37 replies to this topic

[OLD CS1]

InfernalKeith, on Wed Feb 16, 2011 1:24 AM, said:

No one has yet mentioned an obvious truth -- that Parker Brothers' TI conversions were light-years ahead of both TI AND Atarisoft in terms of looks, sounds, and gameplay.

Q*Bert, Popeye and Frogger are all fantastic! I wish that team had been doing the Atarisoft conversions.

Not spoken, but certainly thought on my end. (Been lurking on this thread.) I could spend hours playing "Q*Bert" and "Frogger," and I recently acquired "Popeye." My exclamation on each one was, very impressive.

To that effect, I am also very pleased with "Burgertime." Really wish "Demon Attack" was more like the 2600 version -- I KILLED at that game. But I digress.

InfernalKeith, on Wed Feb 16, 2011 1:24 AM, said:

Of the Atarisoft games, I think DK looks the best, but gameplay is definitely lacking. Some of the others, like Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, are so sluggish, I've never spent a lot of time with them.

After spending a lot of time collecting all of the Atarisofts I could find, I am mostly disappointed in them. The only ones I really like are "Shamus," which runs just like on my aunt's PCjr, and "Moon Patrol." While I like "Donkey Kong," there are quite a few missing elements which leave me wanting. The Pac-Mans are just down right embarrassing. I will let the rest rest.

[Jess Ragan]

That may be the case for the TI 99/4A, but man, I couldn't disagree with you more about Atarisoft games for other machines. Their ColecoVision games were generally in the upper echelon of the system's library. The unreleased prototype for Pac-Man was impressive until it was blown to smithereens by Eduardo Mello's near-perfect conversion. Similarly, Galaxian was incredibly close to the real thing, and more colorful than most ColecoVision shooters.

The VIC-20 was a much more limited system, but Atari's programmers did the best they could with the hardware... and as it turns out, they could do a lot! Witness Donkey Kong, which was as ugly as a thumb flattened with a sledgehammer but had ALL the intermissions and ALL the stages and the proper scoring for leaping over barrels. Even the NES version couldn't claim that! The port of Moon Patrol was fugly too but there were elements of the arcade game that I'd never seen anywhere else... if you take too long to blast the UFOs overhead they'll try to crash into you!

It's probably a your mileage may vary thing, but overall I've been really impressed with Atarisoft games. They were way better than you would expect a game company to make for its competitors.

[sometimes99er]

lucifershalo, on Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:15 AM, said:

Atarisoft games are disappointing.....

I had the 2600 too. Back in the day I only had Defender, Donkey Kong and Pac-Man for the TI. At the time I was not disappointed. Donkey Kong (16K) was perfect. Defender (8K) was excellent though a bit sparse on graphics. Pac-Man (16K) was very nice, just a bit slow. Nice to have some "real" arcade conversions for the TI.

Had no problem with 50Hz.

Edited by sometimes99er, Wed Feb 16, 2011 2:41 AM.

[lucifershalo]

Yes, Atarisoft has the reputation of doing excellent games for non Atari systems,
and maybe (probably) my judgement for Ti99 conversions was too fast and harsh

overall if comparing with 2600 equivalents, what is sluggish could be a "slower" difficulty curve...when 2600 Ms Pac Man doesnt have so much different between level 1 and 4, on the TI99 "it takes its time".....

My cart of Protector II seems to freeze any idea?

and yes, Atarisoft carts are working with the Speech module plugged in
but not with Nanopeb+ plugged in the module, in fact none of the carts work

[Tursi]

jaybird3rd, on Tue Feb 15, 2011 1:13 PM, said:

Some of the Atarisoft titles did cut some corners, particularly in the sound effects: weren't there enough audio channels on the 99/4a to play the ghost and dot-eating sound effects at the same time in Ms. Pac-Man, for example?

That would be silly since the arcade didn't do that.

[InfernalKeith]

Let's talk about the Imagic conversions for a minute. "Super" Demon Attack made no sense to me - I burned up a lot of time with it as a kid, but the giant (awesome looking) aliens and the boss level had nothing to do with the original. 2600 Demon Attack is one of my favorite "twitch" games for that system.

Fathom and Moonsweeper both looked really nice. And Microsurgeon, of course, is in a class all its own, in my opinion. That one could have really changed some people's minds about the 99/4A, had it gotten more attention or come out a little sooner.

I wish a TI version of Atlantis had come out. I love that game, I can play it for hours. Dragonfire's another one for quick, mindless arcade play, though it doesn't have nearly as much staying power.

I recall reading that the unreleased Wing War prototype wasn't very good. Have any of you played it?

[Tursi]

Opry99er, on Tue Feb 15, 2011 5:40 PM, said:

Anyone here have a copy of Moon Patrol? Interesting scrolling in that one. I think the mountains in the background are actually SPRITEs..

They aren't, they are graphics, just like in Parsec, except Moon Patrol manages three layers. You can prove it in Classic99 by turning off sprites.

[sometimes99er]

Okay, I'm not going to win an Academy Award or anything, but I hope you get the idea.

[Tursi]

Damn!! Nice breakdown, Sometimes99er!! I'm saving that one off for the next time this discussion comes up, hehe.

[retroclouds]

Very nice. By the way opcode is working on converting the arcade version to the colecovision. He has a thread somewhere about that.
Interesting considering the TI-99/4A and Colecovision have the same VDP.

EDIT: I found the thread here.

Edited by retroclouds, Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:39 AM.

[sometimes99er]

Nice review ...

[zylon]

Personally, I found the Atarisoft titles to be among the better ones for the system. Most of them seem "dumbed down" like the Commodore versions, but very playable. In particular, I liked Moon Patrol. Picnic Paranoia and Protector were just crap so I gave those away.
Otherwise, I enjoyed Moon Mine, Jawbreaker, TI Invaders, & Hustle. Super Demon Attack and Burgertime leave much to be desired but tolerable. Most of the others I gave away: Parsec, The Attack, Car wars, Tombstone City, Hunt the wumpus, and others. TOD was actually given back.

[ceratophyllum]

I never much liked any of the Atarisoft games at the time.... The home computer stuff I played with a lot came from Scott Adams, Infocom, Activision, or Imagic. Most of the arcade knock-offs(on any microcomputer/console) kind of depressed me because they rarely were anything close to the quality of the originals.

Recently, I rediscovered Miner 2049er, a TI (Tiger?) sidecart game that I thought was the greatest when I was a kid. I have NO IDEA what the hell I saw in it. On the other hand, Microsurgeon looked really cool but I found it boring. Now it's one of my favorite TI games. Anyhow, while some of my preferences have changed, I still don't spend a lot of time playing Atarisoft games.