Largest ROM possible via Harmony Cart? (Dragonstomper II idea)

[Butt_Rogers]

I've just recently gotten into Atari 2600 games and have been totally blown away by the Starpath titles like Dragonstomper and Phaser Patrol.

Dragonstomper in particular is just amazing. The simple and easy to navigate menus, the consumable items with random attributes each game, the multiple ways of solving problems, etc. It's just brilliant. I've beaten it 3 times just trying to figure out all the cool stuff you can do. It's a lot of fun to this day and I've recommended it to a few friends. That bridge guard is as hard to kill as the dragon! Also, I still have zero idea what the Lantern, Chain, and Flash spell are for.

However, the Starpath cassette loading had limitations. You start out in the Wilderness. Then you make your way to the Village. Then to the Dragon's Cave. There is no backtracking. I reason this is due to the cassette loading. Having to rewind the tape and reload a previous zone would have been very unwieldy.

But this was a flaw only of the cassette loading, correct?

If someone made a Dragonstomper II as a Harmony Cart/Emulator exclusive, couldn't backtracking be workable? Loading previous areas while retaining your current inventory and stats and all that?

And if this is true, what are the limits to how many loads/zones would be possible?

Could a hypothetical Harmony Cart Exclusive Dragonstomper II incorporate as many areas and towns as we wanted, creating an Atari RPG with PC RPG length?

Edited September 23, 2015 by Butt_Rogers

[alex_79]

Every supercharger load is identified by an unique 8-bit number (to avoid loading the wrong one), so in theory you can have up to 256 loads per game.
Standard Harmony cart currently supports 4 supercharger loads but it should be possible to increase that to about 60 loads (see this old thread).

I don't know if Harmony encore supports larger games with the current firmware, but given its higher specs I guess it could handle the full 256 loads if needed.

[Butt_Rogers]

I've read a few places that Dragonstomper is the first console RPG, ever. Some sources say the Intellivision RPGs like Swords & Serpents also came out in '82, but others say '83.

If Dragonstomper really is the first console RPG, it's a shame more people don't know about it, and I think the reason for that is that it's never been released for free.

What do you think it would take to buy the rights for Dragonstomper from the current IP holders then freely release it, along with the source code if it still exists...?

It seems like that could be one of the last holy grails for the Atari.

And after that, hacks to increase gameplay content and really build a PC RPG length game could come to fruition.