Unreleased Atari 2600 Game Found At Flea Market 253
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 A few were unpublished or saw limited runs, like Video Hustler (billiards).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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Launch Party (Score:5, Funny)
- A projector.
- A camera to record footage for posterity.
- A celebrity guest, Either CmdrTaco, CowboyNeal, or one of the Diggnation guys.
- Huuuuuge quantities of alcohol.
This has the potential to be one of the most successful parties in
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
What happens to today's games? (Score:5, Interesting)
But what happens to games today when they're cancelled? I read about games being put on "indefinite hiatus", or just being cancelled with the company essentially throwing their hands up in the air and saying "ain't gonna happen." What becomes of all that code? Since it just sits on the developer's machines, does it just get wiped when they start on a new project?
Maybe someday someone will find a hd in a flea market labeled "Shenmue 3 SVN Repo", but it doesn't seem likely, sadly.
So while we revel in the curios of the past, we ourselves have none to give to future generations.
Re:What happens to today's games? (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe someday someone will find a hd in a flea market labeled "Shenmue 3 SVN Repo", but it doesn't seem likely, sadly.
So while we revel in the curios of the past, we ourselves have none to give to future generations.
Sometimes they even risk their jobs and lawsuits to see the game get played: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrill_Kill [wikipedia.org]
You never know what might turn up on a DVD-R at a tag sale someday. Maybe the first 3 versions of Duke Nukem Forever. Heres hoping...
I want to see the DNF side-scroller game that was (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What happens to today's games? (Score:5, Insightful)
But what happens to games today when they're cancelled? I read about games being put on "indefinite hiatus", or just being cancelled with the company essentially throwing their hands up in the air and saying "ain't gonna happen." What becomes of all that code? Since it just sits on the developer's machines, does it just get wiped when they start on a new project?
Maybe someday someone will find a hd in a flea market labeled "Shenmue 3 SVN Repo", but it doesn't seem likely, sadly.
So while we revel in the curios of the past, we ourselves have none to give to future generations.
Re:What happens to today's games? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks to the internets, it's easy to find stuff like this online too - I wrote a game when I was 12/13 and sent it into Amiga Format. A couple of years ago in a fit of nostalgia I tried searching for it online, found a website mentioning the name, got in contact with the author, and he sent me a copy (I dont have an Amiga any more and if I still have the floppies for the game they're at least 10 years old and probably corrupt, although the version that I sent into Amiga Format wasn't my final version, so there are little touches that are missing
Usually if a project is canceled, it's because it was no fun to play anyway, so don't feel like you're missing out or anything! Some companies just release their boring games anyway.. others, like Valve or 3D Realms, only release games that they know are worthy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:What happens to today's games? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I also worked at Staples the night of 9/11 and we got a whole list of games to take off the shelves from corporate. Flight Simulator topped it off, don't remember any others, but it's not like anyone came in that night asking for them either. I'm pr
Re: (Score:2)
One of the original trailers did exactly that. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjtXUULtH4E [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Like this, you mean...?
http://waxy.org/2008/04/milliways_infocoms_unreleased_sequel_to_hitchhikers_guide_to_the_galax/ [waxy.org]
Re: (Score:2)
The great thing about the age of carts is just what the article touches on...here's a game that never made it to the store shelves but clearly a copy or two was made on actual hardware that somehow made it to this flea market.
But what happens to games today when they're cancelled? I read about games being put on "indefinite hiatus", or just being cancelled with the company essentially throwing their hands up in the air and saying "ain't gonna happen." What becomes of all that code? Since it just sits on the developer's machines, does it just get wiped when they start on a new project?
Imagine if that code could reused. The release date of Duke Nukem Forever could be advanced by weeks !
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I worked for a small company back in the mid90s(biz sw not games). When we folded, I took all my code home with me.
My co-developers did the same.
I viewed it as my library of work, and for a while it was my reference material since it was full of generalized code for basic business apps. Now of course its quite antique.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Flea Markets, Goodwill, Bargain Bins (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://lowendmac.com/500/macintosh-tv.html
Games Better Left Buried... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now a Garbage Pail Kids game... THAT I'd play. Even now.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Honestly, I always thought Cabbage Patch Kids was one of the best games for Colecovision. Seriously. It had more diversity than most games, and was difficult in the right ways: you needed dexterity and timing to get the vine-swinging and jumping just right, and not be knocked out. Think "Metroid for Kids" or something.
Dang, now I have to dig out my Colecovision and revv up my carpal tunnel again.
My secret plan, now I know this... (Score:3, Funny)
2. Put a cryptic label on them, something like "P0N 13S OMG", or "SR0 CKS TH1", plus some brandname like "Coleco" or "Atari"
3. Go to the nearest auction site
4.
5. Profit !
Seems like we're jumping the gun here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, even if they do contain some version of the game, and even if it's readable, there's no guarantee that it's actually a playable game. It could be an unplayable version, or even a test or demo of some sort.
Sorry to rain on the parade. If this turns out to be the real McCoy, I'll be as excited as anyone. But I'd put up even money that this ends up being a disappointment. I hope I'm wrong, though.
Re: (Score:2)
So long as the window was covered and they've not been zapped by static, there's a good chance that they will read perfectly.
Re: (Score:2)
Internets? You have more than one at your disposal?
It's not unusual (Score:2)
MAME Dumping Project (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mameworld.net/gurudumps/DumpingProject/ [mameworld.net]
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Somebody is getting their comeuppance (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.intermute.com/company/management.html
Reading EPROMs (Score:2)
Bear in mind that some EPROMs may have somewhat non-standard pinouts, and will need an adaptor. You can probably figure out how to make one from two IC sockets.
Dude. You're in the SF Bay area. (Score:3, Funny)
But to echo what Guido said, EPROMs typically aren't rated for "eternal" data retention and depending on storage conditions there could be anything from bit errors to blank chips. If both copies of the Park roms were the same you've at least got something to work with.
No! Don't do it!!!!! (Score:3, Funny)
reading them (Score:5, Informative)
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
Get thee to AtariAge! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
do not want! (Score:2)
On the bright side, I bet CowboyNeal would probably play it (and enjoy it),. . . ;-)
So why should we care? (Score:4, Interesting)
LS
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
That's funny (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I live in New Mexico, originally near Alamogordo, which is famed for being the dumping ground for Atari's ET game cartridge. Apparently they trucked thousands of the unsold cartridges, dumped them, ran over them with a bulldozer, then covered them with concrete. I wish I could find out where that was, that'd be a cool place to explore and maybe find one.
Re:That's funny (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a list of undumped pinball games that need (Score:2, Offtopic)
-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-- PINBALL GAMES -xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-
-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-- Sega / DE / Stern -xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-
Arnon Milchan, Total Recall, Flip Out '91, Joel Silver, The Pinball
Aaron Spelling -Still mis
A large subculture (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.atariprotos.com/ [atariprotos.com] is a repository of Atari stuff and http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/ [assemblergames.com] is a message board discussing the subject.
The big area for debate around prototyes is wheather or not they should be realeased. Regardless of the fact that this game never saw commercial release, it's still likely to be someone's intellectual property, and they may not be keen on seeing it spread around freely.
A lot of prototypes are worth serious money, this one as an Atari game will be too. A lot of collectors refuse to relase prototypes they've discovered incase it lowers the value of them.
It Finally Surfaces! Maybe... (Score:3, Informative)
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
Ugh (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, now I was getting a boner. Cabbage Patch Kids Adventures in the Park for Atari 2600.
Is it just me or did this creep out anyone else?
Re:Origins (Score:5, Interesting)
Dumpster diving has become both an art, a business and industrial espionage.
Also, it's quite likely that a programmer just took them home after an office cleaning or cancelled project or mass-layoff.
I worked at Coleco Advanced R&D in '79-'80... (Score:2, Funny)
"Them"? (Score:5, Funny)
I imagine the kids didn't care for hanging in the tree either.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of people (like me) just don't like to see good gear thrown out. They are called pack rats.
Re: (Score:2)
The company has to pay people to either wipe the data or securely destroy the device. Sure large corporations take these things a bit more seriously nowadays but minor companies don't become major companies by writing cheques.
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt this was the case here, but before it's clear that something's going to be a hit often companies are not careful at all about where things go. When Barbie first came out, Mattel let employees (like factory worker level employees) take home broke
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where do you live ? (Score:5, Informative)
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]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It was a voice activated clock, and after it was released they found a bug in it that made it off at the end of every day. However, there was a non-mask rom chip in the game, and we happened to have a communications protocol from it to my LCD that allowed reads and writes to anywhere in ram. My co-worker that was writing the voice chip (mine was the LCD microcontroller) wrote up a little patch that checked for the bug and patched it up when it occurr
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Google Maps Linky [google.com]
Further down the threads, he links to his Flikr photos of these roms.
Second Linky [flickr.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Cool (Score:5, Informative)
(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)
Profit! (Score:5, Funny)
2. Write the names of old video games on stickers and attach.
3. Go to flea market.
4. Profit!!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Cool (Score:4, Funny)
Thank you so much for making me feel old
I had one of these when I was a kid (actually a colecovision with the Atari 2600 adapter.)
I'm going to go play "Adventure" now.
Are you kidding? (Score:3, Funny)
One of the great joys of being this age is listening to people your age whine.
I don't blame you though. We got all the cool games, bought houses before the bubble, got jobs before the dot-com crash, had gas cheap enough to have a pastime called cruising (that's were you simply drive just for pleasure)...and we got all the good music.
Your games are pretty, but not nearly as playable. Houses are now in the quarter-million range commonly - good luck paying that off. New cars can easily run 30k. Gas wil
Best Atari Games (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
/Take that, turkey!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Cool (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I'd recommend the Commodore=64's Elite over Star Raiders. It's the same basic concept (defend yourself), but on a much more massive scale (hundreds of planets). After I discovered Elite I never played Star Raiders again.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
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, regard
Re: (Score:2)
Enduro
River Raid
Star Raiders
Circus Atari
At least, those are the ones I still play from time to time.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Funny)
It's a whole new treasure trove of source material for Uwe Bolle.
Solomon
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What's an Atari 2600?
I guess that's something people of each decade faces, people born in the 2000's will lament that people born in the 2010's haven't heard of the Playstation 3 or Windows XP. Or in the not too distant future senior citizens won't have participated in WW2 or remember a time before TV...
Lament an ignorance of the Playstation 3 or Windows XP? You must be joking. I hope that Sony and Microsoft will be only footnotes in dusty history lessons for the 2010's generation.
I wouldn't worry about WW2 either, there will be plenty of other wars to talk about. I hope I live to see a time after TV.
Tagging for posts (Score:4, Insightful)
Which overlaps a lot with moderation, being the same thing but without a formal point system... Maybe with some distributed trust system a tag system could replace the moderation system.
We need a way for people to say "I Agree!" without modding the post up with 'Insightful' or something. And vice-versa. Many people moderate down anything they disagree with just because they have to disagree somehow but aren't prepared to write a message. If they could tag something quick they might be satisfied. (Or if not, in comes that distributed system of trust to reduce the value of their always exaggerated claims.)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The entire attraction of things like the Coleco/Intellivision/Atari 2600 were that they were the first, and each provided uniqueness in how they approached the video console concept.
The thing they may lament is that they don't remember the Wii, the one console that actually broke new ground this round.
Re:Cool (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cool (Score:5, Funny)
Richard Gere might disagree.
It's much better on the real thing (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Fun!
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
BFD
It's not as if its never been seen before, like when a never before heard Steven Stills tape was found at that dump recently.
Re: (Score:2)
The differences between the 2600 and the Colecovision were considerable. Imagine trying to port GTA3 to the original Nintendo system and you'll have some idea how bad this game probably is.
Re:Cool (Score:4, Funny)
Sort of like a vintage Daikatana?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Now, now... it isn't that bad. Porting a Colecovision game to an Atari 2600 is more like porting Final Fantasy 7 to Nintendo64. Basically the same game, but with some graphical limitations (i.e. no bitmapped backgrounds).
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You could imagine it, or you could actually do it [archive.org].
I find back-ports of game titles from more to less powerful hardware to be fascinating -- paring down a complex premise into something more simple really exposes a programmer's cleverness, and it really does give credence to the idea that it's gameplay, not high-quality graphics or sound, that makes a game fun.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)