Unreleased Atari 2600 Game Found At Flea Market

VonGuard writes "I was at the flea market in Oakland yesterday when a pile of EPROMs caught my eye. When I got them home I found that they were prototypes for Colecovision games. A few were unpublished or saw limited runs, like Video Hustler (billiards). Others were fully released, like WarGames. But the crown jewel is what look to be a number of chips with various revisions of Cabbage Patch Kids Adventures in the Park for Atari 2600. This game was never released and has never been seen. It was a port of the version for Colecovision, and this lot of chips also included the Coleco version. So now I have to find someone who can dump EPROMs gently onto a PC so we can play this never-before seen game, which is almost certainly awful."

nice

[PhantomHarlock]

Good find. My first job in HS was at Atari playtesting video games for the Tengen system. (I knew someone who worked there as a 'game councelor' on their help line, a fellow Amiga fanatic, ironically)

It's not surprising that the roms turned up there - it's close to Milpitas. Usually I say there's nothing more to be had at flea markets - all the vendors these days are selling various combinations of the same grey market goods from Asia...but every now and then I guess there's still a gem.

Re:Where do you live ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere near Oakland?

Re:What happens to today's games?

[Peet42]

Maybe someday someone will find a hd in a flea market labeled "Shenmue 3 SVN Repo", but it doesn't seem likely, sadly.

Like this, you mean...?

http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/ [waxy.org]

MAME Dumping Project

[Thorwak]

"The Guru" at the MAME dumping project would probably be very interested in your find! Dumping those kinds of ROMS would be trivial to him.

http://www.mameworld.net/gurudumps/DumpingProject/ [mameworld.net]

Re:Where do you live ?

[CRC'99]

What else would have helped is the type of EEPROM, the manufacturer, and part number... Something like 27C512 in a 40 pin DIN or similar... Different types of EEPROMs require different equipment...

Re:MAME Dumping Project

[OSS2021]

Don't forget Atariage ;) can be found at www.atariage.com

Re:Cool

[electrictroy]

What's an Atari 2600?

(just joking)

Although I can imagine some teenager asking that question. The Atari VCS/2600 is older than many people alive today (almost 31 years). As for why Atari did not erase the EPROMS, in 1984 they were on the verge of collapse and probably didn't care. They had more important things to worry about... like not going bankrupt.

Best Atari games?
- Space Invaders
- Breakout
- Defender
- Missile Command
- Berzerk
- Phoenix
- Joust
- Jr. Pac-man (only VCS version of Pac-man that was arcade-accurate)

Re:Where do you live ?

[Hal_Porter]

Some of these chips are clearly EPROMS, you can see the quartz window peeking out from under a label

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vonguard/2429248669/ [flickr.com]

Remember this is an unreleased game. It's likely that they would use UV EPROMS right up until the final release when they'd commit to a binary to be produced as mask roms [wikipedia.org]. That way they could use the time honoured method of burning a batch of EPROMS, testing them, erasing them under UV and burning a new batch.

Actually back when these things were still used I never worked on a project that was high volume enough to justify a mask prom. The break even point was about ten thousand chips IIRC. I worked on a system where the production run was only a few hundred per firmware revison so we always used EPROM. Then again you could get chips that were physically EPROM but had a plastic package and no window. They could be programmed in the field, but only once.

Here's a picture of the chip

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vonguard/2429242881/in/set-72157604647023310/ [flickr.com]

It's a Intel D2763-4. Apparantly it's 8K*8, available in either windowed or OTP versions. It's not really clear how it differs from the very popular 2764.

http://www.cpushack.net/chippics/EPROM/2763/ [cpushack.net]

reading them

[ajs318]

You can read them with a standard EPROM programmer ..... something like a Dataman S3 ..... they're probably up to S5 or S6 by now, but the S3 is the one I remember. The S3 also had some built-in RAM with its own power supply, so you could load it up with data and use it in a circuit in place of a real EPROM. Nice hacker tool, back in the days.

Note that if you try to use a standard 2732 or 2716 EPROM in an Atari 2600 cart, the chip enable (on pin 20 -- driven by A12) needs to be inverted. (The OTP parts used by Atari had this inversion logic built in.) Just use a BC547 and a couple of 4k7 resistors (one in series with the base and one as a pull-up from collector to +5V). If it seems a bit temperamental, drop the collector load down to 3k3 or 2k2.

You can use bigger chips eg. 27512 to hold several ROM images -- just attach 4k7 pull-up resistors to each of the high-order address lines, with switches to pull them to 0V.

Carts with ROMs > 4K need some extra logic to switch the high-order address lines, dependent on values being written to some address somewhere. Carts with integral RAMs (yes, they existed; all of them TTBOMK were static RAM which at least makes it simpler, no need for refresh logic ..... it'd hafta be async refresh anyway, lovely, there goes your MW radio, unless you pulled some weirdy stunt with a phase-locked loop and gotta watch what you're asking that poxy little PSU for) need the RAM mapping to two distinct address blocks; one for write and one for read, because the R/W line isn't brought out on the 2600's cartridge port.

Get thee to AtariAge!

[Megane]

atariage.com [atariage.com] is the place you need to go. There are plenty of people all over the country who will go out of their way to your place to dump the chips. There are also prototype version collectors who will be interested in dumping all the rest of your chips as well, in case there's an undiscovered version in your pile of chips.

And bare EPROMs are the easiest to dump. If you have a standard programmer, assuming these are standard EPROMs, which they should be, you can do it yourself. Just don't read the important chip first until you know you've got the procedure right.

In the meantime, keep the chip windows covered and keep the chips away from light. The older they are, the more likely they will be vulnerable to "bit rot", which is the chip erasing itself even with weak light, usually after 15-25 years. Once the process begins, it can take weeks or months for the whole chip to be blank.

Re:Flea Markets, Goodwill, Bargain Bins

[lightversusdark]

It's a TAM - the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh [wikipedia.org]
The integrated sound system was designed by Bose (after an initial design by Bang & Olufsen was deemed not good enough), and it marks the first time Apple externalised the PSU of a desktop machine - it is contained within the floor-standing subwooofer. The design is a clear forerunner of the modern iMac all in one, but is thinner than any production iMac. Noteworthy was that your purchase was delivered in a limousine, and set up for you by a concierge.

I have two, but one is missing its "fatback", meaning I can't upgrade it - not even to add ethernet :o(
If anyone could help me source the part, I'd love to hear from you before I gut it to retro fit the innards of an Intel MacMini.

Re:Where do you live ?

[michrech]

Looking at google maps, he's probably in California.

Google Maps Linky [google.com]

Further down the threads, he links to his Flikr photos of these roms.

Second Linky [flickr.com]

Re:Cool

[Machtyn]

I know you all could have found it yourselves, but I'll take the middle step out of it... Berzerk Commercial [youtube.com]. It's pretty good!

/Take that, turkey!

Re:Cool

[SpiceWare]

You might like Medieval Mayhem [spiceware.org], my homebrew version of Warlords for the Atari. You can even play online [spiceware.org], though note that the mouse makes a poor substitute for a paddle.

Re:Flea Markets, Goodwill, Bargain Bins

[Anonymous Coward]

No, as he described, it's the Macintosh TV [dreamhosters.com]. Download mactracker [mactracker.ca] for the full story.

Re:Cool

[Hatta]

Atari 2600 ROMs and emulators are easy to come by, but if you like Star Raiders, you should look up the Atari 800 version of it. It's very much improved over the 2600 version. There's Atari800 [sourceforge.net] for the(you guessed it) 800, and Stella [sourceforge.net] for the 2600. Games are a little harder to come by, underground-gamer.com is down atm. You could try the Pleasuredome [pleasuredome.org.uk] though.

Re:Flea Markets, Goodwill, Bargain Bins

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it was not:
http://www.apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=tv

It Finally Surfaces! Maybe...

[Tempest_2084]

I run a website about unreleased Atari games called AtariProtos.com (http://www.atariprotos.com/ [atariprotos.com]). We've known about the existance of Cabbage Patch Kids: Adventures in the Park for years now, but it was thought that programmer Ed English had the only copy. While I'm pleasantly surprised that it appears that it has finally turned up, I'm still a little skeptical that this is indeed the 2600 version and not the Colecovision version since it was found with many other Colecovision prototypes. We'll have to wait and see, but if it turns out to be the real deal, another long lost prototype will have be found!

On a side note, one of the other EPROMs he found is labeled "Sword". This may be the lost Coelcovision game The Sword and the Sorcerer that was thought to be complete but not released.

Oh and a little bit of trivia, Cabbage Patch Kids is actually a port of an MSX game called Athletic Land. It was simply hacked into CPK to fit the license.

Tempest

Re:Flea Markets, Goodwill, Bargain Bins

[tonywong]

um, I highly doubt that it's a TAM. TAMs are not black, Macintosh TVs are black though.

http://lowendmac.com/500/macintosh-tv.html

It's much better on the real thing

[SpiceWare]

You can order up a cartridge [atariage.com] from AtariAge for play on a real Atari. They have a number of other homebrews [atariage.com] as well.

Re:Cool

[CedarPlank]

Someone in this thread will probably mention the Starpath (Arcadia) Supercharger, which added a datacassette to the 2600. The free game which was included, Phasor Patrol, was my favorite in the Star Raiders / Starmaster spaceflight-sim genre. The A/B switches raised and lowered shields on your ship, and the crosshairs changed color to offer target tracking. It was extremely smooth and immensely playable. Another great game for the Supercharger was Dragon Stomper...

Re:Cool

[Dogtanian]

if you like Star Raiders, you should look up the Atari 800 version of it. It's very much improved over the 2600 version.

Uh, the "much improved" Atari 800 version was actually the original! It came out in 1979 (or at least is copyright dated then) and was one of the first games for the system.

Although the 2600 itself was the older system, its version of Star Raiders came out much later (1982 according to Wikipedia). I haven't played that version, but given how primitive the 2600 hardware is compared to the 400/800, I'd give credit to *anyone* who could get a passably faithful version of Star Raiders on that system, regardless of the limitations.

Anyway, the 1979 original was an incredible feat for its time. Yes, it was running on (what was then) state of the art hardware, and of course more polished games came along later (for both the 400/800 and other 8-bit machines). But by the standards of its contemporaries, it's just incredible- relatively advanced "full" 3D graphics, basic strategy elements and (for what is basically a shoot-'em-up) real hunter-killer depth to the fighting itself. Yet running in 16K (8K ROM + 8K RAM) on new and relatively unknown hardware.

This was just a year after Space Invaders had first been released, and it wasn't even running on "arcade" hardware, but a home system (albeit an expensive one).

Yes, Elite probably had more depth (and deserves credit for its influence too), but that came out five years later, during which time both the market and experience in developing software on the 8-bit machines had improved massively. Look at the first and last games to be released for a long-lived console and you'll see a massive difference in technical quality- experience with the system and techniques is just as important as having advanced hardware.

Star Raiders came out around three years before the Commodore 64 was even released!