Activision Anthology (PS2) question

[Kitsune Sniper]

I was organizing my collection the other day and I searched for some info on Activision Anthology, when I stumbled upon Gamestop's product description (http://www.gamestop.com/ps2/games/activision-anthology/23623). One thing that caught my eye was this line:


Go Online for More Games - Connect to the Activision Classic Gaming Web site to download game prototypes, technology demos, and other rare game oddities never before released. The Web site also features historical info about Activision, it's designers, programmers and the console that started it all.

And uh. I dunno about you guys but my copy doesn't have internet connectivity. :P Was this supposed to be a big feature of the pack? I saw the mini-review posted here by Tempest back in 2002 (gah!) and was wondering if Activision made a big deal out of it in their promos for the game.

[Leo_A]

Sony killed the feature at the last minute. That's what the phone on the desk was going to be for and why there were so many empty cartridge slots in the tower.

I believe Klove at AtariAge back before he left Activision (I believe he was the producer) spoke about Bloody Human Freeway, some commercially released hacks of Activision software from back in the day like a River Raid hack, Skateboardin' from Absolute, more Imagic titles, Venetian Blinds (The tech demo), and the two prototypes discovered a few years back as being the titles planned (They're called Kabobber and Thwocker now).

Not sure if any of the homebrews ultimately included on the GBA release were slated for it.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Interesting. I see he still has an account there, so I'll drop him a line to ask about... some stuff... I found in the game.

http://www.foxhack.net/stuff/tcrf/blah2.png

*whistles innocently*

Thanks!

[Leo_A]

Cool, found anything else like that?

If he replies to you (And I haven't seen him post in years so I'm skeptical, but maybe he'll get a email notification and decide to reply... I don't think his parting with Activision was a friendly one judging by how I saw him speak about them once or twice at AtariAge afterwards before he seemed to disappear), I'd love to know what the entire point of the downloadable end was.

Were they going to be sold or free to download? If they were free, why not include them on the disc itself or were they games that were taking additional time for Activision's legal department to clear and this was a easy way to expand the package after the fact? Would the files reside on your memory card (A decent chance I'd say when you consider how small each file would be) or quickly be redownloaded each time they were loaded?

And were they to include manuals, box scans, and virtual cartridges to match the lineup on disc? And if so, would those files reside on memory card or would the user have to connect each time to the server to download the bonus material?

Too bad that end of the deal wasn't realized. Beyond a handful of issues here and there (Both Pitfall games could've been emulated better for something that comes immediately to mind), this is one of the closest compilations we've seen to being perfect in implimentation and scope (Nearly all of Activision's 1st party lineup of releases for the 2600).

[Kitsune Sniper]

After some thought I don't think it'd be wise for me to contact him. Mostly because I'm hacking a game he worked in. :p

I did find some interesting stuff in the disc, but I still need to finish documenting the stuff and taking screenshots. I'll make a post when I'm done, which shouldn't be too far off.

[CRTGAMER]

After some thought I don't think it'd be wise for me to contact him. Mostly because I'm hacking a game he worked in. :p

I did find some interesting stuff in the disc, but I still need to finish documenting the stuff and taking screenshots. I'll make a post when I'm done, which shouldn't be too far off.

I don't think there is a harm in asking since you have an original game, a genuine interest on the other hidden games, he might appreciate the query. This is interesting, please update as you go. Maybe some of the games are already on the PS2 disc waiting for an Action Replay unlock?

[Kitsune Sniper]

I don't think there is a harm in asking since you have an original game, a genuine interest on the other hidden games, he might appreciate the query. This is interesting, please update as you go. Maybe some of the games are already on the PS2 disc waiting for an Action Replay unlock?

Oh, I already found a couple of playable games...

[Leo_A]

Oh, I already found a couple of playable games...

If this content rest on the disc itself and all you were getting via the internet was a message to now unlock this content, I wonder if it would be possible to create a save file for the game with the extra games already unlocked?

[Kitsune Sniper]

If this content rest on the disc itself and all you were getting via the internet was a message to now unlock this content, I wonder if it would be possible to create a save file for the game with the extra games already unlocked?Probably, but I wouldn't know. I'm not a programmer. I just messed with the disc and found the games. ;)

I do have a question though - I downloaded the GameFAQs save file for the game from here (http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/562585-activision-anthology/cheats) since it claims to have everything unlocked. I saw the patches, and there seem to be three missing at the bottom. Is that normal? The FAQ also says that's all of 'em.

[Leo_A]

I haven't earned them all I don't think. But as I recall you can check your unlock progress for each game somewhere so you could detirmine that way if there was anything yet to be unlocked.

If everything seems unlocked, I wonder if Ghostbusters had patches. I believe that came out at the tail end of Activision's glory years with the 2600 rather than being one of the game's they programmed and released later in the 1980's in the wake of the Atari 2600 Junior long after they had stopped the high score patch program. So maybe those empty spots are due to the failure to come to a reasonable agreement with the IP holder which wanted an outragious amount of money from what I recall Klove saying (Unlike Capcom that let them include Commando free of charge). And at least a game or two in there had three patches so maybe this one did as well.

That and Ghostbusters II (Never released by Activision but licensed by a 3rd party for Europe) are the only Activision game's from their glory years on the platform that didn't make it out on here. And then there was Rampage, Double Dragon, and Kung Fu Master from the later years that didn't make it into the lineup.

[Kitsune Sniper]

There are no Ghostbusters patches in there. Or any Ghostbusters game files. :P

There's one patch file that doesn't seem to be used (I used to think there were five, but after checking GameFAQs, it looks like there's only one).

http://www.foxhack.net/stuff/tcrf/tcrfpitfall.jpg

I already have this in a perfectly ripped form thanks to Joe, a really awesome programmer who helped me with a tool to extract the graphic data from the game files.

[Leo_A]

That's interesting, I wonder why that one didn't make the cut. I wonder if it was a Atari 5200 or computer patch and they didn't realize until later on that it wasn't for the 2600.

Looking at the shot of the board with all the patches, I can certainly see why you're curious. 40 spots and just 37 patches. I don't have the time to go over patterns in my head but surely they could've been organized more evenly without glaring holes like that leaving the gamer wondering if they missed something.

[Kitsune Sniper]

GameFAQs' "codes" listing says that there's three Decathlon patches (Bronze / Silver / Gold) and the 1,000,000 patch, and these aren't in the save game. I thought they weren't available, but since they are, I plan to play the game and see if I can get 'em.

And about this other patch, they already had one Pitfall 1 patch, and this is a later version. So they probably decided to go with the earlier one instead.

[Leo_A]

That explains that (Although I wonder with the alternate Pitfall patch why they just didn't do what Space Shuttle does which hands out both patches when you complete it).

Good luck with it since I never liked that game. Hopefully a d-pad will at least be better than killing a CX-40 playing it.

Almost looks like there's 8 missing at the top. They should've adjusted the size of the board a bit to make the patches fill it instead of leaving an empty row or spread the patch rows out a bit more evenly.

Edit - Doing a bit of reading in the archives about this game (Thanks to you, I think I'm going to be firing this up soon and working at my own patch completion :)) and came about a bit more information about the missing games. According to this DP user, Activision had prepared altered versions of the Ghostbusters titles and Double Dragon for their scrapped download service (No mentions of Kung Fu Master being missing and if it had been edited and of course Rampage is too much like Rampage to be altered into something else).

http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?4099-Activision-Anthology-for-PS2&p=36587&viewfull=1#post36587

Also, I could've swore that the two rediscovered prototypes had been left off and were planned as downloads. But apparently they are in there so maybe I'm remembering the GBA or PSP collections instead [They're in every version so I'm just mistaken according to this or was thinking of the other prototypes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activision_Anthology].

Edit Again - Another interesting tidbit that you might find interesting that I just recalled was the fact that this nearly supported the Stelladapter for hooking up original controller's to the PS2 USB ports. Not sure why the reason the feature was scrapped or if Klove ever explained why it didn't make the cut but I imagine it was either lack of development time to flesh out the feature or it was again Sony.

It's ashame since it would've been much appreciated. Several of these games like River Raid just aren't ideal for a modern gamepad.

[Leo_A]

Looking closer at that game list, it looks like much of what was planned for the download service ended up in the PC version. Only game I know for sure that Klove spoke about that isn't there was the pirate hack of River Raid called Bermuda (There's at least another hack called Harbor Escape from back in the day but I never saw mention of it, a modern day River Raid hack that added balloons like seen in some other versions, and probably much more that may of been considered).

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/59133-bermuda-i-offer-you-another-lost-rom/#entry723793

And you have the mention of those Activision edits in that DP I linked to earlier for a few more possibilities.

Since I'm too lazy to get up and look, does that account for all of the empty cartridge slots? We have the pirated River Raid hack called Bermuda, Bloody Human Freeway, the Venetian Blinds tech demo, two unreleased prototypes (Not Thwocker and Kabobber), Dragonfire from Imagic (I don't believe the rest of the Imagic library was under consideration since these four are all Activision has ever touched, the other three are are on disc, and there's some question about the ownership of the rest), and Skateboardin' from Absolute. So that's seven games.

If there's seven empty slots, I wager that was the lineup. And if it was 10, I imagine the other three were the titles referenced in that DP post about the editing jobs done to several Activision products left off of this. If it was more than 10, I imagine a few more pirate hacks from back in the day were slated for inclusion or perhaps some modern day hacks like the River Raid one I just mentioned were planned.

Edit - Just fired it up. I had forgotten how nice the introductions were on here.

I count 12 slots. You can tell where at least some of these were to likely to go. The three slots under Kabobber and Thwocker seem like the obvious spot for the other two prototypes and Venetian Blinds.

My guess is that Harbor Escape was another pirate hack planned.

http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=232

No guess on what #12 would've been.

[Kitsune Sniper]

There really isn't that much in this game, other than a few unused textures and images, cart artwork (like the one I posted), the games, and a bit of leftover file names.

And I really doubt it was Sony who told them to cut features of the game. They don't that much power over game producers. If someone cut something it was Activision management.

[Leo_A]

I'll try to dig up Klove's posting about it. Always the possibility I remembered it incorrectly.

Another interesting fact though is that this was ported over to the Xbox and that a prototype exists of it, but Activision didn't pursue it to release.

Edit - Okay, here's the post from the horse's mouth stating Sony killed the download feature off at the last minute.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/16309-activision-collection-for-ps2-48-games-with-extras/#entry165032

And here's a post again from the producer that shows just how much say Sony did have in thing's.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/6904-anthology-update/#entry64056

And here's another post showing just how ambitious their plans were at one time for the downloadable portion. Looks like they had visions far beyond just a dozen 2600 titles.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/6904-anthology-update/#entry64067

What I can't find is anything about the Stelladapter. So I'm thinking that was Atari Anthology instead [Indeed it was Atari Anthology on the PS2 and that game's producer that spoke about wanting to do that feature but it didn't end up happening]

Lot's of other information looking through his post about this project and other projects that might've been.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Wow, that was unexpected. It might explain why there's some leftover content for the download part in the disc. I saw some graphics that look like they're from a web browser (a home button and a mouse cursor) but not much else.

Oh yeah, there's a modem. Guess the phone number. ;)

[Kitsune Sniper]

Aaaaaaaaand so much for me trying to get those missing badges. You need 100,000 points in Laser Blast to get the 1 Million badge, I got bored at 53000 last night and fell asleep... my god, did kids back in the day actually spend an entire day getting one million points?!

And Decathlon is freakin' impossible on a DualShock 2. I'm gonna end up breaking my pad so no thanks. I'll just keep poking at the game to see if I can find more unused textures...

[Leo_A]

As I recall, 1 million is something like four hours worth of gameplay. But the patch requirement in Activision Anthology on the PS2 isn't 1 million (Looking through the search engine here, it looks like it was changed to 100,000 so only 1/10th of that work is needed here and you were past halfway to unlocking it). They didn't stay faithful to the original requirements with the PS2 version (Which is particularly a blessing for Kaboom... I want to say that's my only patch left on one of the subsequent handheld versions because they stuck with the original requirement which is impossible to earn without a paddle).

Laser Blast is such a shame. Nice graphics, nice audio, interesting gameplay, etc. But it has the fatal flaw of having its difficulty max out quickly and never surpassing a level that's perfectly manageable instead of the time honored arcade tradition of trying to kill you after the first minute or two. If they had just changed that I'm sure this would be viewed as one of the 2600's gems.

Instead it's a bore.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Well, I'm finished with what I was doing.

Here's a The Cutting Room Floor article for Activision Anthology. (http://tcrf.net/Activision_Anthology_%28PlayStation_2%29)

I found Rampage and Skate Boardin' hidden in there. Fully playable. And a bunch of other stuff. I made a patch to enable the games. Have fun!

[Leo_A]

I thought that Pitfall patch might've been for a different version. My guess is that they mistakingly thought it was the 2600 version's patch and it just never got deleted when they realized their mistake. Does the file name of it match how they named the other patches while the file name for the correct patch was named slightly differently than how they handled the other's? Doesn't seem like it would be a remnant of their plans to possibly feature games from other platforms via DLC mentioned in a post I linked since we'd see other unused patches here if that was the case. And if they bothered to rename this disused patch when they discovered their mistake, I would think it would've just been outright deleted.

That's interesting why only two games are in there though and nothing else. One is fully releasable and was included in the PC version not long afterwards and the other one required licensing and as far as I knew wasn't under consideration beyond the early stages of the evaluation process for their 2600 properties.

I wonder if it was planned to be on the disc and they were optimistic right up until the end end that an arrangement could be worked out with Midway (Like Capcom's generosity with Commando) and the deal fell through late in the process scuttling things and they just didn't bother to delete it completely.

Does Skaeboardin seem to run fine? One possibility why that one is there and nothing else was there was that it was planned as part of the retail package itself instead of DLC but was locked out late in the process when they realized it didn't function correctly with the emulator. If it was to be unlocked via DLC, I assume the other DLC properties would've also been in there as well.

Just tossing that out there as a possibility.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Skate Boardin' is fully playable. I played through the whole five minutes just fine. But, I never played the original game (I am not an Atari kid) so who knows.

As for that patch, it follows the same naming style as the others. Just a name. It's not in the same folder as Pitfall and PitfallII.

Who knows. Maybe the programmers liked to play Rampage while the game was in development. :P

[Leo_A]

Probably was a lot of stuff in there during testing. :)

I remember Klove mentioning all kinds of things that they had running when they were debugging the Xbox port that never made it out.

[Leo_A]

Activision Anthology for the DS & Wii.

http://www.codemystics.com/screens/game-1b_large.jpg

http://www.codemystics.com/products.shtml?-1

:(

[treismac]

Activision Anthology for the DS & Wii.

Are you sure it made its way to the Wii?

[Leo_A]

Not worth posting this separately, but here's more interesting, never picked up projects involving Code Mystics classic gaming emulation technology.

Adventure Online

http://www.codemystics.com/products.shtml?-6

http://www.codemystics.com/screens/game-6a_large.png

Star Wars

http://www.codemystics.com/products.shtml?-2

http://www.codemystics.com/screens/game-2b_large.jpg

Combat Online

http://www.codemystics.com/products.shtml?-4

http://www.codemystics.com/screens/game-4a_large.png


Are you sure it made its way to the Wii?

No, as explained in the link, it didn't.

http://www.codemystics.com/products.shtml?-1


When the prototype was ready, we approached Activision, but were unable to get them interested in publishing the collection (proposed for both DS and Wii, with a series of extra features planned).

But it was part of their proposal to Activison, along with the DS proof of concept prototype, that Activision turned down.

I'd like to see their DS prototype be leaked someday down the line. That and the translated Retro Game Challenge 2 are two unofficial DS games that I'd love to own reproductions of.

[treismac]

No, as explained in the link, it didn't.

http://www.codemystics.com/products.shtml?-1



But it was part of their proposal to Activison, along with the DS proof of concept prototype, that Activision turned down.

Ah. Sorry, I didn't follow the link.