Superauthenticity: Atari 2600 aspect ratios

Combat, in a superauthentic 2:1 PAR

As one of the first commercial console systems ever, the Atari 2600 didn't handle resolution or aspect ratio in a standard way. MAME, when emulating an NTSC model, assumes a framebuffer of 176x223, but this is misleading; the vertical resolution was whatever the programmer wanted it to be, and can even change frame-to-frame, which plays hell with upscaling hardware (but works fine on analog televisions... or emulators). Atari themselves recommended using 192, but even they didn't always follow this. As for the horizontal resolution, 160px was the effective maximum, and only the very limited sprite capabilities could even use that degree of resolution, but some developers would make it less than that by extending the HBLANK period, effectively buying their code some extra clock cycles in exchange for resolution.

Consequently, the system's authentic display aspect ratio isn't really straightforward. You can certainly assume 4:3 is correct and expect your framebuffer (itself an anachronism) to just scale up to a 4:3 resolution. That's the default behavior of MAME and Stella, and this typically looks okay, but it isn't truly authentic; a real system on a real NTSC television wouldn't use the entire display most of the time. Nor is this necessarily my preference! I had been overriding this on a case-by-case basis almost from the start.

To seek superauthenticity, we should be looking at PAR rather than DAR. According to MAME's source code, the NTSC Atari 2600 has a sprite-pixel aspect ratio of 12:7, or about 1.714:1. Background pixels are four times as wide. I'm not going to bother with PAL calculations.

Combat

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

 

12:7 PAR is indeed very close to 4:3 DAR, and could well be the reason why the MAME developers settled on a 176x223 resolution.

However, for this particular game, there's a good reason not to use it. The game has rotating tank (and plane) sprites, and only double-wide pixels let them retain their correct dimensions in all orientations. Atari's artwork simply assumed the pixels would be doubled. Not because they actually thought this, but because this made plotting out the rotated sprites much less work.

Though I will say, the scores look better with square pixels. 

Verdict: Double pixels

 

Adventure

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

12:7 looks best to me.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR 

 

Space Invaders

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Funnily enough, I think the square pixels look best! Better approximation of the arcade's vertical orientation, and the invaders (and laser base) get very chonky as you go wider.

Verdict: Square pixels

 

Yars' Revenge

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

This is another game with rotating sprites, and only double-width pixels preserve their dimensions, but in this case I think the spritework looks better with 12:7 pixels.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR

 

E.T.

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

E.T.'s a short, chubby little guy. But the humans look best at authentic PAR.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR

 

Ms. Pac-Man

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

You might assume that Ms. Pac-Man's vertical sprite is just rotated, but she isn't. Atari did the responsible thing here and re-drew it to consider non-Pythagorean scale pixels. It's still a bit too wide, but 4:3 comes the closest to a perfect rotation.

Verdict: 4:3

 

Let's look at some Imagic games next!

 

Demon Attack

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

This is interesting. The Imagic logo? Perfect match for the official printed logo at square pixels. And the rest of the game looks fine with square pixels too.

Verdict: Square pixels

Atlantis

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Subjectively, this one also looks best to me with square pixels, especially those ampoule-like domes.

Verdict: Square pixels
 
 

We'll finish this series with some Activision.

 

Pitfall!

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Square is very obviously too thin. I defer to authenticity here.

Note the thicker than usual black bar on the left side of the screen - Activision games tended to give up some of the active picture to prevent the artifacts that you see in other games.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR

River Raid

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

Subjectively, square pixels look best to me. The sprites just seem too fat otherwise.

Verdict: Square pixels.

H.E.R.O.

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

 

This one seems a bit off at any aspect ratio, but square honestly looks the most okay, even if R. Hero looks a little bit skinny.

Verdict: Square pixels.

Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

Scaling:	1x 2x
PAR:	Square 12:7 Double
DAR:	Raw 4:3

 

Authentic 12:7 looks the best. Easily.

Verdict: 12:7 PAR.

I'm not really sure why I did this series; I'm done with the Atari 2600 whales and I don't know if I'll ever play another one, and I doubt many people care about optimizing how good their Atari games look. Comprehensiveness, I guess. But it seems to me that Atari developers were very inconsistent about designing for the system's pixel aspect ratio. Square pixels are objectively wrong; you'd never get a vertical 160x192 display on original hardware, and yet subjectively, most of the games not by David Crane or by Atari themselves look better this way.

We'll be returning to the simple, square-pixel world of Macintosh games soon enough, if only for a little while. 

The Crimson Crown: Won!

Welcome to the bottom half and finale of this game. We gathered the magic artifacts the sage foretold of; Erik's royal sword, an onyx signet ring, and a magic scepter, as well as a "sphere of annihilation" and a few other doo-dads. We helped the wizard Zin drive away some haunting spirits and recovered an ancient tablet, we befriended an owl, and learned some magic words. But none of that helps right now; the vampire has us, and our stuff. Sabrina and I are imprisoned, and Erik is about to be dog food.

Lack of inventory and places to go means there aren't many things I can try doing. I'm in no condition to summon the owl with a whistle, but Sabrina is, once I splash some water on her face, and it brings us a beehive. This plugs the drain, letting water fill the pit, and we float to the surface.

I wake up Erik and we explore.

Oh, come on. A literal maze of twisty passages? In 1985?

My stuff is scattered throughout the dungeon, and I gradually recover bits of it as I explore and solve whatever problems I can as I encounter them.

A magic seashell turns into a magic shield

The sphere of annihilation does its job

 

A cave troll's got a lantern and our bag, and now our scepter too.

A rare encounter with natural life, but I'm not sure if there's a purpose.

 

Gotcha!

 

I can't seem to get the sack or lantern, but I am able to retrieve my scepter, which impresses a dragon roosting in the eastern side of the maze.

His name is "Fury" and promises to answer if we call.

The next part has me stuck, and I need a walkthrough. There's a darkened room nearby, and I thought for sure that the troll's lamp would get me through, but you can't get ye lamp (and I'm certainly not going to tell thou why). Nor does the dragon answer here.

Instead, you wear the onyx ring.

The sage had hinted that I'd need a pointy weapon dipped in blessed water to defeat the black fiend, and I indeed had encountered a basin of it in the maze, where I had immersed the centaur's arrow. But finding the right verbiage here is the real puzzle; SHOOT MAN and SHOOT ARROW prompt me that I am forgetting something. Also, he kills you after three incorrect actions.

The correct actions; LOAD ARROW and SHOOT ARROW. He dies, and behind him, a massive set of iron doors yield only to Fury.

Enter, and observe an epic monster duel.

I'm helpless, but Erik isn't. Unfortunately, Erik is useless, and refuses to fight the vampire, claiming we just need to escape. But he also refuses to leave without us. The game hints that I must find a way to break the vampire's charm, but also refuses to let me wear the crown, since only the heir to the throne can do that.

The solution? I had to look this one up. GET ERIK.

Is this supposed to be a Samwise Gamgee situation? I don't buy it.

 

We simply leave, and return to the seaside cove, where our ride home meets us.

 

GAB rating: Average.

It's... fine. A casual, mostly solvable adventure, with adequate graphics, adequate writing, and mostly free of the genre's traditional annoyances. Mostly. But it doesn't feel as fresh, exciting, or atmospheric as the first game, whose only noteworthy fault was being very short. I'd say the first disk side in The Crimson Crown is about as long as the original game, but the second side just feels like an epilogue. The werewolf and time limit of the first game might have been annoying, but they respectively contributed a sense of danger and gravity that just isn't here in the sequel. And while it goes out of its way to ensure the game is solvable, with ample clues and not very many ways to die or softlock yourself, there wasn't a single satisfying puzzle in the whole adventure; all of them are either obvious immediately, obviously signposted, or solvable with brute force, with the exception of the endgame which I just found dumb.

My Trizbort map:

I went back and played the pre-release version for comparison. It is incomplete, and ends at the disk flip.

An intro scene unique to this version

 

It's familiar, but cruder.

This sequence is not illustrated yet.

The Griffin's riddles are in the game, not the packaging.

The zombie's fate is grislier.

A very different depiction of Karel Thurg

Whoopsie.

Some different banter. The grating is pre-opened for you!

Zin, sans silhouette

The end!

I kind of wonder what the Comprehend engine was even doing.

The Crimson Crown: Critters of the night

The first step in the chain of Crimson Crown's unsolved problems is to light the candle, found in the attic of the abandoned house, and then burn the zombie in it. Your reward is a mouse and a burlap sack, containing an ebony ring and a flute. Don't ask me to explain the logic behind any of this. The sack also expands our inventory limit, which incidentally has already been hit by having a scepter, a candle, and a sword.

I also try typing "LOOK IN CRATE" and am told "There are no mushrooms here." Um, that was a weirdly specific denial.

Next, there's the owl, who doesn't speak HOOT, but speaks English perfectly, once you give him the mouse. 

Nope, that didn't work.

 

He tells us to whistle if we need aid. Before I can figure out how this helps, I figure out how Erik can. By letting him drink the witch's potion, I can toss his transmogrified form into the lake, where he finds a silver coin.

Next, the flute found in the sack enchants the cobra, giving me a few new areas to explore.

 

I offer the demon my coin, and get a.... sphere of annihilation? The sphere has the images of a man and a horse on it, giving me a clue to its purpose, but no clue on what to do next.

But eventually I find the grate in the cemetery can be pried open with Erik's sword. 

An incense burner is found down here, but the way out is obscure. So obscure that the parser actually interjects pretty quickly and offers to give you a clue, but only once. Initially I declined, but when lighting the burner and waving it around didn't do anything except make this smelly pit even smellier, I had to reload and accept.

A word will do. It is the only way out.

I'd been teleported with a word before - Windmill - and it works here too.

The incense is useful in the wizard's castle; it drives away the spirits in the high chamber, letting me enter the wizard's tower. 

After speaking to the wizard, I find that although I still can't take his magic laughter scroll, Sabrina can. This is exactly what we need to deal with the witch and take her tablet.

The wizard helps us cross the chasm to the fortress, as promised, but this gets our adversary's attention.

 

To be continued, on side 2!

My Trizbort map of Transylvania:

Game 454: The Crimson Crown

Read the manual here:
https://www.mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=crimsoncrown

 

There's an obscure, possibly unfinished early version of The Crimson Crown floating around the Internet. It's so obscure that I can't even find a version that has the title screen intact (edit - it was there all along), where it is simply called Transylvania II. This one has an engine very similar to the first game's 1982 release, but was very soon afterward remade with Polarware's new Comprehend engine, and later in 1985, the original game was also remade in Comprehend and expanded.

Despite what many resources online (including Digital Antiquarian) state, neither Comprehend remake appears to use the Apple II's 128KB double-resolution 16-color mode. This seems to be conflating them with Transylvania's earlier 1984 re-release, which did.

Comprehend. There are five colors here, including black.

Normally, I would cover the earlier version first, if not exclusively, but as it seems to have never been released or indeed intended for release, and I don't know how complete this one is, I'll play the complete commercial edition of The Crimson Crown as consumers would have experienced it for the first and only time back in the day. After all, you're probably going to get more enjoyment from a finished novel by reading it fresh than you would by reading the author's foul papers first.

Still just four colors.

 

Polarware stepped up their package game, now including a manual, a map, a sealed envelope, and a booklet entitled "Journal as chronicled by His Majesty's Loyal Chamberlain Mikkail" in old blackletter. 

The plot is all in the journal in this version. The princess Sabrina is returned, safe and sound, and the people rejoice, but there are evil tempers in the air, and the king seems afflicted by an almost spiritual fatigue. Fatigue advances to madness, and then death - a vampire's curse. Now the Crimson Crown is missing, stolen by the vampire (sorry, Vampyr), who is using its magic powers to terrorize the land. We, the adventurer from the first game, are summoned and sent on a quest to destroy the monster and recover the crown, and are accompanied by the princess and crown prince, which is allowed for some reason.

The sealed envelope contains three riddles, which seem pretty abstract. I'm thinking the answers to the first and third might be fear and dream, guided partly by the prominent eye motif on the parchment. The second, I don't know... pollen? That's probably wrong. I may have to brute-force it and possibly the rest of them too when the time comes to solve.

Let's start.

 

I get Trizborting, as always, but the attempt doesn't last long.

We're dumped into a crypt, where Erik opines that Sabrina should magic us out, but she isn't powerful enough for that yet.

There's an inscription on the wall here - a riddle that I can't figure out.

"I do not breathe, yet I need air, true."

 

I continue trizborting this new area, which quickly opens up to a new, open area of crossroads and several caves. One cave holds a crystal ball, through which we see the vampire (and he sees us!).

Another is the lair of a gryphon, who challenges us to answer his three riddles; my first guesses are correct, and I eventually brute-force the last - there's no limit on guesses - it's cloud, which I have to call foul on, especially for misleading us with the literal image of a teary eye when the other two examples of this motif weren't metaphorical. Our prize is a scepter.

This eventually circles back to the tree stump, where we now know to walk around the trap door. We'll just have to ignore the fact that the exit from this underground crypt is a twenty-foot flight of stairs leading down that somehow returns us to the same topographical height from where we started.

Good to know

Sabrina can HELP if you get bitten

How thoughtful!

This guy just shows up out of nowhere and offers clues/spoilers to puzzles I haven't seen yet.

Many of the landmarks from the original Transylvania are present and accounted for here - there's the stump, the castle, the abandoned house, and cemetery, but the geography connecting them is different.

While exploring the castle, now renovated and apparently home of a short-tempered wizard, we're whisked away back to the crypt.

Oh, duh!

The password opens the iron doors, where we find a sword embedded in a stone, and naturally, Prince Erik alone can take it.

 

Unsolved problems:

• An owl sits in a tree near the start of the game. The sage advises us to speak to him, but the owl doesn't respond.
• There's a button in the crypt and I'm not sure what it does.
• Do the mushrooms do anything? Touching them is no good, but not fatal either, thanks to Sabrina's magic.
• There's a witch in the woods who has an important-looking tablet. Sabrina can scare off her cat, but Erik is useless and just wants to drink the brew, which (temporarily) turns him into a frog.
• Erik also can't kill the cobra, not because he refuses, but because he sucks.
• There's a zombie lurking inside a wooden crate in the abandoned house, and we're told that normal weapons have no effect on it.
• Knocking on the stump results in an explosion, rather than anything apparently useful.
• A scroll in the cellar is known by Sabrina to be a spell of laughter, but it is magically protected.

My Trizbort map so far: