DarthKur
Experienced Member
I recently acquired three IBM version Atarisoft games in still sealed condition. Amazingly there seem to be an awful lot of these circulating as of late and not just for IBM but other systems. Anyways, the titles are Jungle Hunt, Moon Patrol and Gremlins. Now sadly I still don't have a working 5150 or 5160 and it's beginning to look like I never will because everyone seems to want Ebay prices for everything these days and that's on top of the monstrous shipping amounts, but I digress. What I do possess is a Leading Edge pc and an IBM PCjr. Neither one of which seems to be fully compatible with both hardware and software made for IBM PC's. Now it's a well known fact the the Jr has it's issues with certain items but I was hoping the LE would be a bit better.
Jungle Hunt won't load on the Jr at all. It will on the LE but the graphics are all wrong. It seems that there's about half of them missing. The game will play but the unclear graphics make it difficult and unpleasant. Both Moon Patrol and Gremlins seem to play and look alright on the LE both with no joystick support. I have a joystick adapter card installed, pictured below, and have tried various controllers but to no avail. The only time I got any sort of response was with another Atarisoft game, Dig Dug, but the directions the character went were all incorrect and no amount of adjustment would work. I have two exact copies of Dig Dug and both reacted the same way on both the LE and the Jr. Moon Patrol will boot up on the Jr but when the "function" button is depressed, which is necessary in order to start the game and select the joystick option, the intro screen of the game becomes garbled and the computer locks up. Oddly enough Gremlins plays just fine. I now that Gremlins was a later release so some of the compatibility issues might have been ironed out through software patches. Gremlins is dated 1984 while the other three are all 83. Now I don't know if all three were released at the same time in 83 or if they were stepped out through the year. Logic would suggest that Jungle Hunt might have been first on account of it having the most difficulties, then Moon Patrol, workable but no stick support and then Dig Dug with faulty joystick responses. Of coarse this is all speculation and I could easily be wrong. Granted there still is no joystick control with Gremlins on the LE but it works perfect on the Jr. It seems the the joystick card is not compatible with the LE very much at all.
Has anyone else experienced these or similar problems? AM I doomed to use the keyboard for game control, which is problematic at best? At least until the unlikely chance that I find a fully functional PC or XT locally or the XT I have now, which some filthy vermin ruined, miraculously repairs itself.
Jungle Hunt won't load on the Jr at all. It will on the LE but the graphics are all wrong. It seems that there's about half of them missing. The game will play but the unclear graphics make it difficult and unpleasant. Both Moon Patrol and Gremlins seem to play and look alright on the LE both with no joystick support. I have a joystick adapter card installed, pictured below, and have tried various controllers but to no avail. The only time I got any sort of response was with another Atarisoft game, Dig Dug, but the directions the character went were all incorrect and no amount of adjustment would work. I have two exact copies of Dig Dug and both reacted the same way on both the LE and the Jr. Moon Patrol will boot up on the Jr but when the "function" button is depressed, which is necessary in order to start the game and select the joystick option, the intro screen of the game becomes garbled and the computer locks up. Oddly enough Gremlins plays just fine. I now that Gremlins was a later release so some of the compatibility issues might have been ironed out through software patches. Gremlins is dated 1984 while the other three are all 83. Now I don't know if all three were released at the same time in 83 or if they were stepped out through the year. Logic would suggest that Jungle Hunt might have been first on account of it having the most difficulties, then Moon Patrol, workable but no stick support and then Dig Dug with faulty joystick responses. Of coarse this is all speculation and I could easily be wrong. Granted there still is no joystick control with Gremlins on the LE but it works perfect on the Jr. It seems the the joystick card is not compatible with the LE very much at all.
Has anyone else experienced these or similar problems? AM I doomed to use the keyboard for game control, which is problematic at best? At least until the unlikely chance that I find a fully functional PC or XT locally or the XT I have now, which some filthy vermin ruined, miraculously repairs itself.
