Romhacks Dolphin – Activision – Atari 2600 – PAL Version Conversion (Atari 2600) Romhack

[Romhack Plaza]

Dolphin – By Activision for the Atari 2600/VCS PAL Conversion. Seeing there wasn’t an official release of the PAL version of Activision’s Dolphin. I managed to hack the the Pigs ‘n’ Wolf Atari 2600 ROM that has this game in it. Using Hack-O-Matic III. I splitted the file to 4KB that only has the game “Dolphin”. After hours of testing. I was able to utilise it to run Dolphin only using Stella & the 2600+ with success. How is this possible? Using Hack-0-Matic 3 I reduce the ROM size to 4KB from the original 8KB from the H.E.S. 2 in […]

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[Simone D. Alemanno]

I don't want to sound bad, but I can't really consider this to be the "final" version of the hack. You added the Activision logo and corrected the seaweed color, and that's nice, but most of the color palettes still don't match the NTSC version. What I mean by that:

1. The sky should be a darker blue, not a light blue like midday. The sun, clouds and sunset in the background also don't appear to have the correct colors.
2. The water isn't colored the proper shade of blue here.
3. The colors used for the squid and seahorses don't match the NTSC ones either. Like instead of being a yellowish color they are caramel orange, or a different shade of light blue.

Probably other things in the game like the dolphin itself don't have the right colors too, but how do I know. You could try to update this hack when possible and make the game look like the NTSC release as close as possible, just like you did with Pitfall II and Activision Decathlon.

 

[JRussellRetroGaming]

You must be using the default Stella Palette by the sounds of it where as I am using the User-Defined Palette (The one that emulates the real TIA colours that you would see from a real Atari 2600 console.) on Stella.
if you have used the User-Defined one like I have, you would know the Sky and sunset colour from both PAL and NTSC do match. same can be said with the colour of the water. You obviously using the default Stella palette here where as I am using the Under-Defined palette to play the games.

When I looked at the values from both the PAL and NTSC colour palette charts closely on Stella. they are similar matches and are in par like I did with the Pitfall II and Activision Decathlon Hacks.
Sorry but when I did release this final version. it is definitely is in par and there is no more tweaking needed.

Check this link regarding the colour palette I use.

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/204418-new-user-defined-palette-file-for-stella/

Set it to User-Define and see for yourself that they are in par and very close.

Another thing to understand too, the PAL colours only have 104 colours and not the full 128 colours like the NTSC version does. I can't do much more about that.

 

[Simone D. Alemanno]

I did compare the default Stella and User-Defined palettes even before playing so I knew what was in for. But still, it didn't really make sense to me that the sky was a lighter tone than it is in the NTSC version.

See?

 

[JRussellRetroGaming]

I did compare the default Stella and User-Defined palettes even before playing so I knew what was in for. But still, it didn't really make sense to me that the sky was a lighter tone than it is in the NTSC version.

See?
View attachment 272

From that screenshot that is definitely the Default Stella palette. As good I want it to make it 100% like the NTSC one. but as I said the PAL colour palettes only go up to 104 and not the Full 128 colours. It's a good compromise. I'm happy with the final results and will leave it at that.

As for that "Lighter tone" That's a hue shift you're seeing. meaning the blue hasn't got a purple tinge to it.

 

[Simone D. Alemanno]

That's a hue shift you're seeing. meaning the blue hasn't got a purple tinge to it.

Hue shift? Ah right, the NTSC format has a slight purple tint to it. I know that already happens with NES games (like Super Mario Bros., where the sky background color can be a purplish blue).