Talk:Stone Sling

Gameplay

The description of the background as "a colorful enviroment with yellow walls, green valleys, blue mountains, and a bright blue river in between the two fortresses", while matching the picture included in the article, does not seem to be accurate. Actual screenshots, such as those featured here and here , do not show such detail. Moreover, such resolution seemed far beyond the Odyssey²'s capacity. Is it possible that the picture in the article is of an overlay, such as those produced for the original Odyssey, which could have been affixed to a television screen?

Update

According to an article on GameSpy's ClassicGaming website, updated versions of many classic games were to be made for the Odyssey³ console, the successor to the Odyssey² which never made it to the United States but was released in Europe as the Philips Videopac + G7400. These games would incorporate highly detailed background graphics which could be viewed on the newer console but would merely appear like the older versions on the Odyssey². Some of the highly detailed screenshots taken from Dieter Koenig's website which accompany Wikipedia Videopac game articles are screenshots of the updated games made for the Philips Videopac + G7400. Koenig comments that the "Screenshots were taken from real G7000/G7400 machines using a Hauppauge WinTV Theater tuner card." --Killerwasp 02:16, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

The developer mystery

I can't tell if this game was made in Europe or not. The central figure would be Robert Cheezem who is attributed to Smithereens! by James Hague, Bob Harris, Dieter Koenig and himself. So what's the problem? The timeline doesn't make any sense. By all accounts at the start of 1981, the only person in the US making Odyssey 2 games was Ed Averett. Sometime in 1981 it's unclear exactly when but probably after K.C. Munchkin's release, N.A.P. rehired Sam Overton and a whole crew of programmers presumably including Cheezem. From Averett, we know the new game development generally took a couple months and then production could take two to six months. All of the rest of the Knoxville programmer crew got there first games out by late 1982, just like Smithereens. And yet, in Europe the game was definitely available at least as early as May 1981, here's someone trying to sell their G7000 including Videopac 20 in Personal Gaming World June 1981, not to mention CVG November 1981. The French cartridge also has a copyright date of 1980 for what it's worth.

It's simply not realistic that Cheezem designed the whole game give the timeline constraints here. Plenty of Odyssey 2 games were developed in Europe, which we know from an interview with Jon Shuttleworth. Unfortunately the interviews with all of these people are so horrifically light on details. Cheezem's interview goes "Did you make Smithereens?" and he goes "Yep" and that's it. Really? you couldn't have bothered drilling down into any of those specifics? No "when were you hired?"? No "what was your design process"? Anyway, I'm like 95% sure this was made somewhere in Europe and then adapted for The Voice later by Cheezem, but this is still mostly just WP:OR so I'm putting it here. Whipmywillows (talk) 01:57, 31 May 2026 (UTC)