nopaybob Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 What XE cartridges work on a stock Atari 400? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wrathchild Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 By 'stock' do you mean 16K? Probably none, many of the XE carts seem to be done as 'dump stuff to RAM as needed' rather than employ a bank switching mechanism. So the titles require the RAM they needed when loaded from cassette/disk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 A quick look down the Wiki page at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atari_XEGS_games Some possibilities that might work given the originals worked in 16K: Blue Max and Eastern Front. Necromancer supposedly had an original cartridge version which mentions 16K so possibly it works also. But all up, I'd not count on many of them working on low memory systems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nopaybob Posted November 7, 2023 Author Share Posted November 7, 2023 I'm trying to understand this, What would it take to play the XE Donkey Kong cartridge on a 400? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfollowell Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 5 hours ago, nopaybob said: I'm trying to understand this, What would it take to play the XE Donkey Kong cartridge on a 400? Donkey Kong was an old enough cart that it's really hard to imagine it not working on a 16K machine. That being said, I never had a 16K machine, so I'm not 100% certain. I'm fairly certain that there is anything at all improved or different about the game itself though. The only differences are the XE cart styling and new box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flyindrew Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 I would imagine that a first addition Donkey Kong cart (XL version) would work fine on a 400. Unless there was a coding issue with late 80s XE carts, I could see a fair amount of them like Donkey Kong, Dave’s Midnight Magic working ok on a 400. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peri Noid Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 I don't have a 16K 400 (I expanded mine) but I have a stock 600XL with 16K. I gave a try to some carts I have. Older games worked, of course - no problems with PacMan, Donkey Kong and many others. But what impressed me the most, was... Atari Blast! A new game that, when executed from a disk, requires 1MB of RAM, run smoothly on an unexpanded 16K machine... Just running from a cart. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beeblebrox Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 Just now, Peri Noid said: I don't have a 16K 400 (I expanded mine) but I have a stock 600XL with 16K. I gave a try to some carts I have. Older games worked, of course - no problems with PacMan, Donkey Kong and many others. But what impressed me the most, was... Atari Blast! A new game that, when executed from a disk, requires 1MB of RAM, run smoothly on an unexpanded 16K machine... Just running from a cart. I've run Atariblast! off an Atarimax cart on 64k systems. Banked ram games like this and Spaceharrier, Flob, and (I believe) Onescape(?) will not need 1MB of ram to work if running from say Side3, Atarimax or AVG carts. Always a bonus to see these running. Also for the record the distinction to make about a direct comparison between two 16k A8's such as the 400 and the 600XL is that they aren't the same, with the 400 having an earlier OS, (with no inbuilt Basic). Any 600xl I've gotten my hands on I've instantly upgraded it to 64k using one of the many very cheap manual upgrade methods. It's a no brainier to bring it in line with it's big brother the 800xl. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 Doesn't this all depend on what we mean by "XE cart"? As we all know, quite a few silver/grey/striped label (and a few brown label) era carts were pushed during the release of the XEGS in support of it. I'm sure that I saw one of those pink "works with the XEGS" stickers slapped onto a few Super Breakout and Galaxian big boxes in 1988 here in Canada, but it's been a few decades... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfollowell Posted November 7, 2023 Share Posted November 7, 2023 44 minutes ago, davidcalgary29 said: Doesn't this all depend on what we mean by "XE cart"? As we all know, quite a few silver/grey/striped label (and a few brown label) era carts were pushed during the release of the XEGS in support of it. I'm sure that I saw one of those pink "works with the XEGS" stickers slapped onto a few Super Breakout and Galaxian big boxes in 1988 here in Canada, but it's been a few decades... I thought there were more, but maybe not, but for sure Donkey Kong, Eastern Front are just rehash titles. There was nothing at all special about them that made them "XE" titles. They were the same titles that had came out on the old brown carts and the later silver carts, before getting refreshed again as XE carts. They had no different or improved coding and there were no changes at all that I am aware of other than updated packaging and manuals. That I can recall, there were no XE carts that really required an XE or XEGS to run, as all would run on a 64K XL and many would run on 400/800/XL machines with lesser amounts of memory as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted November 8, 2023 Share Posted November 8, 2023 DK should work fine. If the XE game was originally a cartridge release then it should work in 16K. Though looking at the list I linked earlier I'd guess that amounts to under 1/3rd of that lot. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abbotkinneydude Posted November 8, 2023 Share Posted November 8, 2023 STAR RAIDERS II (XEGS Cartridge Release) always worked on stock PAL 600XL (16Ko). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+davidcalgary29 Posted November 8, 2023 Share Posted November 8, 2023 1 hour ago, bfollowell said: I thought there were more, but maybe not, but for sure Donkey Kong, Eastern Front are just rehash titles. There was nothing at all special about them that made them "XE" titles. They were the same titles that had came out on the old brown carts and the later silver carts, before getting refreshed again as XE carts. They had no different or improved coding and there were no changes at all that I am aware of other than updated packaging and manuals. That I can recall, there were no XE carts that really required an XE or XEGS to run, as all would run on a 64K XL and many would run on 400/800/XL machines with lesser amounts of memory as well. I think that Tower Toppler would have been the only slight exception -- had it actually been released -- due its use of artifacting. But the brown/blue XL pallette is really much nicer than the pink/green effect on the XE systems anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sl0re Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 On 11/7/2023 at 8:35 AM, nopaybob said: I'm trying to understand this, What would it take to play the XE Donkey Kong cartridge on a 400? Ps There are some cheap 48k boards for 400s on ebay. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Westphal Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 It's my understanding that Blue Max requires 48k ram. So it looks like Donkey Kong, David's Midnite Magic and possibly Necromancer are the only one's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.