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RadioPoultry

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  1. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from Justin in Squad Challenge - Centipede (Atari 2600)   
    Here's my score: 76040.
     
    Achieved on a 7800 with a twitchy wico joystick that's lost its ability to center. (Maybe that helped?)
     

  2. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from nosweargamer in The Last Letter Retro Game Game   
    Oregon Trail (Apple II)
  3. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from RickR in The Last Letter Retro Game Game   
    Oregon Trail (Apple II)
  4. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from Bakerman in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I was going to post these on Atari Day, but looks like I'm a little late. Anyways, I made more animated GIFs! Can you guess what games they're from without hovering your mouse over?
     





  5. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from nosweargamer in The Last Letter Retro Game Game   
    The Dreadnought Factor (Atari 5200)
  6. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from nosweargamer in The Last Letter Retro Game Game   
    Donkey Kong (Atari 2600)
  7. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from nosweargamer in The Last Letter Retro Game Game   
    Ninja Golf (Atari 7800)
  8. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from nosweargamer in The Last Letter Retro Game Game   
    Edit: Never mind, someone beat me to it!
  9. Like
    RadioPoultry reacted to nosweargamer in The Last Letter Retro Game Game   
    The rules are pretty simple: Name a Retro* Game that begins with the last letter of the game before it.
    * Retro for this game is Dreamcast or earlier. Computer & Arcade games count!
     
    Example: Altered Beast (Sega Genesis)
                    Tetris (Game Boy) 
     
     
    Try not to use games already mentioned and do not use games that end in a number or symbol to keep the game going. However you can use a title twice or more if it is on a different platform.
     
    Street Fighter 2 (Arcade)
    Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition (Arcade)  
     
    FYI: "The" counts as a word.
    FYI 2: If two people respond to the same letter, only the first response counts.
    FYI 3: Please include a platform for the game so we can reuse the title on another platform later on.
                   
     
    Ok. I'll start. Here's the first one:
     
    Combat (Atari 2600)
  10. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from LeeJ07 in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I was going to post these on Atari Day, but looks like I'm a little late. Anyways, I made more animated GIFs! Can you guess what games they're from without hovering your mouse over?
     





  11. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from Justin in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I ran the games in an emulator (Stella), and repeatedly took screen captures. I picked out the ones that had all the frames I needed, and then used a paint program to get the pieces and make small adjustments (for example, sprites that didn't show up well against white I made slightly darker). After saving each frame as an individual GIF, I used http://gifmaker.me/ to make them into a single animated GIF. There are other sites for making animated GIFs, but this was the only one I found that was handling transparency correctly.
  12. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from RickR in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I ran the games in an emulator (Stella), and repeatedly took screen captures. I picked out the ones that had all the frames I needed, and then used a paint program to get the pieces and make small adjustments (for example, sprites that didn't show up well against white I made slightly darker). After saving each frame as an individual GIF, I used http://gifmaker.me/ to make them into a single animated GIF. There are other sites for making animated GIFs, but this was the only one I found that was handling transparency correctly.
  13. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from Justin in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I was going to post these on Atari Day, but looks like I'm a little late. Anyways, I made more animated GIFs! Can you guess what games they're from without hovering your mouse over?
     





  14. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from RickR in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I was going to post these on Atari Day, but looks like I'm a little late. Anyways, I made more animated GIFs! Can you guess what games they're from without hovering your mouse over?
     





  15. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from nosweargamer in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I was going to post these on Atari Day, but looks like I'm a little late. Anyways, I made more animated GIFs! Can you guess what games they're from without hovering your mouse over?
     





  16. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from Arenafoot in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I was going to post these on Atari Day, but looks like I'm a little late. Anyways, I made more animated GIFs! Can you guess what games they're from without hovering your mouse over?
     





  17. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from StormSurge in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I was going to post these on Atari Day, but looks like I'm a little late. Anyways, I made more animated GIFs! Can you guess what games they're from without hovering your mouse over?
     





  18. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from The Professor in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    I was going to post these on Atari Day, but looks like I'm a little late. Anyways, I made more animated GIFs! Can you guess what games they're from without hovering your mouse over?
     





  19. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from LeeJ07 in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    Happy Atari Day! Justin's work inspired me to make some more Atari animated gifs, of which there are far too few on the internet.
     
    P.S. Cool photos, Storm! How are the paddles doing now?
     
     
     





  20. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from The Professor in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    Happy Atari Day! Justin's work inspired me to make some more Atari animated gifs, of which there are far too few on the internet.
     
    P.S. Cool photos, Storm! How are the paddles doing now?
     
     
     





  21. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from The Professor in ATARI DAY - On the 26th day of each month, show the world how much you love Atari!   
    You can play AstroBlast with paddles?!
  22. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from LeeJ07 in What's In Your Collection?   
    Fairchild Channel F (imperfect, doesn't show scores)
    Magnavox Odyssey 2
    Intellvision II
    Vectrex
    Atari 2600 (Sears Tele-Games 6-switch)
    Atari 5200
    Atari 7800
    Atari Lynx (power supply issues)
    NES (works, but I need to find new screws)
    N64
  23. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from The Professor in Pigs in Space analysis   
    Here's a short blog post concerning Jim Henson's interaction with Atari. I wish there was more info, but I found it interesting nonetheless.
     
    http://www.henson.com/jimsredbook/2013/05/55-61983/
     
    There's at least one factual error. It's stated that neither Pigs in Space or Miss Piggy's Wedding's were produced, but of course the former was.
  24. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from Rowsdower70 in Pigs in Space analysis   
    Here's a short blog post concerning Jim Henson's interaction with Atari. I wish there was more info, but I found it interesting nonetheless.
     
    http://www.henson.com/jimsredbook/2013/05/55-61983/
     
    There's at least one factual error. It's stated that neither Pigs in Space or Miss Piggy's Wedding's were produced, but of course the former was.
  25. Like
    RadioPoultry got a reaction from Sabertooth in Pigs in Space analysis   
    We go to the next game by selecting the middle pig from the menu. But this is not just any pig. This is the pig, the one and only Miss Piggy, or First Mate Piggy as she is cast. Hogthrob may have been the captain, but it's Miss Piggy who was the real star of the show. Indeed, the cartridge art not only depicts her the most prominently, but the title even reads "PIGS in SPACE starring MISS PIGGY". One could say she was the Seven of Nine of porcine science fiction.
     

     
    This game is "Pastaroids". In case you are wondering, the only resemblance to Atari's "Asteroids" is in the title. The gameplay here is more original than for the previous one. It reminds me most of Activision's Freeway. Piggy is caught in the midst of a pasta storm and must spacewalk to the Swinetrek, which is slowly traversing the top of the screen. 
     
    Starting at the bottom, she must avoid spaghetti (which travel left) and meatballs (which travel right) to reach the ship before her shipmates abandon her. Well, OK, according to the manual the crew come back for another pass, but either way is entirely within character for these swine. Accomplishing this causes the screen to be filled with more spaghetti and meatballs the next time the game is played. These obstacles knock Piggy down to the lane below, often right into another obstacle, and so on.
     

     
    Pressing the joystick button compels Piggy to use her trademark karate chop, which can be employed to destroy oncoming meatballs. Noodles are impervious to all attack, naturally. At the beginning, I was unaware of the karate chop ability, and so, while the first few rounds were easy enough, they quickly became very challenging, and success seemed as much based on chance as anything. Even so, I was once able to complete this mini-game 15 times before expending all my lives. As soon as I discovered the karate chop, the game became much, much easier. If you have extra lives enabled, this is the game you'll go to to restore any lives lost. You don't get as many points as you do with the others, but it is easier and faster to complete than both.
     
    Graphically, Pastaroids is not quite up there with the others, but it's not bad. The depiction of Miss Piggy here is a bit crude (and, arguably, without the spacesuit seen on the cartridge she has bigger problems than pasta), but the motion of the Swinetrek tilting side to side like a ship tossed at sea is nicely implemented with five frames of animation. It's the gameplay that is lacking. Depending how it is played, it either feels tedious or frustrating, but never really achieves "fun".
     
    However, there is one game left. Selecting Dr. Strangepork gives us "Escape from the Planet of the Gonzoids", or as I like to call it, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boomeray". The Swinetrek is moving up through a passage, and the player must make sure the ship does not come in contact with any walls or projectiles until it reaches the exit. If the corridor seems to pass by too slowly at times (and it will, especially at first), at your own peril you can speed things up by moving to the top of the screen. I won't try to describe what occurs when the ship collides with an object, but it is an unsettling combination of sight and sound indeed.
     

     
    The tunnel is always symmetrical, but sometimes divides into two passages. Continuing the game's food obsession, the manual explains that this is a pizza mine and that the Gonzoid robots placed along the walls are throwing deadly pizzas (which once again look like lines... but horizontal ones!).
     
    There are places where destroying the Gonzoids is essential for passing safely, but the way to do so is not straightforward. Literally. The ship is equipped with the bizarre "Boomeray" which fires a dot which moves upward, then curves to the left or right (whichever you moved last), and then downwards. The shot cannot pass through walls. The placement of the enemies above the walls is such that the player must take advantage of the curving path of the boomeray to clear the way.This comes with risk: the returning dot can destroy the ship. Offhand, the only other classic game I can think of where you can be damaged by your own fire is Fortress of Narzod for Vectrex (no doubt there are others).
     

     
    The progression of difficulty in this game is odd. Each time the game is successfully completed the mine passes a little faster, but also the Gonzoids alternate between firing quickly and slowly. The result is that the second round of this game is easier than the first. After roughly half a dozen rounds, the alternating pattern settles on a moderate firing rate.
     
    There is one significant problem with this part of the game: the layout of mine and the placement of the enemies is the same every single time. Had the developers been able implement a bit of variety here, I'm sure the entire package would have a better reputation, but as it is they may have been pushing their eight kilobytes of ROM to the limit. I can't help but think, though, that with a bit of time they could've implemented something akin to River Raid's procedurally generated level design.
     

    (I would like to add that Dr. Strangepork gets the short end of the stick through all of this. Being the hidden pilot of Swinetrek here and being omitted from the cartridge art entirely, his only real appearance is on the menu screen. Anyways, we still love you, Dr. Strangepork.)
     


     
    So, looking at the whole, we have three games in one cartridge which aren't too terribly challenging and tend towards repetition quickly. That said, I love that Pigs in Space for Atari 2600 exists. That someone looked at one small piece of a favorite show, and figured, "We can make a game out of this!". And I sincerely enjoy the quirky humor and the small graphical touches. Had I been the person who originally purchased it, I might well have been disappointed, but as a collector, I find it's great.
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