Kepone's Blog

Thanks. Do you have an Atarivox?

Nope.

 

Honestly, I don't fully understand what it is.

Honestly, I don't fully understand what it is.

 

The Atarivox is a device which connects to the player 2 joystick input on a 2600/7800. It provides two features:

 

-1- 32Kbytes of EEPROM memory

 

-2- A Speakjet chip.

 

If you plug an amplified speaker into the Atarivox, it will produce speech and other sound effects for games which support it (Man Goes Down, Stratogems, and I don't know what else). In addition, the EEPROM memory is used by some games for storing things like high scores.

 

An Atarivox costs about $40-$50 but the Atariage store is out of stock. If you just want the EEPROM memory, I think a board with just that is about $10.

Thanks for the tip.

 

By the way, checked out Strat-O-Gems earlier. It is addictive but I got the hang of how it plays, etc. In Z26, pushing the up button will change the color combination so that is a great way to compensate for the inability to rotate the pieces like in Tetris and other puzzle games.

 

I think it's going to be a worthy purchase as well.

 

I am looking for more time to spend with my games now that the Fall semester for the college I'm attending is over after next week.

In Z26, pushing the up button will change the color combination so that is a great way to compensate for the inability to rotate the pieces like in Tetris and other puzzle games.

 

Pressing player 1 up will switch the "current" and next gem colors. Pressing the player 1 firebutton will cycle the colors of the current 3 gems (I may make the left difficulty switch select between cycling upward and cycling downward). The current posted game supports the following cheats:

 

-1- Game starts "primed" for an eleven-deep cascade. Just drop the first set of gems down the left.

 

-2- Left difficulty switch, if set, skips gems #2-#60 on each level (makes it much quicker to see higher levels).

 

-3- Right difficulty switch, if set (and if Atarivox or EEPROM is plugged in) will cause an automatic replay any time gems are cleared.

 

-4- Pressing up on player 2 joystick will randomly reselect gems.

 

-5- Pressing down on player 2 joystick will cause a wild gem to appear, and will also skip ahead to almost the end of the level.

 

These cheats will not be available in the release game.

Thanks for explaining all that. I don't feel compelled to "cheat" but I think that this game would be a great way to kill a boring afternoon.

 

I'm a closet fan of puzzle games though. Tetris and Dr.Mario are two of my favorites, though I'm better at Dr.Mario.

If you just want the EEPROM memory, I think a board with just that is about $10.

MemCard