A Better Alternative to the NES Classic Edition

In the final entry in what has turned to cover way too much blog space, I am giving my reasons why I cannot recommend the NES Classic Edition (CE).  The CE has a lot going for it, an attractive price, a cute look, the official throwback factor, 30 classic games, a good replica controller.  But it has a few downsides.

The first is obvious, the cables are way too short.  They are only 2.5' long.  An original NES controller is over 6' long.  If you want to play with the CE while sitting on the couch, you will need either a long HDMI cable or controller cable extenders.  A 25' HDMI cable will run you about $15 on Monoprice, but the controller extensions coming out for the CE run $10 each.  If you want to play a two player game, that is another $10.  Ultimately, the problem can be fixed, but the fixes will turn a $60 device into a $90 device.

The second is equally obvious, the console is not upgradeable.  When you finish playing those 30 games, what then?  It will be back to the Virtual Console.  Want to play Mega Man 3, Castlevania 3, Startropics 2, Ninja Gaiden 2, Contra or Tecmo Super Bowl?  You may have to wait for something like the CE 2.0 Edition.  Given that Nintendo included virtually all its first party classics in the existing CE, the game lineup in the CE 2.0 would prove interesting to say the least.

Video Potpourri II

Sometimes, one needs to discuss related subjects that do not by themselves warrant a full blog entry.  Hence the video potpourri series, in which I can talk about aspects of display technology.

I.  Composite Artifact Color Emulation

Composite artifact color emulation has been around for a long time.  Unfortunately, in many cases it just isn't very good at trying to replicate the look of a composite monitor.  Simple schemes just assign a color arbitrarily to a group of two or four monochrome pixels.  Mainline SVN DOSBox tries to simulate CGA composite color as if it were a VGA mode.  The colors are reasonably accurate to the real IBM CGA cards, but the text color fringing is rather blocky.  There are custom builds that use filtering and 16-bit color to give a more subtle impression of the composite color, but it still looks much, much cleaner than the real image.  You can obtain a custom build with better composite color emulation here : http://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=12319&start=660#p501453

Nintendo Mini Mania Redux - The Classic Mini Family Computer

Nintendo has released another retro-themed surprise.  Back in July, Nintendo announced the NES Classic Edition/NES Mini, an emulation box containing 30 classic NES games.  Here is the original trailer for it :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAGVilt3Rls  I discussed it here :

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2016/07/nes-classic-editionnes-mini-nintendos.html

Yesterday, Nintendo announced a Famicom version for the Japanese market.  Like the NES Mini, the "Classic Mini Family Computer" is a miniature replica of a Famicom with a power and a reset button.  It also has 30 games and will cost 5,980 Yen, which is close to the NES Mini's $59.99 price.  It is going to be released on the same day as the NES Mini, November 11, 2016.  While the official trailer is in Japanese, the visuals are self-explanatory :

Famicom and NES Expansions and Peripherals

Famicom Peripheral List

Devices that Plug into the Famicom Cartridge Slot

Nintendo Famicom Disk System

• 199 Official Licensed Games + Prize Cards (and unlicensed games, copying programs etc.)
• Comes with a disk drive and a RAM Expansion.

The RAM Expansion is inserted into the cartridge slot and the cable from the RAM Expansion is connected to the rear of the disk drive.

RetroUSB AVS vs. Analogue Nt mini - Comparison of the Enthusiast FPGA NES Clones

Until now, any kind of accurate Nintendo NES or Famicom console had to use Nintendo's CPU and/or PPU chips, whether that console was manufactured by Nintendo, Sharp or anyone else.  While the idea of implementing a NES on an FPGA was an idea with a long history, only this year are products finally making it to market.  Here I am going to compare the features of the two announced FPGA NES implementations, the RetroUSB AVS and the Analogue Interactive Nt mini.

Console	AVS	Nt mini
Producer	RetroUSB	Analogue, LLC
Hardware Designer	Brian Parker “bunnyboy”	Kevin Horton “kevtris”
FPGA Type	Xilnix Spartan 6 XC6SLX9	Altera Cyclone V
Included	HDMI, USB Cable (mini-to-standard), Power Supply	HDMI, USB, 8Bitdo NES 30 Wireless Controller, Retro Receiver, Power Supply
Outputs	HDMI, USB	HDMI, Analog Video, RCA Stereo
Inputs	4 x NES Controller Ports, 1 x Famicom Expansion Port	4 x NES Controller Ports, 1 x Famicom Expansion Port, Microphone Input
Upgrade	USB Port	SD Card Slot
Resolution Support	720p	480p, 720p, 1080p (HDMI) 240p (analog sources only)
Video Display Support	HDMI	Composite, S-Video, Component, RGB, HDMI
Buttons	Separate Power & Reset	Combined Power & Reset
Unique Special Features	NA Scoreboard, Built-in Game Genie, Turbo-in-Software	Scalers, Famicom Expansion Audio Generation, Audio Visualizer, Famicom Microphone, NES Zapper/Famicom Gun Support (Analog video only), R.O.B/Family Robot Support (Analog video only)
Price	$185.00	$449.00
Availability	September, 2016	January, 2017

NES Classic Edition/NES Mini - Nintendo's Official Emulation Box

North American Packaging

On July 14, Nintendo announced that it would be releasing a "new" console, the NES Classic Edition.  For Europe, it is called the Nintendo Classic Mini.  It will be released on November 11, 2016 and will cost $59.99.  The console is an emulation box will include 30 built-in NES games.

The NES Mini will have an HDMI port for audio and video.  It supports two controllers, which look identical to the standard NES controller except for the Wii connector plug.  One will come with the system.  A second controller will cost $9.99 and will be available for purchase separately.  The NES Mini will be powered by a USB port.  The North American version will come with an AC adapter, but the European version will not (presumably because of the different shapes of the power sockets across Europe).  New games cannot be added to the console and it cannot connect to the Internet.  That dust cover flap is not real and the device cannot work with cartridges.  The USB port is for power only.

The NES Classic will be a small console, it can fit within the palm of an adult hand, but the controllers will be full-size like the original 7-pin controllers.  The cables are rather short compared to the originals, they look to be about 3' long instead of the 6' we enjoy with the 7-pin plug.  The Power and Reset buttons work like the originals (spring/latch and spring).

The RetroUSB AVS - A Potentially Worthy FPGA NES HDMI-Output Clone

This year, bunnyboy (Brian Parker) of retroUSB.com is going to release his long-awaited (if you are a NintendoAge forum member) AVS.  The AVS is a clone of the NES done within the programmable logic of an FPGA.  It comes in a NES-front loader influenced case, has a front loading 72-pin connector (no push down tray) and a top loading 60-pin connector for NES and Famicom games, respectively.  It only outputs HDMI at a 720p resolution.

The FPGA is a hardware recreation of the internals of the NES, namely the 2A03 CPU and the 2C02 PPU, the RAM and the glue logic required for a functioning NES.  An FPGA is a large, programmable surface mounted chip which allows the programmer to define the logic elements on the chip.  In this case, the programmer is attempting to model the CPU and PPU chips to perform an identical function to the logic contained in the discrete, through-hole chips Nintendo used.  Fortunately, these chips have been decapsulated and their dies have been imaged at very high resolution.  How they work on the hardware level is reasonably well-known, although there are some minor variations between the various revisions of each chip.

Recommendations for Two Player Simultaneous Non-sport NES Games

The NES has quite a few good two player games.  When you have a friend over and want to play the NES, it would be nice to have a good game or two ready.  However, two player alternating games are not much fun when you are watching the other person play all the time.  Not all two-player simultaneous games are great either.  Here I am going to give my recommendations for good two player simultaneous NES games.  Since I am not a big sports fan, I am excluding those games.

Archon

Archon is like Battle Chess without the strict chess rules.  It is a port of the Atari 8-bit game.  Each player gets a nearly mirror image set of "pieces" to use, one side representing the Light and the other side representing the Dark.  When a piece enters the square of an opposing piece, the players control the pieces in an arena and fight to the death.  You can win the game by controlling all five squares or by killing the enemy wizard/sorceress.  The various pieces have different strengths and weaknesses.  Some pieces have a melee attack, some have a ranged attack and some have a touch attack.  The color of the board and some of the squares shifts between light and dark, giving the favored side an advantage.  The wizard and sorceror have some one-time use magical spells.  As a one player game, the AI is exploitable and cheap, but two players can have a lot of fun with this game.  The game is easy to pick up and play and there is plenty of strategy to be employed.

Balloon Fight

Balloon Fight is essentially Nintendo's clone of Joust.  The object of the game is to break your opponents' balloons by landing above them.  Then you have to kick them off the platform, otherwise they will inflate another balloon.  You have to dodge lightning sparks and the computer enemies.  Be careful, you can break your friend's balloons just as easily as you can an enemy's.  It's pretty simple, but the late Satoru Iwata's classic really captures the spirit of Joust.  The control is easy to grasp yet hard to master, like all good Joust ports.  Its even better than the official Joust NES port.

NES PowerPak and EverDrive N8 Mapper Reference

This blog entry is dedicated to the various mappers files and collections for the NES PowerPak and EverDrive N8.  I have previously discussed each device elsewhere in this blog.  This blog entry will always have the latest compatibility information for these flash carts.

NES PowerPak Mapper Sets

Latest Official Mappers : v1.34, 10-14-2010
Expansion Audio Support : VRC6, FDS, Namco 163, Sunsoft 5B (all by an older version of Loopy's Mappers)
http://www.retrousb.com/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=34

Here is the Mapper Support Matrix :

Latest Beta Mappers : v1.35b2, 11-10-2010
Changes to Official Mappers : 1, 3, 4, 79/4F
http://www.retrousb.com/downloads/POWERPAK135b2.zip

Latest Loopy Mappers : No version number, 01-21-2019
Mappers supported : 3, 4, 5, 19/13, 21/15, 23/17, 24/18, 25/19, 26/1A, 34/22, 69/45. 71/47, 90/5A, FDS
Expansion Audio Support : VRC6, FDS, Namco 163, Sunsoft 5B
http://3dscapture.com/NES/powerpak_loopy.zip

Latest Save State Mapper : v1.6, 01-01-2014
Mappers supported : 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 69/45
Note : No Expansion Audio Support for Mapper 69/45
http://www.mediafire.com/file/8dq23vlpfsoqy3m/save-state-mappers-v16.zip/file

Latest PowerMappers : v2.3, 12-28-2015
Mappers supported : 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 34/22, 66/42, 69/45, 71/47, 118/76, 119/77
Note : No Expansion Audio Support for Mapper 69/45
https://kkfos.aspekt.fi/downloads/powermappers-v23.zip

Other Noteworthy NES PowerPak Mappers :

UNROM 512 Mapper 30:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?p=236715#p236715

Used by several homebrew games

GTROM Mapper 111 :

http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=16631

Used by several homebrew games

Nintendo World Championships Official Tournament Time Mapper 105/69 :

The NWC had jumpers to set the time from 5m04s to 9m46s.  The standard mapper only gives 5m04s, but the official tournament time was 6m15s.  This mapper gives you the official tournament time.

Comments : The NES PowerPak uses a MAP.XX file for each mapper.  The iNES mapper number is in hexadecimal for each MAP.XX file.  So iNES Mapper 79 decimal turns into 4F hexadecimal and is supported by the MAP.4F file.

http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=97798

Myask Mapper Package

Adds mapper support for 32, 33, 48, 65, & 107.  All but the last were used by Irem & Taito games for the Famicom.

http://forums.nesdev.com/download/file.php?id=5989

Introfix :

This file fixes a bug where the save file will not load if you start the previous game immediately upon turning the power on.

http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9880

EverDrive N8 Mapper Sets

Latest Official OS : v.20, 12-23-2019
Expansion Audio Support : VRC6, VRC7, FDS, Namco 163, MMC5, Sunsoft 5B
http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?topic=7811.0

Here is the Mapper Support Matrix :

Game Issues Common to both the PowerPak and EverDrive N8 :

Action 52 - At 2MB this game is too large for these 1MB flash carts and cannot work.  If you really want to play Cheetamen, try this extracted and improved ROM  : http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=151720

I managed to split the games up so they can load on the PowerPak and EverDrive. You can download them from here : https://archive.org/download/everdrivepack/

Mapper 64 - Skull and Crossbones has a garbage scanline above status bar when the main action screen has been scrolled down as much as possible.  The Hard Drivin' prototype also exploits this chip in ways not yet supported by flash carts.  This is due a lack of information on how the IRQ counter in the RAMBO-1 chip inside this cartridge works.

Galaxian (J) - This is a Mapper 0 game with only has 8KB of PRG-ROM and 8KB of CHR-ROM, whereas the official iNES 1.0 specification does not allow for less than 16KB of PRG-ROM ad 8KB of CHR-ROM with Mapper 0.  Use an overdumped 24KB combined ROM to get this game to work.

Study Box (J) - This game will never work properly on any Flash Cart because it embeds a cassette deck.

All Japanese games using a speech synthesizer chip, such as the Moero Pro games, will not play the speech samples because the speech data has never been dumped and the speech synthesizer chips have never been emulated.  Most of these games have U.S. counterparts that use the NES's PCM channel to produce speech but not the sound effects.

Mappers 153, 157 and 159 - Games requiring these mapper assignments, instead of the base Mapper 16, will not likely work correctly.  They were almost exclusively used by Bandai's Japanese games. These games use similar hardware but different methods to save (none, S-RAM, 128 byte EEPROM, 256 byte EEPROM).  These mappers also cover the Datach Joint ROM expansion device, which has a barcode reader which most of the games use.

Karaoke Studio, Mapper 188 will never work correctly because the real cartridges use the attached hardware, specifically the microphone.

Like Karaoke Studio, Nantettatte!! Baseball, Mapper 68, used a cartridge lock-on system that allowed an expansion cartridge to be plugged into the top of the base cartridge.  These expansion cartridges, which update team statistics, had a protection IC which the EverDrive and PowerPak do not emulate. The base game plays fine.

Specific Game Issues with EverDrive N8

Cybernoid - This game relies on bus conflicts, which the EverDrive N8 has difficulty with.  Use or permanently patch the US ROM with Game Genie code SXZNZV to get the game to work properly after you change the sound mode from sound effects to music.

Gauntlet - Backgrounds will be incorrect if this game is assigned to Mapper 206 because it uses four-screen mirroring, so assign it's iNES header to Mapper 4.

Money Game, The & Tatakae!! Ramen Man: Sakuretsu Choujin 102 Gei - Appear to work when the mapper is changed from Mapper 155 to Mapper 1

Fudou Myouou Den - Appears to work when the mapper is changed from Mapper 207 to Mapper 80.

Mapper 210 is not supported, most games should work as Mapper 19.

General Game Issues with PowerPak (assuming loopy mappers and PowerMappers are added)

Racermate Challenge II - Uses Mapper 168, which is not supported.  This game also requires a custom and rare peripheral that attaches to a stationary bicycle.

Most MMC5 games are playable, but Uncharted Waters, Uchuu Keibitai SDF and Bandit Kings of Ancient China will show graphics glitches.  No expansion audio support.

Super Mario Bros + Tetris + Nintendo World Cup - A PAL only release, uses Mapper 37 which is not supported by the PowerPak.

Games using MMC3 scanline interrupts will often show jumpy status bars (Super Mario Bros. 3, Crystalis, Mega Man 3) or occasional graphical garbage (Kirby's Adventure, Mickey's Adventures in Numberland).  This issue may vary from PowerPak to PowerPak (my PowerPak is a first batch PowerPak), and is ameliorated with the Save State Mappers and PowerMappers.

Specific Game Issues with PowerPak and PowerMappers :

Asmik-kun Land - Status bar on the bottom of the screen constantly shakes.  This can be fixed by using MAP04.MAP from the Save State Mappers.  You rename the file to something unused like MAP06.MAP and assign the game to Mapper 6 in its header.

Battletoads & Double Dragon - The game may crash when the Level 1 Boss appears.  This is also another open bus issue.  If you encounter it, it can be fixed by creating a Battletoads & Double Dragon.sav 8KB file filled in entirely with hex 00.  Battletoads & Double Dragon does not use S-RAM, but if the game reads these values from where RAM is supposed to be, there will be no glitching or crashing here.

Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu - Glitchy garbage as the scroll unfurls just before you begin a level.  This can be fixed by using MAP04.MAP from the Save State Mappers.  You rename the file to something unused like MAP06.MAP and assign the game to Mapper 6 in its header.

Jurassic Park - Extra lines in the wavy Ocean logo on the title screen. This can be fixed by using MAP04.MAP from the Save State Mappers.  You rename the file to something unused like MAP06.MAP and assign the game to Mapper 6 in its header.

Low-G-Man - Music for Level 1 Boss is not correct, but it does not crash.  This can be fixed by creating a Low-G-Man.sav 8KB file filled in entirely with hex FF.  Low-G-Man does not use S-RAM but relies on open bus and this workaround allows the game to obtain the right values it needs for the music engine.

Little Ninja Brothers - Shaking in status menus, text boxes and the like, which did not appear in prior mappers.  This can be fixed by using MAP04.MAP from the Save State Mappers.  You rename the file to something unused like MAP06.MAP and assign the game to Mapper 6 in its header.

Metroid FDS - Will load to a black screen or a screen so corrupted Samus cannot move.  Others have been able to get this game to work, but I cannot.

Mickey's Adventure in Numberland - Certain tiles in Mickey's sprite flicker constantly similar to Startropics.  This can be fixed by using MAP04.MAP from the Save State Mappers.  You rename the file to something unused like MAP06.MAP and assign the game to Mapper 6 in its header.

Mickey's Safari in Letterland - Status bar shakes because these games requires the IRQ timing for Acclaim's MMC3 clone, which is different from Nintendo's MMC3.  

Rad Racer 2 - Occasional flickering of yellow/orange lines in the road.  The Save State Mappers do not support the 4-screen mirroring this game uses, so use Loopy's Mapper 4 instead.

Startropics 1 & 2 - Half of Mike's small sprite flickers constantly, as does his inventory in the action sequences.  This can be fixed by using MAP04.MAP from the Save State Mappers.  You rename the file to something unused like MAP06.MAP and assign the game to Mapper 6 in its header.  If you see that the subweapons on the action screen noticeably flicker if you have acquired more than one, then make sure the save state function is turned off in the blue menu before you finish loading the ROM.

Ultima - Exodus - Due to bugs with uninitialized cartridge RAM, you could see shaking text, font corruption and bad audio if you play this game without a corresponding sav file.

Expansion Audio Support

Here is the expansion audio support breakdown for both flash cartridges and the Analogue Nt Mini :

Expansion Sound Type	NES PowerPak	EverDrive N8	Analogue Nt Mini
Famicom Disk System	Supported	Supported	Supported
Konami VRC6	Supported	Supported	Supported
Konami VRC7	Not Supported	Supported	Supported
Sunsoft 5B	Supported	Supported	Supported
Namco 163	Supported	Supported	Supported
Nintendo MMC5	Not Supported	Supported	Supported
Jaleco/Bandai Speech	Not Supported	Not Supported	Not Supported

The NES Garage Cart - The Father of NES Homebrew Cartridges

In June of 2005, Memblers (Joey Parsell), the webmaster of NesDev.com, offered for sale a cartridge he called the NES Garage Cart.  The NES Garage Cart is significant because it is the first known homebrew NES cartridge ever published.  Approximately 24 were hand-made and individually numbered.  The last Nintendo Entertainment System cartridge that had been officially released was the unlicensed game Sunday Funday in 1995.  In 1998 there was a cache of 1,500 Cheetamen II cartridges found and sold, but no new cartridges thereafter was made available for sale in any kind of quantity, however modest, until Memblers came along.

The NES Garage Cart is a multi-cart containing three games.  The first two, Munchie Attack and Hot Seat Harry, are games from Memblers himself.  The third game is Solar Wars from Chris Covell.  Solar Wars probably has the distinction of being the first homebrew game ever released for the NES.  None of these games were officially released in standalone cartridge form.  The games individually are free to distribute and can be found here : http://www.nesworld.com/index.php in the "Homebrew" section.  They all play well in a NES PowerPak or EverDrive N8.

There are NTSC and PAL versions of the Garage Cart, more of the former exist.  He printed up some rough labels and hand numbered the carts and sold them to NesDev forum members like me who were willing to pay.  No box and no manual were included, it would be years before you could expect such amenities with homebrew cartridges.

Hot Seat Harry is a simple button mashing game that only takes up 1KB of ROM space.  You have to get the dot in the center to touch the CPU player before he gets the got to your player.

Munchie Attack is a simple eat food, avoid non-food game that only uses the D-Pad and takes up 4KB of ROM space.

Both games were made for mini-game competitions held in 2002 and 2003, respectively.  They would easily fit inside the smallest 16KB/8KB NES NROM board, but will require replacing CHR-ROM with CHR-RAM.  Munchie Attack uses horizontal mirroring, Hot Seat Harry uses vertical mirroring.

Solar Wars is a tank aiming game in the vein of Scorched Earth where you set the velocity and angle of your tank's shots.  You have to deal with terrain, gravity (each planet has different gravity) and the position of the other tank, which can be moved on a player's turn.  Solar Wars was originally developed in 1999, but was burnt to EPROMs and tested with a real NES.  Many NES  projects in the early days used inaccurate emulators like Nesticle and would fail on real hardware and later emulators which were more accurate.  Solar Wars is much larger than Munchie Attack and Hot Seat Harry combined.  It uses a 32KB PRG-ROM and a 32KB CHR-ROM and requires a CNROM bankswitching board set to vertical mirroring.

All these games were made long before custom development boards were available.  Homebrew games were tested and made in the early days by cannibalizing cheaper NES boards and cartridge shells.  While they still are to some extent, there are now development boards available in sufficient quantities and from a few vendors (Memblers being one of them).  While they may not rival Nintendo's MMC5 or Konami's VRC VII, they can do a lot more than just simple PRG/CHR bankswitching these days.  They even use replacement CIC lockout chips.

NES Garage Cart Rear - Look Familiar?

While Chris Covell put up instructions on his site for Solar Wars to make your own cartridge copy, he never sold it in cartridge format himself.  Memblers decided to release a series of homebrew cartridges with the label of "Garage Cart".  He has not yet released a successor to the original Garage Cart, but he is still working on it.  For the Garage Cart, he used the most common NES game in existence for his board, Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt.  This game often comes with the Mask ROMs contained within bonded epoxy blobs, but some cartridges use a board with DIP-style packaged Mask ROMs.  The board with real chips is the NES-MHROM board, which supports PRG and CHR bankswitching.  Mirroring is hardwired to vertical mirroring on this PCB, which was only used for SMB/DH.

Garage Cart PCB Front

SMB/DK uses 64KB of PRG-ROM and 16KB of CHR-ROM.  The board itself can accept up to a 32KB CHR-ROM without modification.  The Garage Cart uses a 64KB One Time Programmable EPROM (no quartz UV erasure window) for the PRG-ROM.  However, what makes the cartridge unique, functionally, is that it does not use CHR-ROM, in its place it has 32KB of CHR-RAM (a.k.a. V-RAM).  Only a few cartridges use bankswitched CHR-RAM, such as Videomation.

In order to implement the RAM, a wire has to connect the RAM chip's write enable pin to the CHR-RAM enable pin on the cartridge connector.  It is a very simple modification and no other rewiring is required because the pinouts for the ROM chips Nintendo used and the S-RAM and EPROM chips Memblers used are identical save for the one exception noted above  The game could be dumped with a CopyNES using Mapper 66 parameters and does run in an emulator properly supporting the iNES 2.0 standard.  The ROM is not publicly available but it can be emulated if your emulator or your flash cart supports the proper iNES 2.0 parameters.

Garage Cart PCB Back

When I received my cart, I only had my Famicom A/V and a 72-to-60 pin converter.  It worked just fine except that the title screen in Solar Wars would show some jumpiness.  I sent it back to Memblers who opined that it could have been due to Solar Wars using color palette entry $0D, the "blacker than black" entry.  $0D is so close to a TV's blanking signal that some TVs may show visual anomalies or glitches if it is used.  I have a CRT that will show anomalies when that color finds its way into games.  Memblers patched my copy to use the regular $0F instead of $0D for black, but the problem still persisted when I received the cartridge back.  I solved the problem by using a Game Genie and then later a front-loading NES (it does occur seldomly on the latter).  According to Memblers, no one else complained of the issue, so I would have been the only person to receive a hardware revision of the NTSC version.

When you turn the power on your NES with the cartridge inserted, you are treated to a menu selection screen and given a choice for each game.  Specially-composed music plays in the background and there is animation and a pattern being drawn on the screen until you select the game.  The menu has three pieces of music, the game starts with the piece that will play if you reset the console after selecting Solar Wars.  The other two games will allow you to hear another piece of music if you reset after playing each one.

I bought Garage Cart #5 for approximately $42.00 plus shipping in 2004.  However, other than the menu, there was nothing unique about the software.  The games were all freely available and playable.  I noticed that the Garage Cart had steadily climbed in value over the years.  When the value had increased from $100-200 to $700-800, I knew the day would come when I would have to part with mine.

I decided on using NintendoAge instead of eBay to auction off my cartridge.  I did not want to pay eBay's final value fee on top of the PayPal transaction fee.  Moreover, I believed that any collector who would be interested in the Garage Cart would be on the NintendoAge forum.   I let the auction go for seven days.  I would not use any of that cheap nonsense about extending the auction by 2 minutes past the end time each time another bid came in.  QuiBids this is not!  The final bid came in at $1,870.00 on at 9:22PM on January 29, 2016, eight minutes before the auction end.  The winner paid the next day and made no complaint about the shipping or insurance cost.  I made sure to offer the buyer the opportunity to purchase insurance, the risk of loss would squarely be on the buyer if he did not.  I even offered to deliver the cartridge to the buyer personally, since we both lived in the same state, but he demurred.

As part of my auction I made high resolution, 600dpi scans of the cartridge label, as shown above.  I also made a video showing the cartridge's condition and it working in my front loader NES.  When you have to point a camera at a CRT TV screen, I suggest decreasing the brightness and contrast quite a bit.  I also found that I obtained a better picture by eliminating all ambient light sources in the room, hence I shot it at night.  I shot it using the camera's "60fps" capabilities, but the resulting frame rate of the video is 59.49227fps while the NES's frame rate is 60.098815fps.  So there will be some retrace bar shown as a black line going up the screen, which can be seen when I am playing Solar Wars.  However, it won't be nearly as bad as those thick, slow moving bars you get at the standard "30fps".  Here is a video showing the Garage Cart's menu :



Having parted with this unique piece of history, I am glad that a collector will be able to enjoy it.  Even though the game would be easy enough to recreate, there will never be a replacement for those 24 cartridges sold during the summer of 2005.  Today NES Homebrew is quite the business with many new cartridge games being released each year, but here is where it started and I had the privilege of being there for its birth.

Analog Controllers in Consoles and Computers

A digital joystick is just four contact switches activated by pressing a directional instead of a button.  This includes the Intellivision's controller, which has sixteen discrete positions, and most console "joysticks".  An analog control allows for smoother movement instead of relying solely on the amount of time a directional has been pressed.  Originally, analog knobs or paddles were used with Pong and other ball and paddle games. Eventually the combination of two of these "paddles" with a common control became a joystick and achieved some popularity for racing and flight simulators.  Outside these pigeonholes, most of the popular games of the 70s and 80s used digital joysticks, trackballs and rotary spinners (the latter are used in the Breakout-derived Arkanoid).  Only in the mid-90s with the rise of first and third person 3D games did a compelling need for a general analog controller present itself.  In the blog post, I will discuss how analog controllers used to be used and how they are used today.

True analog controllers in the video game world use variable resistors.  The humble variable resistor, also called a potentiometer, has had a wide variety of applications.  You will see them at work in light switches, to change volume or temperature.  They were often used in video game controllers.

There are two ways in which analog control was implemented at the hardware level, and both involve potentiometers.  The most common way is to use the potentiometer as a variable resistor in a resistor/capacitor discharge network.  In this method, a capacitor is discharged then a port is read until the capacitor indicated it was recharged.  The time it took for the capacitor to charge gave the position of the potentiometer.  More resistance equals a longer charging time.  Only two wires are connected to the potentiometer in this case, one of the end terminals (to +5v) and the middle terminal is connected to the console.

The second method is to use the potentiometer as a voltage divider with a comparator.  In this method, the potentiometer's output voltage is compared to a voltage ramp, which is reset, and the time it takes for the voltages to become equal indicates the stick's position.  In this case, all three terminals of the potentiometer, one end to +5v, one end to GND and the middle terminal gives the signal to the console or computer.

Atari 2600 & 7800

The Atari 2600 usually came with a pair of paddle controllers.  Each paddle had a potentiometer connected to two terminals, making it function like a variable resistor.  Each controller port could support a pair of paddles but only one of any other type of controller.  Paddle games were the only official solution for four-player gaming.  The output line of these potentiometers is connected to the TIA chip.  The rating of these potentiometers is 1MOhm.  Each paddle had a single button, which shared the same line as the left or right joystick directional.  Button inputs are connected to the 6532 RIOT chip.

Interestingly, while not an analog controller the Keypad Controllers and their clones also make use of the potentiometer lines.  There are insufficient digital inputs on the 2600 controller port to read a 4x3 matrix.  What the 2600 does is to set the joystick inputs as outputs and send a signal through each of the four lines.  These correspond to each horizontal row of keypad keys.  One column is read via the joystick fire button input on the TIA and the other two columns are read through one of the paddle input lines with the assistance of a 4.7KOhm resistor.

The Atari 7800 is backwards compatible with the Atari 2600 and includes a TIA and 6532, but no 7800 games support analog controllers.

Apple II

The Apple II and II+ came with a 16-pin socket which could accept four paddle inputs.  These systems came with a pair of paddles with the Apple logo branded on them.  Like the Atari paddles, these operate as variable resistors.  They use 150KOhm potentiometers.   Soon someone figured out that you can pair two paddle inputs to make a joystick input.  Unfortunately, there were only three button inputs, making the use of two joysticks rare.  Typically a single joystick would only use the first two button inputs.

The Apple IIe kept the joystick socket but also added an external DE-9 port containing the lines necessary to support the four analog inputs and three digital inputs.  This port uses the same lines at the 16-pin socket, but it is easier to plug in and remove peripherals from the external port than the internal socket.  The Apple IIc removed the internal socket and required the joystick to share the port with a mouse, limiting the joystick to two analog and digital inputs.  For the IIe and IIc Apple released a joystick and paddles separately that use the DE-9 connector.  The Apple IIgs has the capabilities and connectors of the IIe but also supports a fourth digital input for four buttons.

Tandy Color Computer, IBM PC & Tandy 1000

The IBM PC uses a DA-15 gameport supporting four axes and four buttons.  The Tandy Color Computer and 1000 uses a pair of DIN-6 connectors, each supporting two axes and two buttons.  All of these computers use 100KOhm potentiometers, but the IBM standard wires them as variable resistors and the Tandy machines wire them as voltage dividers.  Like the Apple II, these interfaces use discrete circuitry instead of a custom chip.

Tandy's regular CoCo joystick uses one button and are non-self centering.  They are not regarded highly.  The Tandy Deluxe Joystick is self-centering, has two buttons and can be set to free-floating mode.  The IBM PCjr. joystick has the same features and look identical to the Tandy Deluxe Joystick, but has a different connector and is wired as a variable resistor.  Both joysticks hail from Kraft-designed joysticks, which were pretty much the standard for the early to mid 80s for the Apple II and IBM/Tandy.

See here for more discussion of issues relating to the IBM PC joystick : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/03/wheres-my-digital-joystick.html

The Apple II usually runs at one speed and unless an accelerator is being used, the constant speed eliminates issues with reading from the joystick port.

Commodore VIC-20 & Commodore 64

The VIC-20 has one joystick port, so only one pair of paddles is supported.  The paddles are connected to the 6560 VIC chip, which provides video and audio.  Because the paddles are wired to the Atari standard, the buttons are handled by one of the 6522 VIA chips.

The C64 has two joystick ports, so two pairs of paddles are supported.  The paddles are connected to the 6581 SID chip, which also handles the audio for the computer.  The SID chip only has two analog potentiometer inputs, so the inputs from two pairs of paddles are multiplexed and read with the assistance of one of the 6526 CIA chips.  The CIA chip also handles button reading.

Commodore's paddles can be used with either system and they use a resistance value of 470KOhms.  Atari 2600 paddles are more common and usually work OK, indicating that Commodore's paddles are wired as variable resistors.

Atari 8-bit Computers and 5200

The Atari 400 and 800 computers could support four pairs of paddles using its four controller ports.  These are connected to the POKEY chip inside the system, which has eight analog input pins.   Super Breakout for the Atari 8-bit computers supports eight paddles used in a sequential fashion.  POKEY is also used for audio generation and other system functions including scanning the keyboard for pressed keys. The buttons are read by the 6520 PIA chip.  The 2600 paddles are used in these computers.

The Atari 5200 was noted for being the first system to come with an analog joystick.  The Atari 5200's joysticks manipulates a pair of potentiometers (not smaller than those found in paddles) and use a resistance value of 500KOhms.  The 4-port system could, as its name implies, support for of these joysticks.  The 2-port system could only support two joysticks.  No paddles were specifically made for the 5200.  There is no PIA chip in the 5200, so the joystick buttons are read by the GTIA chip.  The keypad buttons are read similarly to the keyboard keys in the 8-bit machines by the POKEY, but multiplexers are used.

The later Atari 8-bit machines, from the 1200XL, 600XL, 800XL, 65XE, 130XE and XE Game System eliminate two of the controller ports, so you can only use two pairs of paddles with these machines.

Vectrex

The Vectrex controller may not have had quite as many buttons as the 5200 controller, but four independent fire buttons was a rarity.  Its joystick was smaller than the 5200's and apparently less brittle.  Also, far more importantly, the joystick is self-centering.  The innards of the joystick look very similar to those of the Sony Dual Shocks to come in the following decade.

Not only does the Vectrex controllers contain a pair of potentiometers attached directly to the joystick, but there are also a separate pair of trimmer potentiometers located elsewhere on the PCB.  Apparently these can be adjusted without opening the joystick and serve to fine tune the joystick's centering, not too dissimilar to how Apple and PC joysticks work.  These trimmer potentimeters are 10KOhms.

Unlike the Tandy sticks, which have one end terminal of the potentiometer connected to +5v and the other end terminal connected to GND, the Vectrex stick has one end terminal connected to +5v and the other end terminal connected to -5v.  The resistance value for these potentiometers also appears to be 10KOhms.

Because Vectrex controllers are rare and only two commercial Vectex games use the analog function, Sega Genesis 3-button controllers have been converted to work with them.

NES & Famicom

NES Controllers are primarily digital, they send out a bit for a pressed button.  However, the NES and Famicom versions of Arkanoid were released with a paddle controller.  This controller, called the VAUS Controller in the US, could be used instead of the gamepad.  The Famicom controller plugged into the expansion port and the NES controller plugged into Controller Port 2.  The paddle had one button.  The NES and Famicom controllers are not compatible with each other, they function identically but use different bits to send their data.  No other NES game used its Arkanoid controller, but the Famicom games Chase HQ and Arkanoid 2 could use the Famicom Arkanoid controller.  The NES controller has a small screw that could be used to adjust the sensitivity of the controller via a trimpot.  The Famicom controller does not have a trimpot.

The interior of the Arkanoid controller shows a 556 timer and potentiometer wired only to two terminals.  This means that it works just like in the Apple II or IBM PC.

Thumbsticks - Sony PlayStation Dual Shock controllers and their successors

Outside the classic consoles, most systems of the third and fourth generation of video games did not support analog controllers.  In the fifth generation, things began to change.  The Nintendo 64 was released with an "analog" thumbstick, but the thumbstick uses optical sensors and is not really an analog controller for the purposes of this article.

The basic principle of how the analog thumbsticks operate on a PlayStation Dual Shock controller is similar to how the Tandy CoCo joysticks work.  Although its successors may offer more analog controls, the basic functionality is unchanged.  Essentially each thumbstick manipulates a pair of potentiomers, one for each axis of the stick.  These potentiometers are wired in the three pin style, making them voltage dividers.  When the stick is in the neutral position, the sticks should be outputting half the maximum voltage (2.5V).  The controller chip of the controller reads these values and converts them into a digital 8-bit value which is sent with other stick and button information as a multi-byte serial packet to the console.

I have read that using a voltage divider is more precise than using a resistor/capacitor network as used in PCs and Atari consoles and computers.  However, potentiometers are notoriously loose with their tolerances (20% seems to be the norm).  I imagine Sony and its competitors may have higher quality parts and the lower resistance ranges (0-40KOhms seems to be about right) and the shorter travel distances may tighten the tolerance a bit (10% seems reasonable)

Every PlayStation game that supports the thumbsticks should use a standard routine to calibrate the thumbsticks when the game is bootup.  Even with tighter tolerances and more compact form factors, the dead center position may not reflect the midpoint voltage reading.

Retro Kickstarters - Modest Goals Rewarded

I have been fascinated by the concept of Kickstarters geared to classic video game consoles and home computers.  That many have been successful indicates that there are needs that are waiting to be fulfilled.  However, most retro video game Kickstarter campaigns have had reasonable goals.  Few that have required over $100,000 to be funded have been successful.  In this blog entry I will talk about some of the campaigns and give my thoughts on their significance.

First, Kickstarter campaigns with lofty goals targeting the retro video game market will almost certainly fail.  The Retro VGS is a perfect example of a campaign so wrong headed and just plain bizarre that it justifies the trope "truth is stranger than fiction:".  They wanted $2,950,000 to fund a new retro-style cartridge only console built from a plastic mold for the Atari Jaguar shell.  Oh, it may have had an FPGA that could recreate consoles like the NES or the 2600 in hardware.  The Retro VGS campaign's risible failure has been commented to death and has really given far too much attention.

People may be more hesitant to spend their money for big ticket video game projects thanks to the failure of the Ouya console.  The Ouya raised over $8 million on Kickstarter for a $99 game console (the controller was quite a bit extra) that would play games easily ported from Android.  Despite the massive success of the crowdfunding campaign, the Ouya was sold off to Razer and discontinued within two years of its release.

There have been successes with sequels to classic games.  Wasteland 2, Dreamfall Chapters, Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded (a remake), Shadowrun Hong Kong and Shenmue III may never had been possible without crowdfunding.  Also, some designers with classics to their name like Richard Garriott,  Chris Roberts, Tim Shafer, Kenji Inafune and Koji Igarashi have found the resources to back new projects in the vein of their earlier work but which is owned by a large corporation that has turned its back on them.  (Hideo Kojima may be joining them soon.)  These games of course are designed to play on current platforms.

Crowdfunding true retro games designed to be played on classic consoles is a far greater challenge.  Similarly, while there have been successful crowdfunding campaigns for books, documentaries and music albums related to classic video game consoles or home computers, crowdfunding useful hardware for those computers and consoles has been a task that has been a success only to a few.

The NES has had a quite a few successful hardware and software kickstarters.  Hardware successes include the Blinking Light Win : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/113891498/blinking-light-win-resurrecting-your-nes?ref=discovery  For $20 you bought a quality NES cartridge connector replacement that, eleven months after the campaign has ended, they are still having trouble stocking.  It has fulfilled a need for a reasonably priced, quality connector from people who are passionate about what they are doing, not just some Chinese manufacturer endlessly recycling second-rate parts.

There has also been the Chip Maestro, a MIDI synthesizer device that uses the audio channels of the NES' 2A03 APU : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jarek/chip-maestro-an-nes-midi-synthesizer-cartridge?ref=discovery  This is not the first cartridge to allow for the NES audio channels to be controlled via MIDI, the MIDINES was available years earlier, but may no longer be available for purchase.

While you may ask why you need a MIDI controller for the NES when you have FamiTracker and other musical composition programs that allow for full register access to the APU, if you want to use a keyboard directly with the NES in a live performance, you need something that will respond to key presses in real time, hence these MIDI controllers.

Cheetamen II: The Lost Levels (essentially a fixed version of Cheetamen II on a cartridge) is the most successful NES-based hardware Kickstarter I know of : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/343248998/cheetahmen-ii-the-lost-levels?ref=discovery   There is a patch available for the game here : http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/778/ that allows you to complete the game and you can play it on an NES PowerPak and an EverDrive N8 with the MMC1 patch.

Despite the full ALL CAPS and somewhat discursive presentation, the Kickstarter was a huge success.  This must have been helped by the large number of NES collectors who wanted to fill a hole in their collection for $60 instead of $1,000, which is what the original Cheetamen II cartridge was going for at the time.  The promotional video with James Rofle in his Angry Video Game Nerd persona (and his 1.95 million subscribers) must have helped enormously.

Another modestly successful piece of NES software is the retroplayer.nl Championships 2015, which recreates the Nintendo World Championships 1990 cartridge and competition : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1348643050/nintendo-nes-retroplayernl-championship-2015?ref=discovery  Frankly I do not know how this got through Kickstarter because it uses Chip 'N Dale's Rescue Rangers II, Tetris and Excitebike and no authorization from any of those rights holders seemed forthcoming.  Considering that it flew well under the radar, no one may have brought it to their attention.

There are a pair of NES books on Kickstarter, the first is called the Complete NES by Jeffrey Wittenhagen :  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thesubcon3/the-complete-nes-collectors-book-physical-nes-rpg?ref=discovery
The book is being published alongside a game exclusive to the kickstarter called Jeffrey Wittenhagen's Black Box Challenge.  It is being programmed by Sly Dog Studios, no stranger to NES homebrew.  Whether their games are any good I cannot say but graphically they look pretty dull.  This game is an RPG centered around the quest to acquire all NES black-box games.  This campaign requested $15,000 and took in $24,455.  If you wanted a physical paperback copy of the book and the game on cartridge without box or manual, you would have to pledge $90.  For a more impressive hardcover copy of the book and a game with box and manual, the price increases to $170.

Perhaps the price seemed a bit steep to attract more donors.  The second book, the Ultimate Guide to the NES Library by Pat Contri, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/560468638/nintendo-nes-library-guide-and-review-book-of-750?ref=nav_search gets you a physical hardcover copy of the book for $60. Normally I do not mention books without something else, but this book is the most funded NES project ever, expecting to hit the $100,000 mark.  Pat has also had three successful Indiegoogo campaigns for his annual NES charity marathons and has also successfully raised money for four DVD volumes of his Pat the NES Punk series.

There is also documentary called The New 8-bit Heroes with a new NES game called Mystic Searches :  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1316851183/the-new-8-bit-heroes-new-nes-game-and-creation-doc?ref=discovery  The documentary is focused on the homebrew scene and the game will be an adventure game that appears to play in the Zelda vein.  Also, accessible from the cartridge via a USB port will be a modern version of the game and the NES game and the PC game can talk to each other.  Perhaps a bit too ambitious, and the $54,381 pledged is not sufficient for the modern game.

Another gentleman was able to get his NES homebrew game, Lizard, funded : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1101008925/lizard?ref=discovery  There is a homebrew game for the SNES called Syndey Hunter and the Caverns of Death.  A stretch goal enabled it to be ported to the NES : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/439982171/new-snes-game-sydney-hunter-and-the-caverns-of-dea?ref=discovery  It is the only non-NES and non-2600 homebrew game that seems to be crowdfunded.  The only other homebrew game I could find that was funded through kickstarter was Star Castle for the Atari 2600.  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/698159145/atari-2600-star-castle?ref=discovery

The Commodore 64 has seen some hardware kickstarter success.  One gentleman was able to secure the case molds for the C64c and was able to offer new cases with different colors instead of the boring beige of the original :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1670214687/original-commodore-64c-computer-housing-in-new-coo?ref=nav_search
Unfortunately, the project manager was required to remove all references to Commodore from his campaign because the entity that holds the Commodore trademark threatened to sue for trademark violation.  Fortunately they did not catch it until late in the campaign, so there was sufficient advertisement for the kickstarter to be successful.  I understand it is compatible with any C64 motherboard with proper keyboard support mounts, and I have a nice C64 motherboard that works with a brittle, post-retr0bright failure case. Considering that the creator only wanted a modest $10K, obtaining over nine times that amount was pretty impressive!

The Commodore Amiga has seen similar success with a project (with their second attempt) to make new A1200 molds :  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/a1200housing/new-amiga-1200-cases-made-from-new-molds?ref=nav_search You will note that the name Commodore is not present when describing the project.  Of all the projects discussed here, this one is the only one which has passed the $100K mark.  However, the project managers needed to make new molds, which is incredibly expensive.  I cannot say I am incredibly familiar with the late model Amiga scene (not a lot of gaming potential there), but boy there had to be a need for these cases.  They also have room for a Raspberry Pi or a MiST FPGA board, which would not have been the case with the original cases.

Of course, I cannot leave out a mention of HD Retrovision's Component Video cables for the SNES and Genesis : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hdretrovision/sega-genesis-and-super-nintendo-component-cables?ref=discovery  Even though component video is not the best way to connect a SNES or Genesis to a modern LCD or to stream footage from one, it is still useful for those of us with big screen CRTs with component video inputs.  A hardware project I would have liked to see succeed was the hdmyboy, https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507669971/hdmyboy-a-full-hd-power-up-for-your-game-boy-class?ref=nav_search
which is a HDMI adapter/converter for the original Game Boy.  Unfortunately, 65,000 Euro is an ambitious goal and I believe that people were really expecting not just original Game Boy, but Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance support, especially with the Retron 5 out there.  How much more processing power would have been required to convert 15-bit color instead of 2-bit monochrome?  Also, the hdmyboy lacked stereo output support.

As you can see, this is a very small number of successful projects (14).  Most people who have a product usually rely on pre-orders from internet forums like AtariAge, NintendoAge, VOGONS, Vintage Computing Forums, Sega-16, PCenginefx forums or assemblerforums.  AtariAge has been extremely successful in allowing developers to publish new games for the Atari 2600 in cartridge form.  On the other end of the spectrum, kevtris had to fund development of the Hi Def NES Mod out of his own pocket, for example.  Currently, retro console and computer related kickstarters that keep their funding goals within the five figure mark stand a good chance of success.  Six figures is most likely poison to just about any campaign.

NES Gameplay Trilogies

There are certain games, that while they are not part of an official series, in many respects could have been.  In these cases, the gameplay across the three games is similar.  In this blog entry I will identify groups of games which I believe share certain gameplay traits that make them an unofficial trilogy.

Gradius - Lifeforce - Jackal

All three of these games were developed by Konami and encompass what I call the Konami Shooter Trilogy.  Unlike Japan, the US did not receive a version of Gradius 2 or Parodius, but Europe never saw Jackal either.  I note that Stinger was also released by Konami, but while it is a fine game in its own right I do not consider it to be in the same league in terms of popularity or adolescent-focused pure shooting action as these games.

All three of these games began life as arcade machines.  Gradius received a very faithful Arcade-to-NES port, although it lacks a bit in the flash and polish department. Jackal is also arcade-faithful as well, but Konami truly excelled here at bringing the fast-paced destruction of this game to the less capable hardware of the NES.  Nothing essential is lost in porting.  In fact, the game is substantially  improved by end-level bosses and level transitions.  As I mentioned elsewhere, Life Force is in certain respects a better game than its arcade original, Salamander.

Of course, I cannot go without mentioning the two player simultaneous gameplay of Jackal and Life Force. Two-player simultaneous gameplay was somewhat uncommon in the days of the NES due to the hardware limitations.  64 sprites get used up very quickly, and the 8 sprites per line limitation of the NES leads to flickering very quickly.  Konami was one of the few developers who consistently could do it right with Jackal, Life Force, Contra and Super C.

Zanac - The Guardian Legend - Gun+Nac

Here we have the Compile Shooter Trilogy.  Zanac and GunNac (note the similarity of the names) are similar in that their basic gameplay model is that of the vertical shooter.  The Guardian Legend combines vertical shooting stages with exploration-style bird's eye view stages like The Legend of Zelda.

Zanac has three principal strengths.  First, it has a wide variety of powerups (eight) that have their own strengths and weaknesses.  Second, it has very solid gameplay, especially for a somewhat early title.  It is a fairly fast paced game, the controls are very responsive, rapid fire is present.  Even though it lacks varied bosses, it feels very modern.  The graphics are good and the music is excellent.  Third, the game adapts itself to the power ups you choose and reportedly your skill level.  It is not simply a randomizer, the game will behave in somewhat predictable ways, in terms of the enemies it will throw at you, based on the active weapon powerup you possess.  This mechanic makes it never quite the same game twice. You can continue at the last area by pressing start and select at the same time on the title screen (this is in the manual).

The Guardian Legend tweaks the formula quite a bit by adding overhead exploration.  You collect chips to buy items from the Blue Landers, fight bosses in special rooms and collect keys to open "corridors" to vertical shooting stages.  Your character is not just a ship but a female android (which the US version took some pains to obfuscate).  It has a password feature for restoring your game, and it is pretty long by NES standards.  There are several themes to individual areas, like water, plants and mountains, and the graphics change accordingly.  The music is some of the best on the NES.  Shooting stage bosses are varied and some are really tough (blue Optomon will make you throw your controller against the TV screen) and others are much more reasonable (even the red Clawbot and Bombarder are reasonable).  Finally, you gain many weapons and you can switch between them as often as you like, but you use up chips by using them.  Fortunately, the game is fairly generous with supplying you with chips and health items when you need them.  By inputting the password TGL, you can play the game as a straight shooter.

Gun+Nac is as to Zanac as Parodius is as to Gradius.  Unfortunately, Gun+Nac is not as well-known as it deserves to be because it was released rather late in the NES's lifespan.  Gun+Nac plays like Zanac with more powerups.  You still collect the Compile "P" chips, but you also collect money so you can upgrade your ship and buy extra lives during the levels.  GunNac is cute and goofy with rabbit and cat enemies, but do not let that fool you into thinking the game is a cakewalk, it is not.  Graphics and sound are excellent.

Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode - The Mafat Conspiracy -  WURM: Journey to the Center of the Earth

Golgo 13 and its sequel the Mafat Conspiracy are a logical choices because they use the Golgo-13 character, but WURM?  It is not as far fetched as you think.  Golgo 13 advertised multiple styles of play.  First, there are side-scrolling areas with some platform (enemy bases) and some free form (underwater) elements like Super Mario Bros.  Second, there are first person, 360 degree mode instances where you have to kill all the enemies that are ambushing you. Third, there are horizontal shooter stages when you fly a helicopter. Fourth, there are first person maze stages with traps, items and enemies to shoot.  Finally, there are dialogue and cinematic sequences when you charm the ladies.

The Mafat Conspiracy has more of the same, mostly.  In exchange for the horizontal shooting mode, you get a driving mode that looks very close to Rad Racer.  There is also a more involved sniping mode and the game is much more cinematic overall.  The mazes are still as annoying as hell, but in the manuals for both games there are maps.  Also, the platforming stages are still a bit stiff in terms of your character's control scheme but there have been some improvements from the first game.  One big one is that now button B shoots and button A jumps, it was swapped for Golgo 13.

WURM shares the jack-of-all-trades gameplay style of the Golgo-13 games.  It starts you out with a horizontal shooter stage.  You will see more than one of these and your vehicle has and can acquire several different abilities and powerups.   Second, you will have a 360 degree first person mode where you fight boss monsters.  Third, you will explore various areas as Moby in side-scrolling stages.  Moby has a gun and can kick and she controls very similarly to Golgo-13.  Like Golgo-13, the enemies on these stages are not known for their variety.  Fourth comes vertical shooter stages, which are a bit more rudimentary than the horizontal stages.  Fifth, there are also cinematic cutscenes, but these suffer from a lot of repetition in terms of dialogue and artwork.  You also have dialogue during boss fights.  Similarly to Golgo-13, you can also engage in dialogue during the side-scrolling stages.

Golgo 13 and WURM share the same designer, Shoichi Yoshikawa, and he acknowledges that he took inspiration from the earlier game.  He even made a direct reference by including the "G-13" robot in the game.   However, WURM has an unfinished feel to it that cannot be said for the Golgo-13 games.

Will the Real Successor to the Pitfall Legacy on the NES Stand Up?

There never was a game called Pitfall III.  David Crane programmed the original Pitfall for the Atari 2600 in 1982 while working for Activision, a company he co-founded.  Two years later he released Pitfall II: Lost Caverns for the Atari 2600.  Thereafter came the great Video Game Crash and Crane left Activision in 1986 to co-found Absolute Entertainment.  While there would be other games in the Pitfall series, this blog entry will discuss three games released or were to be released during the third generation of home video game consoles would could compete for the right to be called the successor to the Pitfall Legacy.

In the Beginning: Pitfall and Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

Pitfall essentially made David Crane as close to a household name as video games got before the Crash and cemented his reputation as a game designer worthy to be inducted into The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences' Hall of Fame.  This game was a massive success in its day, selling over four million copies and ported over to all the major consoles and many of the popular home computing platforms of the day.

Starting Screen with Stationary Log

Pitfall is one of the first platforming and side-scrolling games, even though the Atari 2600 hardware did not accommodate scrolling and this game only used static screens.  This game was inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark and invited players to explore a large, non-randomized world.  In fact, Pitfall is actually far more popular than the official 2600 Raiders adaptation because Crane was able to pare the exploration concept to the basics while still maintaining a sense of fun.  You can just pick up and play Pitfall, Raiders requires reading the manual and a lot of trial and error in order to make any sense out of it.

Swinging over a crocodile lake

There are many dangers in Pitfall : tar pits, lakes (both of which can expand and retract from what appears to be solid ground), crocodiles, scorpions, snakes and campfires that can kill your character, Pitfall Harry.  Logs can steal points if you collide with them, vines can allow you to cross over dangers, you can jump on the crocodile's heads to get over water, ladders and holes allow you to go underground and the underground passages allow you to "warp" a few screens, if there is no brick wall in the way to block you.  Multi-colored "sprites", a relatively detailed background and catchy sound effects and jingles make the game a visual and aural treat for the 2600.

Swinging over a tar pit and rolling logs

Finally, there is plenty of challenge in that you have to locate 20 treasures strewn across 256 screens in 20 minutes with 3 lives.  You will need to map and plan carefully and identify useful warp passages if you want a good chance of finishing the game.  Important to note that unlike most other Atari 2600 games this game will end (it just stops) if you find the twentieth treasure.

Camping out

One other important theme to note here is that Pitfall Harry has no way to kill any of the enemies which he encounters.  In Pitfall, you have to jump over or otherwise avoid all obstacles, including animals.  This aspect will be maintained in the other games Crane designed and discussed in this article.  Ultimately finding non-violent solutions is a recurrent theme throughout almost all the games Crane has designed.

I forgot to bring my tambourine

Two years after Pitfall, Crane released his sequel, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns.  He did not reinvent the wheel or take the series into a radical new direction.  Some sprites and mechanics were taken from the previous game and the two games are visually similar.  However, he expanded the concept by taking the basic exploration theme of the original game (which only used the horizontal plane) and expanded it into the vertical plane.  There are eight horizontal screens and twenty-seven vertical depth levels which you can explore.  In other words instead of having 255 screens stacked together horizontally, you have a grid of 8x~8 screens, adding an extra dimension to the world.

Starting Screen with Checkpoint and Eventual Goal

Now Pitfall Harry can swim in water and has checkpoints to start at if he is "killed". You do not die in this game, you just get sent back to the last checkpoint.  Nor is there a time limit.  There are several new enemies, like electric eels, frogs, vultures, bats, the rat and the return of the scorpions.  The  vultures and bats travel in a repeating pattern across the screen.  In addition, each time you enter the screen they may start from a different position than the previous time you entered the screen.  This makes it hard judge when you can run underneath them, but you have to run past them to make progress in many areas.  At one point you will need to catch a balloon to progress further in the game.  

Bat and Rat

You can find typical gold brick treasures for points, but the object of the game is to find your pet Quickclaw, your girlfriend Rhonda and a diamond ring.  The game ends when you obtain all three with Harry doing some victory jumps before the game stops.  You loose points by colliding with enemies or falling and landing after a certain height.  The screen scrolls vertically as you descend and explore the "lost caverns".  The look of the game is still very much in line with Pitfall, and like Pitfall, the only thing you can do is climb and descend ladders, walk left and right or jump.

Scorpion, Swimming and Treasure

Crane designed a special hardware chip for the cartridge called the DPC.  Because of this chip, Pitfall II was undoubtedly the most complex cartridge ever to be released on the Atari 2600 during its lifetime.  The DPC chip allows bankswitching up to 10KB of ROM (Atari carts are only 2K or 4K without bankswitching; Pitfall is a 4K game), a hardware random number generator, hardware to assist with graphics processing and hardware to generate the data to feed into the internal 2600 audio to create three additional channels of sound.  There was not enough space to put the Adventurer's Edition second quest into the 2600 original that was present in the Atari 5200, 8-bit and Commodore 64 versions of the game.

Watertfall and Electric Eel

Frogs, Ladders and Multiple Levels

Thanks to the DPC chip, Pitfall 2 has music playing throughout.  There are four pieces of music, the treasure theme, the return to checkpoint theme, the default theme and the balloon theme.  This music plays according to what happens during the game.  Multi-channel music as heard in Pitfall 2 is difficult to pull off on the 2600, but when coupled with an advanced game engine like Pitfall 2's, it needed hardware assistance.

Multi-level Madness

Vultures

A Boy and his Blob

Title Screen

Start Screen

The 2600 was too long in the tooth when David Crane was developing A Boy and his Blob, the 7800 and the Sega Master System did not have the market share and the Commodore 64 was dying in the US.  Having left Activision, he had no more right to create a Pitfall sequel than I would.  He ended up creating A Boy and his Blob for the dominant platform of the day, the NES.  A Boy and His Blob to me feels like Pitfall III and in addition to having its creator at the helm, let me explain the design similarities between this game and its Pitfall predecessors.

No money, no healthy food

A subtle way to inject the production team into the game

The Boy in the title is less capable than Pitfall Harry, he can only move/run left and right, he cannot jump unaided.  However, he has a companion, the Blob, which functions as a puzzle solving device.  Using different flavored jelly beans, the Blob can do different things.  Need a ladder, feed him the licorice jelly bean.  Want to drop down to the next level, turn the Blob into a hole with the punch jelly bean (you can do this multiple times for one bean).  While you have 15 flavors to choose from, your supply of jelly beans is limited and you need to use them wisely.  The Blob and jelly bean mechanic represents an evolution over using the character's own abilities to get past obstacles.

Treasure and Subway Serpent

Don't try this in real life

Like Pitfall 2, this game requires exploration of caverns beneath the surface.  Similarly, the game is structured in a grid of non-scrolling horizontal screens.  Unlike Pitfall 2, the screens do not scroll vertically, despite the superior NES hardware.  I do not believe this was done because David Crane could not figure out NES scrolling but because the levels were so vast and less structured than Pitfall 2 that it would have made map making much more difficult.

Cinnamon & Spice

The caverns have many dangers, including subway serpents, falling rocks, spider webs and stalactites and stalagmites in the water.  However, unlike Pitfall 2, the omnipresent danger is death by falling.  If you fall more than one and a half screens (without a device that can ease your fall), you die.  You start off with five lives in this game and no continues.  Also, your Boy moves a lot looser than Pitfall Harry, so you may run into something you cannot avoid and cannot turn back quickly enough to lose a life.  You cannot swim but the Blob can help you with that.  Finally, if you lose a life you will start at the point where you found your last treasure similar to Pitfall 2's checkpoints.

That Blob is very strong

But running under those subway serpents is still tricky

Mind your height

The goal of the first half of the game is to find treasures and escape the caverns.  There are 22 treasures located in different areas of the underground caverns, similar to Pitfall 2.  At the bottom of the caverns you will find an underground lake just like in Pitfall 2.  These treasures allow you to buy vitamins that you will need on the Blob's home planet, Blobolonia.  The second half of the game is a shorter experience where you have to dodge more enemies and defeat the evil, sweets-loving emperor.  Ultimately, gameplay is the key focus of this game.  The graphics are drab and backgrounds are mostly black underneath the subway.  It is quite easy to get lost because screens often look alike.  Music is limited to one basic piece of music for the game (in addition to the title screen music) and a few sound effects and ditties that play at certain times.

You will need to do this very often

Super Pitfall

Title Screen

I am aware that there is a game for the NES called Super Pitfall, but that is an abomination that David Crane had nothing to do with.  It is a port of a Japanese PC-8801 game by Pony Canon where is was called Super Pit Fall. Post-founders-era Activision licensed the title and published it as one of its first NES games. Activision may hold the rights to the Pitfall brand, but that does not mean it earns a place here considering its pedigree.

Spider and Bat Enemies and Water

Super Pitfall is a stripped down port from programmers who did not quite get the NES.  Scrolling is choppy, graphics are barely NES-worthy, the music is a 15-second piece intended to give you an idea of what hell feels like and there is quite a pause as the level loads.  You can now duck and shoot a gun with limited ammo and there are a couple of bosses, which pretty much sums up the evolution of this game over Pitfall 2.  Hit detection is unfair.  Even the manual states that the gun will feel useless at times, which is refreshingly honest. You can see glitches with sprites not infrequently.  The gun mechanic does introduce an element foreign to Crane's Pitfall games.  Also, items are invisible, so you have to jump in certain places to make them appear.  The game is filled with cheap deaths, in fact if you go down the first ladder in the game you will almost certainly die.

Bats and Frogs

Like Pitfall 2, you have to obtain the diamond, the pet and the girlfriend to win the game, but there are more obstacles to overcome. The world is huge (270+ screens) but you only have three lives and no continues, so it will be difficult to get a feel for it.

Waterfalls, Spikes and Treasure

Super Pitfall 2

Title Screen

There was going to be a game called Super Pitfall 2 released for the NES, but was canceled.  There is a prototype ROM floating about.  Super Pitfall 2 was a port of another Japanese game, this one a Famicom game called Atlantis no Nazo (Mystery of Atlantis) by Sunsoft.  The prototype appears to differ from the Japanese original only in its title screen.

1st Zone

Unlike Super Pitfall, Super Pitfall 2 is competently programmed.  Sunsoft was willing to hire competent programmers, Pony not so much.  The graphics are still bland but the music is pretty decent and the control is not quite as frustrating.  Your weapon is a bomb that you can throw, but it detonates when it wants to and can kill you if you are in its (short) blast radius.  The jumping could use more polish (you cannot change your trajectory in mid jump like Castlevania) and the game will get frustrating very quickly.  The bats dropping guano as a weapon is a nice touch.  The shell crabs will hide in their shells if they perceive a bomb coming, so killing them is a bit tricky.  Still, the violent solution is out of place in Crane's Pitfall games.  

2nd Zone

Ultimately, Super Pitfall 2 is really a horizontal side scroller.  The level progression is fairly linear and it does not feel like a Pitfall game at all.  You can find doors that will take you to a small portion of a later zone, but the game is still linear.  Even Super Pitfall was better at conveying an open world.  Pitfall's influence on the game is still present.  The enemies appear to be mostly of the natural variety and there are treasure chests you can open for points.  Between its lack of a real Pitfall feel and its rather long-in-the-tooth status for 1989 when Activision was considering porting it, it is no surprise that it eventually went unreleased.  An optimist may wish to believe that Activision saw that its former founder had released a Pitfall-like game in the same year and did not want to compete with him, but my idea is probably the more likely reason.

3rd Zone