... play Astro Blaster!
Happy Holidays everyone!
I've been working on this for a few weeks now, and I'm trying to get it finished for sort of a 'Holiday Gift' to everyone here. Still needs work, so no bin yet. But, here are a few screenshots:
For the purists out there, I copied the sprites directly from the arcade game, as well as the movement tables. I'm using 320A mode to get the look/feel down. The 'Fuel' gauge is the same as the arcade *divided by three* to fit on the line with the temperature gauge, which is *divided by two*. All increments / decrements to both gauges have been adjusted appropriately, so they should work exactly like the arcade.
For the most part, the playfield is the same, except that I had to take one zone (i.e. 8 scanlines) away from under the ship (no biggie), and one zone away from the very top of the playfield. On my TODO list:
- Fix some collision detection when the enemy ships are at the top of the screen
- Finish the movement / placement of the enemies for sectors 4 and 5 (half-way through 4 now)
- Warp Button
- Enemies that drop in certain waves
- Hidden bonuses
- Sound
- Speech
Regarding the 'Speech', I will only implement speech at non-gameplay points (i.e. after losing a ship *2 ships remaining*, when the game has ended *play over*, etc.). Any other important information (i.e. the Warp countdown) will be written on the screen behind the action. I do plan to have the attract mode announcement (i.e. the title of this thread).
It was challenging getting (up to) 16 enemies, 6 enemy shots, 1 player shot and the player to update each frame during VBLANK, but I finally did it. Of course, it will use the HSC.
I am hoping to have a BIN ready by next week, On or before Christmas.
Coming soon! 
Bob
*BTW, before someone asks, "Why do you mostly do ports?" - It's because 1) I like to do them, and 2) It's fun to see what would have actually been possible back in 1984-1986. Now that I've scratched this itch, I can see about a (somewhat) original game I've been thinking about.
Thank you, Trebor, Nathan, Schmutzpuppe and Al for the feedback and testing up to this point.