March 27, 2007

A few weeks ago I ran across an extremely cool nod to retro computing, but wanted to wait to pass it along until I had one in my hands to show. I am referring to Ben Fry's distellamap project.

Having put together the rather interesting dismap and mariosoup projects, which provide a unique glimpse into the code and graphics buried in the typical Atari 2600 cartridge, Fry basically merged these pieces into distellamap. Distellamap is a listing of a game's 6507 assembly code—at most 4K's worth (yes, 4096 bytes!) per cartridge, with every "go to" or jump illustrated with a curved line to the target and every block of data (as opposed to code) represented as an orange square. It's a fascinating thing to behold.

Fry's gallery includes a number of games popular at the time, the most complex of which is Pac-Man, due to the necessary AI for the ghosts. When I saw these could be ordered as prints, I grabbed one and it now adorns my office wall. Click the above thumbnail for a better view, and a second shot is available here.

Amazing effort on Fry's part. And be sure not to miss his deconstructulator which shows, in real time, how such graphics data is accessed from the cartridge by way of a Java-based NES emulator and a live sprite buffer display.

March 26, 2007

Ever since I first played it back on my Atari 520ST back in 1986, I've loved the game Time Bandit. A few weeks ago, at the request of a reader, I scanned the game's short manual that I'd kept all these years and placed it online. Well, I've got another bit of Time Bandit news.

A week or so ago I was scanning eBay in search of interesting vintage computer items when I came across an auction for an unopened (still shrink-wrapped) Time Bandit for Atari ST retail package. I clicked to "Buy It Now" before I'd even read half the item posting. (See the auction here while it's still online.) A great find.

Have a look at it in my galleries.

March 19, 2007

My last post concerned my Wipeout collection. As any Wipeout fan is aware, when it comes to getting champion track times, the 4-way digital pad is out. But when the original Playstation and Wipeout came out, that's all there was, you're thinking. Dual Shock wasn't even a glimmer in Kutaragi's eye. Well, there was one alternative: the NeGcon.

Perhaps the most unique controller I've ever encountered, the NeGcon was a Playstation controller put out by Namco which featured most of what the standard Playstation controller had to offer, with the notable addition of an analog "steering" style control in the form of a split down the middle of the unit, with the left and right halves connected by a swivel-joint. What's more, the left shoulder button as well as the front X and square buttons were analog with a notable travel distance to them. The player would twist the unit to steer his or her craft while applying the desired level of thrust to the analog buttons. A player's potential performance, when armed with the NeGcon in a game like Wipeout, is far beyond that of the unfortunate player chained to a D-pad.

A number of games supported this controller early on, among them: the entire Wipeout series, Gran Turismo, and the Ridge Racer series. The NeGcon was never a well-known controller, but there are players who, to this day, consider it to be the superior analog controller for the Playstation. I'm pleased to have found one back in '96 at a local toy store. I never play Wipeout without it.

March 8, 2007

Apparently I really like wipE'out". I posted a pic of my computer room on Amiga.org and a reader saw, in the foreground, the original "long box" of wipE'out" for the Playstation. He wrote to tell me it's very rare. Is it? At any rate, it prompted me to take a photo of my wipE'out" collection. Enjoy.

I do hold a special place for the game. I was very anti-console in the 80's and early 90's. Back in '96 a friend told me to stop by and checkout his new Playstation and this great 3D racing game. I had never used a Playstation before. He fired up wipE'out" and literally before five seconds had passed, I knew I would be purchasing a Playstation and that game as soon as was humanly possible. I was stunned. 15 hours and one trip to Circuit City later, I was playing in front of my own TV. (I still have and use that original Playstation, which I have since mod'ed.)

Coincidentally, the latest issue (#35) of Retro Gamer magazine features the article, "The Making of: Wipeout." A good read. (And, for the love of God, subscribe to that excellent mag!)

UPDATE [3.14.2007]: It was eating at me, the lack of Wipeout XL for the Playstation, so I eBayed a copy and retook the collection picture. Now at least one version of every wipE'out" title, other than the Europe/Australasia-only Wipeout 3: Special Edition, is represented.

March 7, 2007

In May of 2003, Adam Kalsey sent out the call to 11 people to submit the personal stories of their early experiences with computing technology, and send him the links. The stories were posted on the individuals' own blogs and linked from Kalsey's own post Newly Digital: A distributed anthology of early computing experiences.

Says Kalsey, in starting off this project:

Newly Digital is an experimental writing project. I’ve asked 11 people to write about their early experiences with computing technology and post their essays on their weblogs. Some have written about their first computers or learning to program. Others wrote about their first experiences with the Internet or a budding computer technology. Some stories are short and some span several printed pages.

This is different than a traditional anthology. Every story is hosted on its author’s weblog. Each story has links to all the others. Although I’m the editor of the anthology in the sense that I chose who to invite and the general subject, I didn’t read any of the stories before they were posted to the anthology. I’ll be reading them for the first time at the same time you do.

Once the original piece went live pointing to the initial 11 stories, the reader submissions started pouring in and a rather sizeable library of stories detailing the loss of computing virginity was assembled. These pieces are fascinating reading. Kalsey posted what he saw as a Best of Newly Digital a short while later. His own I was Newly Digital story is out there, as well. (It looks like Kalsey and I shared similar beginnings; we both started with a TI-99/4A.)

I was quite pleased to have run across this little goldmine in a Google search for something or other a short while ago. I will certainly have to put together my own Newly Digital writeup and post it here when I can find time. Kalsey's project took place several years ago, but I'd love to hear such "early days" stories from my readers here, in the comments thread. Anyone have an experience to share?

March 5, 2007

I have recently stumbled across one of the most impressive, hardcore retro computing efforts I've ever encountered. A reader, Kroah, broke into chat with me the other day, indicating that he had been searching for months and months for the manual to the game Time Bandit. He saw a photo I had linked on the Usenet several years ago, in which the manual was pictured in the background. It was chance that he found me here at Byte Cellar, but now that he had, could I provide it? I could.

Why did he want the Time Bandit manual? He is building a sequel. How, you ask? With the Time Bandit Utility of his creation. You see, Kroah's passion is "decompilation". That is, breaking a game down to its basics, and then building a easy-to-use tool--GUI and everything, that allows editing of level maps, graphics, game scripts, etc. Coded in in C# under .NET, his Time Bandit Utility allows you to modify the core game, or go far beyond and create more or less a whole new game based on the original engine. The images above are just a quick demonstration of what can be done with the tool. Good stuff, eh? Well - it gets better. It's not just the Atari ST classic Time Bandit he has decompiled; a host of classic games have gone under the knife, as can be seen at his page: Archon, Seven Cities of Gold, M.U.L.E., Gateway to Apshai and more--classics, all.

Kroah tells me that he follows a certain drill in decompilation:

1. Decompile and decrypt the game with an über tool (thanks IDA)
2. Understand the whole data and code
3. Make a tool to read/write the data (and updating some game code)
4. Create new levels before releasing the custom tool
5. Develop on a cool story
6. Build the levels (this takes time...)
7. Release the new levels and wait for the community feedback
8. Release the tool

And, as can be seen from the following, it's not a lightweight process.

This game has really a complex obfuscator and code protector (I spent numerous nights decrypting it...). The hardest I've ever seen. There's 3 layers of XOR encryption (at loading, in game and when loading/saving). With this, some checksums are computed and it hangs the computer randomly in time after the check... So I first decrypted the 3 layers and write it back to disk, removing the decoding code and the checksums. After that, I've extended the floppy to a double sided one (720k) and updated the loading code (the floppy is raw copied to memory). Now the game won't run on a 512K, but we have lot more free memory to do the levels. Scripts and texts take great amount of space. When I'll have time, I'll add a little encryption before loading because all the texts are readable on the floppy... not good for cheaters ;)

This truly is an astounding effort and I hope that my post, here, helps spread the word on the good work that Kroah is doing in his free time. Efforts like this truly keep the retro scene alive. Hats off, Kroah.

March 4, 2007

I have scanned the Time Bandit instruction manual at 300 dpi and put the pages together in an eight page PDF document for anyone, like me, who loves the game and would like a digital version of the manual. If any copyright holders take issue with this move, please contact me.

See it here:  http://pix.blakespot.com/view/computers/atari_520ST/time_bandit/

March 1, 2007

I got my first Amiga back in October of 1985. As I understand it, it was the first Amiga 1000 sold in the state of Virginia. 4096 colors, 4-channel stereo sampled sound, fast 16/32-bit processor, lightweight UNIX-like OS with preemptive multitasking with a WIMP GUI. It was like something sent back from the future. An amazing machine with an amazing OS.

Sadly, the cult-like passion of its followers could not prevent Commodore from driving the company straight into the ground. C= filed for bankruptcy in 1994. Yet, the Amiga-faithful live on. They can be found in various IRC channels and forums across the web. I frequent Amiga.org, personally. Yes, I've still got a few Amigas, even if I am not of the true brotherhood, using an AmigaOS machine as my main day-to-day workhorse.

It's too long a story to explain what hardware these hardcore users ride. I'll defer to Wikipedia. Just know that there's original 68K-based Amiga hardware and then there's more recent PowerPC-based hardware known as the AmigaOne. Owners of these fairly snappy machines had long waited for the release of AmigaOS v4.0, as they were forced to run Linux in the absence of a version of AmigaOS that supported their machines. An awkward stuation, true. But, after years of anticipation, AmigaOS 4 finally made it out the door on December 24, 2006 and there was much rejoycing across the land. Except that EyeTech, the company that made the AmigaOne, no longer does. It's a sad story, really.

Those with the hardware, however, are rather happy with this latest, greatly updated release. Have a look at what it's all about in ArsTechnica's review of AmigaOS 4 by Jeremy Reimer. (His earlier review of the Micro-AmigaOne and Amiga OS 4 Developer Prerelease can be seen here.) Very interesting reading. I'll stop with Amiga OS 3.9 on my Amiga 1200 '060, I think.

March 1, 2007

What could be finer than an 8-bit video game art show? Little, as can be seen in the pictorial posted at Fort90 of just such a phenomenon. Artistic homages to Pac-Man, Mario, Q*Bert, Dig Dug -- the list goes on, can be found within. Oil, water color, sculpture -- there's some truly inspired works on display. The apparently functional, super-sized NES controller is pretty slick, as well.

Not sure which piece is my favorite.

UPDATE: As one of my readers pointed out, a book exists with art from this show, entitled i am 8-bit: Art Inspired by Classic Videogames of the '80s. Have a look.