Scott Stilphen
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Posts posted by Scott Stilphen
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A local news station did this piece from 1982:Games shown:
Galaga (Midway)
Ms. Pac-Man (Midway)
Pac-Man (Midway)
Congorilla (Orca)
Space Battle (Mattel Intellivision)
Tempest (Atari)
Monaco GP (Sega)
Super Cobra (Stern)
(unknown game to left of Super Cobra)
Asteroids (Atari)
Battlezone (Atari)
Challenger (Centuri)
Vanguard (Centuri)
(unknown Universal game to right of Vanguard) -
There's a great documentary about it that was done in 2003:
As well as a couple retrospect videos about the original and the BG 1980 'sequel':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af6wuq0h6Fc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RWpZlin6so
Personally I loved the show when it first came out. Here was a show that boasted the same special effects that were in Star Wars, with ships flying around in space having laser battles. The sequence showing a Viper ship launching and hitting Turbo was also cool to see (at first..). The main characters Apollo (perfect scifi name, given the Apollo moon missions were still recent enough) and Starbuck (basically Han Solo, complete with laser pistol) were interesting enough, not to mention the bevy of beauties that were always around them. There was even a robotic dog (which was actually a monkey in a costume!). The effects were done by John Dykstra - the same person who headed Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic division which created the special effects for Star Wars. Dykstra left ILM before SW was released, and set up his own special effects company, Apogee, with a few ex-ILM folks, and the first project they worked on was BG. Seeing screens showing squadrons of Cylons and Vipers in vector graphics was also very reminiscent of Star Wars.
The show borrowed from Fred Saberhagen's Berzerker series of stories, which tell about an ongoing war between humanity and the Berserkers - self-replicating war machines programmed with one main objective: destroy all life. They were created by the Builders, who were humanoids with a single, 'sliding' eye. Both found their way into Battlestar Galactica in the form of the Cylons and their Base Stars. The Cylon's sliding red eye and monotone voice was the stuff of nightmares to a kid back then
It was a great audio and visual effect, which were used in Stern's Berzerk (the sliding red eye also appeared again in another show, Knight Rider).
It's a shame the series was cancelled after 1 season, but watching the show years later, it's not hard to see why it was cancelled. After seeing the same handful of special effects footage shown repeatedly, and the same Viper ship launching and "turbo-ing", you realize where most of the budget went (ironically, Dykstra left ILM over Lucas being upset with the effects being over budget and over time. Have to wonder if the same issues doomed BG). Plus the stories run the gambit from very entertaining to very poor. The followup (BG 1980) was just awful, save for maybe the last episode (featuring Starbuck and the Cylons), which was certainly "too little, too late", though there was one special effect from the show that was noteworthy - the time travel visual effect. You've seen the same effect before, in Atari's Star Wars arcade game, when you destroy the Death Star.
Atari had plans to create a laserdisc game based on the show, but the project only went as far as this test footage that was assembled:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoUwU6dqSsQ
Notice the intro shows a similar "flying through rings" effect
Mattel nearly had the first BG video game. Space Battle for the Intellivision (and Space Attack for the VCS) was to be that game, but someone failed to realize they only had the license for electronic games, not video games. The graphics were left unchanged, which is why the enemy ships look like Cylon Raiders. But BG actually influenced another game the year before - Atari's seminal Star Raiders. The game has the player battling the Zylons, with the fighters using Star Wars' Tie-Fighters and the same BG Base Stars:
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List updated.
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It's the same basic strategy used for the original arcade version.
- Sabertooth and Justin
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182,000
I use the tried-and-true strategy of turning and going in reverse. Don't let the tanks get behind you, no matter what. Keep them off to the sides. When you see a shot fly past you, that's when you turn to shoot them.
- RickR, Sabertooth, nads and 1 other
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On 2/6/2015 at 6:13 PM, The Professor said:
We updated the Atari Arcade page this week more detail on the history of Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater, including this GREAT video of Nolan Bushnell at Google, telling the fascinating story behind ShowBiz Pizza and the Chuck E. Cheese concept. More here: http://www.atari.io/atari/atari-arcade-games/#cec
FYI The video and account have been removed.
There's a picture of the original "coyote" costume in my interview with Jerry Donaldson:
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/jerry_donaldson/interview_jerry_donaldson.html
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Most every time an old show is redone (Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Star Trek, etc), there's 'diminishing returns' you might say. It's worth nothing this is the third time TZ is being revived (the first time was in the mid-80s). In regards to the original TZ series, Rod Serling's narration was certainly memorable, but it was the quality of the writing/writers that made that show iconic. So many of the ideas and topics from that original run were truly ground-breaking, and still reverberate through other shows and films today. That was science-fiction when most of it was still truly fiction. There were shows depicting people traveling to other planets years before the first satellite (Sputnik) went into orbit, let alone the first person to reach outer space. Take a show like The Lonely (prob my fav TZ episode). Within 5 minutes, you completely forget it's in b&w and filmed in some barren area. The story and acting just grab you and everything else melts away.
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I would be embarrassed to attach my name to something like that, let alone sell one (and for nearly $100 at that). Someone could write a 'How Not To' book based on those photos, or 'How To Waste $40 in Materials'. Damn. What a box of 'fail'. From poor layout design and construction (destroying a mounting post for the shell for a button that doesn't even fit properly?) to complete lack of wire management, to poor soldering skills (wires already falling off? Looks like he used general purpose acid core solder - same stuff used on pipes!). Even grade school shop projects don't look this bad. And on top of everything, you get a used paddle controller, instead of a new one from Best Electronics.
You did a nice job trying to polish that turd, crossbow, but as the saying goes, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig (or was it a wig on a pig?).
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I was thinking something similar to the Sega Spy Hunter coupler. The top joystick can easily be rewired so that the directions are correct for other games.
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$30. How much were the ones on Etsy?
It would be nice if someone was 3D printing the VCS coupler for Spy Hunter, or one that would support all these:
http://www.ataricompendium.com/faq/faq.html#software13
- Radar Lock - left joystick controls plane; right joystick selects weapons.
- Raiders of the Lost Ark - left joystick controls the inventory strip; right joystick controls your character.
- Riddle of the Sphinx - left joystick controls your character; right joystick controls your inventory strip.
- Spy Hunter - uses the fire buttons from both joysticks. A plastic joystick holder was included, which allowed you to snap 2 standard Atari sticks in and operate them as if they were one controller.
- Star Raiders - both a joystick (in the left port) and a Video Touch Pad (in the right port) are used.
- Stargate - left joystick controls the ship and firing; right joystick controls Inviso, Hyperspace, and Smart Bombs.
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On 1/19/2019 at 11:13 PM, Arenafoot said:
Probably all of the heavy hitters in the AA store..... Stay Frosty 2 (180+ 1st run), Halo 2600 (150 copies 1st run), Syncart, Lady Bug (LE- 1st run), Space Rocks, Medieval Mayhem, Zippy..... (definitely known 100 copies: Another Adventure hack, Boulder Dash, FPF 2017 hack, Lasercade, L.E.M.) Also alot of repros and prototypes were printed in 100+ copies too: Extra Terrestrials repro, Actionauts proto, Bugs Bunny proto, Combat Two proto, Looping proto, RealSports Basketball proto, Snow White proto
3-D Rubik's Cube - 250 copies were made.
Actionauts - 250 numbered copies were made, with an additional 50 "unnumbered" copies (but from what I've heard, those are numbered as well).
Boulder Dash - 250 copies were made.
Bouncin' Baby Bunnies - 60 copies in first run.
Good Luck, Charlie Brown - 50 copies were made.
Halo 2600 - 130 copies were originally sold at CGE2K10 with a black label.
Lasercade - 100 copies were made.
Racer - 75 copies were made.
CGE releases: Bugs Bunny, Combat Two, Crack'ed, Elevator Action, The Entity, Looping, Pick Up, RealSports Basketball, Snow White - 250 copies of each were made.
VideoSoft releases: 3-D Genesis, 3-D Ghost Attack, 3-D Havoc, Atom Smasher, Depth Charge, S.A.C. Alert - 100 copies of each were made.
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Email Arcade 1up they will send out new control panel artwork and a Plexiglas cover.
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Try a green 3M Scotchpad. Those work great on edge connectors.
If that doesn't work, try a piece of fine-grit sandpaper.
If that doesn't work, that cart is dead. That board uses COB (chip-on-board), so there's no option to reflow any solder joints. If you're really bored, you can fill in all the pass-through holes on the pcb with solder, but beyond that, there's nothing else you can do.
- Atari Creep and Justin
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On 12/17/2018 at 1:44 PM, RickR said:
Technically speaking...the driving controller was the better design. Ideally, Atari could have used the driving controller instead of the paddles, with the only downside being only 2 player games instead of 4.
Indy 500 wouldn't control as well as it did with a stop in the rotation. None of Atari's arcade driving games had a stop in the wheel either.
Since the VCS was primarily designed to play Tank and Pong, designing an opto-based controller (to support Trak-ball and racing games) wasn't part of the plan. The paddle controller uses a variable resistor (potentiometer), which is what the arcade Pong game used (as well as Breakout and several others). So Atari certainly could have had an opto-based controller in the late 70s, but the development time and cost would have made it unrealistic. The Driving controller was a clever & cheap workaround to an opto controller, which is basically the same principle the arcade game Sea Wolf used for the periscope. Even by the time Atari released an opto controller in 1983 (the Trak-ball), the software didn't fully support it! So that controller was more marketing hype than anything else. It's only been in the last 15 years or so that programmers have hacked games like Missile Command to take full advantage of the Trak-Ball. They certainly could do the same with all the other driving games - the Colecovision's driving controller would be the best way to go for that.
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There's now 30 different types of Atari Flashback systems since 2004 - 27 of which are from AtGames:
http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/reviews/flashbacks/flashbacks.html
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Having the keypad certainly made playing Star Raiders easier, but Atari could have implemented all the functions by using the console switches or another joystick, much like how Activision did with Space Shuttle, Sega with Spy Hunter, and Telesys with Stargunner. By the same token, 3rd-party companies could have supported the keypad (ex: Activision with Space Shuttle), but CommaVid was the only one (with MagiCard). Atari only released 5 carts that supported the keypads (Keyboard Controllers) between 1978-1980:
A Game of Concentration
BASIC Programming
Brain Games
Codebreaker
Hunt & ScoreStar Raiders was the only cart that used both the joystick and keypad (Video Touch Controller). Activision, Imagic, and Starpath came out with their own Star Raiders knock-offs (with Starmaster, Star Voyager,and Phaser Patrol) - none of which used the keypad. So the keypad wasn't so much of a necessary item for Star Raiders, but as you mentioned, I'm sure Atari's Marketing wanted the opportunity to remind everyone they could have games using keypad controllers as well (which they certainly did with the 5200).
The following year was when Atari decided to re-do the keypad again (with the Kids Controller) and planned to support it with no less than 8 titles:
Alpha Beam with Ernie
Big Bird's Egg Catch
Cookie Monster Munch
Grover's Music Maker
Holey Moley
Monstercise
Oscar's Trash Race
Peek-a-BooThe Driving Controller is really one I had hoped Atari would have supported more. It's the perfect controller for driving games, and a combination of that and a joystick (for shifting) would have been ideal. But other than 2 homebrews (Stell-A-Sketch and Thrust Plus: DC), Atari's Indy 500 was the one and only driving game to use it. Paddles really weren't ideal for driving games, yet Atari used them for Night Driver, That was a very popular title and its release would have been an excellent time to reintroduce the Driving Controllers, as would have the later (top-down) version of Dukes of Hazzard (had it been released) and Pole Position. When Coleco came out with their own driving controller (Expansion Module #2), I immediately thought that was something Atari should have released years before. Would have been nice if homebrew programmers utilized that with new games, or hacked versions of existing ones.
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Custer is sold but I have Beat Em left.
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The ROMscanner is definitely worth more than a Video Game Brain. The VGB's were much more common here in the U.S. (K-Mart used to sell those) - probably the most common of all the different makes and models (Game Selex and Videoplexer were 2 others):
http://www.ataricompendium.com/faq/faq.html#hardware14
There's another price guide site, but it only lists software:
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The bios on a friend's system somehow got corrupted and had to be reflashed. I saw it working long enough to play 1 game. It has a sharp video output, but beyond that, you're still using an emulator-based console, so it'll never be 100% identical to the real thing (of which there's still a million floating around).
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It was a great audio and visual effect, which were used in Stern's Berzerk (the sliding red eye also appeared again in another show, Knight Rider). 
Atari 2600 Miniature Golf Source Code
in Atari 2600
Posted
I don't know of any source code available for this game, but being it's only 2K, it shouldn't be difficult for any 6502 programmer to do.