Thursday, January 28, 2016

Atari 8-bit emulator ---> Alien Ambush

I do actually have some fond memories of loading this one into the old Indus disk drive and playing on the old Atari 1200 XL.  Those were the days when you'd have to wait about 20 to 30 seconds for the game to start... maybe a little less in the case of this one.  Oh, it's got everything.  Player missiles, graphics 7, display list interrupts, getting three colors out of two player missiles mashed together, doubling the size of player missiles with the peeking of one poke... I forget those numbers now.  I think 53770 is for a "random" number between 0 and 255.  Ah, brain cells.  How you continue to impress me.
Now I'm one of these people who would live their lives completely the same over and over again if I had to, and I probably don't.  But I do consider it one of the great failings of my life that I consistently chose level 0 of play over level 9 in Peter Fokos' 1982 classic, Alien Ambush.  I mean, level 9's hard!  It's hard work!  And plus, you keep getting blowed up and all that!  I just HATE that!  So I'm trying to make up for lost time by playing level 9 now... oh, and on a technical note, I'm using disk 60 142 from the Mushca collection, because the official unofficial Satan's Hollow Alien Ambush ROM for the Atari emulator doesn't load... oh, right.  I never tried it out.  Might work!

Peter Fokos' profile at something called zoominfo dot com

Alien Ambush's official home at atarimania.com.  The nice thing about atarimania.com is that they organize games into broad categories... or is it?  Doesn't that take away some of the mystery?  Don't we lose something when we gain the organization and collation of all things?  And besides, this is more of a Shoot 'em Up than a Space Invaders clone.  The aliens here aren't as regimented.  Also, I don't feel so bad anymore about not being able to dodge the simple, diagonal paths of things bouncing around in a room... I probably should.  I mean, how hard is it to get out of the way of something coming sort of at you at a rapid pace?

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