Thought experiment: Running modern indie games from cartridge on the Atari 2600+

[Dionoid]

Just as a thought experiment: If Atari wanted, I think they could release modern indie games on cartridge, which would be playable (only) on the Atari 2600+, providing its Rockchip is powerful enough to run the game.

Using an enhanced cartridge dumper on the Atari 2600+, these carts would be dumped to a binary file which would then run directly on the Rockchip, so without any emulators involved. I'm not sure how many bytes/second the dumper can handle though.

 

Of course these games would only run on the Atari 2600+ and not on the original 2600 and 7800. To prevent users from trying to insert these carts in original machines, they could use a wide connector which only fits in the 2600+, as both the cartridge slots of the Atari 2600 and 7800 have vertical bars which would prevent inserting such a wide connector. The Atari 2600+ doesn't have these additional bars (see pictures below).

What do you think? Feasible or just an useless thought experiment?

[CPUWIZ]

Sounds totally feasible, I can't see any reason why the code couldn't jump into RAM, instead of Stella's entry point.

 

EDIT: I mean, you can already utilize the entire architecture by "simply" flashing your own IMG to it. 

[CPUWIZ]

You should take a look at the flash, it has all the information you need, to spin your own.  

 

The 2600+ is by far the most homebrew friendly system out of the box, you can buy for the price.  I imagine people will do all sorts of fun stuff with it, I swear someone is already running THE64 on it (it is extremely similar in architecture / Rockwell based).

[Dionoid]

3 minutes ago, CPUWIZ said:

You should take a look at the flash, it has all the information you need, to spin your own.  

 

The 2600+ is by far the most homebrew friendly system out of the box, you can buy for the price.  I imagine people will do all sorts of fun stuff with it, I swear someone is already running THE64 on it (it is extremely similar in architecture / Rockwell based).

I know the 2600+ is flashable with a custom image, but my though experiment was about Atari releasing cartridges with modern games, specifically targeted to run on the 2600+. But that probably wouldn't be profitable for them.

[MrChickenz]

This is a great Idea!

[+-^CrossBow^-]

4 hours ago, Dionoid said:

Just as a thought experiment: If Atari wanted, I think they could release modern indie games on cartridge, which would be playable (only) on the Atari 2600+, providing its Rockchip is powerful enough to run the game.

Using an enhanced cartridge dumper on the Atari 2600+, these carts would be dumped to a binary file which would then run directly on the Rockchip, so without any emulators involved. I'm not sure how many bytes/second the dumper can handle though.

 

Of course these games would only run on the Atari 2600+ and not on the original 2600 and 7800. To prevent users from trying to insert these carts in original machines, they could use a wide connector which only fits in the 2600+, as both the cartridge slots of the Atari 2600 and 7800 have vertical bars which would prevent inserting such a wide connector. The Atari 2600+ doesn't have these additional bars (see pictures below).

What do you think? Feasible or just an useless thought experiment?

The only issue is that the newer cartridge ports that Atari sent me to look at and have on hand, actually have the added plastic in the connector again just like the OG 7800 console. So if future 2600+ consoles are made with these newer ports, then the extra wide PCB will not fit at that point.

 

[John Stamos Mullet]

Sounds interesting from a Tech standpoint of "Can it be done?", but it kinda defeats the purpose of building a 2600/7800 remake.

 

Another way around the cart slot idea is to just program the game with a detection method that recognizes a real original 2600/7800 and puts a message on screen stating that it's only compatible with the 2600+ console when someone tries to put one in a real 2600/7800.

[JetmanUK]

8 hours ago, Dionoid said:

Just as a thought experiment: If Atari wanted, I think they could release modern indie games on cartridge, which would be playable (only) on the Atari 2600+, providing its Rockchip is powerful enough to run the game.

Using an enhanced cartridge dumper on the Atari 2600+, these carts would be dumped to a binary file which would then run directly on the Rockchip, so without any emulators involved. I'm not sure how many bytes/second the dumper can handle though.

 

Of course these games would only run on the Atari 2600+ and not on the original 2600 and 7800. To prevent users from trying to insert these carts in original machines, they could use a wide connector which only fits in the 2600+, as both the cartridge slots of the Atari 2600 and 7800 have vertical bars which would prevent inserting such a wide connector. The Atari 2600+ doesn't have these additional bars (see pictures below).

What do you think? Feasible or just an useless thought experiment?

I had a similar thought to this recently, when I was playing my Evercade. It struck me that they were similar hardware and the Evercade runs lots of different console/arcade hardware, could the 2600 Plus read say a Megadrive level of game via it's dumper? Or perhaps some of the more simple games that have appeared on the new VCS. Then I thought it takes a while to load a 7800 game, could it be sped up running a different emulator which would have to be added for this purpose?!

 

EDIT:

I think the revised slot has the plastic bars, I may be wrong, I need to look.

 

Ah, someone has already confirmed this, ignore my edit

Edited June 28 by JetmanUK

[Ben from Plaion]

Looked into it. Data transfer speed of the cart socket is made for 1977 cart sizes.

 

Any modern game is somewhat magnitudes higher in size which would result in a load time like a tape.

Edited June 28 by Ben from Plaion

[John Stamos Mullet]

9 minutes ago, Ben from Plaion said:

Looked into it. Data transfer speed of the cart socket is made for 1977 cart sizes.

 

Any modern game is somewhat magnitudes higher in size which would result in a load time like a tape.

Shazbat!

[JetmanUK]

1 hour ago, Ben from Plaion said:

Any modern game is somewhat magnitudes higher in size which would result in a load time like a tape.

Like a tape you say? 🤔

Spectrum and C64 games confirmed!

[Maztr_0n]

what i'd prefer to see is, like...

Essentially 7800 games on steroids, they follow the same graphics and sounds basically, but they could be modern games that are large, have saves, massive open worlds, and aren't actually all that possible on 7800, they just look and sound like 7800 games, but function differently.

2600+ Extreme Games!

I'd buy tinylife or stardew valley for 50$ just for that.

[Maztr_0n]

On 6/28/2024 at 3:50 PM, Ben from Plaion said:

Looked into it. Data transfer speed of the cart socket is made for 1977 cart sizes.

 

Any modern game is somewhat magnitudes higher in size which would result in a load time like a tape.

still doesnt kill my Supergames idea, cuz they'd still have to be within the realms of like... 7800 but on a few drugs of choice.

[gpn]

On 6/28/2024 at 1:50 PM, Ben from Plaion said:

Looked into it. Data transfer speed of the cart socket is made for 1977 cart sizes.

 

Any modern game is somewhat magnitudes higher in size which would result in a load time like a tape.

 

That's too bad to hear, as I've been wondering the same thing recently. I was thinking it would be neat to get 2600+ cartridge versions of the new games Atari is putting out like the new Haunted House and Lunar Lander. Another thought came to me while reading about Digital Eclipse in the new Game Informer magazine. They mentioned wanting to be like the Criterion of video games, and I thought it would be neat to get special versions of classics like Adventure and Haunted House that included extras from the Atari 50 collection on cartridges for the 2600+.

[Maztr_0n]

On 7/9/2024 at 6:37 PM, Maztr_0n said:

still doesnt kill my Supergames idea, cuz they'd still have to be within the realms of like... 7800 but on a few drugs of choice.

Also i thought i should explain this...

 

 

Like the most i'd actually wanna see is basically Beefier 7800 games that run better on 2600+ at most, like maybe more sprite capabilities, sound, different inputs like Keyboard and Mouse, Light pseudo-3D, etc

 

But even then it would likely still be able to run on a 7800, at least without too many issues, i mean retro is big, if Disco Elysium could be ported by a single guy on the Game Boy just out of an experiment, i DOUBT that a few clever people cant use extra tricks, chips and techniques to get more modern-adjacent titles running on both 7800 and 2600+, retros big, even with people who didnt grow up with it... i think its best to work on compatibility and new tricks for old hardware to demake modern experiences than to try to make 2600+ Modern Games...