Ex-Activision Designers Launch Retro Game Publisher Audacity Games™

[jaybird3rd]

Here is their press release, dated 3/6/2021:

 

Quote

Ex-Activision Designers Launch Retro Game Publisher Audacity Games™
Legendary Video Game Designers to Publish New Retro Games

 

Danville, CA: Today, former Activision Co-Founder David Crane and ex-Activision Game Designers Garry and Dan Kitchen announced that they have partnered to form Audacity Games, Inc., a video game publisher focused on designing and publishing boxed game products for a variety of retro game systems, starting with the Atari® 2600™ Video Computer System™.

 

"With the popularity of retro video games, we saw an opportunity to create new titles for these still popular systems", Audacity Games co-founder Garry Kitchen said, "and it gives us all a chance to design games again for the platforms that helped launch our careers."  Co-founder David Crane added, "For years our fans have been asking us to create new games.  We heard you, and have decided to do just that.  I have always said that I have as much fun making games as others do playing them, and the retro game systems are my favorites."

 

About Retro Gaming: Retro Gaming is a movement to preserve, collect, and enjoy games and game consoles from a simpler time when video games were easy to understand and fun to play.  Retro games demonstrate that a game can provide hours of enjoyment without using the latest technology.  The buyer of a retro game gets to own a physical part of gaming history rather than a download of a license that can expire at any time.  Each of Audacity Games’ products were authored by original retro game designers, designed to be fun to play, and come as physical game cartridges in a collectible box.

 

About Audacity Games Inc.: Audacity Games is a premium retro-game publisher founded by legendary game designers David Crane, Garry Kitchen and Dan Kitchen.  Every game produced by Audacity Games™ is manufactured to order, and each copy is customized with a unique serial number.  Every game connects to the internet through your connected mobile device for registering high scores, gives the player a chance to earn a physical high score patch like those from the golden era of 2600 games, and comes in a full-color box with colored label and printed manual to add to your game collection.

 

About the founders: David Crane, one of the most successful video game designers of all time, is best known for his smash hits PITFALL!™, DRAGSTER™ and GHOSTBUSTERS™ to name just a few.  Garry Kitchen's work spans five decades of successes with such hits as KEYSTONE KAPERS™, PRESSURE COOKER™ and the Atari® 2600™ version of DONKEY KONG™.  Dan Kitchen rounds out the trio with over 40 years of game design experience creating such games as CRACKPOTS™, and the Atari® 2600™ versions of KUNG-FU MASTER and GHOSTBUSTERS™.

 

Atari and Atari 2600 are trademarks of Atari Inc.; All other trademarks, service marks and company names are the property of their respective owners.

 

[+DrVenkman]

I got that email and read the presser. I also saw the render of their cartridge PCB, which looks like it can be configured for various-sized EEPROMs. I hope they plan to encrypt their ROMs or they will read and dumped ASAP by tech-types. 

 

[+D Train]

36 minutes ago, jaybird3rd said:

Every game connects to the internet through your connected mobile device for registering high scores, gives the player a chance to earn a physical high score patch like those from the golden era of 2600 games

this part is interesting.  I wonder if this is similar to the pluscart route?

[+sramirez2008]

@jaybird3rd Yep, received the same email.  Looking forward to their new games. All true gentleman that still take the time to meet with us, talk shop and sign our games.  Here's to seeing them again, sometime soon.

 

[+fdr4prez]

50 minutes ago, jaybird3rd said:

Every game connects to the internet through your connected mobile device for registering high scores, gives the player a chance to earn a physical high score patch like those from the golden era of 2600 games,

 

12 minutes ago, D Train said:

this part is interesting.  I wonder if this is similar to the pluscart route?

"connected mobile device" makes it sound like a Bluetooth connection to your phone to their app

[jaybird3rd]

@DrVenkman: I was just in the process of cropping and posting the same picture!  I notice that their cartridge board has a footprint for a standard through-hole EPROM—up to 256K!—but I don't see any bankswitching logic.  Perhaps the other chips are mounted on the other side of the board; the placement of those vias would seem to suggest that there's something else back there.  (I also wonder if they're using one of the standard bankswitching methods, or something different.)

 

I found these details from the press release to be especially interesting ...

 

"Every game produced by Audacity Games™ is manufactured to order, and each copy is customized with a unique serial number.": This makes sense to me.  In addition to giving them the flexibility to customize/serialize individual copies, using a "print on demand" approach avoids the need to invest in a lot of inventory up front.  I've found this approach to work well with my own cartridges.

 

"Every game connects to the internet through your connected mobile device for registering high scores, gives the player a chance to earn a physical high score patch like those from the golden era of 2600 games.": I'll be very curious to know how they implement this.  Again, we haven't seen the other side of that board yet, so perhaps they have some sort of wireless connectivity built right in to the cartridge—although going that route would make the cartridges more expensive.  Or, perhaps they're using the joystick port(s) for GPIO, with a simple dongle or adapter providing a connection to the mobile device.  In either case, I would imagine that most of the work of interacting with their online leaderboard would actually be done by an app on the device; the 2600 would need to exchange only relatively small amounts of data, which is certainly feasible.  However they do it, I'm looking forward to seeing it!

 

EDIT: It turns out I was reading too much into the word "connects."  The games use QR codes.

[Rom Hunter]

Pretty sure Keystone Cannonball is one of their titles.

Great to see these three legends working together again.

[Asaki]

GOLD RUSH

[youxia]

The online connection bit sounds ominous, what with the modern datamining craze. Hopefully it won't be mandatory.

[jaybird3rd]

Something else that I find interesting about that cartridge board: I was puzzled at first why they chose to make the key prongs for the cartridge door a part of the board and not part of the shell, but looking at them more closely, I notice that the tips are gold-plated, and that there appear to be traces running to/from the tips.  There's nothing for them to electrically connect to inside the keyholes in a 2600, so I wonder why those would need to be there.  Could they be using these prongs as wireless antennae?  If so, it seems more likely to me that those cartridges are indeed going to have some sort of built-in wireless—probably Bluetooth, if I had to guess.  (EDIT: It turns out that the games use QR codes.)

[Swami]

Sorry, but I'm half expecting another two years of convention appearances and grandstanding with nothing to show for it?

[Dan Iacovelli]

saw it on facebook never got the e-mail even though I did sign up but don't know if it took.
Great to the Original Activision team came back in a rebirth of the company

[SoundGammon]

1 hour ago, DrVenkman said:

I got that email and read the presser. I also saw the render of their cartridge PCB, which looks like it can be configured for various-sized EEPROMs. I hope they plan to encrypt their ROMs or they will read and dumped ASAP by tech-types. 

 

No room for a 2K or 4K game?  lol

[BIGHMW]

Boy am I now glad I DID get rid of my Flashback 9 (I kept my CX40 P2 joysticks from it) and got A REAL 2600 (a 2600 Jr Short Rainbow) as now I get to enjoy a whole new generation of physical media to enjoy on it as well as all the ROMs already out there of past glory, move over Champ Games and AtariAge you've got company!!! I absolutely love the fact that I am (STILL!!!) DAMN PROUD to be an Atarian (since 1983 when I got my first 5200 for my 17th birthday, May 19, 1983) even after all these years, in a day and age of Xbox, PlayStation and Switch!!!

[TrekMD]

I got the email as well.  This is really cool!

[+DrVenkman]

5 hours ago, jaybird3rd said:

 

"Every game produced by Audacity Games™ is manufactured to order, and each copy is customized with a unique serial number.":

I was skimming and got distracted by the PCB, but there's the answer to my question: the code will have a probably-encrypted serial number that will uniquely tie the ROM to whomever buys the cart. You might be able to dump the ROM but (a) the code probably won't run without running the serial number/key through a valid decryption algorithm contained in whatever mystery chip (probably SMD) is going to be mounted on the back; and (b) assuming you do dump it, that dump will be traceable back to a specific buyer. Smart.

[+batari]

The fingers are probably for programming a chip on the board. You could do serial programming with the two fingers, assuming pads on the top and bottom.

[+5-11under]

So, a lot of fancy stuff going on, and then DIP packages?

[fiddlepaddle]

If this is an indication that the market for these games is getting bigger, maybe we'll see some new vcs consoles from somebody at some point, maybe even a handheld with a big screen?

[CPUWIZ]

7 hours ago, DrVenkman said:

I got that email and read the presser. I also saw the render of their cartridge PCB, which looks like it can be configured for various-sized EEPROMs. I hope they plan to encrypt their ROMs or they will read and dumped ASAP by tech-types. 

 

 

Boy, the VIA's are pretty bad.

[jaybird3rd]

1 minute ago, CPUWIZ said:

Boy, the VIA's are pretty bad.

They look autorouted to me.  This particular board may just be a prototype; the card edge doesn't appear to be beveled, either.

[CPUWIZ]

16 minutes ago, jaybird3rd said:

They look autorouted to me.

 

Very much, un-corrected even, not hard to pull them away from the component holes.

 

And where is the other side, with the ESP?   It'll be interesting to see how you configure your router.

 

EDIT: I've had net access working on the 7800, for 4-5 years now, so I know it is possible.

[CPUWIZ]

15 minutes ago, jaybird3rd said:

This particular board may just be a prototype

 

Prototype V1.1 even.

 

All kidding aside, of course it is just a render, popular these days.

 

 

"I Like breadboards and I cannot lie. You other brothers can't deny."

[jaybird3rd]

17 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

And where is the other side, with the ESP?   It'll be interesting to see how you configure your router.

I find the router useful as a starting point, but I usually end up ripping the traces back out again and rerouting them by hand; it takes longer, but it's always a lot cleaner.  The last cartridge board I designed used no vias at all, other than the existing component holes.

 

6 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

All kidding aside, of course it is just a render, popular these days.

Really?  It looked like a board photo cropped out of its background to me, judging from the perforations around some of the edges, and the black plastic shell visible through the holes.  (Not to mention the overhead fluorescent light reflections on the surface.)

[Shawn]

3 hours ago, BIGHMW said:

move over Champ Games and AtariAge you've got company!!! I

 

Ya! You should leave the AtariAge forum and go to the Audacity Forum right away!! You will never have to see another Champ or AA title mentioned ever again!