Zaxxon

[tz101]

Recently acquired Zaxxon for Intellivision, so now have the game for all the early consoles. In looking at the different versions, I got to wondering why Coleco manufactured the CV, VCS, and INTV versions, while Sega is the maker of the 5200 version. While the arcade Zaxxon game was indeed a Sega release, did Coleco not buy rights to all the console ports?

 

This is really weird because normally a game was licensed to a certain publisher for all consoles.

[Video]

Way back when, people would buy the 'rights' to a game (to make it for a certain time for certain stuff) and often, they would say they wanted the rights to make it for certain systems, or maybe even certain formats (some would go and buy the exclusive rights to cart format, while someone else could slip their own version in because they get the disc rights, or the tape rights) Mostly a system would only have one version of a game, but sometimes, there would be two (like two froggers for the 2600) and this happened a lot for computers, since they could use so many different formats.

[OldAtarian]

Way back when, people would buy the 'rights' to a game (to make it for a certain time for certain stuff) and often, they would say they wanted the rights to make it for certain systems, or maybe even certain formats (some would go and buy the exclusive rights to cart format, while someone else could slip their own version in because they get the disc rights, or the tape rights) Mostly a system would only have one version of a game, but sometimes, there would be two (like two froggers for the 2600) and this happened a lot for computers, since they could use so many different formats.

 

There's two Froggers for the 2600?

[Nukey Shay]

Yes, Parker Bros. and Starpath. Of course, the Starpath one is more-faithful due to it's wealth of ram memory.

[Nukey Shay]

 

[atariksi]

Yes, Parker Bros. and Starpath. Of course, the Starpath one is more-faithful due to it's wealth of ram memory.

 

You mean it has an internal RAM in the cartridge? I haven't seen the one in the bottom picture.

[bohoki]

Yes, Parker Bros. and Starpath. Of course, the Starpath one is more-faithful due to it's wealth of ram memory.

 

You mean it has an internal RAM in the cartridge? I haven't seen the one in the bottom picture.

 

wow we have been honored by a visit from the great nukey he is the king of starpath supercharger bin fixing

 

the starpath supercharger doesnt really feel like it has much memory just the games designed for it "hit all the walls"

 

i wish we could get nukey on board with converting a400 games to the 5200

 

i just got a supercharger a couple years ago

and cant belive i slept through this i put 90 games on cd (have about 400 roms converted to wavs and play them through my diskman

 

and i thank nukey for about 100 of the fixes

 

using tapes sucks

Edited October 19, 2010 by bohoki

[Nukey Shay]

You mean it has an internal RAM in the cartridge?

That is how the Supercharger works. Starpath games were sold on tape, and loaded into the unit. The programmer could treat as much of the addressable space as ram as he wanted.

 

 

I haven't seen the one in the bottom picture.

Starpath "roms" for the old computer aren't too difficult to find.

[OldAtarian]

You mean it has an internal RAM in the cartridge?

That is how the Supercharger works. Starpath games were sold on tape, and loaded into the unit. The programmer could treat as much of the addressable space as ram as he wanted.

 

 

I haven't seen the one in the bottom picture.

Starpath "roms" for the old computer aren't too difficult to find.

 

Can the Starpath read data from a CD player?

[Nukey Shay]

Yes (bohoki answered your question above BTW). The downside is that the CD format only allows a maximum of 99 tracks...which would leave a lot of empty space on a CD unless you are putting multiple games on single tracks - (increasing the complexity to search for them to load). Still, 99 games per CD isn't bad compared to a single game per cassette

[walter_J64bit]

Yes (bohoki answered your question above BTW). The downside is that the CD format only allows a maximum of 99 tracks...which would leave a lot of empty space on a CD unless you are putting multiple games on single tracks - (increasing the complexity to search for them to load). Still, 99 games per CD isn't bad compared to a single game per cassette

use a MP3 player than you can get pass the 99 tracks.

[bohoki]

Yes (bohoki answered your question above BTW). The downside is that the CD format only allows a maximum of 99 tracks...which would leave a lot of empty space on a CD unless you are putting multiple games on single tracks - (increasing the complexity to search for them to load). Still, 99 games per CD isn't bad compared to a single game per cassette

use a MP3 player than you can get pass the 99 tracks.

 

heck 99 is too many cause the game i want to play is always around the 40s i either need to hit foward 40 times or hit back 40 times

 

cds are cheap

 

also with the supercharger being mono and every earphone jack since 1979 is stereo i use this device and set it to medium volume to prevent loading problems

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2102690

 

 

its not like loading a commodore 64 tape at most loading time is like 15 seconds

 

i just press play and kind of hold by breath as the blue loading curtains close on the tv set

 

the reason i like it is i dont have to keep all my games in the house just the ones bigger than 4k

 

wow what a tangent discussion going from sega zaxxon to sega supercharger frogger

 

i liked zaxxon on the computer i remember playing it on a green screen the 3d depth always messed me up especially in the space level cause you got the be the same zoom as the enemy to shoot them

 

it seems to be a rare and thusly expensive so i do not have it and probably wont find it

[Lord Helmet]

Yes, Parker Bros. and Starpath. Of course, the Starpath one is more-faithful due to it's wealth of ram memory.

 

You mean it has an internal RAM in the cartridge? I haven't seen the one in the bottom picture.

 

Starpath Frogget is superior to the more readily known Parker Bros port. Grab the rom and your favorite emulator and have a go at it.

[tz101]

it seems to be a rare and thusly expensive so i do not have it and probably wont find it

 

None too expensive, I got my 5200 Zaxxon cart for $2 at Goodwill.

[bohoki]

it seems to be a rare and thusly expensive so i do not have it and probably wont find it

 

None too expensive, I got my 5200 Zaxxon cart for $2 at Goodwill.

 

wanna double your money?

[atariksi]

You mean it has an internal RAM in the cartridge?

That is how the Supercharger works. Starpath games were sold on tape, and loaded into the unit. The programmer could treat as much of the addressable space as ram as he wanted.

 

 

I haven't seen the one in the bottom picture.

Starpath "roms" for the old computer aren't too difficult to find.

 

So the Supercharger is a cartridge I plug into the Atari 2600 and then use a tape or cd player to load the ROM?

[Nukey Shay]

Pretty much any audio source that has an earphone plug. The Supercharger was just an oversized cartridge (click to see it's size compared to a standard Atari 6-switch) that had an earphone lead to receive data. The games themselves were designed using an AppleII (the subsequent program being stored using the AppleII's cassette jack). The unit actually included more ram than the Atari system was capable of addressing...and was designed to detect calls to a couple of specific memory addresses to take advantage of it's own "bankswitching" method to swap a full 2k block of memory with another occupying a reserve block...with a third 2k block always being present. Certian bitpatterns used in these calls could also instruct if following address references were to be altered...so a program could "self-modify", or rewrite, display kernel instructions...making it possible to create game screens that were pretty much impossible for ROM cartridges to do (unless a LOT of redundancy, or condition-specific code, was implemented).

 

Because the RAM blocks occupied the full stretch (and then some) of memory normally used for ROM addressing, this meant that ROM images of 2k and 4k games could be loaded into the unit just as their own programs were. As long as said programs did not access the addresses used for banking (which would flip banks or otherwise corrupt RAM memory in the unit), the unit would not know the difference. For games that DID access one of these banking addresses, the unit is easily modified to include a physical "write-disable" switch...to be used after a program has loaded (but before it executes). The alternative is to rewrite the program lines that access those addresses. That was the goal of the Supercharger hack thread...to modify such games so they are directly-compatable with an unmodified unit.

[atariksi]

Pretty much any audio source that has an earphone plug. The Supercharger was just an oversized cartridge (click to see it's size compared to a standard Atari 6-switch) that had an earphone lead to receive data. The games themselves were designed using an AppleII (the subsequent program being stored using the AppleII's cassette jack). The unit actually included more ram than the Atari system was capable of addressing...and was designed to detect calls to a couple of specific memory addresses to take advantage of it's own "bankswitching" method to swap a full 2k block of memory with another occupying a reserve block...with a third 2k block always being present. Certian bitpatterns used in these calls could also instruct if following address references were to be altered...so a program could "self-modify", or rewrite, display kernel instructions...making it possible to create game screens that were pretty much impossible for ROM cartridges to do (unless a LOT of redundancy, or condition-specific code, was implemented).

 

Because the RAM blocks occupied the full stretch (and then some) of memory normally used for ROM addressing, this meant that ROM images of 2k and 4k games could be loaded into the unit just as their own programs were. As long as said programs did not access the addresses used for banking (which would flip banks or otherwise corrupt RAM memory in the unit), the unit would not know the difference. For games that DID access one of these banking addresses, the unit is easily modified to include a physical "write-disable" switch...to be used after a program has loaded (but before it executes). The alternative is to rewrite the program lines that access those addresses. That was the goal of the Supercharger hack thread...to modify such games so they are directly-compatable with an unmodified unit.

 

I guess similar to the 410 recorder for 8-bit in converting the frequency audio tones into digital data. What's the transfer rate? The 410 works up to around 800bps.

[Nukey Shay]

AFAIK, it's 300 baud. The same rate that was used to create it from the AppleII.

[bohoki]

AFAIK, it's 300 baud. The same rate that was used to create it from the AppleII.

 

i gotta ask ya nukey

what brought you to the 5200 zone

 

any chance of breaking the xonox ghost manor second /third level off as self starting individual games the shooting stage and maze stage you know with full crosses and stuff