Attract Mode by Scott Jacobi

The Many Faces of... Fast Eddie by Alan Hewston

There are not that many Yellow carts out there.

Vic 20 screenshot courtesy of Boris.	C64 screenshot courtesy of Gamebase 64.

Atari 8 bit computer screenshot courtesy of Atarimania.	Atari 2600 screenshot courtesy of AtariAge.com

NEScade -- Joust by David Lundin, Jr.

Unique yet simple concepts have been the heart and soul of the video game industry since its birth.  Although things have become increasingly complex in the modern era, the games that continue to be regarded as favorites are those that take an easy to understand concept and put a new twist on it.  Such is the case with Joust, medieval mounted combat with something different.  Instead of traditional riders on horseback, the knights in Joust take to the skies atop giant flying birds in an all out battle to the death.  Player one rides an ostrich while player two rides a stork and the enemy knights come mounted atop buzzards.  Although the mounts may be surreal, the core game play mechanic couldn't be simpler, "highest lance wins."  As long as your lance is higher than that of your foe when you run into him, you will win the joust and he will be tossed off his mount.  Colliding with an enemy at equal elevation will cause both knights and mounts to be turned away in the opposite direction, no one dies, and the joust is a draw.  If an enemy's lance is higher than yours during a collision you will be destroyed and your mount will fly off.  Knocking your foes off their mounts is just the beginning however, as once dismounted they turn into eggs.  Eventually these eggs will hatch if not captured, becoming the next most powerful enemy knight, and a fresh mount will swoop down so that they can return to battle.

Things start off slow but quickly become more hectic as the screen is filled with enemy knights of varying skill.  As waves of enemy knights are defeated the landscape changes, platforms disappear and lava pools rise.  Within the lava pool lurks the deadly Lava Troll, a powerful enemy that reaches up with its burning grip, pulling any knight not swift enough to escape to a fiery death.  Yet the most deadly enemy in the game is the pterodactyl which appears if the player takes too long to clear a wave.  Only a direct joust to the pterodactyl's mouth will kill him, any other contact results in death for the player.  With its unique concept, detailed graphics, simple play control, and frantic pace Joust became a favorite of the arcade patron for many years to come.  As with many games of this level of popularity, it was ported to the home game systems of the era and beyond.

An NES version of this game seems like a simple enough project but things have to be executed properly to pay any respect to the arcade smash it set out to recreate.  Thankfully things go off without a hitch.  Graphically the game is very nicely presented with the level detail recreated pretty much verbatim.  Platforms disappear on the later levels and the bridges slowly burn away to free the Lava Troll just as they did in the arcade.  The player sprites are nicely detailed as are the enemy knights and their mounts and all are animated fluidly and accurately to their original counterparts.  Play control is spot on with the directional pad controlling horizontal movement.  Varying degrees of walking speed are easy to work out which perfectly recreates the movement in the arcade original.  Holding the B button down causes your mount to flap consecutively to gain lift while you get one flap for each press of the A button.  Flight and game physics are nicely recreated and feel fluid and accurate, including the egg physics.  To round out the package an admirable job has been done to incorporate as much of the original sound effects as possible.

It is also worth mentioning that there were actually two similar, although slightly different, versions of this game developed for the NES hardware.  In Japan the Famicom version of Joust featured sprites more closely designed after the arcade originals but over all the graphics came out looking plain.  The NES version featured some slight enhancements such as the knights having feathers atop their helmets and a full rework of the rock design of the platforms.  While this strays from the original presentation just a bit, it gives the game much better contrast on the eight bit hardware.  Additional graphic tweaks such as the buzzard's beaks and the knight's lances having more color are a nice touch that make the NES version an all around better game than the Famicom release.

Joust stands one of the true arcade classics from the golden area of the arcade industry.  While I've never been that great at it I've still played it for years and will continue to do so for one reason - it's fun.  After all, that's the mark of an excellent game, challenging yet extremely entertaining.  Those looking for one of the best home ports of this arcade legend for a bit age console need look no further than the NES.  It's still a ton of fun to throw hours away in two player mode and the NES version has stood the test of time, just as much as the arcade original of which it is based.  Yet another must have title for anyone's NES library.
 

 Apple II Incider: "Happy 30th Birthday to the Apple II"


 by Donald Lee







I've been meaning to write some articles on one of the the lesser known members of the Apple II family of computers. However, due to various circumstances, the RTM deadline was suddenly upon me and I wasn't quite ready. However, as it turned out, the 30th Anniversary/Birthday of the the introduction of the Apple II at the West Coast Computer Faire just passed on April 16th. Yes, it has been 30 years since the original Apple II computer was introduced to the world. 

What good timing! This gives me an oppportunity to talk about my experiences over the years with the Apple II and how it has affected my life over the years. Plus, I can fulfill my obligation to RTM this month as well (hahahaha).

I recall my parents picking up our Apple II computer (the Apple IIe) sometime in 1983. Harking back to the 80's, where you could pick up computers at department stores, the Apple IIe was purchased at a Macy's department store. Interestingly enough, that was where my family picked up our Atari 5200 as well. 

As I noted in one my earlier columns, Apple Panic was my first game. I also loved playing with the introductory disk that came with the IIe: "Apple Presents......Apple IIe". It was a cute little program showing the various features of the Apple IIe with some mini games that I thought were quite fun. 

As it turned out, my grammar school (I was in 3rd/4th grade around 1983) also used Apple IIe's. So I got a chance to play around with the IIe a lot. I was mainly a software guy so I got a chance to play with various games and other programs including one well known application: "The Print Shop". 

I can't claim to have any type of artistic ability or inclination to create anything artistic. However, I fell in love with the Print Shop. I convinced my parents to buy me a copy and for the next few years I was printing all sorts of cards and other things with my trusty (and still around) Epson MX-80 Dot Matrix printer. 

The mid 80's to the early 90's were a blur to me. Those were my teenage years and like most teenagers, it seemed to fly by quickly. Despite the introduction of many technologically advanced computers during those years (Atari ST, Commodore Amiga, etc), I kept using the Apple II through my middle school and high school years. 
I don't have any stand out memories of the Apple II during those years. However, i was an avid gamer and looked forward to any games that were released for the Apple II. 

It was when I entered college (1992) that my love for the Apple II was re-kindled. I went to a community college initially and was exchange written letters (yes, hand written) with a high school friend of mine who had gone to Massachusetts. Through my friend, it was the first time I had heard of email and the Internet. I tried to find out more from my community college, but I didn't know where to look and what to ask for. Despite this, my trusty Apple II was an important part of my college life. I used it to write papers and also started learning how to use word processing, databases and spreadsheets. Despite the fact that the community college used old DOS mainstays such as Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3, I used an old Apple II standby, AppleWorks. 

It wasn't until 1995 when I transfered to a 4 year university that I finally discovered the joys of email and the Internet. I signed up for my free dial up account at the university and began to spend hours at the computer lab reading/sending email, surfing the web with Mosaic, and reading Usenet groups. 

Thanks to a friend (another computer geek), I also finally discovered the joys of telecommunications. In all the years of using the Apple IIe, I had never used any online services like Compuserve or Delphi. My friend and I went on a shopping trip to some computer clearance shops and I picked up a 2400 baud modem (!!!!) and a serial card for the Apple IIe. After picking up some cheap telecommunications software, I soon find my way onto the Internet from home. 

My Apple IIe would still be used up until the late 90's. However, I had to join the world of Windows when a programming class required I used a complier that only ran on a Windows machine. I soon discovered what a modern operating system (Windows 95) was like and began to slowly move away from my IIe. However, I was happy that my IIe, despite it's age, could be part of the Internet generation even if it was just through the use of dial up account and text based applications (Lynx, Pine, Tin, etc). 

Now, it is 2007 and my IIe is all boxed up and unused (the video chips failed). Yet, it is hard to believe, it was 24 years ago that I first got my IIe. Though the IIe is a machine, I almost think of it as a friend that has been with me through many parts of my life. 

Happy 30th Birthday to the Apple II family of computers. Here's to many more!

 Nintendo TG16 Realm... sort of


 by
Scott Jacobi

Most of the regular readers know this as the section of RTM where I review the next six or so Famicom games on my chronological release list.  But I recently completed a project that I wanted to share with you.  Part of retrogaming is keeping older titles alive by playing them and sharing them with others.  Another part, for me, is discovering games that I never knew about, or couldn't play before, and finding out how to play them.  This usually happens when I discover a translation of a Japanese ROM into English.  (And if you're not familiar with this trend, and have a look at www.RomHacking.net to learn more.)  And just last month, I increased the number of these translated ROMs by one.  So I thought I would describe what the was like.

So I took the space in the ROM where "NAMCO" was, and I replaced it with every number from 0 to 255 (or "00" to "FF").  I did this to see what the results would look like, and in a small matter of time, I had a complete ASCII chart of what letters mapped to what numbers.  Now I had to see if I was right.  I started the game, and copied the first hint that the game provided.  I translated it according to my ASCII table and searched for that sequence of numbers, and... viola.  There they were.  Interestingly, they were preceeded by a series of numbers that I didn't yet understand.  Some were spaces, and some were little symbols that change the sound that a letter makes.  (For a very simplified example, in Japanese, two little dashes over a letter that normally has a T sound becomes a D sound.  A little circle over an H letter makes it a P letter.)  Eventually it occurred to me that every line of text was actually written across two lines.  The first time was for the dashes or the cirlce, while the bottom line was the actual text.  This turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  Here's why.

You need fewer Japanese characters to express things than you do in English.  This meant that since I had to fit all of my translations in the same sized block of text that the game used for Japanese, I could not express nearly as much and would have to "shrink ideas to make fit good."  That last sentence shows the dilmena.  However, since I discovered that every line was made from two lines of text, I actually gained a lot more room in the ROM for the translations.  At this time I felt the hard part was over, now the more difficult part: doing the translation.  What I needed was a partner.  And I found such a partner at work, a woman named Keiko who was originally from Japan.  While she wasn't a gamer by any means, she could translate every block of text I could find.  Over four lunch hours we translated every screen that I could find.  Once I had all of the literal translations, I still had to truncate many of the ideas in order to make them fit.  That was a long, slightly boring, process but the effort was well worth it.

 Old Wine in New Bottles: Retrogaming on Modern Hardware


 by Jonathan H. Davidson

Probably because of the widespread distribution of Stella and similar free emulators, there have only been a very few commercial releases of Atari 2600 emulators for the PC. Indeed, I am only aware of two examples: Atari: the 80 Classic Games and the Activision Action Packs.

The Atari collection was originally released in 2003. After its initial commercial run, it was later re-launched (in Canada, possibly also elsewhere) as a free bonus with purchase with certain types of General Mills cereal. (I got mine with a box Cheerios!)

 The title is somewhat misleading as the collection actually includes only 62 Atari 2600 games. The balance of the 80 titles consists of 18 Atari arcade games. This review will focus on the 2600 games only; I plan to cover the arcade games in a future article.

The range of games is nothing short of comprehensive! It includes about three-quarters of the original Atari-made games. Obviously excluded are ports of (non-Atari) arcade games and games that used licensed content (e.g. the Disney children’s games). Titles included range from very early releases such as Star Ship, Space War through games released at the very end of the system’s lifespan such as Quadrun, Motoredo, and even Swordquest Waterworld. Many of these games are so very rare that a typical collector will never otherwise get to play them.

Some of the game choices are a bit odd (e.g. Video Chess, Fun with Numbers). There is also some redundancy with different versions or editions of games. For example the collection includes three different baseball games: Home Run (1978), Realsports Baseball (1982), and Super Baseball (1988). It almost seems like the producers were trying to pad-out the size of the collection.

The main interface screen is very well designed. The games are grouped into various categories and clicking on the game launches the emulator. Each game includes a mini-manual that explains the objectives and controls. It also has a quick-reference guide to the switch settings and a list of the levels/options. Some of the colours appear to be very slightly off. Otherwise, the quality of the emulation is excellent.

In terms of control, there are options for keyboard controls as well as joystick. The keypad game controls are mapped to the PC keyboard in an intuitive way. Unfortunately, the paddle games are stupidly mapped to the keyboard, using the Z and C keys, rather than the arrow keys. Indy 500, which used a unique driving controller, is not included.

The extras and bonus content are also very comprehensive. There are full-colour scans of all of the original game manuals, cartridges, and boxes. Sometimes there are even multiple scans of variations, such as Japanese and/or European releases.

Next month, we will look at another PC collection of 2600 games: the Activision Action Packs.

Feedback on this column is most welcome; special thanks to everyone who has sent positive comments so far. Please send e-mail to jhd@interbaun.com.