Blog Stats
According to Blogger, this blog has had almost 220,000 page views. So far I have published 205 posts, not including posts that I have removed because they were not up to snuff.
Many of my most popular posts tend to be about flash carts. Those are some expensive posts! People have been generous enough to lend me hardware. The Framemeister and Turbo CD posts would not have happened otherwise. This is expensive hardware, and requires me to treat it respectfully and return it when I am done. I would like to thank anyone who has ever donated anything to me for review.
The trouble with flash carts is that once you buy one, in a year they release a more advanced one. The Mega Everdrive has a v.2 which adds support for battery backed saving. With the v.2 you will not longer need to reset in order to retain your save in Phantasy Star II or Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Of course, when you have a v.1, an upgrade feels like a necessity but is more of a luxury.
As some of the more dedicated readers of this blog may have noticed, the number of blog entries has increased dramatically over the past two years. When I started this blog in 2010, it took over four years to publish 100 posts. In just over a year, I have passed the 200 mark. With this increase in content has come an increase in pageviews. I now get 10,000 page views a month. While most of my readers are based in the United States, I have a sizable number of pageviews from Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Russia.
Video is not for me
I tried putting up a Youtube channel and did make some videos showing off some of my vintage hardware but took all the videos down. I'm no good with video, I simply do not have the equipment for it. My smartphone camera just is not up to the task of taking professional video and none is. I do not have any devices to capture video directly from my consoles or computers. I do not even have a good quality condenser microphone. I tried using written captions but that took forever. Nor do I have proper lighting, so my videos always look grainy. Moreover, I do not have access to good free video editing software or the training I need to make effective video edits. My particular talent, to the extent I have one, is with the written word. This does not mean that I would never post a video, but I generally would keep them short and blog oriented. I have made audio recordings, something that can be done easily with Audacity. Even though hosting the clips on Soundcloud is cumbersome, it works well enough.
Favorite Youtube Channels
Although I watch many Youtube channels fairly consistently as they pertain to retrogaming and retro PC and console hardware, there are a few channels dedicated to the PC side of things which deserve a special mention. The number of people seriously interested in vintage PC gaming and hardware is rather small compared to the Atari 2600 or the NES or the Genesis or the SNES. There are a few well-produced channels focusing on vintage PC gaming which I believe are worth noting. While I like AVGN's stuff, he has 1.8 million subscribers and does not need my endorsement. These guys and girl do :
1. Ancient DOS Games : https://www.youtube.com/user/Pixelmusement
Ancient DOS Games (ADG) is run by Kris Asick, who has been running the ADG series since 2010. Kris' background is in game design. He has had games published and he knows how to program. He approaches his reviews focusing on the game design, highlighting what works and what doesn't. He also gives advice on how to set up games in DOSBox and tells you where you can find these games. I really hope GoG supports him on Patreon. In his canonical series, he has reviewed some 164 DOS games. His reviews include well-known classics like King's Quest and System Shock, crap console to PC ports like Mega Man and Mega Man III, edutainment titles like 3-D Body Adventure and Math Rescue, and obscure games like Thor's Hammer and Moraff's World.
Prior to 2013, Kris hosted his videos on blip.tv A bit later than most he saw that the handwriting was on the wall as far as blip's long-term viability (Flash has no place in the tablet-centric world of this decade) and began uploading his old videos to Youtube. Now he has fully transferred his whole series where I hope a much wider audience can find and enjoy them.
2. Lazy Game Reviews : https://www.youtube.com/user/phreakindee
Clint Basinger, (no relation to Kim), has been making game and hardware reviews and videos and posting them to his Youtube channel, Lazy Game Reviews, since 2008. Clint is as engaging as he is knowledgeable, and unlike many other people who focus on all things DOS, he actually has a very respectable collection of hardware and is not afraid to show it. His PC software collection would inspire almost anyone with envy. He also captures footage from real hardware, which is very special in this day and age. There are also reviews of non-IBM PC hardware and even console hardware. Clint can be trusted to give a concise talk about the subject of his video.
Clint has recently been doing Let's Plays with Kris and PushingUpRoses, and is a huge Sims and SimCity fan. He has many, many videos of both these series, but I have no interest in the Sims and little interest in SimCity past SimCity 2000. He has taken his knowledge of the history of the PCs and has made videos on various interesting stories from its history.
3. Pushing Up Roses : https://www.youtube.com/user/pushinguproses
Did you know that women used to play DOS games? Like every other type of video gaming, PC gaming was typically a male-focused interest. However, many women did play DOS games back in the day, I know one very well. Certain categories of DOS games, like point and click adventure games and puzzle games had a much stronger appeal toward women than the sidescrollers and the shoot-em-ups of NES, Genesis and SNES or Wolfenstein 3-D and DOOM on the PC. Pioneering women like Roberta Williams, Lori Ann Cole, Jane Jensen and Lorelei Shannon made their mark in the adventure game genre and have indisputable classic series to their names. (Is it a coincidence that all three of these game designers made their mark at Sierra?)
Only a very few female fans only a very few have been known to venture into vintage DOS gaming (its so annoying to feel like you are constantly being hit on.) One of those who have is PushingUpRoses. She has reviewed many DOS games and always brings a fresh and often times rather feisty perspective to the table. She also does Let's Play videos of DOS games, sometimes with LGR. I tend to avoid these because I don't like spoilers, even if I probably won't get a chance to really play the game for the next five years.
Quest Studios RIP?
On a sadder note, the once mighty Quest Studios site has gone down. It hosted an extensive Sierra sound track library, both recordings and MIDI files take directly from the games. It also had many arrangements of Sierra tunes and a lot of information about the MT-32 and MIDI utilities for it and other old sound cards. This was the site where I first really understood what an MT-32 was and why it was so special.
The site had been merely maintained for years, but it was on its the forums that ignited an interest in retro PC hardware. In its day it was the place where new discoveries were made. On that forum, the differences between the generations of MT-32 hardware became generally known. I made many a trade using that forum as well as my best online friend.
However, by 2012 the forums were not seeing much action, most of the interest in vintage hardware having gone to VOGONS and the trading gone to Amibay. The forum's software was not updated, leading to a mostly-broken search function. Links on the main site to files started to break and repairs were not quick to come. In late April of 2015, the site was hacked, causing people who followed a Google link to be redirected. The hack looked simple and at first seemed to be repaired, but searching the site or forum using Google saw the user encounter the hack again. The ISP recommended that they upgrade their hosting software, but that may not have worked with the site files compromised. The other alternative was to reload the existing clean SMF software, then upgrade. While this may or may not be done, the site has been taken down in the meantime. The site owners are older and may not feel it is worth the trouble to put it back up. All that remains currently is a simple placeholder page directing the user to the owner's Youtube channel, with no Sierra or vintage hardware content to be seen.
MobyGames : New Management but No Interest
I knew that Trixter had founded MobyGames way back in 1999, but it never really sunk in that he had not been actively administering the site for years. I contributed a few screenshots and reviews here and there, but I was not going to win any contribution awards. Then in September of 2013 the site received a massive resdesign that essentially destroyed most of its usefulness.
Fortunately, this state of affairs lasted for less than three months. In December of 2013, a redesign was launched which has persisted with some minor changes to the present day. However, I have never felt the desire to contribute to the site since the bad redesign. The pre-September 2013 design was not particularly friendly to portable computing, but the bad redesign satisfied neither the traditional desktop or the tablet/smartphone crowd. The December 2013 redesign can be lived with and I often go to MobyGames for research or because I need screenshots and am too lazy to take them myself.
Before the redesigns, I found the contribution approval system to be slow and fickle. I had trivia or even whole games waiting for over a year for some action. There were screenshots that needed review by someone higher up the chain. Of course, when you are an expert, it is very annoying to have to wait for a second opinion from someone who is unlikely to be as well-informed.
Saturday, June 13, 2015
NES Versions that are Better than the Arcade, or Graphics Aren't Everything
Part I - The Superior Port
Contra
Contra is widely recognized as a classic on the NES. It has good graphics (especially the Famicom version, which has animation inthe backgrounds in level 1, 5 & 8) and excellent music for its time. The play control is very responsive. The bosses are great (except level 7, which is something of a let down, but is non-existent in the arcade version.)
Compared to the NES version, the arcade original has very short stages and they are very simplistic. Using a vertically oriented monitor as the arcade original did makes sense in an overhead shooter but not in a sidescroller. Enemies are on top of you without fair warning. The graphics use many more colors but everything appears small. Your characters move like molasses. The NES's Level 3 boss is much cooler than the arcade's. The level 5 and 6 bosses are treated more like the level 5 tanks. Also, the last four levels in the arcade progress without a break. The NES version gives you a break, and the Famicom version has short scenes that propel the story.
Super C vs. Super Contra
Most of what I had to say about the differences between the NES and Arcade versions of Contra apply here, although Super Contra does bridge the gap more than arcade Contra. Stages 4, 5 and 7 in the NES versions has no arcade counterparts. Arcade Stage 5 is very similar to NES Stage 8 and its boss has no NES counterpart whereas the other have. Obviously Super C is more impressive graphically than Contra or NES Super C and your character has more fluid movement, but that vertical perspective is so inappropriate.
Jackal vs. Top Gunner/Jackal
Jackal for the Arcade came earlier (1986) than either Contra (1987) or Super Contra (1988). Arcade Top Gunner (Jackal in World versions) is one long stage, no breaks, no bosses (except at the very end and its pretty underwhelming) It gets very repetitive after a while. NES Jackal is another great Konami game, and like Contra and Super C and Life Force is a two player simultaneous game. The Famicom Disk System version of the game, Final Commando, is not quite as impressive as the NES due to the vertical-only scrolling and lack of the first mission.
While I am here, I would like to praise Konami for handling its ports. When they do things in house, the results are usually pretty amazing. TMNT 2 - The Arcade Game for the NES is without a doubt the best contemporary port of the arcade title. However, I do not consider it as superior to its arcade original because the arcade original is extremely colorful like the TV show, well-animated and supports four players. While the NES version has more stages, it has a severe limit on the number of enemies on the screen and the stages get monotonous. Green Beret on the Famicom Disk System is a very good port with very catchy music lacking in the arcade version. Its NES equivalent, Rush 'N Attack, has some difficulty balance issues.
When Konami does not do things in-house or hands a project off to the B-Team, the results are often disappointing. Metal Gear for the NES is a mess, Metal Gear 2 looks the part of a sequel but that is about it, and TMNT for the NES just did not leverage the license very well and was unfairly difficult to boot.
Life Force vs. Life Force/Salamander
Life Force for the Arcade has some very nice graphics. The NES version took it as a template and improved on it quite a bit. The two versions have a nearly identical first, third and last stages, but the NES version's stages 4 and 5 have no arcade counterpart. They are two of the most impressive stages as well, as stage 4 sends you through what looks like a living entity and stage 5 sends you through an Egyptian pyramid. Their bosses have no counterparts in the arcade version. The NES version relegates the less impressive bosses in arcade stages 3 and 4 to mini-boss status in NES stages 3 and 2, respectively. Arcade stage 2 becomes the first half of NES stage 6 and arcade stage 4 becomes NES stage 2. Arcade stage 5 is really short and non-descript. The final boss for stage 6 is far less menacing than the NES version of this boss. The arcade version has a nice mini-boss homage to Gradius lacking in the NES.
One other advantage the NES has over the arcade is the use of the Gradius-style powerup system. In the arcade, if an enemy leaves a power up, you have to take what is given. It can be difficult at first to distinguish the various powerup icons. In the NES version, you can save power up levels and choose how you want to upgrade your ship. The Famicom version, Salamander, allows you to have three option pods whereas the NES version only allows two.
I would like to talk about the sound. Usually the sound effects in Konami's arcade games are good, but they often drown out the music. Contra is an exception and its arrangement sounds very good. All these arcade games use FM Synthesis for their music, but I find the FM synthesis for most of these games to be underwhelming compared to the more distinct PSG-based NES music. In Life Force, there is a fair amount of digitized speech, but it intrudes far too frequently and it is often difficult to make out the words. And this is playing it in MAME, never mind a loud arcade!
Part II - The Superior Adaptation
Ninja Gaiden
Up to this point I have been comparing arcade ports to their originals. Now I will turn to games that had a (usually exclusive) NES version based off the arcade version, but not a direct port. Let's start with Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden. The arcade game played like a side-scrolling beat-em-up, sort of like a combination of Spartan X and Double Dragon (or Streets of Rage). The enemies are extremely generic and do not take many hits to beat. Ryu's attacks are a punch/kick combo or a jumping head flip. He does not use his ninja sword that often. The best part of the game has to be the continue screen, where you see Ryu tied down and looking fearfully at a buzz saw slowly descending as the time runs out. It is no classic, the graphics are often dull and crude, the music unremarkable and the levels are a long slog.
Ninja Gaiden for the NES is a classic. It is not a beat-em-up, just a sidescroller. It does what it does very well, with appropriately gritty graphics, a pseudo-3D perspective is used to great effect, a superb sound track with great use of DPCM-channel percussion. The control is very responsive, the hit range is fair (something its sequels had trouble with). The difficulty level is appropriately ramped up throughout the game (although it becomes unfair in 6-2 and beyond) and the bosses are unique. When you finally beat this game, you really feel like you have accomplished something special.
Most important, Ninja Gaiden had the first known uses of detailed cutscenes in a console video game. Tecmo used these cutscenes to tell the story in a dramatic way. Most games up to this point had a perfunctory story that usually could be confined to the manual or used talking heads. In Ninja Gaiden, the story propels the action instead of feeling tacked on. It also helps that the dialogue is relatively free from Engrish. The arcade Ninja Gaiden does not have a story, just a framing device of Ryu traveling to America to defeat an evil cult. There is simply no time for this sort of thing in an arcade game where the primary object of the game is to make the players pump as many quarters into the machine as they can.
I should also mention that Ninja Gaiden spawned two sequels on the NES and other games in the series for the Sega Master System, Game Gear and Game Boy. The arcade game went nowhere.
Rygar
Arcade Rygar is a simple side scroller where your character can jump on enemies to stun them and use a retractable discus to hit them. You walk from left to right across 27 rounds, acquiring powerups that extend the length, speed and damage of your discus. In addition to having a frontal attack, you can swing the discus overhead to attack airborne enemies. There is a minimap on the bottom of the screen and you can see your enemies emerge underground, although your character cannot go there. The graphics are decent, but the music is a single song that gets repetitive quickly. There is something like a final boss at the end of the game, but no other bosses to break up the monotony.
NES Rygar is an adventure game similar to Zelda 2 in many respects. Like Zelda II it has a top down style of movement as well as a plaformer style. You can find items in various zones that will improve your abilities, you can cast a few magic spells by acquiring spell points from enemies, and you earn experience points from killing monsters that increase your attack power and life meter. You retain the discus and can extend it with the Attack and Assail magic option, but you cannot swing it overhead. You can also stun most enemies by jumping on them. Unlike Zelda II, you can fight while in the overhead mode (like the original Zelda).
Even though the graphics are a tad rough around the edges and lacking in color a bit, there are lots of variety of enemies for a game of this vintage. The various side scrolling levels offer a lot of variety, from swamps and caves to mountains and sky castles. The music is really good, and even better in the Famicom version. Proper boss enemies guard the treasures you will need to find. Like every other adventure game on the NES of this period, clues are very cryptic and not helped by some egregious examples of Engrish. If you die you can continue from where you left off, but there is no password or battery backed save. Overall it is far superior to the arcade version and fondly remembered when a Playstation 2 sequel was released in 2002.
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando is similar to Rygar in that the arcade version is a relatively simple sidescroller while the NES version is an adventure game. The arcade game has a rather muted color palette (which seems to be something of a common theme of the arcade games featured in this blog post) and some jaunty tunes. The character designs are very squat and cartoony. The game at five stages is very short, and there is one part at the end that qualifies as a boss fight, but just barely.
Bionic Commando for the NES was very ambitious for its time. It has an actual story of your character trying to rescue Super Joe behind enemy lines. You are a soldier of the Federation, fighting against the evil Badds Empire. The Badds Empire under the command of Generalissimo Kilt is focusing all its efforts on the Albatros plan, an armored warship that would allow the enemy to control the world. You traverse 19 zones to find Super Joe, then destroy the Albatros and then prevent the resurrection of the Badds's evil leader, Master D.
That was the US version's story. The Japanese version was called Top Secret, Hitler's Resurrection. The Japanese version squarely identifies the enemy as being Neo-Nazis and Master D as being Adolf Hitler. (The US manual refers to the enemy group as "Nazz", not "Badds".) There are swastikas in the Japanese game, which were adjusted for the U.S. version. Even in the U.S. version, the insigna for the enemy was changed to Nazi-appropriate Albatrosses. Generalissmo Kilt/General Weissman looks like Herman Göring.
Bionic Commando for the NES has excellent gameplay, taking the main idea from the arcade and developing it into a superb adventure game. The game is still a side scrolling game, and the bionic arm works just like the arcade. You can send the arm up, diagonally at an angle or straight in front. You can latch onto objects and platforms and use them to pull yourself or swing. Because you cannot jump, you have to show a bit of foresight on where you want to go and how you are going to get there. It is extremely impressive for a game of its vintage to use diagonal scrolling on the NES. Most of its contemporaries and predecessors did not scroll, scrolled either horizontally or vertically or both but not at the same time.
Bionic Commando requires you to beat each of the twelve enemy zones and rewards you with a new item when you beat each one. You start off with a basic gun, but soon you will have access to more powerful weapons. You will also find helping items that are necessary to explore some of the stages. You must destroy the reactor core of each area to get its item. These reactors are defended by increasingly difficult guards, making the reactor rooms the equivalent of boss fights .
In order to unlock the doors that keep you from getting to the reactor core for each stage, you have to enter communications rooms and communicate with your allies or eavesdrop on your enemies. They may give you helpful information or just spout nonsense. There are four communicators in the game, each one only works in three of the enemy zones.
You find communicators in the seven neutral zones. Neutral zones are zones where you will not be officially attacked by the Badds, but if you shoot then the civilians disappear and hostile soldiers spawn in until you leave the area. You can receive information or be taunted by characters in these zones and find communicators and other items inside the rooms.
There is an RPG element to Bionic Commando. When you first start the game, one touch or bullet from an enemy will kill you. As you kill enemies, they drop bullets. By picking up these bullets, you will eventually gain the ability to take a hit, then two, then three and so on.
There is an element of non-linearity to Bionic Commando. You can fly to many zones in the beginning and do not necessarily have to complete each in a certain order. However, some zones you are not intended to enter before beating others, and you cannot travel to zones eight and above when you start, so non-linearity has its limits. Also, you won't be able to continue your game unless you clear the stages where your helicopter encounters an enemy convoy on the map. These stages use an overhead view and are very simple, but you collect continues by beating the large enemies in those stages.
Although there is some variety in the enemy zones, they are essentially military bases and look the part. The obstacles provide a good deal of the challenge and fun. Since you cannot jump, elevators become very helpful. However, this game has a lot of traps, including disabled elevators, man eating plants and ambushes in the communications rooms. There are lots of enemies, including standard soldiers, little soldiers driving big rigs, a huge soldier that throws steel balls and laser turrets travel back and forth across the screen shooting beams. Sometimes the stages become exercises in determining whether you have mastered the use and timing of the bionic arm. There are times you have to use your arm very precisely in order to avoid falling to your death.
The NES game loses the cartoon theme of the arcade and has a much more serious military theme. The English dialogue includes the word "damn", something of a no-no for Nintendo's censorship policies of the NES era. While there is some Engrish, it does not get to laughably bad too often. The graphics are always good and some of the enemies are quite large. Character interaction use head portraits. The music, of which two pieces have been taken from the arcade game, is utterly fantastic. The arcade game has been mostly forgotten, while the NES game spawned a Game Boy game, a Game Boy Color game, and a remake in 2008 and two followup games thereafter.
Little Nemo Dream Master vs. Nemo
Little Nemo was an odd title to make a licensed game. Little Nemo in Slumberland was a newspaper comic strip drawn by Windsor McCay from 1905-1914 and from 1924-1926. The property had some occasional revivals and was fondly remembered by the cartoonists who were influenced by it, but it had not achieved continual currency of near contemporaries like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula or Mickey Mouse or even Tarzan. However, in 1989 there was an animated feature film called Little Nemo : Adventures in Slumberland, and Capcom based both games off that adaptation.
Arcade Nemo is somewhat obscure, and it is easy to see why. While it looks very nice, it is very a simple 1990 sidescroller. There is very little diagonal scrolling and Nemo's primary attack is a wand that he uses like an energized baton. He can also throw objects and collect power ups to make his attack stronger. He has a lifebar. In a two player game, the second player plays as Flip. The bosses get very weird in this game, which is very appropriate considering the source material. Level 5's boss is a very clever parody of a boss in Konami's Gradius III. There are seven stages and some variety between them.
NES Little Nemo is another very strong licensed game from Capcom. It seems that only Capcom and Konami were able to do justice to licensed properties on the NES. Little Nemo is a sidescroller, but unlike the arcade game, there are large open worlds to explore. Nemo explores each world after an introduction from another character like Flip. He has to collect a certain number of keys throughout the level to advance. There are no boss fights until the last stage. The has a short life bar, which can be extended. His only weapon is candy, of which he possesses an unlimited amount. He can jump, but not very high.
His candy can stun some enemies, but what it is really useful for is to lull certain animals into sleep. After you get an animal to sleep, Nemo can become the animal and use its abilities. The frog allows Nemo to jump very high and defeat enemies by landing on them, the mole allows you to dig through dirt, and the bee allows you to fly and shoot a stinger, the ape can punch enemies out and the lizard can climb up walls. You won't have access to an animal helper at all times, you have to dodge, stun or otherwise avoid many enemies. These add a strategic element to what could have been a run of the mill adventure game. On the eighth stage do you get to use the wand and face the Nightmare King and several mini-bosses before him.
The graphics are very bright and colorful. The stages all look distinct and the music is another Capcom showcase (Capcom had some very good composers working on the NES). There are nice opening, middle and end sequences. The only downside to this game is that there was no password save.
Part III - The Miscellaneous
Port or Adaptation? - Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!! vs Punch Out!!!
Arcade Punch-Out!!! and its sequel are good games, but Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!! is sublime. The arcade game was overdesigned with its dual monitor cabinet, the upper monitor is simply not vital to the gameplay. Arcade Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out have six unique fighters each. It has voice samples, but they constantly play to the point where they become annoying.
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out has eleven unique fighters. The NES version also has Mario as the referee, three rounds and cut scenes where your trainer can try to give you advice and your opponent can taunt you and transition scenes where it shows you doing road work with your trainer. Nintendo made the inspired decision to use the name and likeness of the then-current undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and one of the most feared fighters of all time, Mike Tyson. They made him one of the most feared video game boxing opponents ever as well. The game just made you keep coming back to try and find the patterns and weaknesses in the fighter you were stuck at to get to the next one. Nintendo also allowed players to return to the circuit which they left off with a password, which helped players get to where they wanted to practice much more quickly than going through the whole game.
The Reverse Port - Castlevania vs. Haunted Castle
Castlevania came first on the NES (Famicom Disk System really), then a related game was developed in tandem and released a little later on the MSX2 platform and finally a very similar game got released for the arcade. The NES game is a classic, the MSX2 game is sort of an alternative version and very good, but the arcade game is garbage. The problems with the arcade game are that the play control is incredibly stiff, your whip's attack range is pathetic, the enemies can hit you very easily and give out massive amounts of damage. You will be lucky to get to Medusa, and you only have about four quarters worth of continues before the game forces you to start back at the beginning. This was a also present in Konami arcade games like Contra and Super Contra and Life Force, but was taken to a ridiculous extreme in this game. The special weapons are not very useful either and ammunition is hard to obtain. The graphics are weird in a kind of cartoony way and rather ugly looking, but the music is very good. You will have to play the game a lot to hear it legitimately.
Castlevania for the NES is no cakewalk, but it runs to the not impossible side of the difficult scale. It offers unlimited continues, and even still it will require lots of practice and enemy memorization in the later levels. The FDS version would save your level progress. Unlike Haunted Castle, Simon Belmont's whip has good range and can be powered up easily to have a longer and more powerful attack. Hit detection is solid and jumping, while stiff, is not nearly as ungainly as the arcade version. The NES version ramps up the difficulty very nicely and is well paced.
Tie - Willow
Willow for the Arcade was a good game and pretty faithful to the film, following the plot reasonably closely. The levels are bright and colorful and many of the bosses come from the movie. You play as Willow (1, 3 & 6) and Madmartigan (2, 4 & 6), both of whom have different attack styles. You get to choose which character you can play in stage 5, which has the most impressive boss fight by far. Willow throws magic acorns, which he can charge for a more powerful attack. Madmartigan uses his sword, making his attack up close and he can also charge up his attack. The brownies can help Willow at times. By defeating enemies and opening treasure chests you can earn gold which you can use to buy items and permanent power ups at shops. Most of the six stages end with a boss battle. Your characters start with a lifebar of three units, which you can extend. All in all, it has more depth than your average arcade platformer.
Willow for the NES is more of a very loose adaptation of the film to serve a top-down Zelda style adventure game with RPG elements. It feels like Capcom set out to make a non-Willow game and then tacked on the Willow elements when it paid for the license. Willow is armed generally with a sword and a shield. There is no gold, you find all your items. You have hit points and magic points, and raise them by defeating monsters for experience points. You can get up to level 16 in the game.
Not only does Willow's attack power increase with levels, so does his attack speed with the various swords. Willow can either thust with his sword or slash with it. Magic can be used to heal, to stun enemies and to attack enemies. The shield helps from Willow getting hit and can block enemy projectiles. Willow has a rather large area for enemies to hit him otherwise.
The game has a huge world with several towns with townspeople, some of whom may give you weapons and magic. There are overworld areas and many caves and castles filled with enemy monsters. Monsters will appear randomly on any of these screen. A neat effect is the wind tunnel when enemies spawn on the overworld. The game did not come with maps, which are essential to getting around in this game. I do have to fault the game with the constant reuse of map screen types and there should have been more music. The music here is very good, however.
Not Superior - Strider vs. Strider
Strider for the Arcade and the NES is one instance where I have to award the better version award to the arcade, even though the NES version is an adventure game. Strider for the arcade is classic. Hiryu has pretty good control for the time, can acquire temporary power ups like an extended sword and robot and eagle helpers. There are five stages in total, and each one has many memorable moments. Each stage could be viewed as series of set pieces with the music changes showing the transitions. The big boss fights may not always happen at the end of the stage, but each one is memorable. Hiryu can grab onto platforms and walk up walls. There are points in the game were gravity is reversed and you must fight upside down. The difficulty follows a fairly linear curve, but there are few nasty spikes on the way. When you die, you continue at the beginning of the scene you died on, not at the beginning of the level. The graphics are great with plenty of bold color and some very large enemies. The music and sound effects are also top notch.
Strider for the NES is something of a mess. It has a lot more plot, your character becomes stronger as you progress through the levels and there is a password save. You can also acquire the equivalent of magic, you can shoot fireballs and heal yourself and jump higher, among other things. You can acquire items like the Aqua Boots, which let you stand on water and Attack Boots, which give you a sliding attack. You have hit points and energy points, but they are not raised by the number of enemies you kill but when you beat a stage. You will also need to acquire keys and files to get past certain obstacles. You can use your sword similar to the arcade version, but it has less range. You can also attack by raising it above your head and jumping up, and later you acquire a charged shot. Your helpers are absent.
The trouble with Strider is mainly one of play control. This Hiryu moves very stiffly. He can do a wall jump, but pulling it off is nearly impossible. There is one or two spots in the Egypt level that requires this jump, but thereafter you never need it again. Replenishing your health or energy can be done by pills dropped in certain places or by certain enemies, but there are times when they never seem to drop, usually when you most need them. The music is very good and appropriate to the stages, but the graphics are really gritty and fuzzy. There is a lot of slowdown and flicker when enemies are on the screen. Sloppy object removal code leads to unwanted graphics and colors seen on the edges of the screen of the more revealing monitors.
Many of the levels have a boss encounter, a Zain mind control machine. These are always the same and can be destroyed very easily. The plot is typical anime stuff, and there is some pretty goofy Engrish throughout. Hiryu can be hit easily and repeatedly, leading to many cheap deaths. There are also several tricky jumps with punishing consequences for missing them. The game is not super difficult, just too inconsistent to overcome the superior arcade version, which has spawned other action-oriented sequels. The adventure-style NES game has not had its elements carry over into later entries in the series. Still, taken in its own right it is enjoyable and uses a password system.
I am indebted to MobyGames for the arcade game screenshots.
Contra
Contra is widely recognized as a classic on the NES. It has good graphics (especially the Famicom version, which has animation inthe backgrounds in level 1, 5 & 8) and excellent music for its time. The play control is very responsive. The bosses are great (except level 7, which is something of a let down, but is non-existent in the arcade version.)
Compared to the NES version, the arcade original has very short stages and they are very simplistic. Using a vertically oriented monitor as the arcade original did makes sense in an overhead shooter but not in a sidescroller. Enemies are on top of you without fair warning. The graphics use many more colors but everything appears small. Your characters move like molasses. The NES's Level 3 boss is much cooler than the arcade's. The level 5 and 6 bosses are treated more like the level 5 tanks. Also, the last four levels in the arcade progress without a break. The NES version gives you a break, and the Famicom version has short scenes that propel the story.
Super C vs. Super Contra
Most of what I had to say about the differences between the NES and Arcade versions of Contra apply here, although Super Contra does bridge the gap more than arcade Contra. Stages 4, 5 and 7 in the NES versions has no arcade counterparts. Arcade Stage 5 is very similar to NES Stage 8 and its boss has no NES counterpart whereas the other have. Obviously Super C is more impressive graphically than Contra or NES Super C and your character has more fluid movement, but that vertical perspective is so inappropriate.
Jackal vs. Top Gunner/Jackal
Jackal for the Arcade came earlier (1986) than either Contra (1987) or Super Contra (1988). Arcade Top Gunner (Jackal in World versions) is one long stage, no breaks, no bosses (except at the very end and its pretty underwhelming) It gets very repetitive after a while. NES Jackal is another great Konami game, and like Contra and Super C and Life Force is a two player simultaneous game. The Famicom Disk System version of the game, Final Commando, is not quite as impressive as the NES due to the vertical-only scrolling and lack of the first mission.
While I am here, I would like to praise Konami for handling its ports. When they do things in house, the results are usually pretty amazing. TMNT 2 - The Arcade Game for the NES is without a doubt the best contemporary port of the arcade title. However, I do not consider it as superior to its arcade original because the arcade original is extremely colorful like the TV show, well-animated and supports four players. While the NES version has more stages, it has a severe limit on the number of enemies on the screen and the stages get monotonous. Green Beret on the Famicom Disk System is a very good port with very catchy music lacking in the arcade version. Its NES equivalent, Rush 'N Attack, has some difficulty balance issues.
When Konami does not do things in-house or hands a project off to the B-Team, the results are often disappointing. Metal Gear for the NES is a mess, Metal Gear 2 looks the part of a sequel but that is about it, and TMNT for the NES just did not leverage the license very well and was unfairly difficult to boot.
Life Force vs. Life Force/Salamander
Life Force for the Arcade has some very nice graphics. The NES version took it as a template and improved on it quite a bit. The two versions have a nearly identical first, third and last stages, but the NES version's stages 4 and 5 have no arcade counterpart. They are two of the most impressive stages as well, as stage 4 sends you through what looks like a living entity and stage 5 sends you through an Egyptian pyramid. Their bosses have no counterparts in the arcade version. The NES version relegates the less impressive bosses in arcade stages 3 and 4 to mini-boss status in NES stages 3 and 2, respectively. Arcade stage 2 becomes the first half of NES stage 6 and arcade stage 4 becomes NES stage 2. Arcade stage 5 is really short and non-descript. The final boss for stage 6 is far less menacing than the NES version of this boss. The arcade version has a nice mini-boss homage to Gradius lacking in the NES.
One other advantage the NES has over the arcade is the use of the Gradius-style powerup system. In the arcade, if an enemy leaves a power up, you have to take what is given. It can be difficult at first to distinguish the various powerup icons. In the NES version, you can save power up levels and choose how you want to upgrade your ship. The Famicom version, Salamander, allows you to have three option pods whereas the NES version only allows two.
I would like to talk about the sound. Usually the sound effects in Konami's arcade games are good, but they often drown out the music. Contra is an exception and its arrangement sounds very good. All these arcade games use FM Synthesis for their music, but I find the FM synthesis for most of these games to be underwhelming compared to the more distinct PSG-based NES music. In Life Force, there is a fair amount of digitized speech, but it intrudes far too frequently and it is often difficult to make out the words. And this is playing it in MAME, never mind a loud arcade!
Part II - The Superior Adaptation
Ninja Gaiden
Up to this point I have been comparing arcade ports to their originals. Now I will turn to games that had a (usually exclusive) NES version based off the arcade version, but not a direct port. Let's start with Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden. The arcade game played like a side-scrolling beat-em-up, sort of like a combination of Spartan X and Double Dragon (or Streets of Rage). The enemies are extremely generic and do not take many hits to beat. Ryu's attacks are a punch/kick combo or a jumping head flip. He does not use his ninja sword that often. The best part of the game has to be the continue screen, where you see Ryu tied down and looking fearfully at a buzz saw slowly descending as the time runs out. It is no classic, the graphics are often dull and crude, the music unremarkable and the levels are a long slog.
Ninja Gaiden for the NES is a classic. It is not a beat-em-up, just a sidescroller. It does what it does very well, with appropriately gritty graphics, a pseudo-3D perspective is used to great effect, a superb sound track with great use of DPCM-channel percussion. The control is very responsive, the hit range is fair (something its sequels had trouble with). The difficulty level is appropriately ramped up throughout the game (although it becomes unfair in 6-2 and beyond) and the bosses are unique. When you finally beat this game, you really feel like you have accomplished something special.
Most important, Ninja Gaiden had the first known uses of detailed cutscenes in a console video game. Tecmo used these cutscenes to tell the story in a dramatic way. Most games up to this point had a perfunctory story that usually could be confined to the manual or used talking heads. In Ninja Gaiden, the story propels the action instead of feeling tacked on. It also helps that the dialogue is relatively free from Engrish. The arcade Ninja Gaiden does not have a story, just a framing device of Ryu traveling to America to defeat an evil cult. There is simply no time for this sort of thing in an arcade game where the primary object of the game is to make the players pump as many quarters into the machine as they can.
I should also mention that Ninja Gaiden spawned two sequels on the NES and other games in the series for the Sega Master System, Game Gear and Game Boy. The arcade game went nowhere.
Rygar
Arcade Rygar is a simple side scroller where your character can jump on enemies to stun them and use a retractable discus to hit them. You walk from left to right across 27 rounds, acquiring powerups that extend the length, speed and damage of your discus. In addition to having a frontal attack, you can swing the discus overhead to attack airborne enemies. There is a minimap on the bottom of the screen and you can see your enemies emerge underground, although your character cannot go there. The graphics are decent, but the music is a single song that gets repetitive quickly. There is something like a final boss at the end of the game, but no other bosses to break up the monotony.
NES Rygar is an adventure game similar to Zelda 2 in many respects. Like Zelda II it has a top down style of movement as well as a plaformer style. You can find items in various zones that will improve your abilities, you can cast a few magic spells by acquiring spell points from enemies, and you earn experience points from killing monsters that increase your attack power and life meter. You retain the discus and can extend it with the Attack and Assail magic option, but you cannot swing it overhead. You can also stun most enemies by jumping on them. Unlike Zelda II, you can fight while in the overhead mode (like the original Zelda).
Even though the graphics are a tad rough around the edges and lacking in color a bit, there are lots of variety of enemies for a game of this vintage. The various side scrolling levels offer a lot of variety, from swamps and caves to mountains and sky castles. The music is really good, and even better in the Famicom version. Proper boss enemies guard the treasures you will need to find. Like every other adventure game on the NES of this period, clues are very cryptic and not helped by some egregious examples of Engrish. If you die you can continue from where you left off, but there is no password or battery backed save. Overall it is far superior to the arcade version and fondly remembered when a Playstation 2 sequel was released in 2002.
Bionic Commando
Bionic Commando is similar to Rygar in that the arcade version is a relatively simple sidescroller while the NES version is an adventure game. The arcade game has a rather muted color palette (which seems to be something of a common theme of the arcade games featured in this blog post) and some jaunty tunes. The character designs are very squat and cartoony. The game at five stages is very short, and there is one part at the end that qualifies as a boss fight, but just barely.
Bionic Commando for the NES was very ambitious for its time. It has an actual story of your character trying to rescue Super Joe behind enemy lines. You are a soldier of the Federation, fighting against the evil Badds Empire. The Badds Empire under the command of Generalissimo Kilt is focusing all its efforts on the Albatros plan, an armored warship that would allow the enemy to control the world. You traverse 19 zones to find Super Joe, then destroy the Albatros and then prevent the resurrection of the Badds's evil leader, Master D.
That was the US version's story. The Japanese version was called Top Secret, Hitler's Resurrection. The Japanese version squarely identifies the enemy as being Neo-Nazis and Master D as being Adolf Hitler. (The US manual refers to the enemy group as "Nazz", not "Badds".) There are swastikas in the Japanese game, which were adjusted for the U.S. version. Even in the U.S. version, the insigna for the enemy was changed to Nazi-appropriate Albatrosses. Generalissmo Kilt/General Weissman looks like Herman Göring.
Bionic Commando for the NES has excellent gameplay, taking the main idea from the arcade and developing it into a superb adventure game. The game is still a side scrolling game, and the bionic arm works just like the arcade. You can send the arm up, diagonally at an angle or straight in front. You can latch onto objects and platforms and use them to pull yourself or swing. Because you cannot jump, you have to show a bit of foresight on where you want to go and how you are going to get there. It is extremely impressive for a game of its vintage to use diagonal scrolling on the NES. Most of its contemporaries and predecessors did not scroll, scrolled either horizontally or vertically or both but not at the same time.
Bionic Commando requires you to beat each of the twelve enemy zones and rewards you with a new item when you beat each one. You start off with a basic gun, but soon you will have access to more powerful weapons. You will also find helping items that are necessary to explore some of the stages. You must destroy the reactor core of each area to get its item. These reactors are defended by increasingly difficult guards, making the reactor rooms the equivalent of boss fights .
In order to unlock the doors that keep you from getting to the reactor core for each stage, you have to enter communications rooms and communicate with your allies or eavesdrop on your enemies. They may give you helpful information or just spout nonsense. There are four communicators in the game, each one only works in three of the enemy zones.
You find communicators in the seven neutral zones. Neutral zones are zones where you will not be officially attacked by the Badds, but if you shoot then the civilians disappear and hostile soldiers spawn in until you leave the area. You can receive information or be taunted by characters in these zones and find communicators and other items inside the rooms.
There is an RPG element to Bionic Commando. When you first start the game, one touch or bullet from an enemy will kill you. As you kill enemies, they drop bullets. By picking up these bullets, you will eventually gain the ability to take a hit, then two, then three and so on.
There is an element of non-linearity to Bionic Commando. You can fly to many zones in the beginning and do not necessarily have to complete each in a certain order. However, some zones you are not intended to enter before beating others, and you cannot travel to zones eight and above when you start, so non-linearity has its limits. Also, you won't be able to continue your game unless you clear the stages where your helicopter encounters an enemy convoy on the map. These stages use an overhead view and are very simple, but you collect continues by beating the large enemies in those stages.
Although there is some variety in the enemy zones, they are essentially military bases and look the part. The obstacles provide a good deal of the challenge and fun. Since you cannot jump, elevators become very helpful. However, this game has a lot of traps, including disabled elevators, man eating plants and ambushes in the communications rooms. There are lots of enemies, including standard soldiers, little soldiers driving big rigs, a huge soldier that throws steel balls and laser turrets travel back and forth across the screen shooting beams. Sometimes the stages become exercises in determining whether you have mastered the use and timing of the bionic arm. There are times you have to use your arm very precisely in order to avoid falling to your death.
The NES game loses the cartoon theme of the arcade and has a much more serious military theme. The English dialogue includes the word "damn", something of a no-no for Nintendo's censorship policies of the NES era. While there is some Engrish, it does not get to laughably bad too often. The graphics are always good and some of the enemies are quite large. Character interaction use head portraits. The music, of which two pieces have been taken from the arcade game, is utterly fantastic. The arcade game has been mostly forgotten, while the NES game spawned a Game Boy game, a Game Boy Color game, and a remake in 2008 and two followup games thereafter.
Little Nemo Dream Master vs. Nemo
Little Nemo was an odd title to make a licensed game. Little Nemo in Slumberland was a newspaper comic strip drawn by Windsor McCay from 1905-1914 and from 1924-1926. The property had some occasional revivals and was fondly remembered by the cartoonists who were influenced by it, but it had not achieved continual currency of near contemporaries like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula or Mickey Mouse or even Tarzan. However, in 1989 there was an animated feature film called Little Nemo : Adventures in Slumberland, and Capcom based both games off that adaptation.
Arcade Nemo is somewhat obscure, and it is easy to see why. While it looks very nice, it is very a simple 1990 sidescroller. There is very little diagonal scrolling and Nemo's primary attack is a wand that he uses like an energized baton. He can also throw objects and collect power ups to make his attack stronger. He has a lifebar. In a two player game, the second player plays as Flip. The bosses get very weird in this game, which is very appropriate considering the source material. Level 5's boss is a very clever parody of a boss in Konami's Gradius III. There are seven stages and some variety between them.
NES Little Nemo is another very strong licensed game from Capcom. It seems that only Capcom and Konami were able to do justice to licensed properties on the NES. Little Nemo is a sidescroller, but unlike the arcade game, there are large open worlds to explore. Nemo explores each world after an introduction from another character like Flip. He has to collect a certain number of keys throughout the level to advance. There are no boss fights until the last stage. The has a short life bar, which can be extended. His only weapon is candy, of which he possesses an unlimited amount. He can jump, but not very high.
His candy can stun some enemies, but what it is really useful for is to lull certain animals into sleep. After you get an animal to sleep, Nemo can become the animal and use its abilities. The frog allows Nemo to jump very high and defeat enemies by landing on them, the mole allows you to dig through dirt, and the bee allows you to fly and shoot a stinger, the ape can punch enemies out and the lizard can climb up walls. You won't have access to an animal helper at all times, you have to dodge, stun or otherwise avoid many enemies. These add a strategic element to what could have been a run of the mill adventure game. On the eighth stage do you get to use the wand and face the Nightmare King and several mini-bosses before him.
The graphics are very bright and colorful. The stages all look distinct and the music is another Capcom showcase (Capcom had some very good composers working on the NES). There are nice opening, middle and end sequences. The only downside to this game is that there was no password save.
Part III - The Miscellaneous
Port or Adaptation? - Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!! vs Punch Out!!!
Arcade Punch-Out!!! and its sequel are good games, but Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!! is sublime. The arcade game was overdesigned with its dual monitor cabinet, the upper monitor is simply not vital to the gameplay. Arcade Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out have six unique fighters each. It has voice samples, but they constantly play to the point where they become annoying.
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out has eleven unique fighters. The NES version also has Mario as the referee, three rounds and cut scenes where your trainer can try to give you advice and your opponent can taunt you and transition scenes where it shows you doing road work with your trainer. Nintendo made the inspired decision to use the name and likeness of the then-current undisputed heavyweight champion of the world and one of the most feared fighters of all time, Mike Tyson. They made him one of the most feared video game boxing opponents ever as well. The game just made you keep coming back to try and find the patterns and weaknesses in the fighter you were stuck at to get to the next one. Nintendo also allowed players to return to the circuit which they left off with a password, which helped players get to where they wanted to practice much more quickly than going through the whole game.
The Reverse Port - Castlevania vs. Haunted Castle
Castlevania came first on the NES (Famicom Disk System really), then a related game was developed in tandem and released a little later on the MSX2 platform and finally a very similar game got released for the arcade. The NES game is a classic, the MSX2 game is sort of an alternative version and very good, but the arcade game is garbage. The problems with the arcade game are that the play control is incredibly stiff, your whip's attack range is pathetic, the enemies can hit you very easily and give out massive amounts of damage. You will be lucky to get to Medusa, and you only have about four quarters worth of continues before the game forces you to start back at the beginning. This was a also present in Konami arcade games like Contra and Super Contra and Life Force, but was taken to a ridiculous extreme in this game. The special weapons are not very useful either and ammunition is hard to obtain. The graphics are weird in a kind of cartoony way and rather ugly looking, but the music is very good. You will have to play the game a lot to hear it legitimately.
Castlevania for the NES is no cakewalk, but it runs to the not impossible side of the difficult scale. It offers unlimited continues, and even still it will require lots of practice and enemy memorization in the later levels. The FDS version would save your level progress. Unlike Haunted Castle, Simon Belmont's whip has good range and can be powered up easily to have a longer and more powerful attack. Hit detection is solid and jumping, while stiff, is not nearly as ungainly as the arcade version. The NES version ramps up the difficulty very nicely and is well paced.
Willow for the Arcade was a good game and pretty faithful to the film, following the plot reasonably closely. The levels are bright and colorful and many of the bosses come from the movie. You play as Willow (1, 3 & 6) and Madmartigan (2, 4 & 6), both of whom have different attack styles. You get to choose which character you can play in stage 5, which has the most impressive boss fight by far. Willow throws magic acorns, which he can charge for a more powerful attack. Madmartigan uses his sword, making his attack up close and he can also charge up his attack. The brownies can help Willow at times. By defeating enemies and opening treasure chests you can earn gold which you can use to buy items and permanent power ups at shops. Most of the six stages end with a boss battle. Your characters start with a lifebar of three units, which you can extend. All in all, it has more depth than your average arcade platformer.
Willow for the NES is more of a very loose adaptation of the film to serve a top-down Zelda style adventure game with RPG elements. It feels like Capcom set out to make a non-Willow game and then tacked on the Willow elements when it paid for the license. Willow is armed generally with a sword and a shield. There is no gold, you find all your items. You have hit points and magic points, and raise them by defeating monsters for experience points. You can get up to level 16 in the game.
Not only does Willow's attack power increase with levels, so does his attack speed with the various swords. Willow can either thust with his sword or slash with it. Magic can be used to heal, to stun enemies and to attack enemies. The shield helps from Willow getting hit and can block enemy projectiles. Willow has a rather large area for enemies to hit him otherwise.
The game has a huge world with several towns with townspeople, some of whom may give you weapons and magic. There are overworld areas and many caves and castles filled with enemy monsters. Monsters will appear randomly on any of these screen. A neat effect is the wind tunnel when enemies spawn on the overworld. The game did not come with maps, which are essential to getting around in this game. I do have to fault the game with the constant reuse of map screen types and there should have been more music. The music here is very good, however.
Not Superior - Strider vs. Strider
Strider for the Arcade and the NES is one instance where I have to award the better version award to the arcade, even though the NES version is an adventure game. Strider for the arcade is classic. Hiryu has pretty good control for the time, can acquire temporary power ups like an extended sword and robot and eagle helpers. There are five stages in total, and each one has many memorable moments. Each stage could be viewed as series of set pieces with the music changes showing the transitions. The big boss fights may not always happen at the end of the stage, but each one is memorable. Hiryu can grab onto platforms and walk up walls. There are points in the game were gravity is reversed and you must fight upside down. The difficulty follows a fairly linear curve, but there are few nasty spikes on the way. When you die, you continue at the beginning of the scene you died on, not at the beginning of the level. The graphics are great with plenty of bold color and some very large enemies. The music and sound effects are also top notch.
Strider for the NES is something of a mess. It has a lot more plot, your character becomes stronger as you progress through the levels and there is a password save. You can also acquire the equivalent of magic, you can shoot fireballs and heal yourself and jump higher, among other things. You can acquire items like the Aqua Boots, which let you stand on water and Attack Boots, which give you a sliding attack. You have hit points and energy points, but they are not raised by the number of enemies you kill but when you beat a stage. You will also need to acquire keys and files to get past certain obstacles. You can use your sword similar to the arcade version, but it has less range. You can also attack by raising it above your head and jumping up, and later you acquire a charged shot. Your helpers are absent.
The trouble with Strider is mainly one of play control. This Hiryu moves very stiffly. He can do a wall jump, but pulling it off is nearly impossible. There is one or two spots in the Egypt level that requires this jump, but thereafter you never need it again. Replenishing your health or energy can be done by pills dropped in certain places or by certain enemies, but there are times when they never seem to drop, usually when you most need them. The music is very good and appropriate to the stages, but the graphics are really gritty and fuzzy. There is a lot of slowdown and flicker when enemies are on the screen. Sloppy object removal code leads to unwanted graphics and colors seen on the edges of the screen of the more revealing monitors.
Many of the levels have a boss encounter, a Zain mind control machine. These are always the same and can be destroyed very easily. The plot is typical anime stuff, and there is some pretty goofy Engrish throughout. Hiryu can be hit easily and repeatedly, leading to many cheap deaths. There are also several tricky jumps with punishing consequences for missing them. The game is not super difficult, just too inconsistent to overcome the superior arcade version, which has spawned other action-oriented sequels. The adventure-style NES game has not had its elements carry over into later entries in the series. Still, taken in its own right it is enjoyable and uses a password system.
I am indebted to MobyGames for the arcade game screenshots.
Friday, May 29, 2015
Sound Blaster 8-bit Playback Quality
In this post, I have taken a sample with from a game with FM music and 8-bit digital audio. The game in question is Day of the Tentacle, which is a typical representative of the quality of digitized audio you can expect from classic DOS games (at least until FMV became prominent). From six Sound Blaster cards I have recorded the same sample of the intro from the time the game starts until the gang leave for the mansion. For DOS games, virtually all of them playback digitized audio using 8-bit samples, so the whole of the Sound Blaster range can be used with virtually any DOS game.
Card Number One : Sound Blaster 1.5 CT-1320C
FM Synthesis : Yamaha YM-3812 OPL2
DSP : CT1321 V2.00
CMS Upgrade : Present
This card does a very servicable job with Day of the Tentacle, which really is not using most of the advanced features of the later cards. Digitized sound is a little noisier than the Sound Blaster Pro, but the noise floor is lower. This card is naturally loud because it does not have a mixer chip, volume being controlled solely via the volume wheel.
Card Number Two : Sound Blaster Pro CT-1330A Rev. 5
FM Synthesis : Yamaha YM-3812 OPL2 x 2
DSP : CT1341 V3.01
Mixer : CT1345
Bus Interface : CT1336
The sound engine for Day of the Tentacle was made for a card like this. This card will sound louder than the others because it has an onboard amplifier. I recorded from the other cards without using their onboard amplifiers. I used Audacity's normalization function to give the recordings below a comparable amplitude level.
The Pro has an output filter which you can toggle on and off. The filter is on by default. If you turn it off, then you get a sharper, yet noisier sound. By comparison, the filtered version sounds a bit muffled. Compare for yourselves :
Card Number Three : Sound Blaster 16 MCD CT-1750
CODEC : CT1701
FM Synthesis : Yamaha YMF-262 OPL3
DSP : CT1741 V4.05
Mixer : CT1745A
Bus Interface : CT1746B
Configuration : Jumpers
ASP/CSP : CT1748A
This a first generation sound blaster, and it does not have the hiss I expected. It does have a lot of pops and clicks when there is speaking. The noise floor is higher than the Pro. All the SB16s and later cards use dynamic filtering, which cannot be turned off by the user.
Card Number Four : Sound Blaster 16 MCD CT-2230
CODEC : CT1703
FM Synthesis : Integrated CT1747 OPL3
DSP : CT1741 V4.11
Mixer : CT1745A
Bus Interface : CT1747
Configuration : DIAGNOSE.EXE or SBCONFIG.EXE + Jumpers
ASP/CSP : Not Present
Surprisingly, despite the later DSP and CODEC, this card is even noisier than its predecessor the CT-1750. It also has the same amount of pops and clicks. Its actually the noisiest of the bunch.
Card Number Five : Sound Blaster 16 PnP CT-2940
CODEC : Integrated CT2502
FM Synthesis : Discrete Yamaha YMF-289 OPL3-L
DSP : Integrated CT2502, V4.13 Reported
Mixer : Integrated CT2502, fully compatible with CT1745A
Configuration : CTCM.EXE + CTCU.EXE
ASP/CSP : None
This card does not have nearly as many pops and clicks as the other SB16s and the AWE32 described in this post. The noise floor is slightly lower than the CT-1750 and CT-2760, but higher than the CT-1330.
DIAGNOSE.EXE will report this card's DSP version, but the rest of the card relies on assumptions.
Card Number Six : Sound Blaster AWE32 CT-2760
CODEC : CT1701
FM Synthesis : Integrated CT1747 OPL3
Bus Interface : CT1747
Configuration : DIAGNOSE.EXE or SBCONFIG.EXE and AWEUTIL.COM + Jumpers
ASP/CSP : CT1748A
EMU-8000 : CT1971 + CT1972
SIMM RAM : None
This card is very much like the CT2230, but it is about as quiet as the CT-1750.
Best Sound Quality
In my opinion, the best sounding of the bunch is the 1330A, followed by the 1320U, then the 2940, 2760, 1750 and finally the 2230. Of course, with a different sample, my opinion could change.
Card Number One : Sound Blaster 1.5 CT-1320C
FM Synthesis : Yamaha YM-3812 OPL2
DSP : CT1321 V2.00
CMS Upgrade : Present
This card does a very servicable job with Day of the Tentacle, which really is not using most of the advanced features of the later cards. Digitized sound is a little noisier than the Sound Blaster Pro, but the noise floor is lower. This card is naturally loud because it does not have a mixer chip, volume being controlled solely via the volume wheel.
Card Number Two : Sound Blaster Pro CT-1330A Rev. 5
FM Synthesis : Yamaha YM-3812 OPL2 x 2
DSP : CT1341 V3.01
Mixer : CT1345
Bus Interface : CT1336
The sound engine for Day of the Tentacle was made for a card like this. This card will sound louder than the others because it has an onboard amplifier. I recorded from the other cards without using their onboard amplifiers. I used Audacity's normalization function to give the recordings below a comparable amplitude level.
The Pro has an output filter which you can toggle on and off. The filter is on by default. If you turn it off, then you get a sharper, yet noisier sound. By comparison, the filtered version sounds a bit muffled. Compare for yourselves :
Card Number Three : Sound Blaster 16 MCD CT-1750
CODEC : CT1701
FM Synthesis : Yamaha YMF-262 OPL3
DSP : CT1741 V4.05
Mixer : CT1745A
Bus Interface : CT1746B
Configuration : Jumpers
ASP/CSP : CT1748A
This a first generation sound blaster, and it does not have the hiss I expected. It does have a lot of pops and clicks when there is speaking. The noise floor is higher than the Pro. All the SB16s and later cards use dynamic filtering, which cannot be turned off by the user.
Card Number Four : Sound Blaster 16 MCD CT-2230
CODEC : CT1703
FM Synthesis : Integrated CT1747 OPL3
DSP : CT1741 V4.11
Mixer : CT1745A
Bus Interface : CT1747
Configuration : DIAGNOSE.EXE or SBCONFIG.EXE + Jumpers
ASP/CSP : Not Present
Surprisingly, despite the later DSP and CODEC, this card is even noisier than its predecessor the CT-1750. It also has the same amount of pops and clicks. Its actually the noisiest of the bunch.
Card Number Five : Sound Blaster 16 PnP CT-2940
CODEC : Integrated CT2502
FM Synthesis : Discrete Yamaha YMF-289 OPL3-L
DSP : Integrated CT2502, V4.13 Reported
Mixer : Integrated CT2502, fully compatible with CT1745A
Configuration : CTCM.EXE + CTCU.EXE
ASP/CSP : None
This card does not have nearly as many pops and clicks as the other SB16s and the AWE32 described in this post. The noise floor is slightly lower than the CT-1750 and CT-2760, but higher than the CT-1330.
DIAGNOSE.EXE will report this card's DSP version, but the rest of the card relies on assumptions.
Card Number Six : Sound Blaster AWE32 CT-2760
CODEC : CT1701
FM Synthesis : Integrated CT1747 OPL3
DSP : CT1741 V4.12
Mixer : CT1745ABus Interface : CT1747
Configuration : DIAGNOSE.EXE or SBCONFIG.EXE and AWEUTIL.COM + Jumpers
ASP/CSP : CT1748A
EMU-8000 : CT1971 + CT1972
SIMM RAM : None
This card is very much like the CT2230, but it is about as quiet as the CT-1750.
Best Sound Quality
In my opinion, the best sounding of the bunch is the 1330A, followed by the 1320U, then the 2940, 2760, 1750 and finally the 2230. Of course, with a different sample, my opinion could change.
Monday, May 25, 2015
The Atari 2600 Adventure Lineage
When I think of adventure games, we think of exploration, interaction, puzzle solving and occasional danger. Adventure games first appeared on mainframes and typically used lots of memory and caused time sharing schemes no end of annoyance. The first video game consoles were vastly inferior computing products. However, they were capable of all the features I mentioned above which define adventure games, in a much more rudimentary capacity. In this blog entry, I will be focusing on my characterization of adventure games released by one company, Atari, for one video game console, the Atari 2600.
The Atari 2600 consists of three chips. The first is a 6507 CPU running at 1.19MHz. This cut-down 6502 CPU has no support for interrupts and can only address 8KB. The Atari can access 4KB of ROM in a cartridge without extra hardware in the cartridge itself. The second chip is the TIA, which can generate a 160 pixel by a (typical) 192 line resolution graphics display. The TIA can only support the equivalent of five (single color) sprites and a low resolution 2-color background layer. It does support a rather large number of colors for the time, 128, and the sprites can have their colors changed every scanline or two. It also supports 2 channels of square wave sound with crude (5-bit) frequency control or various methods of producing noise. The third chip is the RIOT chip with provides a timer, 128 bytes of RAM and input for the console switches and (with the TIA) the joysticks and other peripherals.
Input for the Atari 2600 was generally by a joystick with a single fire button. Alternatively, paddles or a 12-button keyboard controller could be used. The two controller ports supported either two joysticks, two keyboard controllers or four paddle controllers. None of the games described below use anything other than a joystick. With this hardware background, let's introduce the games.
Superman
1978 - Johnathan Dunn
Superman is the first true adventure-style game released by Atari. It has a plot, characters, enemies and an ending. The plot is simple, Lex Luthor and his five henchmen have blown up a bridge in Metropolis and scattered the three pieces throughout the city. As Superman you must catch Lex and his henchmen and bring them to jail, find the pieces and put them back where they belong and change back into Clark Kent and go to the Daily Planet to file your story. Lex sent out some Kryptonite that will rob you of your ability to fly and to capture the villains and the bridge pieces, in order to restore your powers you need to find Lois Lane. There is a helicopter also flying around that can randomly transport people, krypton satelites and bridge pieces. Superman has the ability to view neighboring screens with his X-ray vision (push the fire button and a directional).
This game solely emphasizes the aspect of collecting. In order to win, you need to collect bad guys and bridge pieces. Those rectangles and square (for Luthor) show the number of bad guys still at large. Unusually, the four digit number on the right shows the time taken, you are racing against the clock to beat the game, not trying to achieve a maximum score. Your super powers are innate to the character and can only be temporarily lost.
Unfortunately, Superman has not held up very well over the passing decades. This game has three problems. First, graphics become a flickery mess the moment more than two objects are on the screen. Second, most of the main screens have nondescript backgrounds, making it very difficult to navigate the game world. Third, the game world itself is not easy to get around. There is no readily discernable pattern with the subways and the city screens. There are 26 unique screens.
Adventure
1980 - Warren Robinett
Adventure is one of the classic games for the Atari 2600. Warren Robinett decided to take a minimalist approach to the game's design. Instead of a multi-colored Superman sprite, your player was just a square. The dragons look more like ducks. Virtually every other object in the game was also a single colored sprite. Flickering does not begin unless three objects are on the screen, compared to two for Superman. Backgrounds were either empty rooms, simple castles or mazes with clean lines and good contrast between the colors. The object of the game could not be more simple, find the Golden Chalice and bring it back to the Golden Castle.
While the game's graphics would not impress anyone, the gameplay was inspired. Your square can move in eight directions, you pick up an items by touching it and the fire button drops items. However, the items your character could or needed were three keys, a sword, a magnet, a bridge and the chalice. The sword kills the dragons, each colored key open the gates to the corresponding castle.
This game adds the element of puzzle solving to exploration. The three keys (White, Black and Gold) are needed to open the corresponding castle gate. The magnet and the bridge are helper items that allow you to get to places or items you otherwise could not reach. The sword kills the dragons, but since you can only carry one item at a time, you can't count on having it when the dragons come by.
The enemies consist of the three dragons and the Black Bat. The dragons have names, different colors and distinct personalities, Robinett seemed to come to this idea independently of Pac-Man. Yorkle, the Yellow Dragon, is the slowest and runs away from the Gold Key. Grundle, the Green Dragon, is faster can be found guarding many items. Rhindle, the Red Dragon, is the fastest but typically is not seen until you get to the final maze. However, the Black Bat is by far the most terrifying enemy in the game. The Dragons will kill you but the Black Bat will constantly frustrate you by stealing and replacing objects throughout the game world. Sometimes you can grab the bat, but you can't keep him. Unfortunately, the Bat can deposit necessary items in places where you may not be able to reach.
The mazes in this game may feel intimidating at first, especially when dragons are around. However, the exits to the maze are always predictable and soon the player can figure his way around without mapping. The maze between the Gold and White castle is called the Catacombs and only gives you limited visibility. There is also a limited visibility maze after the Black castle.
Adventure brought skill settings to the fore. The game starts up with the skill level number on the screen. Skill level 1 is the beginner's game where only one maze and two dragons are present. Only fourteen rooms are accessible. The bat is not present. Skill levels 2 & 3 add the bat, the red dragon, more screens and three more mazes. In Skill level 2, the items and dragons are in fixed places, but in Skill level 3 they are randomized.
This game was built around the number three. There are three skill levels, three castles, three keys, three dragons. The map is also an improvement over Superman. Even at 29 screens, it is easy to keep track of where you are (except in the mazes). Of course, no mention of Adventure can go without the Easter Egg Warren Robinett hid in the game unbeknownst to his superiors at Atari. Frustrated with the total lack of public recognition and credit for his work, he inserted a graphical "Created by Warren Robinett" into the game if the player found a hidden dot in the maze after the Black Castle that allowed him to enter a room otherwise blocked by a solid line. Robinett was also responsible for BASIC Programming and Slot Racers, but this was his true claim to fame.
Haunted House
1981 - James Andreasen
Haunted House has been called either the first survival horror game or one of the most prominent precursors to survival horror games. Your character is essentially a pair of eyes roaming around in the dark of a four-story house looking for three pieces to an urn. Once the urn is collected, you must exit the house through the exit on the first floor. You can walk over these pieces as you explore the haunted house or press the action button to light a match for a few seconds. There are three types of enemies, the ghost, the tarantulas and the bats. Similarly to Advenutre there are helpful items, the scepter and the master key. The master key unlocks doors and the scepter provides invulnerability to the enemies (except the ghost on some of the harder difficulty levels. However just like Adventure you can only hold one item or the urn at a time. The fire button also allows you to drop items like Adventure.
The map is deceptively simple. The house has four floors, and each floor is arranged in a grid of 3 horizontal rooms by 2 vertical rooms. The floors are connected by multiple stairwells and the rooms by corridors. Cleverly for the 2600, each floor scrolls vertically. The game has nine difficulty levels. On the easiest difficulty level, you can see colored walls, but otherwise they are black and only illuminated when you are near a portion of the wall with a lit match or when lightning strikes. On the higher difficulty levels, certain rooms have locked doors requiring the master key to open each time you pass through the corridor. Also, as the difficulty levels get harder, some of the enemies can pursue you through locked doors. The locked doors are in the same place in the middle difficulty levels, on the highest difficulty level they are in different places.
The game has a status bar, showing the number of matches used, the current floor number, the picture of the currently carried object and the number of lives you have. Fittingly, you start with nine lives. When you move, the pupils of your eyes will look in the direction you are moving. Helpfully, the manual gives you a map of the floors, doors and stairwells used for the intermediate difficulty levels. Even though the enemy designs are a bit goofy, the eerie sounds make this quite a memorable game.
Swordquest Earthworld
1982 - Dan Hitchens
Up to this point, adventure games on the Atari have been pretty-much a pick up and play experience. You can easily beat them with no more information than contained in this blog. Most people can figure them out just through trial and error. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for these later games. All the previous games were 4K games. The next five games hereafter are 8KB games. They require the manual in order to really figure out how to play or how to go about beating these games. The Swordquest series was perhaps the most elaborate set of games ever released for the 2600 during its lifetime. Each game was tied to a contest and came with a comic book to give necessary hints to the puzzles and progress the official storyline.
Unfortunately, the underlying games were just not that great. Dan Hitchens programmed ports of Berzerk, Gravitar and Mario Bros. for the 2600 and all are better games to play than this game or its sequels. All three games have your character walk through a series of connected rooms. These rooms in Earthworld are identical in shape but have different colors. To progress through the game, your character needs to pick up items in one room and use them in another room. Putting the right item(s) in the right room will give the player a clue which he could combine with other clues to write in his entry to the contest. Sometimes using an item gives your player an action sequence to complete. These action sequences are very frustrating. There are four altogether. One of them, the Aquarian Rapids, is like the river portion of Frogger with all the fun taken away. Two are virtually identical and the fourth will test your sense of timing and patience. Fail at any point on any of these puzzles and you are sent back to the beginning.
Earthworld has the most impressive graphics of the three games. The player sprite is multicolored and the game makes good use of cycling color graphics. Fireworld and Waterworld are much more plain by comparison.
The map is based on the twelve signs of the zodiac. There are twelve rooms and the player can cycle through them by going up or down. The left and right exits often do not work.
Swordquest Fireworld
1982 - Tod Frye
Fireworld was programmed by Tod Frye, infamous for the 2600 version of Pac-Man. Fireworld is the worst of the Swordquest games in terms of graphics, sound and gameplay. The player is single colored, the objects during the action sequences are often hard to see and there are no fancy color cycling effects. Sound is abysmal.
The map consists of twelve rooms based on the Tree of Life. Unlike Earthworld or Waterworld, a room can lead to more than one or two rooms. There is not any particular reasoning behind which exit leads to which room. However, unlike Earthworld, at least each exit leads somewhere. A special item called the chalice will help you uncover more exits. The rooms have obstacles in them to make them look less generic.
There are a lot more action sequences in Fireworld than either Earthworld or Waterworld. There is only three basic action sequence types, but variations on them bring the total to ten. Every time you attempt to access the items in a room, you must face a action sequence. You do not need to achieve perfection in the puzzle to access the items, just make a sufficiently decent showing.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982 - Howard Scott Warshaw
Raiders was Warshaw's second assignment after his first, Yars' Revenge became a big hit. Raiders is as close to a personal computer graphical adventure game like King's Quest for the Atari 2600 as Atari ever got. There is a set path to go through the game. In every game you have to detonate the grenade against a particular wall, for example. Raiders is a complex game with many inventory items you can use. In fact, it requires two controllers to play, with the second controller allowing you to select inventory items to use. Unfortunately, handling two joysticks is very distracting and there are enemies that can kill you on most screens.
Inventory items include a whip, revolver, flute, coins, Staff of Ra headpiece, Ankh, grenade, timepiece, shovel, key and parachute.You get three lives to find the Lost Ark of the Covenant, and you must face snakes, an enemy agent, tiny thieves, deadly spiders and fatal falls. The game has thirteen areas which you must traverse, and some of the areas scroll vertically. A first for Atari, you also get to interact with merchants and search for items and paths to get to your goal. It may not have the interactivity of Dragonstomper, but Dragonstomper is a far more ambitious game. There are several places points where you have to wait a lengthy period of time in order to progress in Raiders. Raiders the movie was known for its unusual intelligence combined with white knuckle action. While this game may have something of the first, it has nothing of the last.
E.T. the Extra-terrestrial
1982 - Howard Scott Warshaw
Warshaw's final published game for Atari is the legendary E.T. the Extra-terrestrial. People have endlessly criticized this game for its obtuse goals and mechanics, buggy pit falling mechanics and even the color of your character. Of course, if you read the manual you can actually have some fun with this game, it is far, far from the worst game on the Atari.
The goal of the game is to find the three pieces to a phone so E.T. can phone home for a transport. These pieces are randomly hidden in the 20 pits in the game. The game world is simple, you have only six screens. The game's map is in the shape of a cube, with the landing zone on the top, the four pit areas on the sides and the Washington D.C. screen on the bottom.
There are two notorious pit bugs. The first is when you just climb out of a pit and see the map screen, never push up. You can push left, right or down to totally clear the pit, but if you press up you will be sent back into the pit. Every pixel of E.T. must clear every pixel of the pit. The second pit bug is that exiting right from the landing zone or left from Washington D.C. will always send you to the bottom of a pit.
Except for the easy game, standing in the way of E.T. are two foes. The first is the scientist, who capture E.T. if he touches E.T. and bring him straight to his lab in Washington D.C. for study. The scientist is merely a hinderance. The F.B.I. agent is much, much more annoying. If he touches you, he will take a piece of your phone away. The F.B.I. agent is akin to the Bat from Adventure and the inspiration is obvious.
Unlike the three lives of Raiders, E.T. has a health meter that starts at 9,999 units and runs down to zero. The health meter runs down if you are walking, and runs down faster if you are running or using a special power. If your health meter runs to zero, Eliott will come and revive you three or four times with 1,500 health. You can also restore health by eating the Reese's Pieces found on the pit screens. Otherwise, you can save them for points at the end of the game.
E.T. can use special powers, but only at various areas of each map screen. If you walk into a power zone, you can teleport to another screen, call your ship, call for Eliott to give him Reese's Pieces for points at the end of the game, eat a Reese's Piece for energy or see whether any of the pits on that screen has an item in it. In a pit, you can extend your neck to levitate. In the landing zone, you have to find the area on that screen where the transport capsule will land, otherwise you won't get picked up and will have to call the ship again.
So, beating E.T. is far simpler than Raiders or any of the Swordquest games. You find the three phone pieces, find the area on one of the pit screens to call your ship and find the area on landing zone screen where your capsule will pick you up. This is another game that revolves around the number three, there are three phone pieces, three types of screens, three structures on the Washington D.C. screen, three characters in the game other than the player, three (usually) chances to continue, and three principal tasks to accomplish.
Swordquest Waterworld
1983 - Tod Frye
In the last Swordquest game to be released, things have been toned down quite a bit from Earthworld and Fireworld. In this game there are only seven room based on the Chakra, and unlike Earthworld the last room does not wrap around to the first. The action sequences are much less annoying this time, and you encounter them not by using items but by entering rooms. They are still of the "touch an enemy, miss a jump, return to the start", but are much easier than Earthworld or Fireworld's action puzzles. Only the Ice Floes action sequence is annoying, just like its Earthworld counterpart Aquarian Rapids. If you cannot finish a puzzle after a set period of time, the game will let you progress into the next room anyway but one of the items in that room will be unavailable.
Waterworld may not be as flashy as Earthworld, but its does have some color cycling. The sound effects and musical cues are undoubtedly the best of the series, but there is not a great deal of variety to the sounds. Frye had definitely improved his presentation skills this time around and was working on Airworld, the final game in the series, before Atari shut the whole project down. There were contest winners for Earthworld and Fireworld, but the Waterworld contest was never held due to Atari Inc.'s implosing from the Video Game Crash of 1983.
Secret Quest
1989 - Steve DeFrisco & Nolan Bushnell
During the Atari 2600 revival of the late 1980s, the Tramiel-led Atari Corp. looked for companies who were willing to develop for their console. One such company was called Axlon, headed by Nolan Bushnell and it programmer Steve DeFrisco made three of the best quality games released late in the Atari's lifecycle, this game, Motorodeo and Klax. This is among the most ambitious of Atari 2600 games, using 16KB for ROM and containing an additional 128 bytes of RAM in the cartridge.
Secret Quest uses a top down view, but the character's sprite has different graphics for moving in each direction, unlike Adventure and Haunted House. In this sense, it plays like an Atari 2600 version of The Legend of Zelda would play. The object of this game is to blow up eight space stations. Each station has multiple rooms and most have multiple floors. One or more codes will be scattered throughout the floors in particular rooms. There is a room where you enter the code to destroy the station. Once you enter the code you have 20 seconds to get to the teleporter or you will go down with the station.
Secret Quest has sparse rooms but colorful sprites. Note that no more than one enemy is on the screen at any time, this helps reduce flicker to a minimum. A new enemy gets teleported into the room as you beat an old enemy until you clear the room. Enemies do not respawn in a room once it is cleared. There is a constant background tune that lasts for 18 seconds that plays constantly once you start a game. Sound effects are pretty basic.
Secret Quest is almost unique because it is only one of two Atari games that has a password system. Survival Run had a twelve character code, and it sensibly used numbers 0-9. Secret Quest's passwords also use a twelve-character code, but overdid it. Instead of using letters and numbers like most other games, Secret Quest's passwords consist entirely of "futuristic" symbols. They are not the easiest to jot down quickly as one wants to end his game. These symbols are also used for the self-destruct codes in the game. You also need to remember the initials you entered when you started the game, as they are tied to the passwords generated. The password will allow you to start not just at the level where you received it, but it will also recall the Energy and Oxygen you had, the items you picked up and your score.
Secret Quest is rather different from any of the above games. The game is much more focused on combat. You can pick up three weapons during the game, with the later weapons being more powerful and consuming more energy than the first. There are no puzzle items except sonic keys, which open a door. When you clear a room of enemies, they will drop an Oxygen Bottle or an Energy Pod. Oxygen functions as your life bar and the Energy bar allows you to use weapons. It will be a constant struggle to keep these meters above the empty mark. The Oxygen bar will be depleted if an enemy hits you and also decreases as you explore. In this sense, Secret Quest is similar to Gauntlet.
There is no real puzzle solving in this game. However, it qualifies as an adventure game because there is exploration and collection like in E.T., Superman and Haunted House. It is the need to scour the space stations for the codes, the self-destruct room and the teleporter that separate this from a pure top-down action game like Dark Chambers.
The Atari 2600 consists of three chips. The first is a 6507 CPU running at 1.19MHz. This cut-down 6502 CPU has no support for interrupts and can only address 8KB. The Atari can access 4KB of ROM in a cartridge without extra hardware in the cartridge itself. The second chip is the TIA, which can generate a 160 pixel by a (typical) 192 line resolution graphics display. The TIA can only support the equivalent of five (single color) sprites and a low resolution 2-color background layer. It does support a rather large number of colors for the time, 128, and the sprites can have their colors changed every scanline or two. It also supports 2 channels of square wave sound with crude (5-bit) frequency control or various methods of producing noise. The third chip is the RIOT chip with provides a timer, 128 bytes of RAM and input for the console switches and (with the TIA) the joysticks and other peripherals.
Input for the Atari 2600 was generally by a joystick with a single fire button. Alternatively, paddles or a 12-button keyboard controller could be used. The two controller ports supported either two joysticks, two keyboard controllers or four paddle controllers. None of the games described below use anything other than a joystick. With this hardware background, let's introduce the games.
Superman
1978 - Johnathan Dunn
 |
| Power-On Start |
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| Fleeing from the Scene of the Crime |
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| Subway Entrance |
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| Found a Bridge Piece |
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| More Metropolis |
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| Even More Metropolis |
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| Inside the Daily Planet |
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| Inside a Subway Station |
1980 - Warren Robinett
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| Power On Start |
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| Golden Castle |
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| Grundle and the Black Key |
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| Being chased by Grundle in the Catacombs |
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| White Castle Maze and Bridge |
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| White and Black Keys |
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| Eaten by Yorkle in the Blue Maze |
Haunted House
1981 - James Andreasen
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| Power On Start |
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| First Floor, Difficulty Level 1 |
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| First Floor and Bat, Difficulty 2+ |
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| Second Floor |
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| Third Floor and Ghost |
1982 - Dan Hitchens
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| At last, a Proper Title Screen |
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| Your character in a Room |
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| Action Sequence - Sagittarius Spears |
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| Action Sequence - Rafts in Aquarian Rapids |
Swordquest Fireworld
1982 - Tod Frye
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| Copyright Notice, In a Room |
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| Action Sequence - Flying Fire Goblins |
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| Action Sequence - Deadly Snakes |
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| Action Sequence - Flaming Firebirds |
Raiders of the Lost Ark
1982 - Howard Scott Warshaw
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| Title Sequence |
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| Entrance Room |
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| Marketplace |
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| Mesa Side |
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| Valley of Poison & Thief |
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| Entrance Room, after a Grenade |
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| Temple Entrance |
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| Room of the Shining Light |
1982 - Howard Scott Warshaw
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| Title Screen |
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| Landing Zone |
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| Washington D.C. |
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| Pit Area 1 |
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| Pit Area 2 & Reeses Piece |
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| Pit Area 3 & Reeses Piece |
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| Pit Area 4 & Reeses Piece |
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| In a Pit, nothing to see here |
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| In a Pit with Phone Piece |
Unlike the three lives of Raiders, E.T. has a health meter that starts at 9,999 units and runs down to zero. The health meter runs down if you are walking, and runs down faster if you are running or using a special power. If your health meter runs to zero, Eliott will come and revive you three or four times with 1,500 health. You can also restore health by eating the Reese's Pieces found on the pit screens. Otherwise, you can save them for points at the end of the game.
E.T. can use special powers, but only at various areas of each map screen. If you walk into a power zone, you can teleport to another screen, call your ship, call for Eliott to give him Reese's Pieces for points at the end of the game, eat a Reese's Piece for energy or see whether any of the pits on that screen has an item in it. In a pit, you can extend your neck to levitate. In the landing zone, you have to find the area on that screen where the transport capsule will land, otherwise you won't get picked up and will have to call the ship again.
So, beating E.T. is far simpler than Raiders or any of the Swordquest games. You find the three phone pieces, find the area on one of the pit screens to call your ship and find the area on landing zone screen where your capsule will pick you up. This is another game that revolves around the number three, there are three phone pieces, three types of screens, three structures on the Washington D.C. screen, three characters in the game other than the player, three (usually) chances to continue, and three principal tasks to accomplish.
Swordquest Waterworld
1983 - Tod Frye
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| Copyright Notice & Action Sequence - Sea of Sharks |
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| In a Room with Items |
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| Action Sequence - School of Octopi |
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| Action Sequence - Ice Floes |
Secret Quest
1989 - Steve DeFrisco & Nolan Bushnell
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| Title Screen, Enter your Initials to Proceed (and don't forget them!) |
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| In game - Finding a Weapon |
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| First enemy encountered |
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| Second enemy encountered |
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| Status and Password Screen |
There is no real puzzle solving in this game. However, it qualifies as an adventure game because there is exploration and collection like in E.T., Superman and Haunted House. It is the need to scour the space stations for the codes, the self-destruct room and the teleporter that separate this from a pure top-down action game like Dark Chambers.
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