VecFever documentation
Black Widow
Atari, 1982
One of three color vector games developed for a very similar Atari hardware, in fact the games can be converted into each other, the other two being Gravitar and Space Duel. This is the the weirdest control-input-wise of the bunch, the other two using Asteroids-like inputs but this one uses two digital joysticks, one to move around and the other to shoot. And no buttons except for the Player start ones. So playing it just using a Vectrex joystick is not the best way, the emulator supports a ‘1 joystick + buttons’ mode where the four buttons of joystick one are used for the four fire directions but this needs getting used to and is sub-optimal. This is more for someone who wants to build a controller using just one cable (which I have done at one point for another game).
So using either two Vectrex controllers is highly advisable, or better yet if you like these type of games: build yourself a two-player setup or try to get a MiniVec II or maybe one from a Virtvic.
This game uses the ‘you can buy yourself to higher levels’ technique Atari added to ‘later’ games (which I personally dislike) but this also means you can eventually buy/play yourself to level 105, at which point this game runs into a memory problem internally (the original code, that is) – and the emulated watchdog for the game will kick in and reset the game. Since this is original and the only instance of an Atari vector I know so far where there is a killscreen-ish scenario I did not try to fix it but left it original. I have documented it on ukvac when I stumbled across it, here is the relevant info.:
just stumbled across this, I thought it might be a bug of mine but now am pretty sure this is a Black Widow rom bug: it crashes when setting up lvl 105. I hunted this down in my own, custom binary translation (for the VF/Vectrex) and thought it might be a security issue I have overlooked (..happened before with Tempest and Red Baron) but it definitely overwrites a crucial 'game state' variable which is used as a lookup for a 6502 'switch' code table. Grabs an invalid '$6048' adr. and.. dies.. on my emulator the watchdog kicks in and resets, tried on a recent mame and there it just hangs. Reasonably easy to repro: just set the game to demo, lives to max. and start at lvl 97.. the problematic code starts at $B4F1, X increases directly with the wave_no ($45D) and a STA $3D7,X eventually hits the game state at $421. [...] Should be an easy fix - just checked and there already is a range check in ROM;it is just off by at least one to prevent overwriting the lookup variable: $B558 $E0 $4B CPX #$4B and X is 3*(wave. no minus one) here if I remember correctly. If that is all that is needed, of course, I have not tried a patch out since I am happy with the original state, plenty of games back then had a 'kill-screen' after all.
Inputs
- 1 Joystick + Buttons: controller 1 digital joy. for direction, buttons 1: to 4: for fire direction
- 2 Joysticks: controller 1 joystick for fire, controller 2 joystick for moving
- 2 Joystick, swapped: controller 1 joystick for moving, controller 2 joystick for fire
Options
- Input: 1 Joystick+Buttons / 2 Joystick / 2 Joysticks, swapped
- Lives: 3 / 4 / 5 / 6
- Reset Highscores
- Difficulty: Easy / Medium / Hard / Demo (in which detonations do not hurt)
- Game Info: ” Welcome to Black Widow, the colour vector arcade game by Atari. I really was looking forward to this game – a two joystick shooter after all – but was surprised to see that this is almost a casual game. This is due to the ‘pay-to-win’ high score mechanism: You just need to eventually survive four levels somehow because the game awards massive amounts of points for starting later. This was a direct result of the economics during the end of the arcade golden age – this incentive to start at a higher level equals shorter playing time equals more quarters per hour. Tempest uses the same pay-to-win score incentive but there you really need to get better to survive the higher waves to get further. Not with Black Widow, at least not for me: all I have to do is play long enough and eventually I get to the next level entry. Luckily on the Vectrex you have truly deep pockets to try out just how far you can get.. Interestingly Black Widow has a bug and crashes after level 104. The watchdog resets the machine then. Since on original hw back in the day this would also mean losing credits I do not quite understand how this never was an issue – probably the DIP switch settings were never easy enough for people to reach that level. Or rather noone ever put in enough coins. Or bothered to play that long at all.. “
Localization
//NAME="BWIDOW"
//
GERMAN[] = {
{ 0, 0, 0}
};
FRENCH[] = {
{ 0, 0, " Bienvenue dans Black Widow, le jeu d'arcade vectoriel en couleur d'Atari. J'attendais vraiment avec impatience ce jeu - un jeu de tir à deux joysticks qui plus est - mais j'ai été surpris de voir qu'on pourrait presque le qualifier de jeu 'occasionnel'. Cela est dû au mécanisme dit de 'payer pour gagner' afin de faire un score élevé: Il suffit finalement de se débrouiller pour survivre à quatre niveaux, car le jeu attribue d'énormes quantités de points après si on démarre plus loin. Cette pratique est une conséquence directe de l'économie de la fin de l'âge d'or des bornes d'arcade - cette incitation à commencer à un niveau plus élevé équivaut en réalité à un temps de jeu plus court de même qu'à plus de quarts d'heure de jeu par heure. Tempest utilise le même principe de score basé sur le concept de 'payer pour gagner', mais ici, on doit vraiment s'améliorer pour survivre à de nouvelles vagues d'assaut afin d'aller plus loin. Ce n'est pas le cas avec Black Widow, du moins pas pour moi: tout ce que je me borne à faire est de jouer assez longtemps et finalement j'arrive au niveau suivant. Heureusement sur le Vectrex vous n'avez pas à vous soucier d'argent pour essayer de voir jusqu'où vous pouvez aller. Fait intéressant, Black Widow a un bug et se bloque après le niveau 104. Le chien de garde réinitialise alors la machine. Comme à l'époque, cela devrait sous-entendre également une perte de crédits. Je ne comprends pas très bien comment cela n'a jamais été un problème - sans doute en raison des réglages des commutateurs DIP qui n'ont jamais été suffisamment favorables pour que les gens atteignent ce niveau. Ou plutôt personne n'a jamais mis assez de pièces. A moins qui quiconque n'ait pris la peine de jouer aussi longtemps ... "}
};
ENGLISH[] = {
{ 0, 0, " Welcome to Black Widow, the colour vector arcade game by Atari. I really was looking forward to this game - a two joystick shooter after all - but was surprised to see that this is almost a casual game. This is due to the 'pay-to-win' high score mechanism: You just need to eventually survive four levels somehow because the game awards massive amounts of points for starting later. This was a direct result of the economics during the end of the arcade golden age - this incentive to start at a higher level equals shorter playing time equals more quarters per hour. Tempest uses the same pay-to-win score incentive but there you really need to get better to survive the higher waves to get further. Not with Black Widow, at least not for me: all I have to do is play long enough and eventually I get to the next level entry. Luckily on the Vectrex you have truly deep pockets to try out just how far you can get.. Interestingly Black Widow has a bug and crashes after level 104. The watchdog resets the machine then. Since on original hw back in the day this would also mean losing credits I do not quite understand how this never was an issue - probably the DIP switch settings were never easy enough for people to reach that level. Or rather noone ever put in enough coins. Or bothered to play that long at all.. "}
};