Cosmic Commuter - PAL50Hz Conversion Hack V1.2

CHANGES TO v1.2

I've changed the colour values for the Blue and Green. the Greens are now more warmer where as the Blues are more of the warmish side as well. The green Value is at offset $30-$3F where previously was at offset $50-$5F, the blue value is now at offset $D0 - $DF when previously was $B0- $BF

Look great now. :)

Well, This game Was never released in true PAL 50Hz speed release and was a NTSC only exclusive release. (Until now)

This has got to be the most well worked on Hack conversion of Activision's Cosmic Commuter. A horizontal shooter-gamer Your mission is to shoot obstacles, grabbing fuel. and grabbing people Once you saved all the people. You can take off to another planet/Level

This hack of mine has not only been having the colour palette change to show the correct colours when playing on a PAL Atari 2600 console. This now can happily run in PAL 50Hz speed and in PAL 50fps refresh rate.

NOTE: I know back in 2002 there is a conversion made in "PAL" by Thomas Jentzsch. Yes the colours were recoded to PAL colour values to play on PAL 2600 systems. However it was running on NTSC 60Hz refresh rate. Some might say "it's good enough for the Stella emulator" But what about on a PAL hardware system that is played on a 1980's 50Hz 240v consumer CRT TV? That's where I came in and adjusted the games kernel to do just that, set the refresh rate to a true PAL 50Hz in PAL speed. Besides. Upon checking. It was not at perfect 60.0fps anyways like the retail NTSC version. It is just a lazy PAL colour swap shortcut.

I decided to create my own conversion from scratch from a retail NTSC ROM, not only modify the PAL colour values. But the timing to run at PAL 50, adjusted the game's kernel to run exactly at 312 Scanlines at 50.0fps. Even moved the entire playfield to centre to the screen.

(Yes it may make the game slower. But the advantage of PAL is it gives you better time to react when playing games.)

What's the verdict? If you want to play a True PAL converted game that is a real PAL 50 conversion. this is the one to go for that isn't a mislead NTSC to PAL game from 2002 that plays at NTSC 60Hz speed using PAL colour values.

If you are a hardware user like myself and want to play this on real hardware on a real consumer 50Hz CRT. I guarantee there will be no out of sync screen rolls with this patch PAL conversion.

This is without a doubt the brand new fully PAL version converted Atari 2600 Game.

Spend hours to work out the Stella Debugger to adjust the values for it. on Developer mode on Stella. it shows the fps spot on at 50.0fps with 312 scanlines ( PAL Atari 2600 standard )

Maybe one day I might updated one day once I can work out how to optimise the gameplay. Can't guarantee it as most PAL Activision Games for the Atari 2600 did run slower. But I'm cool with it. :) I guess "Slow and steady ins the race? LOL"

Game works wonders on any emulator (Especially Stella) This game will work on original Atari 2600 Hardware (4-switcher, 6 switch & Atari 2600 Jr ) using the harmony cartridge. Confirmed to work on the 2600+ with correct colours and displaying at 50Hz (50.0fps) Refresh rate

NOTE: When trying to patch this, Make sure when patching this using Lunar IPS, On the drop menu, Change the setting from “Most Common ROM Files” to “All Files” so that you can patch this to a Atari 2600 ROM format.

• J.Russell: Colour value changes, Adjusting the screen playfield
• JetSetIlly from AtariAge: Advice with better hard coding using HEX editor & Stella's Debugger