Notes on Action Pack Two

From: lti@earthlink.net
Newsgroups: rec.games.video.classic
Subject: Re: Atari 2600 Action Pack 2
Date: 19 Jun 1995 16:06:12 GMT
Organization: LTI
Lines: 30
Message-ID: <3s479k$p9d@mars.earthlink.net>
References: <3s447e$qqj@chicago.ugc.com>

>   cbartz@ugc.com (Chris Bartz) writes:
>  Just received my latest issue of Computer Gaming World on Saturday and there
>  is an ad for "Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack 2 for Windows."
>  
>  "It came from the eighties!  The sequel that's already a classic"
>  
>  It's difficult to tell from the box what titles are on it because of the
>  angle, but it again contains 15 Activision titles, 10 of which are:
>  
>  Barnstorming, River Raid II, Megamania, Enduro, Skiing, Keystone Kapers,
>  Stampede, Laser Blast, Dragster and Tennis.  Here's hoping they throw in
>  Oink, Plaque Attack, Pitfall 2, Robot Tank and Pressure Cooker as well
>  

Oink and Plaque Attack are included.  Pitfall II was impossible to
emulate, due to the fact that it has custom hardware in the cartridge.
 Activision may include the others you mentioned in Volume III.

BTW - As we speak, I'm converting the Pack to native Win95; 100%
32-bit flat model code.  I may also use some the game SDK routines for
sound and graphics.  Anyway, it should run faster on the lower end
systems (486/33).

Volumes I & II will be re-released for Win95; Volume III and
thereafter will be native Win95.

Thanks for you interest!

Michael Livesay
LTI

From: lti@earthlink.net
Newsgroups: rec.games.video.classic
Subject: Re: Atari 2600 Action Pack 2
Date: 20 Jun 1995 02:12:13 GMT
Organization: LTI
Lines: 17
Message-ID: <3s5apt$5kk@mars.earthlink.net>
References: <3s4aki$674@crl7.crl.com>

>   btomlin@crl.com (Bruce Tomlin) writes:
>  
>  Really?  What sort of custom hardware?  I know it's the only "AB" cart
>  Activision made, and it's 16k, but is this "custom hardware" some sort of
>  onboard RAM or something?  Sounds like Atari's "super chip" that they 
>  used in most of their later games like Solaris and Defender II.
>  
>>>>

When I was hacking Pitfall-II I found that there was on-board ram, and
also an on-board waveform generator.  Every scanline the code was
moving a byte from a ROM address to the volume level registers of one
of the audio channels.  This effectively is sampling at the the horz
line rate (15KHz).  Kind of cool...

Michael Livesay