Assembloids 2600

Assembloids 2600 is a fast-paced reaction puzzle game in just 4K for the Atari 2600. Author Martin Wendt restricted himself to 4K for this project, since he considers this limit to be working within the original spirit of the machine. It is quite challenging to create a polished, enjoyable game within 4K of space!

Upon starting a game, your screen shows five windows. There is one central window and one each in the four neighboring sides. A quarter of a face in a particular color is displayed in the central window and you can place it by moving the joystick up, right, down, or left if the corresponding tile is still empty - if the tile is not empty, you'll lose one of your precious lives. While you are making the decision where to move the face piece, the timer bar decreases faster and faster.

Once a full face is complete, the windows are cleared again and you are awarded points. The number of points depends on the matching of colors for your completed face. A full face of the same color gains you 300 points. Having three face parts of the same color results in 100 points. If only two parts are of equal color, you'll receive 40 points, and a fully mixed face is only worth a mere 10 points. In case you are able to clear ALL the windows, a whopping extra 500 points and an extra life are added as well!

Assembloids 2600 is based on Assembloids 2013 which Martin coded for the Commodore 64. Assembloids 2013 itself is a port of the Flash game "Quartet" by Photon Storm.

AtariVox Support

If you have an AtariVox or SaveKey plugged into joystick port 2, separate high scores for every difficulty will be saved. Otherwise only one score is shown. Holding right on the joystick and pressing SELECT will exit to the title screen, increase the difficulty, and reset the high score of that difficulty to 0 (only if an AtariVox or SaveKey is plugged in).

Additional Information

Assembloids 2600 includes game cartridge and a full-color, 12-page manual. Assembloids 2600 is available in NTSC and PAL television formats--please select above. If you do not select an option, you will receive an NTSC cartridge by default.

Get an Assembloids Box!

If you'd like a boxed copy of Assembloids, please select "Box Upgrade: Yes" at the top of the page before adding Assembloids to your cart. Our boxes are professionally printed and include a box insert to hold your Assembloids cartridge in place. We want you to play our games, so we have not sealed or shrinkwrapped the boxes in any way, allowing you easy access to the game cartridge and manual.

These boxes are the same size as boxes Atari produced for their games "back in the day". They look great sitting on a shelf with your other boxed homebrew games, or alongside games from the classic Atari 2600 library. We only have a limited number of boxes for each game, and there is no guarantee they will become available again once our supplies are exhausted. Click on the images to the right to see larger photos of the box.