Atari 2600 CD-ROM Adapter

[Secamline]

Many cartridge based video game consoles of the 90s had at one point a CD extension module. For instance, Sega made the Mega-CD/Sega-CD for the Megadrive/Genesis, Atari made the Jaguar CD for the Jaguar, the TurboGrafx-16/PC-Engine had the CD-ROM² System, and last but not least, Nintendo, along with Philips and Sony were on their way to release the SNES-CD, which would eventually become the Sony PlayStation. These peripherals would allow for way more ROM than regular cartridges. Thus, the Mega-CD for example, could output high quality mp3 music and display "full motion" videos, although the latters were still limited to the Megadrive's screen resolution and color palette. With this in mind, I was wondering, would the Atari 2600 be able to do such things if the games were stored on discs?
Here's the 3DO version of the infamous game Night Trap

And here's what I think the Atari 2600 CD version would look like

Edited March 18, 2018 by Secamline

[BassGuitari]

That's essentially what the Supercharger was, only its software originally came on cassette. And IIRC they were all put on CD for Stella Gets A New Brain.

 

On a related note: Night Trap for the Atari 2600 needs to happen. Please, homebrew gods?

[Secamline]

Isn't the Supercharger a RAM expander?

[CRTGAMER]

As mentioned, the Supercharger overcame the memory hurdle with cassette tape loading of levels similiar to disc based games.

 

The 2600 CD Rom an interesting thought. What if the CD Rom came out when the game systems still at Atari 2600 level graphics? Unlimited continual load of game levels along with the CD quality music. Then again, the CD ROM came out to support the increased graphic level of games, a support due to high cost of memory back then. Many early CD Rom games played from the disc instead of full install due to memory cost and well, also for copy protection.

[CapitanClassic]

would the Atari 2600 be able to do such things [output high quality mp3 music and display "full motion" videos] if the games were stored on discs?

ZackAtack is working on a FMV playback driver for the Harmony.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/273167-back-to-the-future/

 

It is currently running from a 32kb ROM, and he mentions that there should be some time to perform game logic outside the kernel and the driver to load the next frame. There might be enough time to load additional video/audio from the EEPROM/SD card.

 

It might be possible to create a Night Trap FMV game that loads off the SD.

Edited March 18, 2018 by CapitanClassic

[godslabrat]

As mentioned, the Supercharger overcame the memory hurdle with cassette tape loading of levels similiar to disc based games.

 

The 2600 CD Rom an interesting thought. What if the CD Rom came out when the game systems still at Atari 2600 level graphics? Unlimited continual load of game levels along with the CD quality music. Then again, the CD ROM came out to support the increased graphic level of games, a support due to high cost of memory back then. Many early CD Rom games played from the disc instead of full install due to memory cost and well, also for copy protection.

In the VERY VERY early days of the CD-ROM, the huge capacity promised huge games, far beyond what we'd ever seen before. Games that could make Metroid look like Pong. For various reasons, this never materialized, and CD-ROM was almost exclusively used to make games more visually interesting, rather than longer or larger.

 

I'm forced to think this would have happened in the Atari era as well.

[Andromeda Stardust]

And here's what I think the Atari 2600 CD version would look like

No was the TIA could output that many colors per line. Even if you could bus stuff the tia into doing fmv sequence by swapping the background color, it takes 9 color clocks tofeed the instruction to the tia. Fmv really isn't possible. And yeah that bad apple demo was one bit b/w by adjusting playfield registers, so 4 pixel width.

[CapitanClassic]

10 colors per line

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Edited March 18, 2018 by CapitanClassic