Sprint 8 in color?

[RayB]

How's this for some obscure Arcade trivia that I hope someone has an answer to.....

Why does the flyer forSprint 8, talk about a COLOR monitor in 1977, but then Galaxian gets all the credit for first color video game, in 1979 ?

To further confuse things, KLOV lists Sprint 8 as Black & White:
http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9741

Sprint 8 flyer:
http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=1063

Galaxian flyer:
http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=thumbs&db=videodb&id=426

I'm going to guess Atari just couldn't get the price within reasonable range and had to substitute in a B&W monitor?? Does this mean the game boards still support color and that a color monitor could be swapped in?

[ahofle]

Pretty interesting.  To further add to the confusion, MAWS' Sprint8 listing shows the colored cars on its screenshot too, so it must be part of the game programming.  Then it goes on to say "The graphics are simple black and white with two shades of gray thrown in for good measure."    I sure as hell can't imagine playing that game with 8 people and wondering which grey car is mine.  On a side note, I don't feel so bad about my cabinet's cup holders after reading that Sprint8 had built-in ash trays! 

[ChadTower]

I've seen a lot of flyers that don't match what was eventually released... the pictures are usually mock-ups based on original specs.  Then costs get cut in production and the game fundamentally changes.  It's more common in pins than vids, I think, when stuff gets cut from a playfield after the flyers were put out there.

[Xiaou2]

 I think I saw this cab at the NH funspot.    If memory serves me right,
it was b/w  but used a green overlay.    Now... it might not have been
sprint... but i recall the cab looked like what is shown on KLOV.

 I will look thru my pics when i get home to make sure.

 Its possible they might have made 2 versions.  A color upgrade when
it became available.

[RayB]

To add to the conflicting info out there, a collector in my area who is really fond of 70's games (I guess he's a bit older than me) claims to remember playing this and seeing colored cars.

Now, I read somewhere that had a bit more detail, that Galaxian was first with "true RGB" monitor.  So, is it possible Sprint 8 had a monitor with limited color capabilities? (Kind of like how PCs had "CGA" monitors that only displayed 8 ugly colors) ??

[RayB]

Check this out!
Indy 800, 1975, IN COLOR:
http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8190

Indy 4, 1976
http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8188

Galaxian must be unmasked for the charlatan he is! 

[RayB]

I've read the manuals for the Indy games and here's what they did... Each car had its own "daughter board" to generate the one car's graphic. So essentially it was still a monochrome graphics output. All the individual outputs went to a "sync" circuit that combined them all into a composite signal for the monitor.

Pretty clever!

[Kevin Mullins]

I think I read somewhere that Sprint 8 did the same thing with daughter cards for each card.

Something to look at: http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=758&page=1#2949
Appears that 1 & 2 were B&W.
But 4 & 8 were color.

[CheffoJeffo]

This is the most interesting thread I've read in a while ... thanks guys!

[Kevin Mullins]

Always interesting to dig into the history of arcade type stuff.
Them little details that aren't so clear sort of thing.

[SavannahLion]

So essentially it was still a monochrome graphics output. All the individual outputs went to a "sync" circuit that combined them all into a composite signal for the monitor.

A composite signal doesn't really mean it was strictly monochrome though.

I'd like to see this beast in real life. It should be interesting to see how the engineers put it together.

[Xiaou2]

 The pic I have was from too far away... but I can see that the cab matches
the pic of the Indy 4.

 Maybe the monitor was in color.   My memory sucks   

[RayB]

A composite signal doesn't really mean it was strictly monochrome though.

Never said that. I meant each seperate car circuit board output a monochrome signal. The sync circuit then combined them all into the composite color signal that went to a color monitor.

Galaxian's distinction I assume is the pixel-level ability to generate a variety of colors all on the main hardware, (in other words, without need for each "object" to be handled by seperate piece of hardware).

I'd still give the award to Indy 800 for first color arcade game. Would you guys?

[SavannahLion]

Son of a ---smurfette---. I crafted this beautiful response and I accidentally clicked on the back link. ---fudgesicle--- that, I'm not retyping my response so you'll get the short version.

No, I don't think it's fair to use the fact Indy 800 (or any other game) uses daughter cards or individual hardware components on a per object basis as a marker for a game to be distinct in terms of generating color. As near as I can figure, Indy 800 is a discreet logic game supporting eight players, so the daughter cards appear to be more of an engineering decision to increase field reliability and reduce production problems and less to do with generating colors.

Seems to me that Galaxian enjoys being the first game to generate a true RGB color signal rather than a combined composite signal.

I'd still give the award to Indy 800 for first color arcade game. Would you guys?

I guess so. I would tentatively tag it as such. I can't find any solid information on any earlier color arcade games. So Indy 800 would be the first color arcade and Galaxian would be the first true RGB. Works for me until some earlier example comes along.

(Someone mentioned to me that Sprint 2 is the first CPU game, yet the Gun Fight manual clearly shows an 8080 CPU in the schematics.)

[ahofle]

I'd still give the award to Indy 800 for first color arcade game. Would you guys?

Definitely.  I think that's an ingenious solution for a time when it was such a struggle to implement a game design in the current day's hardware.  I would have loved to be a software developer back then I think.

[SavannahLion]

Definitely.  I think that's an ingenious solution for a time when it was such a struggle to implement a game design in the current day's hardware.  I would have loved to be a software developer back then I think.

Technically, I think Indy 800 is a discreet logic game, so you would have been an EE rather than a software developer. 

It's a trade off.  With modern high level programming, we gain the ease and speed of RAD but we lose a fundamental understanding of the hardware we're dealing with. I'd happily lose a little bit of the HLPL if we can get rid of some of the cancerous newbie crap that's floating around. 

[ChadTower]

It's worse than that... most AEs now don't even understand the libraries they are calling, whether it is system DLLs, java libs, UNIX daemons... guys come out of college now with a strictly superficial understanding of how to use an API but no idea of what it really does.

[SavannahLion]

It's worse than that... most AEs now don't even understand the libraries they are calling, whether it is system DLLs, java libs, UNIX daemons... guys come out of college now with a strictly superficial understanding of how to use an API but no idea of what it really does.

Assumming they even understand how to use the chosen language at all. A couple of years ago, I audited a PHP based website using a very popular (yet shall remain unnamed) package. In about two weeks, I trimmed the size of the core modules by about 20%. A typical conversation when something like this. "Here, I just knocked off thirty lines of code in this block. Make sure you add the changes." "Why did you do that?" "You were using all those lines of code to do a bubble sort. If you're going to do that, just let the database or PHP do the sorting for you in one line." "You can do that?" ummm....