99 replies to this topic

[Albert]

/images/news/Blaster5200.gifThose attending last weekend's PhillyClassic 5 gaming expo had the first chance to play the unreleased game Blaster for the Atari 5200. AtariProtos.com and AtariAge have now released the binaries to both the 5200 and 8-bit version so you can enjoy them in your favorite emulators. Blaster is an obscure arcade game created by Williams as a spiritual successor to the popular Robotron: 2084 arcade game. What makes this game more interesting is it was originally conceived and written first for the Atari 400/800, and then ported to the 5200 when the 5200 hardware was finalized. At some point the developers showed the prototype to Williams, who decided they wanted to make an arcade adaptation of the game. Unfortunately, due to the weak video game market in 1984, Blaster was never released as planned by Atari.

You can download the 8-bit and 5200 versions of Blaster here and read Matt's full review of Blaster at AtariProtos.com. The authors of Blaster ask that cartridges of this game not be made and sold for profit, and we hope that everyone will respect their wishes.

[Saikyo]

ok i might try it but as i dont own a 5200 will i be breaking the law by downloading the emulator?

(EDIT) if i dont ask how am i to know? NE146 im not bein' paranoid ya know!

[NE146]

Saikyo: shaddup already

Albert: Woohoo! Thanks! Can't wait to get home

[Zaxxon]

I see the 5200 version. Where's the A8 version?

[Gabriel]

Anyone know of a good emulator to try that works under XP?

I don't think MESS is working properly for this game.

[Bryan]

Zaxxon said:

I see the 5200 version. Where's the A8 version?

They're both in the same zip.

-Bry

[jetset]

Gabriel said:

Anyone know of a good emulator to try that works under XP?

I don't think MESS is working properly for this game.

Hmmmm....works fine foe me in Mess. You could use Atari800Win, but you practicially have to be a programmer to understand how to run it.
AWESOME! Great game. A real shame it was never released.
Hint....don't kill your finger pressing the fire button! Just press once and hold it in. Took me a while to figure that out!

[ApolloBoy]

Saikyo said:

ok i might try it but as i dont own a 5200 will i be breaking the law by downloading the emulator?

(EDIT) if i dont ask how am i to know?    NE146 im not bein' paranoid ya know!

It's alright, the hardware's no longer copyrighted and the game isn't either, so quit being paranoid.

[Allan]

Could somebody convert this to a 32K bin so I can play it in the Atari800 emulator for the Mac?

Thanks,
Allan

[bjk7382]

Also fogive me if I sound stupid but how do I run a .bin on the sio 2 pc adapter with APE. I would like to play this on my 800xl, but can't seem to run bin files.

If I can convert this to .atr or a .exe easily that would be great, but I have no idea how to. Plays great on the emultor, but not quite the same as the actual hardware.

[Nukey Shay]

You could just try to copy it back-to-back I suppose...it seemed to work:

Excellent game! I was toast even before the 4th stage

Really puts Star Wars to shame.

Attached Files

•  blaster32_5200.zip   12.49K   139 downloads

[Allan]

Nukey Shay said:

You could just try to copy it back-to-back I suppose...it seemed to work:

Excellent game!  I was toast even before the 4th stage

Really puts Star Wars to shame.

Thanks Nukey. Works now. Very cool! Got to put this on my Maxicart now and play it on the real thing.

Allan

[Gabriel]

jetset said:

Hmmmm....works fine foe me in Mess.  You could use Atari800Win,  but you practicially have to be a programmer to understand how to run it.
AWESOME!  Great game.  A real shame it was never released.  
Hint....don't kill your finger pressing the fire button!  Just press once and hold it in.  Took me a while to figure that out!  

Thanks. Atari800Win is working great. The game is fantastic.

[Cootster]

Stage 1-1 = awesome. Reminds me a heck of a lot of StarFox, which came out what, 10 years later . . .

Stage 1-2 = What in the heck do you do? I get the tunnel, and then it's just a random starfield animation. I can shoot, but I don't see the point.

And there were only 500 arcade Blaster machines made? Odd how I actually have played this before (I believe at Birmingham's Riverchase Galleria Arcade in about '88-'89) and I live in a gaming ghetto . . .

But the game needs music . . . I recommend Pink Floyd.

[bjk7382]

Cootster said:

Stage 1-2 = What in the heck do you do?  I get the tunnel, and then it's just a random starfield animation.  I can shoot, but I don't see the point.

It is the time tunnel where you are supposed to pick up the spacemen flying by. On the 5200 version, they look pretty bad, but you can still see them, and tell what they are.

So I take it by the lack of response there is no way to make an .atr out of the 800 version, eh?

[Saikyo]

I cant find an Atari 5200 emulator that does not require the original system bios plz help!

[Gabriel]

Cootster said:

Stage 1-1 = awesome.  Reminds me a heck of a lot of StarFox, which came out what, 10 years later . . .  

Stage 1-2 = What in the heck do you do?  I get the tunnel, and then it's just a random starfield animation.  I can shoot, but I don't see the point.

And there were only 500 arcade Blaster machines made?  Odd how I actually have played this before (I believe at Birmingham's Riverchase Galleria Arcade in about '88-'89) and I live in a gaming ghetto . . .  

But the game needs music . . . I recommend Pink Floyd.

This is the problem I was having in MESS.

You finish stage 1-1 and then you go through the "time tunnel" which is a series of rings that fly by your ship. You're supposed to pick up humanoids on this stage, but in MESS the humanoids don't appear.

Then the time tunnel stage ends and a starfield stage begins. But no enemies appear on this stage either and the level just goes on forever.

No matter what level you start the game on, you only get one level of actual fighting and then you get stuck on a level where there are no enemies to shoot.

Atari800Win doesn't seem to have this problem tho.

[Bryan]

BTW... MESS is NOT a very good A8/5200 emulator. I don't think that part of it has been updated in a while.

-Bry

[Nukey Shay]

bjk7382 said:

So I take it by the lack of response there is no way to make an .atr out of the 800 version, eh?

Yeah, there is...but I dunno if Blaster is a game that would like being turned into a disk file. What you need to do is move the game rom into a folder that the hard drive folder resides, and use Dos2.5 or something to copy it from that hard disk folder to the Dos disk. You'd need to use a cartridge loader to run it, since it's just raw data that Dos cannot deal with. Sould be something laying around in the archives

[Nukey Shay]

Here's an .atr that has the raw data file...

Attached Files

•  blaster_atr_.zip   20.71K   148 downloads

[Bryan]

Does anyone else notice that this game won't run in XL mode, only 800 mode? Hummm...

-Bry

[Allan]

Beat this score, space hogs!

Allan

Attached Thumbnails

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[classics]

I've posted a flash cartridge version of Blaster in the Atari 8-bit forum that will work (on cartridge) on any 48k XL/XE.

Re: The ATR question.

In a few days I will also post an EXE version of blaster that will run on any 48k Atari. The original rom above only runs on 400/800 systems.

You can use the EXE to make an ATR image of blaster, or even roll blaster into a 1mbit or 8mbit flash multicart. You could also load it off the APE PC-Mirror, or a hard disk setup like MyIDE.

Steve

[SS]

bryede said:

Does anyone else notice that this game won't run in XL mode, only 800 mode? Hummm...

You know what's kinda cool is that you can load the translator into the emulated XL mode and then load incompatible software successfully.

Well, cool to me at least.

[Bryan]

Steve...

Watch out for $807A - endless loop if not running from ROM.

-Bry