Again, a childhood favorite. Lower the gun to the minimum elevation, give it max powder, get it as close as I could to the tower and launch that poor little bastard into the supports 8 times in a row. I'd laugh like a mad-man. Oh yeah, in the versions with the moving window, I discovered you can launch the man over the top of the barrier, off the screen, to skip it altogether.
Heya, thank you for these videos!!!! Been spending a lot of time wishing I had a time machine lately, and these videos are the closest thing to them. Heartfelt thanks!
I must have a morbid sense of humor, but the sight of him repeatedly splattering on the ground is endlessly funny to me. Reminds me of Looney Tunes cartoons, I guess.
Another reviewer ends each episode by saying, "If this were released today it would get E for everyone." Still waiting to see a game with animated violence would get him to change that.
I didn't realize it until now, but I guess this genre kinda IS my jam. I've sunk a lot of time into Scorched Earth, QBasic Gorillas, GunBound. One thing curious about this game is that the cannon, the human, and the 'ouch' seem to be relatively high resolution graphics compared to what we've seen already. Maybe I should read Racing the Beam again, but that kind of resolution seems unusual, am I wrong?
So as I understand it, the technical side of how the 2600 screen works is that you have low resolution background graphics, which are generally quite chunky, but the player sprites can be relatively high-resolution (don't remember about the ball or missile sprites, but those are pretty limited). This came out of the engineers determining that anyone playing the game is really going to be focused on the player sprites, so they only needed to ensure the design allowed for that. I'd guess that the human and their proclamations of pain are player sprites that are just very well laid out, but I've never actually dug into the code to confirm that (and am not a programmer in the first place). Maybe I should reread that book too.
I'm a little late to the party on this but I was curious as well how the graphics were done in this game. I loaded it up in the Stella emulator and turned on the debug colors: i.imgur.com/tma6bBh.png player0 sprite is the cannon player1 sprite is the little man the low res playfield is the score, game type, speed and angle. ball is the basket missle0 is tower left leg missle1 is tower right let Pretty creative how they created the landing tower! Another quick note is that COLUBK is set "racing the beam" style for drawing the sky and the grass. Stepping through the scan lines as they're drawn, the color changes from blue to green as it reaches the location of the grass.
Lol me and a friend of mine loved qbasic, we use to mess with the programming of gorrilla to make the banana huge or making the banana explode and destroy everything
When I played this with my family, we would joke around and move it so the human cannonball would make the thud sound, and i thought that it was fun to blow out the Dragster engines. ;p
I quite enjoy this game and think it's really solid as a two player game in the harder game variations, but I can't help but think it might've been a bit too cerebral for your average 2600-owning kid at the time, while not being sophisticated enough for their parents who might take an interest in games like Blackjack and the upcoming Casino and Video Chess. Calculating the interaction between trajectory and speed isn't really your average 8-year-old's idea of fun, so the sales might've been affected by the fact that this probably appeals more to computer nerds than to console owning families. Good game though. I like it.
Green and blue Atari Logbook Challenge: try for the water tower 7 times with a minimum of misses. Play game 3 with difficulty on B. Pro (Certified Daredevil) 7 hits, 6 misses, Master (Nerves of Steel) 7 hits, 3 misses, Wizard (Certified Daredevil) 7 hits, 0 misses.
This looked bad in the catalog so I stayed away from this game new, although if I'd found it for $1 at the thrift store when I was college-age, I would have picked it up along with all the other games I didn't have, for my collection. It's amazing the difference between a good game, and one that doesn't quite make it like this, I presume. I heard much later about the artillery duel game mentioned here, but didn't consider it in relation to Human Cannonball. Put that as the lead on the cartridge with this as one of the variations, and they might have had something good that sold! After all, these 1970s arcade games were already tested by the public! When he was saying it was one of two "daredevil" games like Skydiver, it first made me think they should have combined them. (Circus Atari in 1980 was one too). It then made me think of Evel Kneivel who was popular in the 1970s. Making a daredevil cartridge involving motorcycle stunts could have been a good game, too. I can imagine riding through ring of fire then leaping cars and buses (or failing like this guy). Also stunts on a high-wire and trapeze come to mind too. Finally Wikipedia considers this a 1978 game, with no author. If you're sure it's 1979, maybe you can cite a reference and change it? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atari_2600_games
Again, a childhood favorite. Lower the gun to the minimum elevation, give it max powder, get it as close as I could to the tower and launch that poor little bastard into the supports 8 times in a row.
I'd laugh like a mad-man.
Oh yeah, in the versions with the moving window, I discovered you can launch the man over the top of the barrier, off the screen, to skip it altogether.
This was one of the first games I bought brand new back in the day as a kid along with bowling, air sea battle, video pinball and outlaw.
Heya, thank you for these videos!!!! Been spending a lot of time wishing I had a time machine lately, and these videos are the closest thing to them. Heartfelt thanks!
Great work as usual. These are by far the most informative videos on 2600 games.
I must have a morbid sense of humor, but the sight of him repeatedly splattering on the ground is endlessly funny to me. Reminds me of Looney Tunes cartoons, I guess.
Another reviewer ends each episode by saying, "If this were released today it would get E for everyone." Still waiting to see a game with animated violence would get him to change that.
I didn't realize it until now, but I guess this genre kinda IS my jam. I've sunk a lot of time into Scorched Earth, QBasic Gorillas, GunBound. One thing curious about this game is that the cannon, the human, and the 'ouch' seem to be relatively high resolution graphics compared to what we've seen already. Maybe I should read Racing the Beam again, but that kind of resolution seems unusual, am I wrong?
So as I understand it, the technical side of how the 2600 screen works is that you have low resolution background graphics, which are generally quite chunky, but the player sprites can be relatively high-resolution (don't remember about the ball or missile sprites, but those are pretty limited). This came out of the engineers determining that anyone playing the game is really going to be focused on the player sprites, so they only needed to ensure the design allowed for that. I'd guess that the human and their proclamations of pain are player sprites that are just very well laid out, but I've never actually dug into the code to confirm that (and am not a programmer in the first place). Maybe I should reread that book too.
I'm a little late to the party on this but I was curious as well how the graphics were done in this game. I loaded it up in the Stella emulator and turned on the debug colors: i.imgur.com/tma6bBh.png
player0 sprite is the cannon
player1 sprite is the little man
the low res playfield is the score, game type, speed and angle.
ball is the basket
missle0 is tower left leg
missle1 is tower right let
Pretty creative how they created the landing tower!
Another quick note is that COLUBK is set "racing the beam" style for drawing the sky and the grass. Stepping through the scan lines as they're drawn, the color changes from blue to green as it reaches the location of the grass.
Lol me and a friend of mine loved qbasic, we use to mess with the programming of gorrilla to make the banana huge or making the banana explode and destroy everything
Great game 😊😊
When I played this with my family, we would joke around and move it so the human cannonball would make the thud sound, and i thought that it was fun to blow out the Dragster engines. ;p
My sister and I had a lot of fun having the people jump out of the planes in Sky Diver and then splat on the ground, so I can relate!
Really enjoy your channel. Great research. I never knew the name of this genre of games.
I quite enjoy this game and think it's really solid as a two player game in the harder game variations, but I can't help but think it might've been a bit too cerebral for your average 2600-owning kid at the time, while not being sophisticated enough for their parents who might take an interest in games like Blackjack and the upcoming Casino and Video Chess. Calculating the interaction between trajectory and speed isn't really your average 8-year-old's idea of fun, so the sales might've been affected by the fact that this probably appeals more to computer nerds than to console owning families.
Good game though. I like it.
Green and blue Atari Logbook Challenge: try for the water tower 7 times with a minimum of misses. Play game 3 with difficulty on B.
Pro (Certified Daredevil) 7 hits, 6 misses,
Master (Nerves of Steel) 7 hits, 3 misses,
Wizard (Certified Daredevil) 7 hits, 0 misses.
I remember being frustrated by this game as a five year old. I think I complained and my parents exchanged it for a more accessible game.
This looked bad in the catalog so I stayed away from this game new, although if I'd found it for $1 at the thrift store when I was college-age, I would have picked it up along with all the other games I didn't have, for my collection. It's amazing the difference between a good game, and one that doesn't quite make it like this, I presume. I heard much later about the artillery duel game mentioned here, but didn't consider it in relation to Human Cannonball. Put that as the lead on the cartridge with this as one of the variations, and they might have had something good that sold! After all, these 1970s arcade games were already tested by the public!
When he was saying it was one of two "daredevil" games like Skydiver, it first made me think they should have combined them. (Circus Atari in 1980 was one too). It then made me think of Evel Kneivel who was popular in the 1970s. Making a daredevil cartridge involving motorcycle stunts could have been a good game, too. I can imagine riding through ring of fire then leaping cars and buses (or failing like this guy). Also stunts on a high-wire and trapeze come to mind too.
Finally Wikipedia considers this a 1978 game, with no author. If you're sure it's 1979, maybe you can cite a reference and change it?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atari_2600_games
Er, maybe I wouldn't have bought it. I think I might have had a chance to get Home Run and Football for $1 each but didn't.
Something seems....wrong about the way this looks, like it mite have been used to teach the birds and the bees to young children😝