2nd generation console discussion(Intellivision, Colecovision, 2600, Odyssey 2)

Scrolling was an important aspect in the evolution of shmups.

During the sort of "second wave" of arcade shmups there was a lot of experiments and gimmicks looked into as a way to keep the genre fresh, and I feel like scrolling won out as the direction of travel pretty quickly, certainly 1984 at the absolute latest, when games like Xevious (released end of 1983), 1942, and Star Force reigned in the shmup world.

But really, I'd argue it had already started around 1982 when games like Time Pilot, and Moon Patrol were about, as well as 2600 games like River Raid, its port of Vanguard, Empire Strikes Back (which inexplicably became quite popular here in Britain via its C64 clone "Attack of the Mutant Camels") as well as its well respected clone of Defender "Chopper Command" etc etc. One of the biggest shmups on Spectrum was a clone of Konami's 1981 arcade game Scramble called "Penetrator"

Unlike with platformers, A lot of these shmups simply aren't possible with flick-screen progression, you need to constantly see ahead.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Well to be fair the 2600 is really good at explosion sounds. I don't think any chip besides the POKEY can do better (without PCM)

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Ahem! SID

The CV version is reproducing the sounds of the 2600 game just fine. Yeah, POKEY was quite amazing for its time. Really, the explosion sound is just white noise with reverb. I don’t get why Intellevision games seem to struggle with that.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Uh....the Intellivision version of River Raid was the choppiest version on consoles. The sound effects are the worst of the bunch as well. The explosions are the generic sound you'd get in most games for the console. Hell, even the 2600 had better explosion sounds in this game.

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I don't know what's going on with that video you posted, but this one is captured from real hardware:



Much smoother.

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

Opcode Games sort of is, depending on what you consider a real Colecovision. They were debating whether to go with a screen-by-screen or choppy scrolling version for the Colecovision + Super Game Module. Apparently they gave up on that and are now making it for their new FPGA console, the hardware of which is in their new Super Game Module 2 which has a cart port.

This is pretty much what their Intellipxander was going to be and the footage below of their SGM2 game shows why I was relieved that they cancelled the Intellixpander:

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Wait.. what is this SGM2 expansion thing?! So this is just some fans dream of what colecovision would look like in the 16bit generation with an addon? That thing is ridiculous haha. Why even have it attach the coleco at all??? It's like as if the 32x was actually a Saturn! Just why..

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Originally Posted by turboxray

Wait.. what is this SGM2 expansion thing?! So this is just some fans dream of what colecovision would look like in the 16bit generation with an addon? That thing is ridiculous haha. Why even have it attach the coleco at all??? It's like as if the 32x was actually a Saturn! Just why..

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Although they're pitching it as more 32X-like, it's basically the same thing as that "adaptor" to play Genesis games on SNES.

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Originally Posted by goldenband

I don't know what's going on with that video you posted, but this one is captured from real hardware:



Much smoother.

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I had to say it once per page earlier and I guess it's still required: most videos online of Intellivision games are inaccurate. If they aren't buggy emulation or terrible captures, the player more often than not hits "1" and starts a game on practice or slo-mo mode and doesn't use an overlay or read the manual to learn how to play.

@Goldenbond

I guess the guy was playing Intellivision Lives, or something like that, on a newer PC. I can’t even run The Atari Anniversary collection on my old 2009 rig, because the game was probably written for single core CPU PCs.

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Originally Posted by turboxray

Wait.. what is this SGM2 expansion thing?! So this is just some fans dream of what colecovision would look like in the 16bit generation with an addon? That thing is ridiculous haha. Why even have it attach the coleco at all??? It's like as if the 32x was actually a Saturn! Just why..

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It’s pretty much like having the RAM (Plus some) from the Adam computer expansion module and adding an AY sound chip. It’s like having the expansion pack for the N64 and a sound chip added to a cart like the NES did. Coleco was forward thinking in the design of it console. Unfortunately, Coleco released the Adam Computer expansion, which pretty much bankrupted the company out of business.


http://www.colecovision.dk/sem.htm?refreshed



Oh, the SGM2. Well, Nintendo added CPUs and other chips to their carts, so why not?

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Originally Posted by gamevet

It’s pretty much like having the RAM (Plus some) from the Adam computer expansion module and adding an AY sound chip. It’s like having the expansion pack for the N64 and a sound chip added to a cart like the NES did.


http://www.colecovision.dk/sem.htm?refreshed

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That's the first SGM and at least it's within a reasonable proximity to the original console hardware. The SGM2 specs are even more than what the 32x was to the Genesis. I guess I don't understand why even bother having it as an upgrade. There's nothing of use in the Coleco hardware to SGM2 haha, other than you don't have two separate consoles??? I just don't get these kind of upgrades, like the 7800 one (YM2151 would never have been in that upgrade), or A8 completely replacing the video chip with something beyond VGA! This thing goes beyond those hahah

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Originally Posted by gamevet

It’s pretty much like having the RAM (Plus some) from the Adam computer expansion module and adding an AY sound chip. It’s like having the expansion pack for the N64 and a sound chip added to a cart like the NES did. Coleco was forward thinking in the design of it console. Unfortunately, Coleco released the Adam Computer expansion, which pretty much bankrupted the company out of business.


http://www.colecovision.dk/sem.htm?refreshed



Oh, the SGM2. Well, Nintendo added CPUs and other chips to their carts, so why not?

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Well, for one the CPUs on the SNES carts were basically just the same SA-1 just clocked faster. The DSPs are just fast simple dumb devices, but they weren't beyond the systems specs of the day.

Have you seen the video for the SGM2?? It's not just a cpu, that well beyond the Coleco, but if a FULL system; completely video hardware with 32k colors, two scrolling fields, 64 sprites of 16x16 or bigger, FM chip, ADPCM chip, etc. Coleco is a 2ng gen system. Those specs are later 4th gen. That's like having a PS2 addon for the SNES.

The Super Game Module that Opcode sells isn't what Coleco designed but never released. The Opcode SGM would have bankrupted Coleco without the existence of the Adam.


Nintendo never added an Xbox to the SNES and left the SNES to just output the video and pass through controller input.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Ahem! SID

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Nah, not crunchy enough, I like crunchy explosions like the sound you get when you die in Battlezone for the 2600. SID is smooth, which is why it is the superior chip, just not for explosions.

That SGM2...what is it trying to be, exactly? Some sort of consolized MSX2+?

I see it'll still use the ColecoVision CPU for handling input/output and sound, à la the Z80 in the Genesis. But at that point, why involve the CV at all?

Wasn't there some other "upgrade" that did something like this, i.e. where the host system really isn't doing anything significant and is little more than a passthrough? There were the Atari 2600 adapters for the Intellivision and ColecoVision, the Super 8 and Tristar 64, or for that matter the Super Game Boy, but those were all ways to support other existing platforms.

I thought there was at least one other occasion where a company put out a SGM2-style upgrade that left the base hardware completely idle. Can't think of what it is, though. Coleco, Mattel and Atari all worked on laserdisc units for their consoles at one time or another, so maybe that's what I'm thinking of...

Super 8 has NES hardware (I think it does?) inside and a pass through for Super Famicom games. I've only used it to play NES games on my SNES.


Speaking of hardware add-ons. 3DO had the M2 and there were rumors of an add-on for the Saturn that would give it enough horsepower to run VF3.

The 3DO Blaster ISA card contains an entire 3DO, and your PC is essentially acting as a pass-through. Though, it did also offer an option to run the 3DO in a window, which involves running a program in Windows 3.1, but even then what you see inside the window is entirely created by the 3DO hardware, and the program resizes it. If you didn't use Windows, you'd launch it from DOS and the 3DO hardware essentially takes over. It doesn't have a separate power supply, and it can use the same CD-ROM drive, but the rest of your PC's hardware isn't really doing anything. However, IIRC you can't have your machine power on "as a 3DO", you must boot up your computer and launch it from the OS, which has to be Windows or DOS. (Okay, or OS/2.)

It also only works with specific CD drives (Panasonic ones I think), so even that was limited. Though at least it could be used as a normal drive too.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

@Goldenbond

Oh, the SGM2. Well, Nintendo added CPUs and other chips to their carts, so why not?

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It's way beyond just an addon cpu (by which that addon cpu is like 5x the processing power the coleco btw). The SA-1 and DSPs were within reason on the SNES, and didn't take over the system. This SGM2 has whole new complete video and sound hardware (32000 colors, two BGs, 64 large spites, FM, ADPCM, etc). It doesn't need the coleco for anything other than gamepads. It's like 2 generations ahead of what the coleco already is. That's putting a PS2 on a snes.

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Originally Posted by turboxray

It's way beyond just an addon cpu (by which that addon cpu is like 5x the processing power the coleco btw). The SA-1 and DSPs were within reason on the SNES, and didn't take over the system. This SGM2 has whole new complete video and sound hardware (32000 colors, two BGs, 64 large spites, FM, ADPCM, etc). It doesn't need the coleco for anything other than gamepads. It's like 2 generations ahead of what the coleco already is. That's putting a PS2 on a snes.

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I look at it kind of like going from the SMS to the Genesis to the 32X, there's still the base hardware in there somewhere but it's no longer needed for much.

Either way I think it's cool, it's like having a "new" 4th gen console.

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Originally Posted by axel

I look at it kind of like going from the SMS to the Genesis to the 32X, there's still the base hardware in there somewhere but it's no longer needed for much.

Either way I think it's cool, it's like having a "new" 4th gen console.

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It's a bigger leap than that, but I mean having a new 4th gen console is kinda interesting. But why make it as an addon? Now you've limited the audience to Coleco owners. As a standalone, I'd definitely be more interested in it. I guess from support/sales perspective, Coleco owners (and fans of that generation) will probably be more likely to buy it than if it was just a standalone console to a general audience? I dunno. I'm having a hard time justifying it outside side some Coleco alternative corrective history fan-ism. At least the SGM1 is much more grounded in reality, and still keeps with the spirit of the console (and doesn't over power it).

Yeah it doesn’t make sense. The SGM1 makes more sense, though it could have used more units available.

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Originally Posted by turboxray

It's a bigger leap than that, but I mean having a new 4th gen console is kinda interesting. But why make it as an addon? Now you've limited the audience to Coleco owners. As a standalone, I'd definitely be more interested in it. I guess from support/sales perspective, Coleco owners (and fans of that generation) will probably be more likely to buy it than if it was just a standalone console to a general audience? I dunno. I'm having a hard time justifying it outside side some Coleco alternative corrective history fan-ism. At least the SGM1 is much more grounded in reality, and still keeps with the spirit of the console (and doesn't over power it).

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Oh I didn't realize that, I thought it was being offered as a standalone. As an add-on yeah that isn't nearly as interesting to buy, even if I do find it technically impressive.

I would have liked to see something like this in an FPGA-clone of a Colecovision that can run the old games (maybe have a bunch loaded into internal memory, if it's possible to get the licenses) and have its own library of games too. The specs look good for a 4th gen console although only 64 sprites total may limit some styles of gameplay.

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Originally Posted by axel

Oh I didn't realize that, I thought it was being offered as a standalone. As an add-on yeah that isn't nearly as interesting to buy, even if I do find it technically impressive.

I would have liked to see something like this in an FPGA-clone of a Colecovision that can run the old games (maybe have a bunch loaded into internal memory, if it's possible to get the licenses) and have its own library of games too. The specs look good for a 4th gen console although only 64 sprites total may limit some styles of gameplay.

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It's both. Their new console is called Omni and that hardware is in the new SGM2 shell.

Came across this MSX game and thought it an interesting point of comparison. A side-scrolling mascot platformer of sorts, based on a cartoon, released in 1991 in South Korea. I think this gives a realistic idea (and not a best-case scenario) of what an average late Colecovision game might have looked like if it had survived into the late 80s. Quite frankly, it being Korean-developed makes me think we would have seen better.



The scrolling still isn't good, but it's a step up from the system's worst offenders in that regard. The sprites are decent and the backgrounds are fairly impressive. The first stage simulates two background layers and the third is a shooter stage and shows some use of parallax. Good use of color too. Unfortunately it looks like crap gameplay wise.

The scrolling is still in 8 pixel steps, its just scrolling faster so its less noticeable.

Some games still play well at that speed (such as MSX Road Fighter) but if you scrolled a game like Gradius that quickly it'd be unplayable.

Activision managed to get smooth scrolling with River Raid. It can't be that difficult.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Activision managed to get smooth scrolling with River Raid. It can't be that difficult.

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Dynamic tiles eat up a lot of space. If you're going for fully smooth you need 8 times as many tiles per direction. Horizontal plus vertical is 16 times and adding a single degree of diagonal requires another 8 frames of everything. If the Colecovision can't flip tiles then another 8 frames would be required for the other diagonal.

Free roaming Intellivision games move in 16 directions. Which would require 64 times as many tiles to animate on Colecovision.

River Raid is mostly single color filler lacking any pixelart.

Just because there are a few Mode 7 demos for Genesis doesn't mean that it can't be that difficult.

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Originally Posted by turboxray

It's a bigger leap than that, but I mean having a new 4th gen console is kinda interesting. But why make it as an addon? Now you've limited the audience to Coleco owners. As a standalone, I'd definitely be more interested in it. I guess from support/sales perspective, Coleco owners (and fans of that generation) will probably be more likely to buy it than if it was just a standalone console to a general audience? I dunno. I'm having a hard time justifying it outside side some Coleco alternative corrective history fan-ism. At least the SGM1 is much more grounded in reality, and still keeps with the spirit of the console (and doesn't over power it).

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There is a strong base of Colecovision collectors who buy at least 2 copies of every physical release. Which is why the original SGM was made just good enough to facilitate fast MSX conversions.

Intellivision has a similar community of collectors who try to obtain everything but it seems to be a much smaller group. There are also lot of straight game enthusiasts who will support rom sales.

Colecovision is TMS9918A so yeah, it can't flip anything period.

That said, I guess that if you really wanted you could get away with less granurality (but more than 8px), e.g. Choro Q on MSX seems to get away with 4px, though it does have a rather simplistic look (forgot if I already linked this video in the thread but if so it was long ago so whatever):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyY5jmMXPKU

I suppose whatever it takes to make it move often enough.

EDIT: originally I said 2px but after paying more attention it seems to be 4px. Goddammit, that's the second time the game fools me with its scrolling :​P

4-pixel scrolling fits into looking similar to some of the lower framerate games that were common leading up to the release of Colevovision.

Pure EXEC games on Intellivision run at <20fps. But you still get the full motion of speed that you do with 60fps. Going from static to full speed movement begins at 1-pixel increments and can build up in a slope like real animation.

I imagine that gameplay at least has the potential to be much more detailed as well. Even if you program in pixel-by-pixel collision in a game that visually scrolls at a minimum of 4-pixels or more, the human brain wouldn't react as accurately in response.

Moon Patrol on the MSX isn't smooth but looks like shorter steps. Maybe 4 px



Yet the Colecovision port looks smoother still.



BC 2, one of the few side-scrolling "platformers" old enough to be on the Colecovision during its lifespan, also looks like less than 8 pixel steps. But worse than the C64 version for sure.

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Originally Posted by j_factor

Moon Patrol on the MSX isn't smooth but looks like shorter steps. Maybe 4 px



Yet the Colecovision port looks smoother still.



BC 2, one of the few side-scrolling "platformers" old enough to be on the Colecovision during its lifespan, also looks like less than 8 pixel steps. But worse than the C64 version for sure.

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BC 2 is just shuffling tiles. Switch youtube to slowest playback and you can count the pixels.

Moon Patrol for MSX would have required a massive number of tiles to animate smoothly for the amount of detail, variety and height of the pixelart. The Colecovision version simplified each, but is still very impressive and has the potential to play better..

If you pretty much always scroll a background fast enough that hardware scrolling would be moving at exactly 8 pixels per frame, it looks smooth. But in-between 8-pixel increments will look weird though. So the next smooth speed would be in 16 pixels increments and very fast. Smooth fast tile-by-tile scrolling works best for backgrounds like shooters without any background collision.

Mech 8 looks like it's shuffling tiles at the sweet spot:








The cool thing about Space Patrol for Intellivision is that Joe Zbiciak actually pulled off all of the parallax using actual h-sync, which was tough to do.

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Originally Posted by Black_Tiger

Dynamic tiles eat up a lot of space. If you're going for fully smooth you need 8 times as many tiles per direction. Horizontal plus vertical is 16 times and adding a single degree of diagonal requires another 8 frames of everything. If the Colecovision can't flip tiles then another 8 frames would be required for the other diagonal.

Free roaming Intellivision games move in 16 directions. Which would require 64 times as many tiles to animate on Colecovision.

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Those D&D games were hardly what I'd call good examples of scrolling, no matter how many directions they had. I doubt any of them were more than 8, despite the controller offering 16 directions. And most side scrollers only had to scroll in one direction.

Defender scrolls just fine in 2 directions on the CV.

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River Raid is mostly single color filler lacking any pixelart.

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River Raid was not a single color. It had blue water and green land.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

Those D&D games were hardly what I'd call good examples of scrolling, no matter how many directions they had. I doubt any of them were more than 8, despite the controller offering 16 directions.

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Hover Force says hi:



As a side note, gamevet, do you have a grudge against the Intellivision or something? You seem kind of driven to paint it in a bad light, and I'm curious as to why.

The Intellivision was a console that I really was interested in playing, and once I did, I was not impressed (probably the worst videogame controller I've ever held) with it. I've always thought that the games just weren't any fun. I watched my neighbor's kids for extra money and I'd often play their Intellivision, just to pass the time, and I often got bored with the games, including AD&D. And no, I don't feel that the Intellivision is on the same level as the Colecovision and Atari 5200. It just felt like a console that was slightly above the Atari VCS in graphics, with poorer sound.

And it's not so much hating on the Intellivision. It's people trying to knock down the CV hardware because it doesn't have hardware scrolling. Obviously, that Moon Patrol footage shows smooth scrolling and parallax scrolling. It's not always necessary to have a built-in hardware feature to accomplish something. And seriously, that Intellivision video of Moon Patrol isn't even comparable.


That's not smooth scrolling BTW. ;)

There's always excuses in this thread with the Intellivision for direct comparisons of the day, but the reality was that it couldn't compete with the CV or 5200 in arcade ports.




Why is the scrolling choppy (the game is running at a snail's pace) in this Intellivision port (It's real hardware!) of TutanKham, even though the hardware supports scrolling?


There wasn't a port of this game for the 5200, but it shared hardware design with their 8-bit computers.

Man the Atari 8bit version is hideous... as are many other games for it.

Why the intellivision version is that slow, I don't know. Probably using EXEC and running at 20 fps. Either way that would be the same as judging the Dreamcast by the Windows CE based games.
On the other hand, saying it's just slightly above the Atari 2600 is... well... that game also came out for it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FrFJoiC9Fo

The Intellivision is MILES ahead, even with the shitty framerate.

How many Intellivision games back then relied on EXEC? From what I recall using Windows CE wasn't the norm in the case of Dreamcast (despite what the marketing may have made people think), but EXEC seems to have played a much more important role with Intellivision.

Most games developed by Mattel themselves used the EXEC. But other companies weren't meant to use it, it was completely undocumented. Mattel even tried to break third party games that tried to use the EXEC by changing it slightly for the Intellivision 2 (and even breaking one of their games in the process).

The EXEC was a big deal for Mattel because it allowed them to develop games very cheaply. It's less an "Operating System" but more a game engine packed with the console. The cart just provided the game logic and the EXEC took care of managing interrupts, tiles, sprites, etc.

In a way the Intellivision is the antithesis of the 2600.

Whereas the 2600 expects you to do everything, to the point you need to run code in sync with the video beam to accomplish anything, the Intellivision is designed to do everything itself as much as possible.

Not only is the hardware extremely WYSIWYG (you can't even do raster effects), but the Intellivision includes over 256 builtin tiles, builtin sound effects, math routines (even square root o_O), and of course the EXEC "game engine".

And that's why a good portion of Intellivision titles have the same generic explosion sounds and other effects.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Man the Atari 8bit version is hideous... as are many other games for it.

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What do you mean by many other games for it?

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The Intellivision is MILES ahead, even with the shitty framerate.

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I'm pretty sure that was a 4K cart and a cash-in title for the pubslisher.

Yes it is miles better, but then you have a game like Lock N' Chase that isn't like twice as nice (2600 version is missing the doors though), and really Mattel could have put a little more effort into those enemy sprites. Really, to me the Intellivision is like the Vic-20 (The 2600 is the Spectrum) of consoles. It wasn't going to blow you away, but it got the job done.

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Originally Posted by gamevet

And that's why a good portion of Intellivision titles have the same generic explosion sounds and other effects.




What do you mean by many other games for it?



I'm pretty sure that was a 4K cart and a cash-in title for the pubslisher.

Yes it is miles better, but then you have a game like Lock N' Chase that isn't like twice as nice (2600 version is missing the doors though), and really Mattel could have put a little more effort into those enemy sprites. Really, to me the Intellivision is like the Vic-20 (The 2600 is the Spectrum) of consoles. It wasn't going to blow you away, but it got the job done.

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I mean given the difference between those two video, I'd say the Intelli version definitely looks at least twice as nice! Even if it's not pushing the console hardware, it's definitely a lot better than the 2600 version shown.

The Atari 8bit has a lot of games with hideous color choices. For every gorgeous looking game there are two that look terrible. Tutankham is a good example of hideous colors.

Yeah, I never undersood some of the decisions programmers made with color choices on the Atari 8-bit computers. They could have went with blue or red for those walls.

I know I have a knock of version of Tutankham on the C64, I think it's called Lady Tut. I don't think the youtube videos I've seen of it are the same game I have on one of my 100s of disks.

One rumor I heard somewhere is that at least for the Polish Atari 8bit games (it was really popular in Poland for some reason), was that color TVs were quite rare there at at the time. So devs kinda "guessed" at the colors, with "interesting" results. No idea if this is actually the case or not.

A similar but unfortunate issue are games with lazy color choices. Games like Draconus which have monochromatic backgrounds. They could at least do the Lionheart thing and plaster a gradient all over the screen, or use a bit more color variety per screen, but nope... just a bland 3 shades of the same color for everything.