New Atari 2600 game cartridge released

Cory Doctorow 10:48 pm Mon Jul 10, 2006

Simon Quernhorst has released a new videogame for the 29-year-old Atari 2600 platform, called A-VCS-Tec Challenge. The game looks pretty fun, especially considering that it fits into 8K, graphics, sound and all. He's released it as a limited-edition cartridge for 2600 enthusiasts who still have working consoles; presumably you can also play it with an emulator like ~~MAME~~ Stella on a PC.

The game consists of 8 KB (8192 Bytes) of coding, graphics, musics and sounds. As the 2600 can only handle 4 KB of ROM at the same time, bankswitching is used to toggle between the two ROM-banks as if they were one. The intro and the musics are located in bank 2 while the main game is located in bank 1.

Due to differences between PAL- and NTSC-consoles, the game is programmed and released in two versions to fit both TV-standards.

The development was performed on a Pentium-PC using a normal Text-Pad as editor and DASM V2.12 as compiler. Testing was done using the emulator z26 V1.52 and V1.58 and on the real console of course.

The game will be released as a limited edition of 55 boxed, numbered and signed copies first. Afterwards the unlimited run (cartridge and manual only) will supply as many copies as requested.

(Thanks, Chris!)

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