Smurf Mockup
February 13, 2006
By Kurt Woloch.


Summary
-------
This is a mock screenshot of a possible Bally version of Coleco's Smurf 
Cartridge.


Details About the Mockup
------------------------

Mon Feb 13, 2006 3:32 pm - Message 2565 on the Bally Alley Discussion Group


Since I was always good at drawing mock screenshots, I tried doing one for a 
possible Bally version of Smurf's Rescue to Gargamel's Castle (or whatever the 
title was - here in Austria it was simply called "Smurf").

It's a 100x160 BMP file which I've zipped to save space. I tried to use only 
those colors available on the Bally and the correct resolution and not to do 
anything that's impossible (i.e. more than 4 colors on a scanline).

You'll notice that it's VERY colorful for a Bally game. This could only be 
accomplished by heavily switching colors mid-screen, as it was always done on 
the Atari 2600 (if you look at the 2600 screenshots of Smurf, you'll notice 
that the colors get switched several times too - at least if you know the 
2600's architecture).

This, actually, would be a cross between the Coleco and the 2600 version of the 
game.

Some details, from top to bottom:

1. The score display looks like on the Coleco version, only at the Bally's 
lower resolution. But it's perfectly doable since no more than 4 colors get 
used in this area.

2. Trees and path: I tried to use only 2 colors per scanline to display the 
background (trees and path). The colors would have to get switched several 
times to accomplish what's shown here, though.

3. Smurf: The main figure should get one color register which gets switched 
from white to blue and back. Thus it's got only one color per scanline, like on 
the Atari.

4. House and fence: The house follows a similar pattern, having only one color 
register which gets switched several times. The fence shares the same color as 
the house on screen, but since the Bally supports two sets of colors per 
scanline, this is still doable... the register for the left side would have the 
house color and the one for the right side would have the fence color.


Comments by Adam Trionfo on the same day:

I've seen the Smurf mockup now (thanks for the link, Paul. I felt like such a 
newbie asking where the picture was!).

I get these weird goosebumps when I looked at the picture. While I was never at 
a classic CES, I get the impression that THIS is exactly the type of thing that 
you might see there. From the description I thought that maybe Kurt had gone 
over the top. But, no, I don't think so.

With the right programmer, this looks possible (to some extent). The screen 
resolution might be a bit too high though. The highest possible, in theory, is 
160x102, but in practice it's more like 160x90-something (some games, like 
Amazeing Maze, are even lower (maybe 160x88) since they use more RAM).  This 
probably wouldn't affect this Smurf picture too much though-- I'm sure it could 
be squeezed a bit without trouble.

The game would certainly be at least 8K, and might even require a bank-switched 
cartridge (which has never been done on the Astrocade before).

One weirdness, that I'm not so sure about, (Lance, help me out here) is the 
movement of the smurf messing up the background. The Astrocade doesn't have any 
sprites; this would be using Magic RAM (with the OR, XOR, and Flop options, I 
guess?). You can get some strange results on a multicolored background. For a 
simple example, look at this:

http://www.ballyalley.com/pics/screenshots/cartridge_screenshots/misc/ball_on_b
ackground.gif

I can imagine a STILL picture like this working, but when you add movement, it 
might be strange... UNLESS you are very careful about where the character 
moved. Say, for instance, the Smurf could only walk on a solid-color background 
(the road, or grass, for example).

Despite all this, I don't think that Kurt's imagination did too bad a job at 
all!


For More Comments
-----------------

Kurt's image started a LONG discussion about how this game might be possible.  
You can read the whole discussion at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ballyalley/
