the 'invulvernability while shooting' in defender (i didnt call it flicker.) :-) I didn't call it flicker in that game either. I just figured that the VCS couldn't show both the shot and the ship at the same time...seemed logical, and turned out to be correct given the way it was programed. I did kind of thik it looked dumb, but I was also very happy that I had a version of defender at home...one that I could actually play for more than 20 seconds on a credit. the arcade game always kicked my ass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thomas Jentzsch Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 I didn't even notice the flicker of Asteroids back then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spector Posted August 17, 2006 Share Posted August 17, 2006 What causes the flicker in frogger when you jump onto a log? The same with Mr Do!, when you are on a line of cherries, they all start flickering, yet the other cherries remain the same. Without getting too technical, what makes it happen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vic George 2K3 Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 i loved the 'invulvernability while shooting' in defender (i didnt call it flicker.) :-) It was like the Inviso feature in Stargate, except that it didn't last very long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RangerG Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 I only remember it with Defender and it still drives me crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Feralstorm Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 What causes the flicker in frogger when you jump onto a log? The same with Mr Do!, when you are on a line of cherries, they all start flickering, yet the other cherries remain the same. Without getting too technical, what makes it happen? Just a basic display limitation of the 2600. It can only display at most two 'player' sprites, two 'missile' objects, and a 'ball' object on any horizontal scanline. only the players can look like anything besides lines/boxes. over time programmers have gotten better at getting around the limitations. Flicker is just one way to get around it, flickering because the same player is being used to display different objects on alternating updates of the display. items on a higher/lower area of the screen don't need to flicker if there are two or fewer unique player objects on that line. back on track, flicker never really bothered me unless it's unusually bad, like lots of things on-screen at once in Adventure or Wizard of Wor - bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Room 34 Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 I noticed the flicker, but like every limitation of the Atari 2600, I took it simply as an inevitable characteristic of what video games were. None of the ol' VCS's weaknesses seemed as such to me. Then again, I was only 8. I just didn't know any better than to take everything in the world at face value. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Room 34 Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 I didn't even notice the flicker of Asteroids back then. Good point! I don't think I even realized until about 2002 that there was flicker in Asteroids. There's something about the flicker in that game that seems "different" than most other games; it's faster or something. Anyway it ends up seeming more like just the kind of flicker you get from a CRT monitor with a low refresh rate, rather than the kind of obvious things that happen with the ghosts in Pac-Man, for instance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 Depends how bad the flicker is and what game. If its nasty flicker like as bad as, but not specifically, say defender I just don't play it. If its reasonable and not distracting or not very noticable (at least to my colorblind eyes) I don't mind at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadow460 Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 I always thought the flicker made ghosts creepier and robots scarier. The places I noticed flicker the most was where it didn't have an explanation. Objects flickering in Adventure? Very annoying. I hated Defender and Pac Man, so those games' flicker didn't make things any worse. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nester Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 Well when I was a kid I thought the ghosts were supposed to do that. I always thought it made them more ghostlike. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whowantschips Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 qbert is the only game that drives me crazy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supercat Posted August 18, 2006 Share Posted August 18, 2006 Good point! I don't think I even realized until about 2002 that there was flicker in Asteroids. There's something about the flicker in that game that seems "different" than most other games; it's faster or something. Anyway it ends up seeming more like just the kind of flicker you get from a CRT monitor with a low refresh rate, rather than the kind of obvious things that happen with the ghosts in Pac-Man, for instance. Sometimes flicker is okay; sometimes it's really bad. The flicker in Asteroids is 'okay' because there aren't any really huge flickering areas of color (unlike, say, FB2 Lunar Lander where the entire moon surface flickers), all flicker is at 30Hz, and there isn't any contrast between objects that flicker and similar objects that don't. Further, flicker against black is often less noticeable than flicker against a colored background. In Missile Command, Rob Fullup uses 30Hz flicker for the incoming missile trails and 20Hz flicker for the explosions. The 30Hz flicker looks okay because it's 30Hz, and the incoming missiles don't represent any large solid area. The 20Hz explosions look okay because, well, they're explosions. Flicker isn't evil if it's well-designed. Of course, Tod Frye's Pac Man isn't well designed (15Hz flicker against a colored background--yuk!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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