Brainstorming: Pharaoh's Curse 2600

[Cybergoth]

Hi there!

 

So this weeks question is: "How about doing Pharaoh's Curse for the 2600?"

 

I've been researching some material regarding it and it sure looks interesting. You're exploring a tomb made out of 16 screens, all with different treasures and obstacles. Here's what I have in hands so far:

 

Lemon64 link for the C64 version:

http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=1923

 

Atarimania link for the A8 version:

http://www.atarimania.com/detail_soft.php?...VERSION_ID=3937

 

A youtube video of the VIC-20 version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dH8LnPzp0E

 

A youtube video of the A8 version:

 

A longplay video of the C64 version:

http://www.c64-longplays.de.vu/

 

A map of all 16 screens for the A8 version:

http://mapy.atari8.info/p-r/pharaohscurse.png

 

I'm no expert on this game, so I need help!

 

Are there any Pharaoh's Curse experts here? Is it doable on the 2600? What are the essential bits of the game? What would be difficult to replicate on the 2600? How would it look like?

 

Greetings,

Manuel

[Mister VCS]

A 2600 game with the same name was released by TechnoVision in 1983. Screenshots are shown at www.atarimania.com.

It must be a "Dig Dug-clone".

[Cybergoth]

Yes, it was even played in the HSC once. But totally unrelated to the Synapse title considered here.

[Hackmann]

I'm no expert on this game, so I need help!

 

Are there any Pharaoh's Curse experts here? Is it doable on the 2600? What are the essential bits of the game? What would be difficult to replicate on the 2600? How would it look like?

I loved this game when I was a kid. I'd love to see a theoretical 2600 port, but I don't think it's very realistic. Pharaoh's Curse plays a lot like Montezuma's Revenge, but with some extra complications that could make it hard to port:

• The screen layouts are much more complex and highly asymmetric.
  
• In addition to the player and static enemies, there're arrows that fly in from the side of the screen, the pharaoh, a mummy, and a bird that will carry you to random rooms. All four of these things appear randomly, and any combination of these things can be on the screen at any given time.
  
• The pharaoh and mummy will try to follow and shoot the player, and they do some rudimentary path-finding.
  

It's a great game, so I strongly encourage you to try it out for yourself. But I don't think a port is doable without being very heavily watered down.

[Cybergoth]

The screen layouts are much more complex and highly asymmetric.

 

I wonder how these screens would look in a best case 40*192 resolution. Given a 32K cartridge you could fit all 16 screens into it like that.

 

Since this already requires 42 cycles, for the rest of the screen you'd probably only have 4 30Hz sprites then.

 

For more it'd require more compromising, like for example dropping PF0 usage and/or redesigning the levels to be at least partially symmetric or repeated.

 

In addition to the player and static enemies, there're arrows that fly in from the side of the screen, the pharaoh, a mummy, and a bird that will carry you to random rooms. All four of these things appear randomly, and any combination of these things can be on the screen at any given time.

 

It'd make sense here to limit these occurances so that there's 4 sprites on a scanline at maximum. How often do you really have a worst case of 5 objects in a line on the A8? Rather seldom I assume?

(not counting shots, they're extra)

 

The pharaoh and mummy will try to follow and shoot the player, and they do some rudimentary path-finding.

 

As long as it doesn't cost any screen time it should be possible to replicate 1:1. Maybe the logic can even be reverse-engineered from the original.

 

It's a great game, so I strongly encourage you to try it out for yourself.

 

I played it a little already, just not that much

 

But I don't think a port is doable without being very heavily watered down.

 

Business as usual

Could still become a great version though I think.

[Godzilla]

I would love to see this I really enjoyed this game on my a800 back in the day.

[supercat]

To do the game effectively would probably require something like 4A50. Given that, it might be doable. The trick would be to avoid essentially all decision-making in the main loop, somewhat like what was done with Leprechaun.

[Cybergoth]

The trick would be to avoid essentially all decision-making in the main loop, somewhat like what was done with Leprechaun.

 

That's probably making it an easier task than Leprechaun then, since the playfield in Pharaoh's Curse seems to be totally static

[ZylonBane]

IMHO, one could do far better than trying to directly reproduce Pharaoh's Curse. I always found it to be a fairly sloppy game, with lots of falling and too-hard jumps and running around in circles and dealing with enemies randomly spawned in weird places.

 

Montezuma's Revenge took the same essential concept and did it right. Pharaoh's Curse was released at that awkward evolutionary stage between single-screen and multi-screen platform gaming, so everything is tiny and the screens are cramped and packed with way too much detail.

Edited December 28, 2007 by ZylonBane

[Cybergoth]

I tend to agree. It seems to be a reasonably good game for its time, but nothing too stellar or groundbreaking. Only a year after its release there came games like Impossible Mission or Bruce Lee, making much better use of the formula

[littleman jack]

Pharaoh's Curse had some great things going for it, though, that lifted it above Montezuma's Revenge and later games.

 

The mummy and pharaoh chasing you around were funny, the screen designs looked fantastic and exotic with bright colors and patterns, you could jump into the walls of some boards and walk around thus paving new paths through the rooms that were not obvious, there were secret spots in some walls that would transport you to other screens, the character really moved quite fast, and it had elevators like Donkey Kong and a bird/feather which was like the bat in Adventure.

[vdub_bobby]

you could jump into the walls of some boards and walk around thus paving new paths through the rooms that were not obvious

This is usually known as sloppy programming - - and it tends to drive me nuts; to me it's not a feature when collision detection is buggy. Might just be my programmer-side talking, though.

bird/feather which was like the bat in Adventure.

This is a good point - it has some cool features that give it a more involved feel than Montezuma's Revenge, which is very static-seeming: no enemies chase you, each room is separate, etc.