Atari @ 50

[WladimZappo]

This is really nice! Had almost forgotten how additive T2K was!!! :-)

BUT!

Is anybody else experiencing problems playing "saboteur" on the 2600? You know, the "lost" game from the maker of "Yar"?

I cant seem to get the controls to work properly

Have a nice day out there.

WZ

[Deckard]

I would LOVE to see a Williams collection in the same vein - I could die a happy man (or be in my nursing home with sore thumbs !) with my Switch, Dead Cells, this collection and a Williams one.

[Misfit]

Do the webs flicker in T2K?

Is it obvious on your emulator? Certainly nothing obvious on this one on the first 10 webs.

And it all looks amazing in glowing OLED on the nReal glasses.

[Misfit]

Is anybody else experiencing problems playing "saboteur" on the 2600? You know, the "lost" game from the maker of "Yar"?

I cant seem to get the controls to work properly

Not tried anything outside of Vector Sector (shows me I'm really bad at Lunar Lander!) and T2K yet.

saboteur was never released, was it? Maybe that is the problem!

[WladimZappo]

Hmm...

If anybody has the PS4 or PS5 version, maybe they could check for me if their version of "Saboteur" works?

That would be great!

Thanx

WZ

[Dio]

Do the webs flicker in T2K?

Is it obvious on your emulator? Certainly nothing obvious on this one on the first 10 webs.

And it all looks amazing in glowing OLED on the nReal glasses.

No, because I found the really bloody obscure GPU bug that causes it . It's very obvious if it's not fixed then on one segment of the web the shading flickers.

The bug is if the GPU sees
MOVE reg0, reg1
LOADW (addr),reg0
then the loaded value is also copied to reg1, presumably due to some scoreboarding bug.

T2K is the only Jag game I tested that hits it.

[Junosix]

Got the PS4 version and it is absolutely worth it for T2K alone. Love the interviews too, not shy about telling things as they were but all very jubilant nonetheless.

PVB pointed out to Digital Eclipse on Twitter that the Game Over screen is a lot faster than on the real hardware. They acknowledge the bug and are working on it.

No web flicker from what I can tell, also this old video of it being played on a T2K emulator (presumably Dio's one) shows a similar crazy Game Over animation speed. Not that I am wishing to query the provenance of Digital Eclipse's emulator, but is the lack of web flicker a canny observation of the GPU bug by them, and the Game Over speed a tricky consequence of Jag emulation, and both a coincidence, or... ?

[Dio]

If it's doing it on the game over screen, it should be doing it on the title screen too - it's down to not cycle counting the blitter accurately.

Emu has a fix, there's a menu option to turn it on and off. (Compared to real hardware, it's still a bit fast though - I think I count cycles right but not the memory bus usage). I think it was also in T2K, the "throttle Jaguar realistically" option, but most people would leave it off in play because it gives 60fps most of the time in gameplay. Although T2K won't run on my laptop, so I don't know for sure.

I see no need for conspiracy theories. They managed to get Cybermorph working, which is certainly more than I did, so they're capable of finding the flicker bug.

[MattyP]

If it's doing it on the game over screen, it should be doing it on the title screen too - it's down to not cycle counting the blitter accurately

Only seems to do it on the Game Over screen. The title screen looks fine.

I did notice it when playing and dying for the first time but well its no big issue really. I expect they'll patch it maybe at some point. Just thankful they included it in the collection TBH. At least we have a legitimate way of playing T2K on the new consoles.

[Junosix]

Yeah, only does it on Game Over so must be something else. More of a quirk than a showstopper and the game (and the other ones in the collection) plays perfectly.

[Dio]

It is harder to spot on the title screen, because the title screen does lots of other work so doesn't go at utterly insane speeds. But if you flip throttle on and off on the emulator the effect is obvious.

[VNVObit]

I would LOVE to see a Williams collection in the same vein - I could die a happy man (or be in my nursing home with sore thumbs !) with my Switch, Dead Cells, this collection and a Williams one.

there was a Williams Classics many years ago but just a small selection of their games (Defender 1 + 2, Bubbles, Sinistar and Robotron)

remember playing Robotron on keyboard. seem to remember they tried again on xbox (think it was first iteration) with some more games

[Rhythm]

Worth pointing out that in this week's Jeff Gerstmann podcast he's talking to Mike Mika (President of Digital Eclipse). They're talking about this collection and the next projects. Mike specifically called out that he'd love to do a Llamasoft collection, dig out things from the baa-kive, get interviews etc.

Jeff, Giles - get on this!! The way these guys work you wouldn't even need to code a thing. :-)

Video version of the podcast here - chat about Atari 50 is bookmarked but comes in around 1:04. Jeff and Llamasoft get mentioned around 1:45

[MattyP]

Worth pointing out that in this week's Jeff Gerstmann podcast he's talking to Mike Mika (President of Digital Eclipse). They're talking about this collection and the next projects. Mike specifically called out that he'd love to do a Llamasoft collection, dig out things from the baa-kive, get interviews etc.

Retrogamer did a cover disk a while back containing lots of Lllamasoft games! This would make a great basis for such a collection!

[Jonesey]

The image is from ebay but I have the very same thing in a stack on my desk!