Intellivision Game sizes

[daldude]

What was the largest size of an official (Non Home Brew or Demo game) Intellivision game size, minimum size and average size?

Also what was the largest size of Intellivision game or demo if you include Home Brews and Home Brew Demos, I heard that demo thing Bad Apple was the largest Intellivision "Program" and was so large it would not run off of the Cuttle Cart 3 because it could not fit in the storage of the Cuttle Cart 3.

 

There was a video on Youtube about the Famicom Disc Syatem and the dude said the Discs can hold a max of 128 killibytes which is not much and some later Cart Games were larger than that.

[Intymike]

What was the largest size of an official (Non Home Brew or Demo game) Intellivision game size, minimum size and average size?

Also what was the largest size of Intellivision game or demo if you include Home Brews and Home Brew Demos, I heard that demo thing Bad Apple was the largest Intellivision "Program" and was so large it would not run off of the Cuttle Cart 3 because it could not fit in the storage of the Cuttle Cart 3.

 

There was a video on Youtube about the Famicom Disc Syatem and the dude said the Discs can hold a max of 128 killibytes which is not much and some later Cart Games were larger than that.

 

 

The first wave of the Intellivision games had 4kb. The biggest of the original 125 was World Series Major League Baseball. About 20kb.

 

Aside from a test program Intvnut uses with about 1mb, Bad Apple is the biggest program on Intellivision so far, over 400kb. The biggest Intellivision game will soon be released.

[mr_me]

I believe the largest cartridge from the 1980s is 24K x 10 bit. (World Series, Hover Force, Tower of Doom). The earliest cartridges were 4K. In 1983, 8K cartridges were still common. There were also Keyboard Component software on cassette tape, not sure how many K that equates to.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the CC3 did not support memory banking. So it might have been limited to 16-bit addressing of which parts are taken up by system addresses. So maybe a limit of about 50k.

 

With memory banking you can increase the cartridge capacity by a factor of sixteen, so 256k or more might be possible. And modern cartridges are 16 bit rather than the old 10 bit roms.

Edited March 14, 2019 by mr_me

[Intymike]

I believe the largest cartridge from the 1980s is 24K x 10 bit. (World Series, Hover Force, Tower of Doom).

 

You're right, forget about the INTV games. WSMLB is the biggest pre crash game.

[mr_me]

And don't forget that Hover Force and Tower of Doom were also pretty much programmed in 1983. The last games by INTV were 16k x 10 bit.

[BSRSteve]

 

You're right, forget about the INTV games. WSMLB is the biggest pre crash game.

 

WSMLB was released by Mattel.

[Intymike]

 

WSMLB was released by Mattel.

 

 

Yes, but I wanted to include with the term "pre crash game" the 3rd party games. And even if Imagic did some bigger games WSMLB is the biggest.

[+DZ-Jay]

 

 

The first wave of the Intellivision games had 4kb. The biggest of the original 125 was World Series Major League Baseball. About 20kb.

 

Aside from a test program Intvnut uses with about 1mb, Bad Apple is the biggest program on Intellivision so far, over 400kb. The biggest Intellivision game will soon be released.

 

 

 

 

The first wave of the Intellivision games had 4kb. The biggest of the original 125 was World Series Major League Baseball. About 20kb.

 

Aside from a test program Intvnut uses with about 1mb, Bad Apple is the biggest program on Intellivision so far, over 400kb. The biggest Intellivision game will soon be released.

 

Just a correction, the "K" in the "4K" of the original Mattel games meant "Kilo Decles," or 10-bit words, not KB. That was because the ROM in used by Mattel was 10-bit wide. The Intellivision supports 16-bit addressing, so nowadays we use 16-bit words. We still count "Ks" as "Kilo Words," since the Intellivision is not byte-addressable.

 

All that to say, that when you see "4K" or "16K" or "40K" for an Intellivision game, it typically does not mean "Kilo Bytes" but "Kilo Words."

 

-dZ.

[+DZ-Jay]

And don't forget that Hover Force and Tower of Doom were also pretty much programmed in 1983. The last games by INTV were 16k x 10 bit.

 

Were they really using 10-bit ROM by then? My understanding is that they only did that in the earlier games, burning through GI's stock of 10-bit ROMs chips.

 

-dZ.

[mr_me]

 

Were they really using 10-bit ROM by then? My understanding is that they only did that in the earlier games, burning through GI's stock of 10-bit ROMs chips.

 

-dZ.

That could be. But I just had a quick look at the Stadium Mud Buggies binary and didn't see anything bigger than 10-bit. Mattel had alternative sources of roms, other than GI, going back to 1982. Edited March 15, 2019 by mr_me

[carlsson]

If someone dumped a 16-bit ROM containing 10-bit code/data, would the top 6 bits typically be random or zero? Of course it would be a possibility that the person making the dump cleared unused bits in the binary, then we wouldn't know by looking at the dump.

[+DZ-Jay]

That could be. But I just had a quick look at the Stadium Mud Buggies binary and didn't see anything bigger than 10-bit. Mattel had alternative sources of roms, other than GI, going back to 1982.

 

Yes, they had alternative sources of ROMs, but my understanding was that GI was pushing their 10-bit ROMs in a time when the industry was transitioning to 8-bit and 16-bit words. I'm sure that they would have loved to use 16-bit ROMs instead of 10-bits because they could fit more data (e.g., pointers and 16-bit values had to be spread across two Decles).

 

Still, it could be that they were still using 10-bit ROMs by the time of INTV Corp.

 

 

If someone dumped a 16-bit ROM containing 10-bit code/data, would the top 6 bits typically be random or zero? Of course it would be a possibility that the person making the dump cleared unused bits in the binary, then we wouldn't know by looking at the dump.

 

The top bits would be zero.

 

-dZ.

[mr_me]

They probably could have gotten 16-bit roms in the early 1980s but they would have cost more. And much of it would have been wasted since most instructions used 10-bits. By the later 1980s cost shouldn't have mattered. Volumes were also significantly lower maybe limiting their options.

[+DZ-Jay]

They probably could have gotten 16-bit roms in the early 1980s but they would have cost more. And much of it would have been wasted since most instructions used 10-bits. By the later 1980s cost shouldn't have mattered. Volumes were also significantly lower maybe limiting their options.

Well, I didn't mean to imply that they were not accessible; it was just too costly.

 

However, I disagree that it would have been wasted: we pack GRAM graphics in 16-bit words now, which not only improves performance, but also conserves space. Plus all pointers and 16-bit data (of which a game is chuck-full) had to be encoded as double-byte data in two Decles.

 

16-bit ROMs would have cut the data storage requirements of a game considerably.

 

dZ.

[mr_me]

Yes, if you have more data than instructions than 10-bit roms would waste more space. Then it would come down to how much more would 16-bit roms cost to make it more cost effective.

[+DZ-Jay]

Yes, if you have more data than instructions than 10-bit roms would waste more space. Then it would come down to how much more would 16-bit roms cost to make it more cost effective.

Agreed. My understanding is that it was still not cost-effective back then -- at least in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Keith and other BSR's have mentioned repeatedly about the high cost of ROMs being the limiting factor in game size.

 

I don't know about the late '80s, though, during INTV Corp's reign. Perhaps it was still cheaper to use 10-bit ROM as 10-bit chips became increasingly obsolete and GI tried to get rid of them in a fire-sale. (Although my understanding was that that is what they tried to do with Mattel at the end of the 70s.) *shrug*

 

dZ.

[mr_me]

If anything, at first, GI might have charged a premium for roms knowing they were the only supplier. It would have been important for Mattel to set up other sources. Maybe after 1984, GI had a stockpile of 10-bit roms that they couldn't get rid of and INTV was on a tight budget.

[+DZ-Jay]

If anything, at first, GI might have charged a premium for roms knowing they were the only supplier. It would have been important for Mattel to set up other sources. Maybe after 1984, GI had a stockpile of 10-bit roms that they couldn't get rid of and INTV was on a tight budget.

But ... Why would Mattel pay a premium for GI 10-bit ROM chips when there was no requirement in the architecture for it? If it was because it still came out cheaper than 16-bit chips from GI or other sources, then the premium upcharge is inconsequential, no?

 

 

UPDATE: My point is that it was still probably about cost, not availability or technical limitations.

 

dZ.

[CatPix]

There were also Keyboard Component software on cassette tape, not sure how many K that equates to.

It depends on the baud rate of the ECS mostly. Given that the ECS feature a remote control plug, it mean that you can multiload a game; by using a 90 minutes tape and multi-loading it probably represent a crazy amount of data for an Intellivision.

for comparison on the ZX Spectrum, a game programmed for the 48K model take about 5 minutes to load, a game for the 128K take 10 to 12 minutes (max). So using those numbers (the ZX Spectrum use a very simple and slow storage method) the capacity of a tape is about 300Ko (for a 60 minutes one, using one side).

 

Of course here the issue is mostly about time - would you really want to wait 30 minutes to play an Intellivision game? even a nice one?

[mr_me]

The ecs couldn't be used to distribute intellivision software on cassette tape since it's 8-bit ram can't load or execute intellivision code. The keyboard component did have cassette tape software. In fact my understanding is that they were written to load code without interrupting program execution. The KC has 16K of ram and the conversational french program spanned two cassettes. Maybe one day we'll see it in action.

[CatPix]

So, what does that port does? Nothing?

[mr_me]

With the ecs tape interface you can save your game as well as your rosters in world series baseball. Store music you create in melody blaster. You can store your basic programs.

[+Lathe26]

By itself, the ECS can only read/write BASIC programs to tape. A tiny number of games offered more (such as the ones mr_me mentioned). Super NFL Football (homebrew release) also can store team data to tapes. I suspect Mr. Basic Meets Bits 'N Bytes can too, but would need to check the manual.

 

However, if you're a developer willing to write custom code, you can read/write any kind of data you want. You could even load binary programs from tape if you wrote a ROM that was a simple boot-loader and the cartridge offered 10bit or 16bit RAM to run it in.

 

ECS tapes typically write data at 300 baud, 8 bit, Odd parity, with 2 stop bits (and 1 start bit), though your software can use other smaller formats. The typical format means that 1 byte of data is encoded as 12 bits so 300 bits_per_second / 12 bits_per_byte = 25 bytes_per_second. Thus a 90 minute tape could hold about 135,000 bytes or so (~132KB).

 

One odd caveat is that the ECS tape baud rate also controlled by the clock speed of the Intellivision (NTSC is slower than PAL Intellivision) and whether the ECS is white or brown. White ECS expect to connected to an NTSC Intellivision and brown to PAL Intellivisions. These combinations will always produce the baud rate you set them to (ex: setting it to 300 baud will actually produce 300 baud). However, if you mix and match your ECS's with your Intellivisions, then the baud rates will be off by about 11% (ex: a brown ECS with an NTSC Intellivision will write to tapes slower at 269 baud, the other combo will be about 333 baud). Such tapes can still be read back by the same mismatched combo but no other ECS+Intellivision combination can (not the opposite combo or the normal combo). A weird consequence of this is that you could get 11% more data on a 90 minute tape to give you ~146KB. Side note, if you accidentally create a tape with a mismatched combo, you can create a new tape by playing the audio into your PC, speed up or slow down the audio by 11%, and play it back at normal speed for a normal combo. I hope this last paragraph wasn't too confusing.

[CatPix]

That make sense.

So, the ECS is kind of it's own computer that just hog on the Intelli for display and some input? Well, thinking about it, I suppose it make sense, else, people could have used the ECS like the 2600's Supercharger and load any Intellivision standard or ECS game on tape rather than buying the carts.

[carlsson]

As far as I understand, the ECS is an expansion containing 2K 8-bit RAM for storage, an extra AY sound chip and the I/O port. You can connect a keyboard to it, and by using a special BASIC cartridge, enter small programs that are executed by the interpreter (dog slow, even compared to the lowest end computers of its day).

 

The KCS however has its own 6502 CPU and rather was its own computer using the console for display.

 

Regarding loading games on tape, don't forget the PlayCable which was a dial-up service offering that, downloading games into RAM I presume and executing those.