Scott Stilphen
-
Posts
435 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
5
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Gallery
Store
Events
Downloads
Posts posted by Scott Stilphen
-
-
List updated.
- greenween and DegasElite
-
2
-
I'm more concerned about how the game kept 'crashing' when ZPH was booting their system up.
So after seeing their website and commercial, and the ZeroPageHomebrew premier, here's my 2c about it (and then some).
There were some questionable statements made in that Audacity video that some of the comments on AA have commented on. The biggest of course was the comment about how they're not homebrewers. Crane says homebrewers make games from home whereas they're a publishing company. My take is, they're programming and producing the games from HOME. Just like... every other person who's made new games for vintage systems in the lat 25 years. Plus they went on someone's YouTube channel to promote it - Zero Page HOMEbrew - which the guys films from his ... HOME. AG reasons having cartridge shells made up somehow helps qualify their releases as official and not homebrew. Sean Kelly had new Vectrex shells made up for his multicarts, and those are considered homebrews as well. CGE used new shells for Lasercade and a few other releases. And Yarusso has been releasing games with professional-looking manuals and boxes for years, and he's basically a 1-person operation. Atariage is a publisher of homebrew games (and considering he gets 50% of all sales, he's not doing it for primarily the 'love' of the community, it's very much a business for him). And I think one of them mentioned in the video they still have a 'day' job (like Yarusso and Kelly). So the only real difference is, Crane and the Kitchens are veteran designers. The Audacity Games website lists their address as:
3494 Camino Tassajara #403, Danville, CA 94506, USA
Which is in a strip mall. But their website is registered to an address in Washington: PO Box 639, C/O AUDACITYGAMES.COM, Kirkland, WA, 98083, US
Crane claims he worked on the game for over 3 years, but he can't convince me never saw or heard of Dan's game before then (which Dan started working on back in the early 1980s). Crane's one of the best VCS designers, no doubt. But he and the other designers also started Activision by knocking off several of Atari's games, so we can't forget that. Yes, the game looks good and there's some new graphical 'tricks' that Crane is employing (like the translucent icon). But he then claims he never designed a game around a trick. What about Dragster? What about Laser Blast? What about Pitfall II?? Of course he did. And Pitfall II remains the 'pinnacle' of his VCS games IMO. But they didn't want to 'cheat' by using something like the special DPC chip? Why limit yourself at this point? It's great that someone finally designed the first 128K game, even though the bank-switching tech and pcb designs have existed for some 15 years. But to limit yourself to designing such a large game using only 128 bytes of RAM? Sure, not many people could have designed with that constraint, but I expected more for a game that large. I expected what some of the later Starpath games look like (Escape from the MindMaster, Dragonstomper, Survival Island, Sweat, etc). He designed a new board, so he could have easily added a DPC chip or more RAM. But now everyone else who uses that board will be restricted to the same limits. And clearly you can see the limits of it in Circus Convoy. Like most of Crane's games, you have only 3 or 4 truly different screens, with variations of those screens. with CC, you have the outside/cars screen, the mini-game screen, and moving objects confined to specific areas (to avoid flickering). No scrolling, like with Pitfall II, but more like Pitfall - 255 static screens, all of which are variations of the same screen. Yes, technically CC has scrolling, but it's limited to the shrubs on the side of the road, much like the trees in Skiing, except you can at least interact with the trees in Skiing. Now, if he designed the game so that the screen scrolled as you ran along the top of the cars, then yes, that would have been far more impressive and worth the top prices they're asking. And with 128K, he could have included digitized music or voice. Atari pulled that off with Quadrun, and that game is only 8K w/o any special hardware. Am I supposed to be impressed with the little tune he implemented for CC because it's in tune? Does it even use both channels? He used Dan Kitchen's method of how he created the music for Pressure Cooker (again, copying Dan!). Like I said, I expected more from Crane at this point.
All the various trinkets and extras that come with the higher packages don't interest me. I'm a gamer, not a collector. So they're definitely targeting collectors. Also not thrilled about having to pay $100 to get a digital copy of the game, esp when the U.S. allows you to make 1 archival copy of media for yourself. If I have the means to do that myself, why would I pay an extra $40 for someone else to do it for me? I'd sooner just buy another copy of the game. At 48m in, Crane also commented how the $100 Collectors Edition price is equal to what people paid for games back in the early 80s. He then made a followup comment, instead saying the $140 VIP edition price was equal to that, "taking inflation into account" and said Pitfall originally sold for $39.95. All of these comments are false. First, the retail price of Pitfall was $31.95:
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/pitfall/pitfall.html (Video Game Update review mentions the retail price).
You can't use retail prices, because nobody pays that! A few months ago, I spent considerable time archiving video game ads from one of my local papers. When Pitfall was first released (late September 1982), the earliest ad I found had a price of $28.95 on it. A month later, the price was down to $25:
Boscov's
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/boscovs/citizens_voice_12-16-82_boscovs_ad.jpg week
before Christmas, below manufacturer's price (not listed)
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/boscovs/citizens_voice_3-5-83_boscovs_ad.jpg March
1983 $28
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/boscovs/citizens_voice_12-15-83_boscovs_ad.jpg
December 1983 $15
General Radio
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_9-30-82_general_radio_ad.jpg
earliest ad
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_11-4-82_general_radio_ad.jpg
earliest ad with price (1 month later) - $25
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_11-18-82_general_radio_ad.jpg 2
weeks later. Same price
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_12-16-82_general_radio_ad1.jpg
week before Christmas, same price.
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/ads/newspaper_ads/citizens_voice/general_radio/citizens_voice_10-27-83_general_radio_ad.jpg
October 1983, same price
More proof? Here's Zayre's ad from September 1982 ($25, with retail $29.95), and Shop Rite's ad from October 1982 ($24).
So nobody uses retail prices in price comparisons. Video game prices on average today are approximately 2x as much from what they were 40 years ago. Using this inflation calculator, that $25 in 1982 is now equivalent to $68:The recent release of CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 has an MSRP of $59.99 but was sold for $10 less a week later, so it's actually cheaper than Pitfall was!
https://www.pcgamesn.com/cyberpunk-2077/saleWell, their server crashed Saturday afternoon and the sale was delayed 24hrs, at which point it was hit-or-miss whether you got your order processed. The VIP editions seemed to have sold out within the first hour, and best estimates on AA are they between 500-750 copies were sold overall, so they certainly made some decent money, not to mention the record for the fastest-selling homebrew and most-copies for a homebrew ever. But there's several pages on AA of people's complaints about their website, as well as AG's Facebook page. I just can't imagine why, since they're only accepting Paypal, why they wouldn't use Paypal to simple create some order 'buttons' for their website. I did that with the VideoSoft games I sold 10 years ago, and it worked w/o any issues.
Speaking of that AA thread, when the question of royalties came up, Yarusso made a comment about how Activision didn't pay Atari royalties, which is completely false. Atari sued Activision and the lawsuit was settled. The specifics have never been released, but Activision did pay Atari. Same with Coleco (see attachment). Same with Imagic. Same with every 3rd-party company back then that Atari sued. I don't think the royalty was that much, but even $1 per cart would have been a significant amount of money, especially with games selling a half-million copies or more (especially the 3.5 million copies of Pitfall).
-
The cart LightBlue2222 used for his 63,260 score was the 1987 released version. I have 6 Pole Position carts at the moment, and some of them are the 1987 version. I'll dump them as soon as I can and let everyone know the results. The person from Atariage, "MayDay", who got the same score back in 2014 used the Stella emulator. He wasn't sure where he got the ROM image from, either Atariage or EmuParadise.
- Justin, AtariSphinx and Marco1019
-
2
-
1
-
-
Must-buy for me, and I just did :)
- RickR and socrates63
-
2
-
Here's a near-complete list of all the VCS arcade conversions:
http://www.ataricompendium.com/game_library/arcade_ports.html
- socrates63 and Rocker67
-
2
-
Pac-Man in a landslide.
-
** double post
-
On 5/25/2020 at 7:35 PM, Atari 5200 Guy said:
Looks like the same shell used for the VCS adapter. I bet the 7800 circuitry inside could be used as a stand alone system as well. If that is the case then the 5200 was a very flexible and expandable unit.
The VCS and 7800 adapters were self-contained consoles because the 5200 was very INflexible and non-expandable. It was designed to intentionally be a closed system, according to Rob Zdybel:
https://ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-interview-277-rob-zdybel-atari-part-2
-
On 8/18/2020 at 11:17 AM, CrossBow said:
Does the VCS adapter have a BW/Color switch on it? Could have been these games included these little known options for the VCS adapter?
It does not:
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Riddle of the Sphinx has scores.
-
Every VCS manual is on my site: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/manuals/vcs/manuals.html
Here's my interview with Stuart Ross, who was part of the team that made the game: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/stuart_ross/interview_stuart_ross.html
Here's the commercial for the game, which I archived from Stuart:
And lastly, a complete video of the game courtesy of Tunnel Runner master Jeff Adkins':
-
Latest article about the Trak-Ball controller, and Crystal Castles:
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/articles/trak-ball/trak-ball.html
-
Atari announced it would be for all their consoles and computers in 1984, but as we know, only the VCS version was released. A prototype version for the computers existed in 1984 (and was leaked out soon after Atari changed hands) and was later revamped and released in 1988, but neither version supported the trak-ball. The game was unofficially converted to the 5200 and someone made a version of it that supports the trak-ball:
https://atariage.com/forums/topic/247585-crystal-castles-no-trackball-support/
Considering all the effort that was put into making and marketing the trak-ball controllers, it's shameful how little they were supported. At the $45 retail price they were first advertised for, it was pretty much a sham, especially when Atari was telling people the controller "takes a good game (Phoenix, Missile Command, Galaxian, Space Invaders) and makes it awesome". In the case of the VCS controller, it was never fully supported, as no games were ever made that took full advantage of it; all the controller ended up doing was translating the analog movement into the standard up/down/left/right movements. Years later someone hacked a few VCS games to take advantage of analog movement:
http://home.ptd.net/~scottith15/trak-ball_series.zip
- HDN, RickR and intellicolecovisonary
-
2
-
1
-
The link is no longer valid. Do you still have a copy of this? I'd like to host it on my site.
-
Anybody remember the Atari Lynx newsletters that were available when the system was released? One was called A.P.E. - Atari Portable Entertainment.
-
-
If you really want an arcade machine, get an original Atari CC. Don't mess with those 1Ups. You should be able to find an original in good working condition for less than $1k. I don't know where you're located, but ask local amusement operators in your area, or look on KLOV, or check online auction sites like this one:
If you have to have it shipped, figure on adding another $200-$400.
So I started to read Atari Force...
in Comics & Books
Posted · Edited by Scott Stilphen
But not proper credit to the person who wrote that comic (Warshaw).
I thought the full-size Atari Force comics were just as good as the mini-comics, if not better. The artwork was superb. Gerry Conway and José Luis García-López worked on the first 13 issues, which is basically where the story ended IMO. The last 7 issues were done by different folks. Conway also wrote the mini comics with Roy Thomas.
I have all of them on my site:
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/comics/comics.html
Atari Force certainly wasn't Conway's best work, but was certainly acceptable (esp for pack-ins). With the minis, story-wise, the game titles were primarily used as chapter titles. Some of them were loosely tied into the story. Ex: #3 features a Star Raider ship, complete with the same scanner screen (btw, there were also several Berzerk mentions in #5, which was more appropriate). The full-size comics allowed for more creativity It would have been nice if he continued with the original characters, instead of relegating them to brief cameos (and seeing Martin Champion as a sullen, bitter old man was a bit too cliche for me). But the 'ending' in ish #13 was memorable. You can't argue with the destruction of an entire universe :)