AtariAge at 2005 vgXpo Dallas

Pre-Order Now!

Crazy Balloon is a port of the 1980's arcade underdog, which is the grandfather of games like Kuru Kuru Kururin. In Crazy Balloon you must carefully navigate your balloon through many varied levels full of different dangers. As if navigating these treacherous wasn't already nail biting, you will encounter additional hazards such as moving spikes or "Hurricane Man", who will try to blow you against a spiked wall!

Author Manuel Rotschkar (whose previous games include Seawolf, Star Fire, and Gunfight) Initially wrote this game to submit it for the 2005 Mini Game Competition, where the goal is to write an enjoyable game in the smallest space possible. Crazy Balloon includes all 16 levels from the arcade game, and you might find some surprises you're not expecting! All the obstacles from the arcade have been reproduced as faithfully as possible, with only a few elements replaced with Atari 2600 exclusive obstacles. If you're a fan of the arcade game, you won't be disappointed!

Includes cartridge and manual, with a beautiful label and manual designed by Dave Exton. If you're not attending the Dallas vgXpo, you can pre-order Crazy Balloon in our store, and it'll be shipped to you after the show.

Pre-Order Now!

With a blight of card games for the Atari 2600, enthusiast Brian Watson brings us a new card game, Poker Squares! In Poker Squares your goal is to place 25 playing cards (from a deck of 52), one at a time, in a 5x5 grid. Your goal is to make the best ten (or twelve) poker hands, five horizontally, five vertically, and optionally the two diagonals, scoring as many points as possible. Complete rules can be found at Solitaire Central (the English scoring system is used).

Poker Squares includes two options to add variety to the game. The first options allows you to disable scoring on the diagonals, making higher scores a bit more difficult. The second option will make the computer deal the first five cards to the corners and center of the grid. This makes for a much more difficult game. Author Brian Watson routinely scores 35-45 points, but there are some players who have gotten over 100 points. Can you be in the same league as them?

Includes cartridge and manual, with a beautiful label and manual designed by Dave Exton. If you're not attending the Dallas vgXpo, you can pre-order Poker Squares in our store, and it'll be shipped to you after the show.

Fans of Amiga computers will immediately recognize the nature of the Amiga Boing Demo 2.0. To help demonstrate the power of the Amiga, the Amiga Boing Ball demo was created. The demo consists of a checkered red and white ball bouncing within the confines of the screen, changing direction when hitting the walls, all the while spinning. With this demo running in the background (as the Amiga could multitask, which was a fairly unique feature at the time in personal computers), it as a powerful statement of the Amiga's capabilities. This demo ultimately became synonymous with the Amiga, and even today it used as part of the official Amiga identity.

For a period of time the Amiga Boing Demo was ported to just about every platform imaginable to demonstrate that, "Hey, we can do this, too!" And of course, the Atari 2600 was no exception! Several years ago, Rob Kudla created a simple version of the Amiga Boing Demo for the Atari 2600 as a tech demo that he posted to the Stella programmers mailing list.

More recently, David Galloway (djmips in our forums), updated Rob's demo to make it truer to the original Amiga demo. His changes include:

• The ball is now larger
• The world the ball bounces in now has gravity (as opposed to the ball moving at a constant velocity and in a straight line)
• The spin of the ball switches when it bounces against a side wall
• PAL/NTSC switch using the B&W switch
• Corrected the number of scanlines to 262
• User control of horizontal speed and gravity (wtih joystick)
• Random change of horizontal speed (after bounce with side wall)

Includes cartridge and manual. If you're not attending the Dallas vgXpo, you can pre-order the Amiga Boing Demo 2.0 in our store, and it'll be shipped to you after the show.

Paul Slocum has been hard at work creating more tools for musicians to generate music with old-school hardware, and his latest creation is the Cynthcart for the Commodore 64. The Commodore 64's SID chip can produce some amazing audio (especially considering its age!) and Paul uses it in much of his music (if you're not aware, Paul makes up one half of the band Tree Wave, definitely worth checking out if you haven't already). Paul created the Cynthcart to turn the Commodore 64 into a kickass synthesizer, and it's now evolved enough where he can share it with other musicians.

Cynthcart Feaures:

• 3 Note Polyphony
• Works with the common C64 piano keyboard overlay
• No latency
• Can change patches and settings while playing
• Support for 2nd SID chip (stereo chorus effect)
• Filter cutoff control via paddle controller
• Portamento
• Generates color patterns based on notes played
• Ability to turn off video chip to reduce noise
• Cartridge version copies itself to RAM (you can remove the cart)

Sound Clips:

Here's an MP3 of Paul messing around with the Cynthcart on a real C64. Paul's using a paddle to control the filter cutoff and has added a bit of echo to the sound using one of the SIDs voices. Paul's also has the Magic Voice module triggering from some of the keys which sounds pretty weird:

cynthcart3.mp3 (360K)

This little demo uses an Atari 2600 playing a drum and note pattern, Paul's dot matrix synth, and a C64 with the Cynthcart doing a filtered bass sound and the weird squeak. It was recorded live with Paul playing the C64 keyboard.

cynthcart4.mp3 (1.2MB)

The Cynthcart comes on a board with a socketed EPROM, which allows the Cynthcart to be easily upgraded in the future. If you're not attending the Dallas vgXpo, you can pre-order the Cynthcart in our store, and it'll be shipped to you after the show.

Paul Slocum will be attending the Dallas vgXpo where he'll give demonstrations of the Cynthcart!