2020/11/7: Atari 2600: Galagon

[VideoGameCritic]

Let me know what you think of my review of this amazing new homebrew!

[ASalvaro]

Let me know what you think of my review of this amazing new homebrew!

i wonder how many here will get the "Galagon take me away" reference

[matmico399]

Good review I did not hear one negative thing about it. Not one. It makes me wonder why this is not an A+

[VideoGameCritic]

I did have one gripe, which is that when both players have their own ships, they look nearly identical which is confusing. There is a tinge of blue and red below them to differentiate, but it's hard to make out in the heat of battle. I will admit it is a borderline A+ game.

[Cafeman]

I have not yet played it, but I've seen it being played on zero page Homebrew several times, and it looks like an A+ fantastic game. If I had not already seen the work-in-progress Robotron game for Atari 2600, I would probably say Galagon is the most impressive thing I've seen on the hardware, although it does use the arm chip of course.

[VideoGameCritic]

Tell me more about the arm chip.

[Cafeman]

Tell me more about the arm chip.

Basically the powerful coprocessor that is used for some newer Homebrews, and is on the Harmony and Melody boards. It started with Pitfall 2's DPC hardware, then came DPC+ and CDFJ and possibly other extra coprocessor ideas. ARM is just a shorthand because these use an ARM chip.

https://atariage.com/forums/blogs/entry ... -hardware/

[icepeople]

A question: After getting past the initial "wow," it seems to me the attacks once the aliens are in formation are limited to one alien or "group" at a time and in general the pace is relatively slow/tame compared to the coin-op. I assume it was a necessary hardware concession, but since I haven't taken a deep dive into the most difficult settings/levels I wanted to ask if anyone can provide a definitive answer about this.

[johnnywc23]

A question: After getting past the initial "wow," it seems to me the attacks once the aliens are in formation are limited to one alien or "group" at a time and in general the pace is relatively slow/tame compared to the coin-op. I assume it was a necessary hardware concession, but since I haven't taken a deep dive into the most difficult settings/levels I wanted to ask if anyone can provide a definitive answer about this.

Hello there!

I am the developer of Galagon (Galaga) for the 2600. To answer your question, there is not a limit to one group or alien attack. The maximum # of active attack aliens/groups is 10 I believe (I needed to define a max # since the attack pattern info is stored in static arrays). Of course there is difficulty ramping based on the skill level and current round, so it may start out at 1 (for Novice, stage 1) but will eventually reach 10 on the higher levels on advance.

Hope that helps!
John

[johnnywc23]

I did have one gripe, which is that when both players have their own ships, they look nearly identical which is confusing. There is a tinge of blue and red below them to differentiate, but it's hard to make out in the heat of battle. I will admit it is a borderline A+ game.

Hi VGC,

Thank you for taking the time to review Galagaon, I'm glad you enjoyed it! I agree with your gripe; in retrospect I should have made the primary colors for your ships red and blue in co-op mode and I could have had their 'captured' ships be white with red or blue instead as it does get a little confusing. I think at the time I wanted the ships to look similar to their counterparts in the one and two player alternating modes (which is closer to the arcade).

Coincidentally, in Robotron (aka RobotWar) for the 2600 (which I'm finishing development on now), I have added a co-op mode and did exactly this for the colors; the players are primarily purple and orange instead of white with just purple/orange trim so they are easier to distinguish in the heat of battle (although the 'heat of the battle' for Robotron is much hotter than the heat of battle for Galaga IMO! ).

Thanks again!
John
Champ Games