Thread 11852646

Previous thread: >>11823645
Rules of the thread are simple:
>You can only talk about games and systems made before the US release of the NES (1985). Everything before it from the CRT Amusement Device to stuff like Marble Madness and Kung Fu Master is cool here. Later and homebrew ports for Pre-NES games on Pre-NES systems are allowed (e.g. Jr. Pac-Man was released in arcades in 1983 but the 2600 port came out in 1986)
>That's it.
I'm currently holding a poll on 2600 games you'd recommend to newcomers. The results will be made into a little pastebin. If you'd like to contribute a vote or write in a game here's the link: https://strawpoll.com/XmZRQv2X3gd
What's your favorite Pre-NES microcomputer? For me it's the Atari 8-bit computers when it comes to games and the Commodore PET when it comes to design. I fucking love old computers with built in monitors.

Does the Microvision have any fix for its screen now? From my understanding the screens dying for these things is a matter of when and not if and I'd be surprised if there's no fix for it by now.

Pre-NES lads I'm having trouble choosing an Atari 2600 game to play tonight. What should I play?

>>11854684
Try Aardvark, the homebrew based on the arcade game Anteater. Its very good and the ROM was dumped for free.

>>11854808

Dang that looks good for 2600.

>>11854808
Tried it out. It's definitely neat but isn't my thing. Still would recommend though because there is fun to be had. Ended it with Towering Inferno which would be fun if the fire stayed in one place instead of clipping out of the walls.

>>11854934
Not 2600 but mountain on on 5200 is fun AF. Might boot it up and play a bit myself

>>11854969
Mountain king*

>>11854808
daym what that tongue do

Tell me what I should play on the Intellivision please

>>11853643
Apparently, yes. Out-of-stock where I looked though.

Grab another person and play Dogpatch for Astrocade. It's a volleyball with guns where two dudes shoot at cans until one of them scores a goal. Features analog aiming thanks to small built-in paddles on controllers.

What microcomputer games are worth playing, as someone who's never really played any unless you counted Metal Gear?

>>11855027
Treasure of Tarmin

>>11854970
I've played the 2600 mostly. I'm still not 100% on what to do (admittedly I've not read the manual yet) but I still have fun when I play it.

Play Berzerk with German speech. It adds to experience.

Has the programmer for the Boxer prototype (early fighting game by Atari made in the late 70sever been revealed? Surely it had to be the guy who made Activision Boxing since it's pretty much the same game.

>time for some pre-nes computing fun
>roll kitputer
>roll assembler program without original documentation (user made info is available)
You could say you haven't truly experienced a pre-nes 'puter if you haven't written hello world in assembly.
Yes, it compiled and ran in my first go. Yes, I copied it from the documentation.

Up next? CPM v2.2 BIOS for Nascom 2 Level 9 Compression Assembler. A real classic.

PLEASE RECTIFY.

sorry but I STILL can only play 2600/7800/intelli/coleco games with retrocheevos on

Played some 1292 family/Interton 4000 games, not much more to go. Keep in mind that this system has a massive 43 bytes of RAM (some versions lost 1-2 bytes along the way). Truly a system for the 60s. As such there's not much to really recommend.

Golf is ambitious as iirc it doesn't actually expand the RAM at all and attempts to do a "back-view" golf game. Obviously it looks exactly the same most of the time and the hazards are just placed straight in front of the hole. Putting is top-down, but to compensate for not being able to aim properly you can change directions of your put for half a second, sort of allowing for more than just 8 directions.

There's also a dragster clone confusingly called Motocross. It's similar except that it decides to get rid of the "clutch & release" scheme and implements a 4 gear H-shift pattern on your joystick which works entirely fine I guess. It takes slightly longer as it has "laps", but that is measured in seconds.

I have a friends 2600 collection that he left me. But I don't have any TV with compatibility with the Atari's port. So I ordered a 7800+ and im just gonna hold onto the 2600 for sentimental value/in case I ever have a compatible setup one day.

>Is the 7800+ good?
>Any other games I should look into getting
>Any of the modern releases worthwhile?

>>11861880
7800 isn’t pre-NES, but Ninja Golf is good

>>11861849
Looks like an interesing system, judging by some games. Too bad that it seems that only MESS/MAME is available as emulator.

>>11861902
WinArcadia emulates this as well, being a Signetics based system. It's probably better as well as I can't imagine MAME puts lot of focus on it, so the driver is likely out-of-date. You can find the games on the same website (Amigan).

Food Fight for Atari XEGS (1979 hardware with more RAM) fucking sucks. A complete mockery, give how excellent the Atari 7800 conversion three years prior was.

>>11861916
Thanks. I'll check on them tomorrow.

I recently learned about the MindLink, Atari's unreleased controller that read forehead movements. I feel like it's the perfect example of how Atari wanted to be ahead of their time, but consistently either fucked things up or put shit towards things absolutely nobody would buy.

>>11863012
>I feel like it's the perfect example of how Atari wanted to be ahead of their time, but consistently either fucked things up...

That's a thing that i've noticed when checking on some UnMAMEd early polygon graphics Atari titles. Most of them, if we don't count I Robot, were either canned in prototype status or failed location tests. Mostly canned ones.
And you know? They made many of those, but i think the reasoning was: "we made another one, but it turned out we might need too much budget to make it... just like the previous one".
How did they managed to not understand that poly graphics wasn't just cut for those times is beyond my comprehension.

>>11861976
What a coincidence. I've played the arcade version one hour ago. Funny game, indeed.

Played a bit of Two Tigers. Is a good game, but kind of difficult.
Also Dedicated version with audio tape > Tron Conversion.

>>11863849
How the hell did they managed to fit this into 85 kilobytes, in terms of emulation?
This is good game, anyway!

Just got a Commodore 64 at a yard sale. What’re some of your favorite games for it?

Played some more 1984 arcade. Not particularly great ones, but it did include Karate Champ (both versions) and Kungfu Master. I did come across some early versions of concepts that would reappear later (likely not inspired by these ones though, bit of a stretch in general).

Picrel is Kick Rider. A Zippy Race/MotoRace USA clone (down to the end-of-stage chase cam section), but with added kicking. Now you've got a topdown proto Road Rash. You can kick cyclists as well.

Another familiar concept was Kamikaze Cabbie/Yellow Cab. It's a topdown slightly spastic arcadey taxi game. Unlike Crazy Taxi you'll want to ram into cars to destroy them (or bump them into larger vehicles). You'll also have to deal with a fuel mechanic. It's definitely not as nice to play.

>>11864007
>Picrel is Kick Rider.
Not a so bad game, altough a bit repetitive. And talking about Universal, did they made some other good games that are not Mr. Do's series?

>>11863857
I honestly wonder why it was a flop because it really is a fun game. Financially I can understand but apparently gamers didn't like it that much. I hope to get picrel running someday (10GB ROM because it's laserdisc). It's from a year earlier and uses a mix of trippy laserdisc visuals and real time 3D polygons.

>>11864069
From the ones I've played up to 1984, not really. Space Panic is more "influential" and Lady Bug is a decent maze game. Quickly looking things up, doesn't seem like I'll be playing much more of them considering they pivoted to the idea of making laserdisc games (they made 1) and then stopped making arcade videogames altogether in 1985. I might run into some more Aruze games (same company), but that's mostly pachislop.

>>11864113
The game itself is a rather repetitive tube shooter with iirc the occasional shitbox (but nothing too horrible for 1983 3D). The trippy graphics are the one thing you might recommend it for, but if that's what someone is looking for you might as well recommend some 2000s audio visualizers.

>>11854808
That walking animal sprite is really great looking. And the game does not use any overpowered microcontrollers.

>>11864145
That's one of the reasons why I haven't allocated the storage for it, I don't want it to be one of those games that is more fun to watch than play. I do enjoy some Tube Panic though so who knows I might become obsessed with it kek.

I honestly think I prefer 2600 Missile Command over the arcade version. I feel like I'm more in control in the 2600 version. Both versions are great but I think the 2600 version is better.

Not really retro, but someone created a very faithful recreation of Dracula Hunter, an arcade game from1979 which is still unemulated on MAME.

arlagames(dot)itch(dot)io/dracula-hunter

>>11865538
I'll have to give this a spin. This game interests me because it seems to have been a very popular game (popular enough to be featured in a manga around the same time and get a Sega Saturn homebrew remake) so it's odd that it's never been dumped.

>>11866248
Just played a few rounds. At least compared to the videos it's very close. It doesn't seem like there's any QoL shit or anything. My only gripe is the CRT filter looks kinda retarded (why is it a horizontal screen for a vertical screen game?) but besides that yeah I think it's a good recreation.

>>11866280
>My only gripe is the CRT filter looks kinda retarded
That and the fact that you can't put the game in full screen, which is kinda bad. It's a little thing, but it bothers me.
Anyway, it's a pretty good recreation.

I don't hate the 2600 Pac-Man port desu. It's certainly not faithful nor is it the best way to play Pac-Man on the 2600 now (Pac-Man 4k is the best I've played so far), but on its own it's still fun. It's kind of like the Donkey Kong port. Not faithful but I still enjoy it.