Video of some homebrews, Stay Frosty 2, Super Cobra, Draconian, Space Rocks

[Reality Studio]

Hey guys, I started live streaming on Twitch with a friend of mine, we both like retro games so we figured hey let's just play live on camera lol. Anyways I bought some homebrew Atari 2600 games and we tried them live on Twitch. I post replays of the videos on my Youtube channel, direct links to plays of each game are below:

 

Stay Frosty 2

https://youtu.be/dUCgVWt2CDU?t=4228

 

Super Cobra

https://youtu.be/dUCgVWt2CDU?t=6473

 

Draconian

https://youtu.be/dUCgVWt2CDU?t=7815

 

Space Rocks

https://youtu.be/dUCgVWt2CDU?t=10047

 

Give it a watch if you guys are curious about the games, Stay Frosty 2 being her favorite and Draconian being my favorite but they were all awesome. Also hit my up with any feedback on the stream itself, always interested in constructive criticism. We don't plan anything on the streams, we just wing it and play old games for fun really. I've since bought a bunch more homebrew games so we'll be playing more on future streams.

[+SpiceWare]

Many thanks!

 

I've watched up to when you get to the second level of Stay Frosty 2 and yes, the Sega Genesis controller makes a huge difference for some players such as my sister. I'll finish watching the rest this evening after I get off work.

 

The original Stay Frosty is part of Stella's Stocking, the Atari Age Holiday Greetings cartridge for 2007. Stay Frosty 2 is the Holiday Greetings for 2014, which is why it doesn't have my SpiceWare logo on it. Sometime after the holidays are over the labels are updated to remove the Holiday Greetings & year, and they are no longer numbered.

 

 

 

 

 

[+SpiceWare]

I watched the segments with the homebrews last night, looks like y'all had a great time! If you ever do a stream with 4 people you might like to check out Medieval Mayhem, my take on Warlords.

 

Too bad y'all didn't start reading the manuals with Stay Frosty 2, knowing what the objects did (especially the pipe on level 6) would have been useful to you. The pipe halves damage for a limited time, the snowman turns ice-blue for the duration, so after you collect it you can take out all the fireballs in the middle section with minimal shrinkage.

 

And yes, we're using a coprocessor in those games. Space Rocks and Stay Frosty 2 are utilizing DPC+, which is an updated version of the DPC coprocessor created by David Crane and used in Pitfall 2. Draconian and Super Cobra Arcade use CDF, which is an updated version of DPC+. Those are emulated by a driver running on the Melody board's ARM processor, plus we offload game logic to the ARM. The ARM cannot directly access the 2600's internal hardware, so code written for the built in 6507 CPU works together with code written for the ARM. Running game logic on the ARM was an afterthought for DPC+, so it's not optimized for it. CDF was designed from the ground up for running ARM code, so there's less 6507 overhead when using it.

 

While I did have input, the manuals (as with most, if not all, games sold at AtariAge) are created by the person who created the label artwork. You can see who in the credits section, such as this one for Draconian:

 

[Reality Studio]

Yeah we had a blast, we were both surprised how detailed the new Atari 2600 games are, just very impressive! It almost sounds like it's a console in a cartridge now with the CDF doing the bulk of the work and using the 2600 as a dumb terminal of sorts to display the results line by line.

 

We probably should have read the manuals lol but initially we were trying to figure it all out on our own. Eventually she busted out the manuals though because she loves that sorta thing, she enjoys the background info. We'll revisit Stay Frosty 2 in the future for sure. I read it has 32 unique levels and I only got to level 6 which is unacceptable

 

I've actually ordered another dozen or so homebrew games from Atari Age and Medieval Mayhem is one of them, so that will definitely be shown at some point. I'm actually sad now that I didn't buy some of these games sooner because many now don't have a boxed option It really did feel like Christmas '82 for me though, to open that box of brand new Atari 2600 games, just awesome. Thanks so much for making these great new games, I intend to buy as many as I can.

[+sramirez2008]

Stay Frosty my friends.

 

 

 

[AtariBrian]

I can tell he is using a Best Electronics Gold joystick upgrade board .

[+SpiceWare]

It almost sounds like it's a console in a cartridge now with the CDF doing the bulk of the work and using the 2600 as a dumb terminal of sorts to display the results line by line.

Pretty much, though the 2600's CPU is still involved so it's more like the smart terminals on the Wang VS systems I programmed on back in the 80s & 90s. You could load microcode programs into the terminals themselves, we had one that aided with programming and were unhappy when they replaced our terminals with PCs running Windows 3 because the terminal emulation didn't support the microcode programs.

 

We'll revisit Stay Frosty 2 in the future for sure. I read it has 32 unique levels and I only got to level 6 which is unacceptable

Sounds good! Yep, 32 levels that repeat 4 times for 128 in total. Each repeat is slightly more difficult than before as the heat of the world is increased, which causes your snowman to melt a tad faster.

 

I'm actually sad now that I didn't buy some of these games sooner because many now don't have a boxed option

A lot of the older homebrew games, like Medieval Mayhem, didn't have a box option. I believe it was cost prohibitive to do so at the time.

 

It really did feel like Christmas '82 for me though, to open that box of brand new Atari 2600 games, just awesome. Thanks so much for making these great new games, I intend to buy as many as I can.

Your welcome. I make them for the technical challenge as coding for the 2600 is so different from anything else out there as TIA, the video chip, doesn't use a framebuffer; instead it only knows about a single scanline.

[+sramirez2008]

If your looking for boxes, AA member Marc Oberhäuser makes many boxes and I can vouch for their quality. I have purchased several from him over the last couple of years. Here are a couple of links to his sites...

 

http://www.freelancer-games.com/atari.php

 

http://www.retrogamesshop.com/?language=en

[Reality Studio]

I can tell he is using a Best Electronics Gold joystick upgrade board .

 

The joysticks are actually these:

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M188I0X

 

They are ok, I'll probably stick with them but maybe have Amber use a 3 button Sega Genesis controller next time. The paddles though I did get from Best Electronics.

 

 

If your looking for boxes, AA member Marc Oberhäuser makes many boxes and I can vouch for their quality. I have purchased several from him over the last couple of years. Here are a couple of links to his sites...

 

http://www.freelancer-games.com/atari.php

 

http://www.retrogamesshop.com/?language=en

 

Hmm ok I will check them out. Are they remakes of the official boxes, or did they make their own versions? For example in my next batch of games I bought Lady Bug, that one had an official box but those are long gone so I got the cart only version. Would be cool to have a box for that, but ideally based off the official box design. Another game I bought was Juno First, if that one never had a box then I'd be cool with a remake box since that would be better than nothing. Basically I prefer to go official design when possible, but if they don't exist then a custom made one would work.

[+iesposta]

If your looking for boxes, AA member Marc Oberhäuser makes many boxes and I can vouch for their quality. I have purchased several from him over the last couple of years. Here are a couple of links to his sites...

 

http://www.freelancer-games.com/atari.php

 

http://www.retrogamesshop.com/?language=en

 

 

I was going to add this. Glad I read to the end.

Thanks for posting sramirez2008!

 

Unless you are in Europe, contact him here on AtariAge.

His websites don't ship to the US (unless things have changed since I last ordered boxes from him - like the Medieval Mayhem box that isn't an option from the AtariAge Store).

[+sramirez2008]

 

Hmm ok I will check them out. Are they remakes of the official boxes, or did they make their own versions? For example in my next batch of games I bought Lady Bug, that one had an official box but those are long gone so I got the cart only version. Would be cool to have a box for that, but ideally based off the official box design. Another game I bought was Juno First, if that one never had a box then I'd be cool with a remake box since that would be better than nothing. Basically I prefer to go official design when possible, but if they don't exist then a custom made one would work.

 

Juno first did have a box when it first sold. I was able to get one of them. Marc makes a reproduction of that box (see links below) as well as a Konami version. I purchased the Konami version, since the homebrew is based on the 1983 Konami arcade game. IMO, this box looks great!

 

http://www.retrogamesshop.com/product_info.php?info=p6143_juno-first--homebrew-box--atari-2600.html

http://www.retrogamesshop.com/product_info.php?info=p6145_juno-first--konami-look---homebrew-box--atari-2600.html

https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8261

[+iesposta]

Hey guys, I started live streaming on Twitch with a friend of mine, we both like retro games so we figured hey let's just play live on camera lol. Anyways I bought some homebrew Atari 2600 games and we tried them live on Twitch...

Has anyone mentioned your Atari Difficulty Switches are set on "A" or Advanced/Expert?

 

Had they been on "B", the Paddles in Video Olympics would be longer, the shots in Galaxian would be larger squares.

[Reality Studio]

Has anyone mentioned your Atari Difficulty Switches are set on "A" or Advanced/Expert?

 

Had they been on "B", the Paddles in Video Olympics would be longer, the shots in Galaxian would be larger squares.

 

Hmm you sure? I had made sure they were both to the right (when looking at the console), which should be position B.

[+iesposta]

 

Hmm you sure? I had made sure they were both to the right (when looking at the console), which should be position B.

Watching the stream, you do have them set to "B".

I guess I'm mistaken.

The Pong Paddles seemed extra short.

 

I did the speech, sound and music for Draconian, and the Christmas music in Stay Frosty 2, and the sounds and music in Supera Cobra. I even gave a suggestion to Space Rocks for the option "Friction" which put my name in the "credits Easter egg". Hold player 1 & 2 fire button and turn on the Atari.

 

Funny you bought all the games I helped out on!

[+iesposta]

Also great capture!

Most videos don't handle all the flickering objects SpiceWare manages to put onscreen. (Yes there are actually 2 Sprite objects, 2 1-bit missiles, a 1-bit ball, Playfield (40 across wide pixels), and background.)

[Reality Studio]

Also great capture!

Most videos don't handle all the flickering objects SpiceWare manages to put onscreen. (Yes there are actually 2 Sprite objects, 2 1-bit missiles, a 1-bit ball, Playfield (40 across wide pixels), and background.)

 

Thanks! On the first stream we did together I used an old dual core i3 pc I had lying around, it could only do 720p 30fps capture so any games that did flickering or interlacing tricks didn't look right. In Yars Revenge for example the quotiles shield would sometimes totally disappear on the stream. The above posted stream is our third stream and for that one I switched to better hardware, so it can capture at 60fps. Glad I did because I suspect the four homebrew games I played would have looked bad on stream on the old 30fps capture box.

 

 

I did the speech, sound and music for Draconian, and the Christmas music in Stay Frosty 2, and the sounds and music in Supera Cobra. I even gave a suggestion to Space Rocks for the option "Friction" which put my name in the "credits Easter egg". Hold player 1 & 2 fire button and turn on the Atari.

 

Funny you bought all the games I helped out on!

 

What a weird coincidence lol. For original games I mostly use Everdrive type carts since I figure the copyrights are long over, the companies are long gone and those games are all used so no one is missing out on sales anyways. For all new stuff like homebrews though I'll always buy them to support you guys.

[+iesposta]

Do you have a flash cart for Sega Genesis?

You got to show Mistress Amber the Sonic 2 with Sonic replaced with Kirby! Soooo cute and fun!

 

Should be this:

http://info.sonicretro.org/Kirby_in_Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2

[Reality Studio]

Do you have a flash cart for Sega Genesis?

You got to show Mistress Amber the Sonic 2 with Sonic replaced with Kirby! Soooo cute and fun!

 

Should be this:

http://info.sonicretro.org/Kirby_in_Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2

 

Omg I never even heard of that hack lol, that's awesome. I just got a Genesis and Mega Everdrive today actually, so at some point we'll have to try that!

[Andromeda Stardust]

Many thanks!

 

Sometime after the holidays are over the labels are updated to remove the Holiday Greetings & year, and they are no longer numbered.

IMG_9693.jpg

 

 

Question: Any change of holiday qb? I own reissues of all of these games except joliday qb (quarterback???) Well at least my stay frosty 2 is numbered!

 

I also have Byte of Christmas which is no longer available due to request of the author.

 

And endless snow (non-aa release) rounding out my xmas themed atari carts.

[Andromeda Stardust]

 

Omg I never even heard of that hack lol, that's awesome. I just got a Genesis and Mega Everdrive today actually, so at some point we'll have to try that!

The kirby one is cute. Beware the double jump move makes you vulnerable to attacks unlike the single spin jump, making boss battles tricky. I have that hack on cart as well as sonic 2xl (secret of the onion rings). In this version, eating "onion rings" makes you fat. Get morbidly obese, and sonic will expire!

[+SpiceWare]

Question: Any change of holiday qb?

Have no idea, I seem to recall that Andrew Davie had it removed from the store for some reason. It's a graphic hack Andrew did of his own game Qb.

 

holiday qb (quarterback???)

While it doesn't explicitly say so in the manual, per both manuals the goal of the game is to move cubes around to form the designated pattern, so it seems logical that Qb = cube.

[+SpiceWare]

Just realized that Chris should have been listed first:

 

as the name CDF was derived from our first names.