Starpath / Arcadia Supercharger

[rdefabri]

I was always a big fan of the Starpath (nee Arcadia) Supercharger and the limited number of games released for it.  Back in the day, my friend had one new and we thought the improvement over "standard" 2600 games was amazing.

 

Has anyone considered porting these games over to the A8 line similar to what Glurkvision has done?

 

Just curious, would love to play some of these again (I do have a few 2600s, but no Supercharger)...

[zzip]

You can play them under emulation

[Goochman]

The 8bit versions of those games are already Supercharged  

[Tinman]

Phaser Patrol is my favorite of the Star Raider clones.  Might be fun to see it on the 8-bit system along side the original SR

[DrVenkman]

You can play them all with a Harmony Cart.  

[+bent_pin]

1 hour ago, rdefabri said:

but no Supercharger

I can sell you a supercharger or trade for one, but it would probably be cheaper to buy a harmony cart.

[+sramirez2008]

While I love to play the actual cassettes from time to time, the Harmony is the best and least expensive way to go.

[rdefabri]

I’d prefer to do in emulation, but I hate the idea of managing multiple emulators (which I do through RetroArch).

 

Would be cool to do just on Altirra, which is my go-to emulator.

[MrMaddog]

4 hours ago, rdefabri said:

I was always a big fan of the Starpath (nee Arcadia) Supercharger and the limited number of games released for it.  Back in the day, my friend had one new and we thought the improvement over "standard" 2600 games was amazing.

 

Has anyone considered porting these games over to the A8 line similar to what Glurkvision has done?

 

Just curious, would love to play some of these again (I do have a few 2600s, but no Supercharger)...

 

Sure...and after that people on AA would want those 8-bit ports made for the 5200 as well.

[Rybags]

I watched a YT video about the games last night.

It gives a similar advantage to Harmony though significantly less.

Writes to the RAM have to be in 2 stages so effectively taking about 8 cycles instead of 6 because the cart port has no write line.

The advantage likely comes due to the fact you could build a brute force kernal during VBlank and achieve more graphical changes, e.g. using immediate mode loads instead of looking up RIOT RAM based variables.

 

Conversions - given the few original games (are any homebrews in existence?) there's not a lot worth looking at.  The Frogger looks pretty OK but pales compared to the A8 version.  The Defender clone likewise but even the Atari Defender II later on matches or beats it.

[+MrFish]

45 minutes ago, Rybags said:

Conversions - given the few original games (are any homebrews in existence?) there's not a lot worth looking at.  The Frogger looks pretty OK but pales compared to the A8 version.  The Defender clone likewise but even the Atari Defender II later on matches or beats it.

Yeah, there's not really much there worth converting. I'd rather see more pure 2600 games brought over.

 

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

4 hours ago, MrMaddog said:

 

Sure...and after that people on AA would want those 8-bit ports made for the 5200 as well.

🤫Quiet or you will awaken HIM, he who wants everything ported to the 5200 and begs for it every chance he gets.............. 

[www.atarimania.com]

Actually, a number of Starpath games were planned for the 8-bit. There might be prototypes of Dragonmaster or Escape from the Mindmaster somewhere.

[Rybags]

It's a good concept - pity it didn't go further.

 

Is it able to run pirated original Roms - or do games tend to inadvertantly trigger the write to Ram and self-corrupt?

[zzip]

12 hours ago, Rybags said:

The Frogger looks pretty OK but pales compared to the A8 version. 

The A8 has 3 official Frogger ports, what's one more? 

 

[+DjayBee]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

The A8 has 3 official Frogger ports, what's one more? 

 

The difference between Guinness Book of Records and nothing like this?

[rdefabri]

On 6/16/2023 at 2:55 AM, www.atarimania.com said:

Actually, a number of Starpath games were planned for the 8-bit. There might be prototypes of Dragonmaster or Escape from the Mindmaster somewhere.

Yep definitely would love Mindmaster...

[Mr SQL]

On 6/15/2023 at 9:21 PM, Rybags said:

I watched a YT video about the games last night.

It gives a similar advantage to Harmony though significantly less.

Writes to the RAM have to be in 2 stages so effectively taking about 8 cycles instead of 6 because the cart port has no write line.

The advantage likely comes due to the fact you could build a brute force kernal during VBlank and achieve more graphical changes, e.g. using immediate mode loads instead of looking up RIOT RAM based variables.

 

Conversions - given the few original games (are any homebrews in existence?) there's not a lot worth looking at.  The Frogger looks pretty OK but pales compared to the A8 version.  The Defender clone likewise but even the Atari Defender II later on matches or beats it.

 

Yes good synopsis, makes the VCS closer to Atari home computers.

There are some great SuperCharger homebrews like Skeleton Plus and Leprechaun, a Load Runner clone.

Example of new SuperCharger homebrews and a DLI demo here illustrating Atari home computer DLI functionality.

 

 

On 6/16/2023 at 7:19 AM, Rybags said:

It's a good concept - pity it didn't go further.

 

Is it able to run pirated original Roms - or do games tend to inadvertantly trigger the write to Ram and self-corrupt?

Yes, I wrote a C64 Atari 2600 emulator that runs those two SuperCharger examples and many other homebrews on the Commodore 64 natively by recompiling the bin and transforming the memory access layer to create a prg. I'm working on a similar emu for Atari home computers.

 

The SuperCharger can play about 50% of the original 2K-4K ROMs. There is a hotspot near the end of the address space that the other 50% trigger, crashing the ROM. Nukey Shay patched them all increasing compatibility with the device. The PlusCart/GameModem Network now supports the SuperCharger making it like the Game Modem, a similar flashcart from the 80's.