Bounty Bob Strikes Back

Original System: Atari 400/800


Sequel to Big Five's Miner 2049er, Bounty Bob Strikes Back (or BBSB) was released in very limited quantities for both the 400/800 and 5200 in 1984.  Due to the extreme size of the game, special roms had to be made which clocked in at an impressive 40K (larger than any cartridge at the time).  Due to the unique bankswitching used to make these cartridges work, BBSB was not able to emulated for a long time.  While BBSB is rare for the Atari 400/800, it is the rarest game on the 5200 with loose copies selling for several hundred dollars.

While the two versions were developed simultaneously (the 400/800 was the development machine however), there is one major difference between the two.  Due to the game requiring pin point precision jumping on small platforms, the 5200 version had to be modified slightly.  Almost all instances of single block platforms have been widened to two block platforms in order to make the game more playable with the less precise analog controller.  To accommodate these larger platforms, some other platforms had to be shifted over a bit but you can't really tell unless you look at the 8-bit version side by side with the 5200 version (check out the screenshots below).  It appears that some single block platforms were left intact (such as on level 11) when there was simply no room to widen them.  It's interesting to note that this was not a problem in the original game as there were no single block platforms. 

There are two other small changes between the two version.   First the 5200 version has a nice Big Five splash screen before the game title screen (bypassing the standard 5200 splash screen) which is missing from the 400/800 version.  Second the debug mode (activated by selecting special code 61,800) was removed from the 5200 version.

Note: The level colors are chosen randomly by the game so ignore the color differences.

 

Atari 800

Atari 5200
N/A

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