On Wed, 8 Apr 1998, Songbird wrote:
> I have not had a chance to look at the demo yet, but isn't there a 2600
> cart called "Karate" or something bland like that that featured really
> large characters? It was very blocky, but definitely covered most of the
> screen.
That's right. Karate characters are one color, 4-scanline-resolution,
and 8-pixels wide (double width), Still, they fill about 80-100
scanlines. I've looked into some other BINS of fighting games for the
VCS. I think the most impressive were "Kung-Fu Master" by Activision,
"Realsports Boxing" by Atari and "Pro Wrestling" by Absolute
Entertainment. Realsports Boxing characters also seem to use the missile
for the boxer's glove, and some HMOVE's to bend the head of a character
that's hit. "Pro Wrestling" also bends the characters when they're
lifted by the opponent, so they seem about 20 pixels wide, but only 8 in
each scanline! (or was it that they are double-widthed to 16?)
At "Kung-Fu Master", the character is also expanded when it hits the
opponent, again using its missile.
All these only have 8-pixel characters, but they don't flicker, and have
some in-player color changes to look really realistic.
I also looked into "Boxing" by Activision. The characters there are
monochrome, but definitely more than 8 pixels wide, and still don't
flicker! I think they also used some missiles, but I don't know how. (I
think this has already been discussed once on this mailing list.)
Robin Habron wrote:
>Haven't you ever played any karate-type games on any of the other
>8-bit systems that used Atari-compatible joysticks? :)
Well, I've also played some of them on the C-64 (Kung-Fu Master,
Exploding Fist, Fist II, Yie ar Kung-Fu, IK) and Amiga (IK+), and also
written a small Yie ar Kung-Fu port for the TI-99 using XBasic (but that
rather looks comical). I didn't try to figure out the joystick functions
of the 2600 Kung-Fu Master, but they also seem to be rather complex, but
intuitive. Also, in Exploding Fist, as I remember, for a definite move,
you had first to kneel down (Joystick down) and THEN move the joystick
right to achieve another punch than you would, for instance, by pushing
right, then diagonally down. You could also think of such combinations,
giving more than 16 possible moves.
Good punching (the 2600 to the edge...)
Kurt WOLOCH
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