darryl1970

Based on @RevEng's insight, it sounds like that could be the issue. Good to know these things. It sounds like all will workout well.

@Phylax hasn't responded in about a week or so. That's why I checked in. That's good insight.

I don't think this was a concern for anybody else in the thread. I think it was just trying to help Phylax. I think he's the only one to report that issue, and he said it seems to be true for all of the 7800 games he's tried so far.

It doesn't appear to be an issue with the game. @Phylax stated none of the Atari Basic games save high scores. However, his 2600 games save high scores. When I got one of my 7800GDs, I was having a similar problem. James informed me that the GD's high score cart needed formatted, so to speak. I needed to run a first-run Atari 7800 game (Ms Pac-Man, Dig Dug, etc.) in order to "format" the built-in high score functionality. From that point on, my 7800GD saved high scores on the 7800 BASIC games. I guess the stock games have an extra initialization for empty high score carts. I don't know if the AVox and Savekey work the same. I suggested above as a shot to try.

Any luck with initializing the HS with a stock game?

I have one more suggestion. This may not apply to real hardware. I had to do this with the 7800GD. I had to play an original game, such as Ms Pac-Man, in order to initialize that unit's high score file. I cannot remember if AtariVox works for original carts that were built for a HSC, but I figure it might be worth a shot to try an original Ms Pac or Dig Dug cart. I am swinging in the dark, so I don't have high hopes. Worth trying though... --Darryl And also thanks for the kind words. I am glad you enjoy it!

I do not have any issues with the game saving to my SaveKey, AtariVox, Concerto CM#0, or 7800GD. If I recall, if Popeye doesn't detect a high score save device at all, it will only show "Top 5 Chart" during the attract sequence. If it detects a high score device, it will show Novice, Arcade and Expert scoreboards. If the attract doesn't loop through those score boards (Top 5 Novice, Arcade & Expert), it doesn't even detect a high score device. Does it have any corruption in the high score tables. I have had corruption in my 7800GD high score file before. This caused issues in multiple games. I was able to delete that and let it rebuild. I don't know if there's a way to reset the AVOX, but I wouldn't want to lose my other game scores if it is still actively working for the 2600 games. I assume your other games still display your saved scores. I guess the question might be if you're able to record NEW scores to your AtariVox in those games. That might rule out corruption on the AVOX itself.

Have you tried to clear the high scores from the game? What version are you running?

OK. Let me rethink. I was going to add high scores to a simple game, but it puts it over 48K. I might just need the one. Thanks.

I'd like to reserve $1979 & $1980; Is it okay to share names later?

If I didn't have two other game commitments, I probably would have already picked that up to give it a shot.

That was an interesting watch. That might be the episode that came to my mind, unless Bluto had a habit of tying Olive to railroad tracks. I can see how, as a young child, I missed Bluto's affection toward Olive. It seemed more like arrogance and testosterone than affection. I can also see where the theory comes from that Brutus is more of a romantic. Maybe it wasn't written into the character as much as the history of the show. Bluto seems to just want to one-up Popeye. I seem to remember Brutus as more of a flower guy, and Olive seemed to sometimes be drawn in a little, making Popeye jealous. Olive doesn't seem to be very interested in Bluto, but she always fluttered between Popeye and Brutus. I guess the change in "enemy" behavior could just be that the cartoon had to stop tying women to railroad tracks if they wanted a spot in the cartoon lineup. I don't watch enough to know if the violent behavior toward women coincidentally changed at the time of the character name change. As for the cartoon being racist, I do recall the use of black caricatures, with exaggerated features (maybe even tribal nose-bones?), in other episodes. I didn't notice anything like that in this episode, although I may have missed it. My assumption is that this one is banned, due to the kidnapping a woman and tying her to a railroad track. LOL. Overall, very interesting. As a child, I remember liking Popeye, but I preferred the color episodes. I probably didn't like Popeye being kind of a showoff and Bluto being more than just a bully. It all seemed wrong; but I did appreciate that Olive always seemed to be into Popeye. Watching this has also brought back the memory of what I didn't like about the color cartoons with Brutus. Olive was kind of a skank and not completely loyal to Popeye. I didn't like her, and couldn't figure out why Popeye would waste his time on such an ugly human being. Where the men were egotistic in the b&w, she seemed to now think she was a queen that the two needed to fight over. The fact that she seems undesirable made my head spin. I kind of wanted to see her get tied to the railroad tracks in these episodes. However, going back and watching that makes me want to watch some of the other suggested B&W videos. There are some cool aspects. It's interesting how strong Popeye was before eating the spinach. I also appreciate the level of creativeness, like using the peacock as the carnival gate. I remember appreciating Popeye punching things into smaller organized things. I don't recall of the later episodes had that kind of creativeness to them.

I didn't realize that. I read that somewhere, and it matched my personal experience with the Bluto character. It's possible that I only caught half of an episode or saw a clip and it reinforced what I had read elsewhere. Bluto was a little more "manly" though, wasn't he? I recall Bluto as being the buff muscle guy, and Brutus always had a more dainty sense about himself. Brutus always seemed more "proper" and sophisticated, where Bluto seemed like he had a steroid problem. Well, that's the main point I was trying to preserve: the arcade game uses the Brutus character. I just like to attempt to preserve game history. Interesting information about the cartoon history though! It seems you have the same passion about Popeye, so I get that. Cool..

My recollection of A8 stuff is foggy, but this one stuck out to me. I used to draw balloons back in the day, and I thought I recalled overlapping two blues for white.. I dug out the "Player Maker" that I made for myself back in junior high. I drew a striped ball in Altirra to test it out. This is the result of overlapping two different luminences of Medium Blue. Yeah. I understand that. I just try to preserve the arcade history. It's not that I want to correct, as much as I don't want to lose the purity of it. I have gotten a lot of slack for the Pac-Man monster debacle, even though the enemies don't go through walls, Blinky gets torn to shreds in the 2nd and third intermissions, and every arcade machine ever has that on the instruction cards. It's just an effort to preserve the origins. I figured that was your purpose. I think somebody mentioned it, and I just threw out the number. Definitely more stuff going on with points, bottles, and such. As I mentioned before, I am not proficient in A8. It sounds interesting. The only thing I am familiar with is that I think character modes are absolute 8x8, but you gain an alternate color for inverse characters. The other mode, like used in Donkey Kong, can plot anywhere on the screen, but you loose the extra screen color. When I hacked MarioXE, I saw how they got around the absolute position by creating shifted character sprites. I was just thinking that technique would leave bigger holes in the background when plotted. I don't want to waste your time trying to explain it though. Just clarifying what I meant in the original. I was thinking that the per-pixel characters would be a lot of extra work, especially if it ended up with a different issue. I was just sharing that as a possible issue to consider, adding that absolute position would not be the end of the world if it looks THIS good! This looks very cool, and I'd love to fire it up and see it on my 800XL (or Altirra) I agree. I had a lot of fun with the original. They did an excellent job, and the music is really good too. It always bothered me that Brutus's head looked like a number 5, and ColecoVision had such a great looking Brutus. I was a little jealous. Of course, Coleco's Popeye is mono and all white in color. My biggest obstacle to play those versions now is how slow the hearts fall, and the CV version is kind of choppy to control at times. Anyway, thanks for sharing. I hope the punching bag blue overlap can help a tiny bit. -D