Arcade games that never made it to the 2600

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

I'd been having a real tough time trying to think of an original "arcade" kind of game that I could write for my first 2600 project. The only thing I have come up with is the idea of doing an Ender's Game takeoff, and that's a copyright which isn't mine.

However, while I am punching copyright in the face, I was trying to think of games that never made it to the 2600. The list I have so far, of stuff that would be worth trying to port:

Robotron 2084 (somehow, I think that even getting close to resembling this on the 2600 is a bit beyond me)

Wacko (Possibly... Wacko had, if I remember right, a trackball control to move and a Robotron-style joystick to shoot. But that's easily emulatable with a 2600 joystick.)

Karateka (Not an arcade game, but still, could probably be ported.)

The only thing is... I am terrible at video games. If I were going to port Wacko or something it stands that I'd need to be good enough at it to figure out what they are doing in later levels.

At any rate, this is a ways in the future. Anyone else think of a game that never made it over? www.atariage.com has a great search index if you're not sure if a game made it out for the 2600 or not.

[bruce]

I
However, while I am punching copyright in the face, I was trying to think of games that never made it to the 2600. The list I have so far, of stuff that would be worth trying to port:

Remember that for the 2600, you're basically stuck with a whole bunch of horizontal stuff in bands.

So:

Robotron: Berzerk is about as good as it gets, I'm afraid.
Wacko: Don't know it.
Karateka: wasn't an arcade game. Maybe you mean Karate Champ? There was a late-period Activision karate game, but I never played it.

Games never ported:

Star Castle: The layout makes it really hard--Yar's Revenge is about as good as that gets.
Satan's Hollow: A possibility. Basically Galaxian, plus the bridge-building aspect.
Tac-Scan: *was* ported. Port *BLEW GIANT GOATS*. Which is too bad because the original game was terrific.
Chiller: the Atari's graphics aren't really up to it but it'd be funny
Death Race: Probably quite doable. In fact, start with Grand Prix as your base and use the driving controllers. Use one player for the car, one for the running guy, and put a cross on the playfield when you hit him.
Dance Dance Revolution: Yes, I'm almost serious. The basic game would be pretty easy, since you just float arrows down the screen to a soundtrack, and there are plenty of sound demos. Make it work with the joystick, and then build a DDR pad for it, which is just a joystick with big pressure contacts instead of a stick.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Wacko: Don't know it.

Here's it's entry on the Killer List. Possibly do-able, but I would never be good enough to get to the higher levels to do them right.

Karateka: wasn't an arcade game. Maybe you mean Karate Champ? There was a late-period Activision karate game, but I never played it.

Actually, I had mentally run out of arcade games, so I went to the computer game side. But people knocking the shit out of one another using swords and karate punches was probably done as best as it could be with that C64 Bruce Lee game.

Games never ported:

Star Castle: The layout makes it really hard--Yar's Revenge is about as good as that gets.
Satan's Hollow: A possibility. Basically Galaxian, plus the bridge-building aspect.
Tac-Scan: *was* ported. Port *BLEW GIANT GOATS*. Which is too bad because the original game was terrific.
Chiller: the Atari's graphics aren't really up to it but it'd be funny
Death Race: Probably quite doable. In fact, start with Grand Prix as your base and use the driving controllers. Use one player for the car, one for the running guy, and put a cross on the playfield when you hit him.
Dance Dance Revolution: Yes, I'm almost serious. The basic game would be pretty easy, since you just float arrows down the screen to a soundtrack, and there are plenty of sound demos. Make it work with the joystick, and then build a DDR pad for it, which is just a joystick with big pressure contacts instead of a stick.

Oh, this is good stuff. GOOD, GOOD STUFF.

Let me ask you this, regarding that Death Race game: I've neither seen the movie or played a game called Death Race. However, is the following at all unique? :

o Two players, like you said, one in a car and one on foot.
o The guy on foot starts out as a slow-moving undead. Like an (urk) zombie or skeleton. As the player in the car runs him over, he upgrades into a faster form of undead.
o The guy on foot can get power ups where he becomes a super undead creature, like a lich or vampire or something. He can then chase the car.
o Eventually machine guns are added to the car, and maybe shields for the guy on foot
o This all takes place in a graveyard
o As the crosses appear, like as you noted, they form barriers, like how the centipede parts did in Centipede

So the thing'd basically be a cat-and-mouse kind of game, a sort of Pac-Man but inside a cemetery. And I think we all know how much I like games in cemeteries. Anyway, has any of that not been done before? I fear that the Death Race people already thought of all this, in which case, kudos to them.

I'm gonna have to find a Tac-Scan ROM or something... hadn't heard of that one before.

[bruce]

Let me ask you this, regarding that Death Race game: I've neither seen the movie or played a game called Death Race. However, is the following at all unique? :

o Two players, like you said, one in a car and one on foot.

Well, that's unique in and of itself. I meant use both of the 2600 "players" (i.e. sprites) but have one controlled by the computer. Makes sense to have them both under real player control, though (one driving controller, one joystick?).

o The guy on foot starts out as a slow-moving undead. Like an (urk) zombie or skeleton. As the player in the car runs him over, he upgrades into a faster form of undead.
o The guy on foot can get power ups where he becomes a super undead creature, like a lich or vampire or something. He can then chase the car.

Or, each five seconds that the player on foot survives, he gets faster; you don't want to reward him for getting run over. As a super-undead he has some time limit before he reverts. That sounds like fun.

Power-ups would be cool. Remember, though, that you have (on any given horizontal line) two player objects, two "balls", and a playfield background. Is the power-up going to be a player sprite (in which case you have flicker if both players and the power-up are on the same scan line) or part of the playfield (in which case you need to have it only appear sometimes).

o Eventually machine guns are added to the car, and maybe shields for the guy on foot

Controller issue. There's only one button on the driving controller, and it's your accelerator. Shields for the guy on foot would be cool though.

o This all takes place in a graveyard
o As the crosses appear, like as you noted, they form barriers, like how the centipede parts did in Centipede

Yeah, although in <i>Death Race</i> the tombstones aren't ablative. Just impenetrable barriers. That's easier to do.

So the thing'd basically be a cat-and-mouse kind of game, a sort of Pac-Man but inside a cemetery. And I think we all know how much I like games in cemeteries. Anyway, has any of that not been done before? I fear that the Death Race people already thought of all this, in which case, kudos to them.

Well, no one played the zombies. And there was no power-uppage; I think the pedestrians just got quicker and the tombstones got thicker and eventually you hit something and the game ended.

I'm gonna have to find a Tac-Scan ROM or something... hadn't heard of that one before.

It rocks. I looked at Wacko and now I remember it. Remember you have 128 bytes of RAM total on the VCS, which would make the mix-and-match monsters very hard if not impossible. Although if you did it as a Supercharger game, you'd have 6K....

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Well, that's unique in and of itself. I meant use both of the 2600 "players" (i.e. sprites) but have one controlled by the computer. Makes sense to have them both under real player control, though (one driving controller, one joystick?).

Yeah, that would work... except that if the driving controller only has one button, I don't know if that'd be feasible. If I have the car on joystick, I can have the car move with the stick (and accelerate that way, ala 2600 Asteroids) and then shoot with the button.

Or, each five seconds that the player on foot survives, he gets faster; you don't want to reward him for getting run over. As a super-undead he has some time limit before he reverts. That sounds like fun.

Right, that's good. Otherwise the second player would want to get run over, right.

Power-ups would be cool. Remember, though, that you have (on any given horizontal line) two player objects, two "balls", and a playfield background. Is the power-up going to be a player sprite (in which case you have flicker if both players and the power-up are on the same scan line) or part of the playfield (in which case you need to have it only appear sometimes).

The balls, I take it, are sort of like the missiles in the player/missile graphic system for the 8-bit? Can the balls be combined to form a third player sprite? If you're able to put a tombstone where the player gets run over (which would be dynamic: who knows where the player gets splattered), wouldn't you also be able to put a power-up just sitting there as well?

Yeah, although in <i>Death Race</i> the tombstones aren't ablative. Just impenetrable barriers. That's easier to do.

I just took a look at Death Race (by Exidy). Fortunately, it looks really, really primitive, as it's a B&W game and so forth. But that's cool, it looks like there's enough room to expand upon the basic concept and make it interesting and fun.

Remember you have 128 bytes of RAM total on the VCS, which would make the mix-and-match monsters very hard if not impossible. Although if you did it as a Supercharger game, you'd have 6K....

I think that I would probably be inclined to go for the mode that offers the most memory. I'm a memory whore (pimp?) that way. Unless it's tougher to get the game on a physical cart, that is. Ultimately, if I get goin' on this, I'd want to be able to play it like you can with LOTR, on the true hardware and such.

[bruce]

The balls, I take it, are sort of like the missiles in the player/missile graphic system for the 8-bit? Can the balls be combined to form a third player sprite?

I think so but they inherit the colors of the players and I think they're single-pixel blobs.

If you're able to put a tombstone where the player gets run over (which would be dynamic: who knows where the player gets splattered), wouldn't you also be able to put a power-up just sitting there as well?

Yeah, but you'd do that with the playfield graphics. And then test--if the car player collides with the playfield, and it's tombstone-color, he dies. If the ped player collides with the playfield, and it's power-up color, he turns into <i><b>SUPER PEDO</b></i>.

Er.

Remember you have 128 bytes of RAM total on the VCS, which would make the mix-and-match monsters very hard if not impossible. Although if you did it as a Supercharger game, you'd have 6K....

I think that I would probably be inclined to go for the mode that offers the most memory. I'm a memory whore (pimp?) that way. Unless it's tougher to get the game on a physical cart, that is. Ultimately, if I get goin' on this, I'd want to be able to play it like you can with LOTR, on the true hardware and such.

Well, then you probably want to go with the 8K supercart format, since Randy can make those. SC games can only be played on a Supercharger or Cuttle Cart, and 16K games are beyond Randy's manufacturing capability. That's still only 128 bytes of RAM, though, which is both your variable space and your call stack.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Allrighty. In terms of getting my stuff together, I have subscribed to the Stella mailing list, downloaded DASM and a few other utilities, and found a couple PDF files that seem to be called "Programming the 2600" and so forth.

Found the source to Combat, too. I flunked Assembly four times in college, and oddly enough am writing microcontroller code for a new board here at work in ASM and will hopefully shortly be writing a 2600 game in it as well. My former professors can lick me!! I doubt any of their ace, namby-pamby, A+ getting students who managed to pass are this freaking hardcore into Assembler these days! Ah! Ah! Ah!

[bruce]

Allrighty. In terms of getting my stuff together, I have subscribed to the Stella mailing list, downloaded DASM and a few other utilities, and found a couple PDF files that seem to be called "Programming the 2600" and so forth.

Want an actual EXIDY DEATH RACE?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 2134870300

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

That looks pretty sweet. A bit more than what I can swing out of the ole entertainment budget this month though. And by "a bit more," I mean, "several hundred bucks."

Looks nice, though.

I have been toying with the idea of getting another arcade game. The upside, well, another arcade game!!! The downside is that in order to "conserve" the life of my Crystal Castles one, I don't have it turned on that much. But I'd love to go get a Spy Hunter machine. There's one down at a bar we go to after football. The thing is, the Peter Gunn music doesn't work on it, and the display is "masked" on the right side (which is kinda critical, as that's where the van will deposit you after a crash). I don't know how to fix those things, either, so that's why I am hesitant about trying to get another one.

I've resubscribed to rec.games.video.arcade.collecting as of late, though. Maybe something'll turn up, like a local seller or something. If you know of an arcade auction between here and St. Louis that's coming up, let me know. If I found a working game that I could get for under $300 including shipping, I'd probably buy it regardless of what game it was.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Oh, and here's a minor tragedy for everyone: this friend of mine bought a house and decided to skip out on the last month of rent for the place he was previously at. Thing is, he left a working Birdie King II in the garage of the place. Dumb fucker. I should probably investigate what the landlord planned on doing with it -- auctioning it off, I guess. Hope it finds a good home and is not simply destroyed.

[Worm]

So ... I think I'm going to have to beat wacko then.

[bruce]

If you know of an arcade auction between here and St. Louis that's coming up, let me know. If I found a working game that I could get for under $300 including shipping, I'd probably buy it regardless of what game it was.

Next SuperAuctions in STL is 11/23.

You're welcome to stay here if you want to attend.