I took out all delay loops, using register $14 instead.

What this means is Nerm will run on your 20mhz Atari just as well as stock - it's not dependent upon a specific clock any more.

For those of you who don't know register $14 is where the 'jiffy' is stored, that's 1/60th of a second. After you get 255 of them, register $13 bumps - that's called a 'slappy.' sure, why not. And that represents 4.2 seconds. And then after 255 of them, register $12 bumps. 255 of those is over 18 minutes and is called a 'stopbragging'

Where these names come from, nobody knows....or I made 2 of them up.

I also moved the joystick read back into the vbi, the reason for that, is I'm going to be taking all delay of any kind out of the game - even these jiffy based delay routines. Now that doesn't mean the game runs full blast all the time, it just means it cycles through the game loop at full blast all the time, and then in the vbi the snake advance will occur at the desired speed, plus songs playing via the vbi routine. \f you are changing direction that will be instant, regardless of speed - that way the game seems responsive. That's the theory.

The original nerm didn't seem responsive,a nd I'll soon know if i cracked that nut.