Pixelboy

In the Team Pixelboy News Bulletin of February 1st 2012, I indicated that Eduardo Mello was willing to port four MSX games for Team Pixelboy to publish this year, games that require Opcode's Super Game Module to run on the ColecoVision. King's Valley and Thexder are the first two games, and I decided to let AtariAge members choose the other two, with Eduardo's accord. Hence the poll of this forum thread.

Voting is limited to the games within the poll. If there's an MSX game you feel is missing from the poll, you can always voice your opinion, but such opinions will likely not be considered in the actual voting results. The poll choices are already pretty wide and diverse, so there must be at least one game among those choices that you'd like to see on the CV, right?

Also, you'll notice that all the games in the poll are roughly 32K in ROM size. Eduardo doesn't want to port any MegaROM games this year, he wants to keep such fan favorites as Gradius, Penguin Adventure and Maze of Galious for later, and they will likely be published under the Opcode Games label. The publishing agreement I have with Eduardo is for first-generation MSX games that require more than 1K of RAM, so please don't bother asking for MSX games that are over 32K in ROM size.

The poll results will be determined on March 1st 2012, and any further registered votes after that date with be ignored. If the voting ends in ties over several games, I'll let Eduardo decide which ones among the poll winners he's the most interested in porting.

Here are some links to YouTube videos of the various games, to help you decide. In the case of Space Shuttle, I could only find actual screenshots of the MSX version on MobyGames, but you can easely find footage of the game on YouTube for other platforms (Atari systems, Apple II, etc.), the game plays the same in all versions.

- Alien 8 : www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aig7_qOb2ic
- Alpharoid : www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZ7xDmlXyd0
- Eggerland Mystery : www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cCbC988udY
- Ghostbusters : www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcrHe2GhOwM
- Guardic : www.youtube.com/watch?v=avxk2qH84fo
- Gun Fright : www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx31gDyQpsM
- Inspecteur Z : www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7tUk9108Ko
- Knight Lore : www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1s7kexSrHE
- Monster House (Youkai Yashiki) : www.youtube.com/watch?v=luBr2V9H-PI
- Rollerball : www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_-zRGFST1w
- Space Shuttle - A Journey Into Space : www.mobygames.com/game/msx/space-shuttle-a-journey-into-space/screenshots
- Spelunker : www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELHfkY6gb7I
- Star Soldier : www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEZ42uqtkkk
- Stone of Wisdom (Kenja no ishi) : www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_F7qX7wY-c
- The Castle : www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0gDgEA7Odk
- The Roving Planet Styllus : www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypTPUOcdxEU
- Twinbee : www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lhn4YUM2a0Q
- Zanac : www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk5C2E90dGY

Happy voting!

It's been only a month since my last news bulletin, but boy how things have progressed! Let's begin with the good news!

GAMES, GAMES AND MORE GAMES FOR CHRISTMAS!

First of all, I'm happy to announce that I've reached a deal with Óscar Toledo (nanochess on AtariAge) for Team Pixelboy to publish his upcoming ColecoVision port of Princess Quest. The game will be released on Christmas Day 2012, along with the other five games I have already announced (namely Wonder Boy, Mopiranger, Champion Ice Hockey, Jewel Panic and Module Man).

But it doesn't stop there! I've also finalized a tentative agreement with Eduardo Mello to publish his MSX port of King's Valley! This game requires Opcode's Super Game Module, so it will be released in parallel to Opcode's Donkey Kong Arcade, and people will have one more reason to buy the SGM.

Eduardo has also reaffirmed his desire to complete the work on The Black Onyx, by the way, so I'm hopeful that this game will be released this year as well. However, a lot of different things need to come together in order for that project to reach its conclusion, not the least of which is support for my Activision PCB in a ColecoVision emulator, like blueMSX or Meka. Without an emulator, completing The Black Onyx will be rather difficult... But rest assured I'll keep pushing to make it happen.

I'm also currently discussing other potential game releases with Eduardo, games that will use the SGM. His initial proposition was to port a trio of MSX games: Zanac, Guardic and Thexder. While Thexder is a classic which I definately want to publish, I'm not so sure about the other two. Guardic in particular is a weird game, which looks very good graphically, but after watching footage of the MSX version on YouTube, I was left scratching my head, and I honestly don't think it would sell very well. I suggested some alternatives to Eduardo, and as I write this, we haven't discussed it any further. We'll see how things pan out.


THERE'S ALWAYS A PRICE TO PAY

There's an unfortunate side to all these great news: In order to get all these games ready in time for Christmas Day 2012, I'll have to put my trading card project on hold, probably indefinitely. But it's no great loss, since pboland is doing a wonderful job with his own series of ColecoVision trading cards. Keep up the great work, Phil! I can't wait to see the next series!


MORE CARTRIDGE CASINGS FOR YOUR HOMEBREWING NEEDS!

Yes people, it's now pretty much official: I'll be visiting Eduardo Mello next Easter week-end, and I'll bring his metal mold back with me. Soon after, I'll have more Coleco cartridge casings manufactured, enough to satisfy the needs of the CV homebrew community for several years to come. If this piece of news is of any special interest to you, please send me a PM to be added to my list of contacts, and to be kept in the loop afterwards.


WHAT THE FUTURE LOOKS LIKE

There's something else I want to say, which I recently mentioned in another forum thread: 2012 will be the last year Team Pixelboy will be releasing "outsourced" projects. After this year's batch of outsourced games, I will put all outsourced game development activities aside and concentrate on BasicVision. I will want to remove all distractions as much as possible, so where Team Pixelboy is concerned, I will only handle sales operations of already-released games in 2013.

I expect that the development of BasicVision will require a full year of my spare time, and afterwards (in 2014 and beyond) I will want to use BasicVision to program my own ColecoVision games, namely the ones listed in the "Personal Projects" section of the Team Pixelboy web site. Coding and debugging my own CV games will also require a rather large chunk of my free time, so there will be no room for outsourced projects in the foreseeable future. That's why I want to go out with a bang this year, which I feel is appropriate for the ColecoVision's 30th anniversary.


CLOSING COMMENTS

I still have a handful of copies available of all my recently released games, so if you haven't placed an order yet, now would be a good time to do so.


This concludes this news bulletin. We now return you to your regular forum activities.

Hello ColecoVision fans, and welcome to Team Pixelboy's first news bulletin of 2012!

The new games that were officially released last week are selling very well. I haven't received a reply from every customer I contacted, so I expect to make a few more sales in January. I believe the worst of the sales rush is already behind me (at the time of posting this, all paid orders have been shipped, except for those that were paid in the last 10 hours or so) and I should remind everyone that the layaway plan offer expires on January 5th 2012.

While people are patiently waiting for their games to arrive by mail, I'd say now is a good time to outline the Team Pixelboy projects that I will be working on this year. I ended up spending most of 2011 preparing the six games released last week, and this year will be mostly more of the same, with some new games on the horizon, including the special surprise which I mentioned last week...

THE GAMES OF 2012

Wonder Boy : Eduardo Mello gave me a very nice present on Christmas day last week, namely the final release candidate of Wonder Boy, which I tested and approved. The game is now ready for release, but I haven't started working on the box art or the manual yet. I want to get started on that early this year, to get a head start on all the work that's ahead of me.

Mopiranger : The beta version that Eduardo gave me last summer was supposed to offer infinite lives for testing purposes, but that added feature didn't work correctly. Two days ago, he gave me another beta ROM with the problem fixed, but I found another bug that freezes the game randomly. I asked Eduardo to look into this, and I'll get started on beta-testing this game as soon as I receive a new beta. Beyond that, it will only be a matter of getting the box art and manual done, like Wonder Boy.

Champion Ice Hockey : This game was tested last year and it works quite nicely as-is, except for the fact that the skating physics seem off... At times, it feels like you're controlling bumper cars instead of hockey players on the ice. I asked Eduardo to fix this by making the ice slightly less slippery, and I expect that this tweak will make the game more frantic and more fun to play. Once the game has been modified and beta-tested, I'll have one more box and manual to prepare. (*sigh*)

Jewel Panic : This will essentially be a re-release of Daniel Bienvenu's Bejeweled, but it will contain some altered features, as well as the addition of a bonus game, namely my own game of Sudoku, which I programmed myself a few years ago. There's still a lot of work to do on the software, but as Team Pixelboy's first 64K offering, it's progressing quite nicely. I expect to have this done by next April, and the box and manual should follow quickly afterwards.

Module Man : SURPRISE!! This used to be listed under my "Personal Projects" on my web site, but if you look now, you'll see it's been moved to the "Outsourced Projects"! That's because my good friend Stephen Seehorn is currently working on the conversion of the Coco-2 game to the ColecoVision, and he's made very good progress in the last month. The screenshots I attached below are from the actual ColecoVision version! Stephen still has a lot of work ahead of him, but if all goes well, he should finish Module Man well before the end of 2012. Which is good, because software made from scratch requires a lot more beta-testing, to find and fix all the bugs.

AND THE SIXTH GAME?

The main reason why I release six games each year is because the german printer company that prints my game boxes will only accept a print order of no less than six different boxes, at 150 copies per box. Lots of wasted cardboard, I know, but it's a take-it-or-leave-it kind of deal. With the five games listed above, I need a sixth game to meet my quota for this year.

I'm hoping that this sixth game will be The Black Onyx, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Eduardo will find some time this year to work on the game. As I explained to him last week, The Black Onyx cannot be beta-tested within a few weeks like most other SG-1000 ports, because it's a fairly large game, and several months will be required to make sure that there are no major bugs remaining anywhere in the game. So getting this game ready by the end of this year is a pretty tall order. I don't even want to think about how many pages the manual will require...

Aside from that, another possibility for the sixth game is Joust. Last summer, Daniel Bienvenu commited himself to adding sound effects to the soundless AtariSoft prototype, but after making some good initial progress with it, the project seemingly fell into limbo. Daniel has been moving away from the ColecoVision homebrew scene lately, so I'm not too hopeful that Joust will be ready by the end of this year. But no one can really predict the future, right? So let's all keep our fingers crossed.

If neither The Black Onyx nor Joust can be finished in time for the planned Christmas 2012 release date, then I'm really not sure what the sixth game will be. I could be persuaded to publish a game made by any ColecoVision homebrewer, as long as it's a quality title... Eduardo and I talked about releasing the MSX port of King's Valley under my Team Pixelboy label, but that game requires Opcode's Super Game Module, and it won't make much sense to release King's Valley if the SGM is not released this year. If the SGM is indeed released in 2012, however, then King's Valley may very well be released in parallel, just so Donkey Kong Arcade won't be the only SGM-compatible game released. We'll see how things will pan out over the next few months.

ARABIAN, HOW I LOVE THEE

There's another small change I made to the web site, namely bringing back Arabian from oblivion. It seems there are some people out there who are truly hoping that a ColecoVision version of this arcade game will become reality one day, and who am I to crush the dreams of ColecoVision fans?

Note that I'm not making any real promises here, but given the fact that the original arcade game uses a Z80 CPU, perhaps someone out there will one day tackle the difficult job of porting it over to the ColecoVision. In fact, the walking/kicking/jumping physics of the player's character are so clunky that it may be best to get the arcade version ported directly, to have a ColecoVision version that truly reproduces the arcade game as faithfully as possible. I need to keep the door open to this possibility, as a publisher.

THE COLECOVISION TRADING CARD PROJECT

Releasing six games this year will be quite a challenge (perhaps more than last year, with Module Man and The Black Onyx requiring much more beta-testing than any of the games released last week), but this year marks the 30th anniversary of the ColecoVision, and I think I should do something extra special for the occasion.

So I've decided that I'm going to put some significant effort into my ColecoVision trading card project. This month, I'm going to work on the basic card template, and I'll get a sample card printed in February. If it all works out as planned, I should be able to crank out at least one series of 25 cards by next summer, and then another series by next Christmas. That's my goal anyway, assuming that my next group of six Team Pixelboy releases won't take up too much of my time.

IN CONCLUSION

So as you can see, I've certainly got my work cut out for me this year. And to meet all my deadlines, I'm going to have to work on a tight schedule. But it will be an exciting year as well, expecially if I can finally release The Black Onyx with the EEPROM-based savegame feature.

I'm looking forward to seing (and purchasing) the upcoming ColecoVision releases from other homebrewers, namely RKGames' Monster Bash, Dvik-&-Joyrex's Burn Rubber, Opcode's Donkey Kong Arcade, as well as youki's and bfg.gamepassion's projects. Keep up the good work guys, and let's all make 2012 a year to remember! Happy New Year, everyone!

This concludes this news bulletin. We now return you to your regular forum activities.

Hello ColecoVision fans!

After several months of work and preparations, I'm pleased to announce the official release of six new Team Pixelboy games, namely:

- Circus Charlie
- Star Force
- Golgo 13
- Ninja Princess
- Konami's Ping-Pong
- Bank Panic

The Team Pixelboy web site has been updated accordingly. By the way, you will notice that I removed the "Potential Projects" section in the sidebar, since I don't think I'll ever get around to programming such titles as Pick Axe Pete A.E., Arabian or Discs of Tron. I think I have more than enough on my plate with the games listed in the "Personal Projects" section. I also added Jewel Panic to the "Outsourced Projects" section.

Anyhow, I will be contacting everyone on my customer list today, so do keep an eye on your e-mail inbox if you know you are on this list.

I would like to use this opportunity to underline a couple of minor issues with Bank Panic and Star Force. I included some addendums in the manuals of those two games (just like I did for Pitfall II Arcade last year, as some of you may recall) to explain the problems, but I'm going to explain these issues below as well.

In the case of Star Force, when you turn the CV console on, you may see some glitchy, garbled stuff on the TV screen for a second or two, then the title screen will be displayed and the game will behave normally afterwards. This happens with all Star Force cartridges, only during a cold boot (not after pressing the reset button) and after testing each and every Star Force cart on the same CV console, I can say without too much doubt that it doesn't cause any hardware problems.

For Bank Panic, you may see some garbled graphics appear in the status bar during the game, especially in the top right quadrant of the screen. You may even see graphic glitches elsewhere on the screen as you play, but those glitches are much rarer. This happens totally at random, but thankfully, it's only a minor annoyance that doesn't really interfere with the gameplay. Again, all Bank Panic carts carry this issue, and it cannot really be fixed. Eduardo told me that Bank Panic was one of the most challenging SG-1000 ports he has ever done, so it should come at no surprise that the CV port has some lingering issues that were missed during beta-testing.

LAYAWAY PLAN AND CONTEST REMINDER

I'm offering a layaway plan this year for those who want to buy these new games, but don't have the funds to buy them immediately. This layaway plan offer expires on January 5th 2012, and is explained in full detail within the e-mails that I'm sending out today.

The Telegames Custom Box contest also starts officially today. I have set up this web page to explain the details of this contest.

CREDIT GIVEN WHERE CREDIT IS DUE

On this special occasion, I would like to thank everyone who has helped me make these new releases possible, starting of course with Eduardo Mello, who ported all these games in record time earlier this year. Excellent job, Ed!

Next I would like to thank retroillucid and Yurkie, who helped me beta-test these games, and also 5-11under, who purchased the electronics and programmed/soldered the cartridge PCBs together. I also need to thank Dale Crum of Doc4, who prepared the PDF templates of the boxes and manuals for all these new releases. Many thanks to Oliver Puschatzki for acting as middle-man between myself and the german printer company that printed the boxes. I think I should also thank the people at Magic-Copie, who printed the manuals and cart labels in such a professional fashion.

A few more thanks are in order: Studio Cutepet for doing such wonderful work on the Ninja Princess box art, Stephen Seehorn for completing the software work on Ninja Princess and thus making its release possible, Omar Cornut for giving me a CIB copy of the SG-1000 version of Golgo 13 (I used the box art for the CV version), Fred Quimby for his work on the Activision PCB (which was used for all these new releases except for Konami's Ping-Pong), and last but not least, Albert Yarusso for holding onto my Activision cart casings.

This round of thanks wouldn't be complete without a special "THANK YOU!" to everyone on the AtariAge forum who has supported me and my collaborators through this gigantic effort. It's hard to believe I've been spending most of my free time on getting these games ready since last April!

BONUS GIFT!

Here are some codes that you can try with last year's batch of Team Pixelboy titles:

Gulkave: At the title screen, enter UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, UP, RIGHT, DOWN, LEFT, DOWN, DOWN. You will enter the "test mode" menu, which features a sound test, and lets you select between normal and hard mode (as if the game isn't hard enough on "normal"!!!).

Pitfall II Arcade: At the title screen, enter 54312 on the keypad to activate infinite lives, and/or enter 89999 which makes Pitfall Harry invulnerable to everything in the game except collisions with mine carts.

Girl's Garden: At the title screen, press a button to start the game, and once the actual game starts, enter 867-5309 on the keypad (it's Jenny's phone number, google it...) to enable the cheat keys: While you play, press 1, 2 or 3 on the keypad to add lives, honey pots and flowers in the status bar at the bottom of the screen.


Tune in next week (January 1st, to be exact) for the first Team Pixelboy News Bulletin of 2012, in which I will present my various projects for next year, including a special surprise!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL!

I recently completed a fun analysis about which Atari 2600 games could be converted to the ColecoVision. Of course, they could all be converted, in theory, but some are more interesting than others, in terms of raw gaming potential. While doing this study, I found that the most interesting games to convert are those that could be improved during the conversion process.

So I decided to create this blog-type thread, where I can present ideas about which Atari 2600 games I would like to see converted to the CV, and what improvements I would include in such conversions. Note that I have no plans to actually create these proposed ColecoVision versions under my Team Pixelboy publishing label, this thread is just an exercice in creative fun, and I encourage people to participate, by either presenting their own wish lists, or reacting to the wish lists of others (with interesting improvement ideas, perhaps). I don't plan on creating any mockup screenshots for any of the ideas I will present in this thread, but I may do a few in the future if I find the time and the inspiration. Feel free to add mockups of your own if you want.

As the starter of this thread, I just have one request for all of you: Let's keep the discussion centered around Atari 2600 conversions. I feel that if we include other systems (Intellivision, Commodore 64, etc.) then this thread could go all over the place and grow chaotically. If you want to discuss potential Intellivision-to-ColecoVision conversions, for example, please create a separate thread for this under the ColecoVision sub-forum, and the same goes for all other gaming systems. I think that's the best way to keep things orderly, and fun to read.

So then, allow me to begin...