Retro Club - 8 & 16-bit puzzlers
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oh - and Demon Attack prompted a lawsuit from Atari as they had licenced Phoenix. Worth giving Phoenix a look to compare with Demon Attack.
Stella has all sorts of features such as scanlines and simulated phosphor effects to recreate a CRT though I haven't really experimented with them too much. You do need the joystick for the real experience though - I think there are USB versions.
But yeah - a 2600 and a CRT is great. I put mine through a VCR so I can connect it to my CRT via composite and that helps the image quality a good bit and also lets me play NTSC and PAL60 ROMS loaded onto the Harmony.Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
Right, unless there are any objections I have selected:
Defender II
Keystone Kapers
Pitfall 2
Demon Attack
Summer Games
Galaxian
Admittedly, Demon Attack looks similar to Galaxian, but I'm in the mood. Will check out the variations later and post them when I change the thread tomorrow. -
Demon Attack has an amusing 2 player mode in which control switches every 4 seconds-it's little ideas like that which make simple games a great deal more enjoyable. Much fun to be had putting yourself in danger just at the right time. It is different enough to show that it is far better than Galaxian, though for emulators and Harmony owners there's a really nice homebrew version of Galaxian which takes the original ROM and improves the graphics etc.
Demon attack - game 1 diff A would be good enough. Like Galaxian the other game variations just start at higher levels which might be a good idea for Galaxian. It's nice to see all the different alien shapes in Demon Attack - that was enough to keep you playing back in the day!
Keystone Kapers has no variations as far as I know, nor does Pitfall 2.
If memory serves you need both controllers for Defender 2? I think hyperspace and smart bombs are controlled by that. I've only played it via Stella - must load it up in the Harmony cart for this.
Never played Summer Games - I had Activision's Decathlon - had plenty of craic with that playing with my brother and cousins back in the day....Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
Demon Attack = game 1 - diff a - 9560
Keystone Kapers - 15650
Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
Will update this in an hour or so, been a busy evening so far (a big shop/long dog walk/staring into space dreaming about the whisky in the whisky thread).
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Right, all ROMs loaded onto my Caanoo. Pitfall II and Keystone Kapers don't seem to be available at atari age, but they're on coolrom.com, which has a direct link if you watch a 15 second video (hmm, Noah looks good, despite Winstone's beards).
I can't see manual scans for these on atariage either, so I think we'll just go for game type 1 if they have variations, apart from Galaxian, which we'll go for type 4 maybe? Also, Defender II seems to work OK for me with just the one joystick, but I've never played it before so I may be missing something important. -
Forty seven (week): Atari 2600 Hi-Score Challenge Returns
Defender II - Game type 1.
Keystone Kapers - Default
Pitfall 2 - Default
Demon Attack - Game type 1.
Summer Games - Multiple Events
Galaxian - Game type 4.
Play and discuss, or simply reminisce.
Schedule:
Fantasy Zone Free Choice - Various (03/03)
Super Punch-Out! - SNES (10/03)
Jurassic Park Free Choice - Various (24/03)
Atari 2600 High Score Week Returns (31/03)
The Firemen - SNES (07/04)
Powerdrive - Various (21/04)
Obscure NES Month, 5 games (05/05)
Wildcard Week (02/06)
Cool Spot - Various (09/06)
C64 Week - (23/06)
Blackthorne - Various (30/06)
Solstice - SNES (14/07)
Derivative Platformer Fortnight - Various (28/07)
R-Type III - SNES (11/08)
Kirby Fortnight - Various (18/08)
Wonderboy Fortnight - Various (01/09)
Chakan The Forever Man - Megadrive (15/09)
Wildcard Week (29/09)
Pilotwings Fortnight - Various (13/10)
Prince of Persia - Various (27/10)
Pinball Week - Various (10/11)
Wildcard Week - Master System (17/11)
Obscure NES Month Returns, 5 Games - (24/11) -
An amusingly pathetic 1900 on my first go of Demon Attack.
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Moot_Geeza wrote:Put 40 minutes into the SNES Jurassic Park yesterday. It is (or perhaps more specifically, was) a very good game as far as I can tell, but would require too much patience and map learning for me to realistically get through it without concerted effort. I'm in two minds about the FPS sections - technically, they're marvellous, especially to the eyes of a 16-bit gamer who had the dull sparseness of Corporation on his side of the fence (SNES JP looks a damn sight better than later MD efforts like Zero Tolerance too), but they just don't play that well. The actual shooting is extremely basic, and although they pushed the boundaries of what was possible on the machine to an extent, most 16-bit FPS sections don't hold up these days, past the initial 'wow, impressive' reaction that I'm lucky enough to still have. I'm probably being harsh here, but Ocean's programmers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should, from a gameplay perspective anyways. So SNES Jurassic Park gets this, for the well above average top-down gameplay being slightly spoiled by the cumbersome interior sections:
...and that concludes the 'ploughing my own furrow' week. I've had my fun, and that's all that matters 
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well played sir..."Like i said, context is missing."
http://ssgg.uk -
speaking of which, i hope Emlyn Hughes International Soccer will be in C64 week, i may join in for that!
"Like i said, context is missing."
http://ssgg.uk -
I just watched a video, and it's in for the noise of the crowd banging alone.
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I feel sad that this weeks games are too far before my time, I just can't appreciate them like you guys do.
I fear for the day when the same feelings are felt for 16bit by people my age now. -
Playing Defender 2 and Galaxian the one thing strikes me most and that is that despite the primitive graphics and sounds, they feel like the arcade games. The inertia in Defender is very well done and is very close to the original. The enemy and bullet movement in Galaxian feels just like the original. Really impressive achievement. Sadly the challenge of the arcade games isn't there even at the highest level but then these aren't about credit munching - the arcade originals , particularly Defender, are brutal and even with the lower difficulty I am struggling..
13,800 on Defender 2 and 8,000-odd on Galaxian so far.
@liveinandive - forgo the arcade ports and have a look at Pitfall 2 - it's basically a maze/platform treasure hunt but it was well ahead of it's time.
Keystone Kapers is a straight run and jump game but there is a light puzzle element in catching the crook because he will react to your presence if on the same floor as him and if you don't do things right you won't ever catch him. Once you learn that trick then the difficulty cranks up each time you catch him and it becomes quite addictive in a Wario Ware kind of way because the obstacles start to vary in subtle ways and things really start to speed up at the same time.Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
Liveinadive wrote:I feel sad that this weeks games are too far before my time, I just can't appreciate them like you guys do.
I fear for the day when the same feelings are felt for 16bit by people my age now.
I felt like that until recently. Retroking often hosts game days, and I was reluctant to attend the Atari 2600 one, to the point where I turned up after it had been packed away. It wasn't before my time per se, but I was still totally devoted to LCD gaming in the mid eighties and pooh-poohed the idea of revisiting a halfway point between that and 8-but consoles (without the 'revisiting' part, for me). It wasn't until the first Hi Score challenge in here that I realised I could enjoy these games without the nostalgia factor. Yar's Revenge was the game that hooked me, iirc, and I played bundles of ROMs when I should have been soaking up the rays on a Leysdown caravan holiday last year.
I know what you mean with your last sentence, but fuck 'em - if anyone ever plays Micro Machines II and fails to appreciate how much beauty there is in the world then their opinion is invalid.
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Yars Revenge is the business. A solid remake with some well considered extra enemies and more complex shields thrown in at higher levels would be most welcome.Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009.
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They aren't before my time - I played them loads when I was little - but I can't be bothered with them now anyway. Most of the stuff I still like came out after around 1986. The leap in graphics in arcade stuff around then, and the more sophisticated console games that came with MS/NES at their best are really where my interest starts nowadays. -
Summer Games:
12.2 - 100 metres
23.4 - hurdles.
Beat that. -
Keystone Kapers - 21200
Demon Attack - 11655
Summer Games - 26.2 hurdles. - edit - 21.5 !! Thing is though I'm playing the NTSC version which runs at 60Hz...
Downloaded the PAL version and put it on my Harmony cart:
Hurdles 26.1
100m 14.2
Galaxian (game 4) 9880 (got to level 7)
Defender 26150 (got to wave 6)
Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
22 on hurdles and 13 on hundred, though i suspect keyboard controls on the emulator counts as cheating... "Like i said, context is missing."
http://ssgg.uk -
Not sure if keyboard is an advantage on the hurdles event as it's all about timing - would give an advantage on the sprint I would imagine though.
Summer Games is pretty good actually - I'm surprised that Epyx made a decent effort at this as they tended to concentrate on Commodore 64 games. I suppose they are both based on the same processor so that helped with porting this - but still a big difference with architectures though.
Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
Getting good at Demon Attack (btw I'm not) is all about rhythm - once in the groove you can take out an alien and then one of the small ones it splits into with a "one-two" combo - then you only have to mop up the 2nd small alien who will try and crash into you before concentrating on the next alien. Easier said than done though.
Once they start firing steerable bullets it becomes a nightmare.
Apparantly early releases of Demon Attack crashed at wave 85 - not much chance of me finding out if that's the version I have (!)
Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
Moot_Geeza wrote:Right, all ROMs loaded onto my Caanoo. Pitfall II and Keystone Kapers don't seem to be available at atari age, but they're on coolrom.com, which has a direct link if you watch a 15 second video (hmm, Noah looks good, despite Winstone's beards).
I can't see manual scans for these on atariage either, so I think we'll just go for game type 1 if they have variations, apart from Galaxian, which we'll go for type 4 maybe? Also, Defender II seems to work OK for me with just the one joystick, but I've never played it before so I may be missing something important.
Defender 2 will work OK with 1 joystick - however you can't use smart bombs or invisio as you need the 2nd controller to activate those. If using an emulator you could easily map those onto accessible buttons - I would have to balance a 2nd controller on my knee or something - haven't bothered trying that yet.Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009. -
6010 on Demon Attack and struggling to improve.
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8140, but three lives lost on the final wave in a soul destroying minute of bubble bursting madness. I'd just started to get confident.
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So easy to lose a batch of lives as you are dumped straight back in after a life loss with no pause in the attack.
It's amazing how challenging a game can be in which only one enemy fires at any one time.
I can get as far as the 2nd wave of enemies that look like infinity symbols and fire steerable shots. They are really hard to hit and you have to go for the centre of them which puts you in prime position for getting whacked.
Holding the wrong end of the stick since 2009.
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