what 2600 games are in stereo?

[bah]

I am thinking of modifying my 2600 to stereo output. What games actually used stereo?

 

BAH

[Gregory DG]

I didn't think there were any? Homebrews maybe?

[Nukey Shay]

Any game that uses the seperate audio channels for independant sounds. The native 2600 hardware has 2 of them. The stereo audio mod just pipes each one to a seperate channel.

[Impaler_26]

Skeleton+ uses stereo.

[+SpiceWare]

I wrote Medieval Mayhem for stereo. Any sounds for left side castles come out the left, and sounds for right side castles come out the right. It's also quite noticeable when the dragon flies across the screen.

 

My understanding is that the earliest games used "stereo" as the Atari was originally going to have two speakers built into the unit. Typically what they did was left player's sounds came out the left side and right player on the right.

Edited September 24, 2007 by SpiceWare

[Rom Hunter]

My understanding is that the earliest games used "stereo" as the Atari was originally going to have two speakers built into the unit. Typically what they did was left player's sounds came out the left side and right player on the right.

Yes, I believe this was the case with Combat.

[graywest]

Yes, I believe this was the case with Combat.

 

Air-Sea Battle, too.

[bah]

Thanks for the replies. I knew about Skeleton but don't have that cart. Is skeleton Supercharger compatible? At least I can test with Air Sea Battle and combat.

 

I think a headphone jack is in order as well.

 

BAH

[Video]

I know a lot of the early games (first year...maybe some seconds as they were already started befor the system released) were sterio, though mainly for P1 and P2, not for 3D sound or anthing. I also know some of the homebrews are sterio, like Skeleton. And as more mods are comeing, and more people are modding, I suspect more games will be comeing out sterio too.

 

But I wonder about some of the middle games, you know, like from the early and mid 80's?

 

For instance, one game I can think of is Frogger. I have an old OLD as sterio TV, that has a 'sterio indicator' light on it. And on some of the first year games, it will blink on and off, ocasionally (even though it won't play them in sterio) but froggers theme (parker bros version) has the light blink to the tune of the game, like every other note is playing out a different speaker or something...what's with that?

[Artlover]

Any emulators offer the feature to split audio channels for pesudo stereo?

[supercat]

I am thinking of modifying my 2600 to stereo output. What games actually used stereo?

 

The Atari 2600 has two independent sound generators. The "stereo" mod sends the outputs of one generator to the left channel and the other to the right. As far as "using" stereo is concerned, I would divide games into four categories, though there is some overlap.

 

-1- Some games only use one generator. All the sound will come from one channel, and nothing from the other.

 

-2- Some games use each channel for a particular purpose. This division may or may not make sense spacially or aesthetically. Combat, for example, will use one channel for player 0's vehicle noises, shots, and explosions, and the other channel for the other player. These assignments will remain constant regardless of where the vehicles move around on screen, so they may not make much spacial sense. Other games may use one channel for background noise and the other channel for shots and explosions. In that case, a left/right division might not be meaningful, but having one speaker closer than the other might be good.

 

-3- Some games such as Toyshop Trouble allocate sounds to the two channels essentially randomly. This allows sounds to 'overlap' (e.g. if you paint two toys in quick succession, the sound for the second can start while the sound from the first is still playing) but would make things sound weird if the channels weren't mixed together.

 

-4- A very few games output sounds to both channels but vary the amplitudes to create a "stereo" effect.

[+SpiceWare]

Any emulators offer the feature to split audio channels for pesudo stereo?

Stella will output in stereo.

1) start Stella

2) load a game

3) hit TAB

4) select GAME PROPERTIES

5) set SOUND to STEREO (it's on the CARTRIDGE tab)

6) hit OK

7) hit EXIT MENU

reload the game to trigger the stereo. APPLE-R on a Mac, CTRL-R on Linux or Windows.

 

You can try it with Medieval Mayhem, the ROM can be found in this topic. Current versions of Stella will correctly set it for stereo.

[A.J. Franzman]

Besides Combat and Air-Sea Battle which were already mentioned, Indy 500 and Street Racer also fall into supercat's category -2- as dividing the sound effects associated with each player to somewhat appropriate left/right channels. For those wanting to mod their consoles for "stereo" output, in order for these four games to have the sounds correctly spatially associated to the same channel as the controller port, TIA pin 12 is the left channel audio and TIA pin 13 is the right channel audio.

 

One other item designed to make use of the dual-channel capability is the Synthcart.

Edited September 25, 2007 by A.J. Franzman

[+SpiceWare]

Just popped the cart in and stereo works perfectly in Street Racer!

 

I did have to stop and think for a moment on how they got 4 large sprites to show up without any flicker.

[supercat]

I did have to stop and think for a moment on how they got 4 large sprites to show up without any flicker.

 

I wonder if it would be practical to hack Street Racer to use Score mode for the playfield, but with the sprite positions and colors 'criss-crossed'? Probably not enough room in 2K--I'm sure that cartridge is pretty well packed.

[Nukey Shay]

A good number of wasted/superfluous bytes in Street Racer (it also has 32 bytes of ram completely untouched for any number of code optimizations). That would be possible.

[Nukey Shay]

Street Racer disassembly with 43 free bytes of romspace after trimming some of that out...if anybody wants to hack it. Should be possible by swapping sprite0 and 1 positioning, etc (then you can remove the STX CTRLPF below tag LF0A6 to keep score mode going throughout the entire screen). Some variable swapping might be required for generic routines, tho.

Street_Racer.zip

[mos6507]

One thing people may not realize is that coinop games that featured two simultaneous players from the mid 70s commonly used two speakers with one tone generator dedicated to each player. So the 2600 was just carrying over this "dual mono" tradition.

[almightytodd]

The 30th Anniversary Demo file here is also in stereo...

[Laner]

So what's the latest on modding a 2600 to output stereo? I've been out of the loop for a while.

[Nukey Shay]

No news. It's been possible to do for quite a while.

 

Tech info:

http://www94.pair.com/jsoper/2600_stereo.html

[jsoper]

Turmoil has a great echo effect when played in stereo.

[Laner]

No news. It's been possible to do for quite a while.

 

Tech info:

http://www94.pair.com/jsoper/2600_stereo.html

Gotcha. I guess I was thinking more in terms of user-installable mods, a la 8bitdomain's offerings.

[Simon]

I am thinking of modifying my 2600 to stereo output. What games actually used stereo?

The spear level of A-VCS-tec Challenge is programmed in stereo, so you can hear if the spear is coming from the left or right side. When reaching the middle of the screen, it's switched. Additionally the spear sound is getting louder when coming closer to the player.

 

So in stereo you hear the spear fading in and out and flying from left to right or vice versa...

 

Best regards,

Simon

[+bhall408]

We just today added initial stereo support to Project Argon, and have seen that it *can* sound good, but most games just use the single channel. We'll need to account for that.

 

The first game I tried was Amoeba Jump and the title screen music is pretty awesome in stereo.

@Dionoid

 

However the game play/sound effects, are all channel 0.

 

ie, we'll need to take that into account. Perhaps auto-detecting when things are mono vs stereo.