Extra history shorts says hi! I always dismissed the Atari as too primitive of a console compared to the jump we got from the NES, but man those games look good! I think I would have fun playing them!
The physical mod isn't even needed to play most 2k or 4k games. The ROM binary can be converted to a .wav or .mp3 with a conversion program like Bob Colbert's, and then loaded in the same way as you demonstrated for Phaser Patrol. A fairly small number of games won't work properly because they accidentally (or purposely?) trigger the Supercharger's bank switching or erroneously write to RAM, so the mod provides a switch to prevent that from happening on problematic games. Nice review, keep up the good work!
@@Mrshoujo The conversion program (maybe called bin2wav.exe or something like that) predates Stella Gets A New Brain by several years, but it was probably included on the Stella CD.
Until recently I had no idea these cassette games existed for the Atari 2600. I'd imagine they came and went so quickly that most people completely missed them. I'm curious to try some of them out on my Retron 77.
Wow never heard of these. That 'Escape from the Mindmaster' would have been mind blowing back in the day, 'Phaser Patrol' actually looks better than Star Raiders (1979) on the 800, I loved that game back in the day the 800 was a real beast! Great video😁
Star Raiders, Starmaster from Activision, and Phaser Patrol all had the same game concept. I remember having what may have been an older, more original version of this game on my TRS-80 called Star Trek, which is why they used terms like phasers, photon torpedoes, and star bases. It took me a month of typing in the program from one of my dad's computer magazines and then debugging for a few days because of one fouled code line, but it was an excellent game for the era. And I saved it using our stringy floppy drive, if anyone remembers those!
I learned about the Supercharger from an article in Joystik magazine, and it looked fantastic. Interestingly, they used the name Arcadia, with a footnote at the end that the name has changed to Starpath as they were going to print.
Hey man, I just found your channel. Very Cool. I got a 2600 for christmas 1981, and I had the Basic with the keyboard controller. It's how I first learned to program. 40 years later, I'm a retired programmer. I love that machine. Yeah the graphics and sound was great, but still. I never saw that cassette adapter, wish I had.
The cover art reminds me of early Spectrum and C64 games. Talking of those, an unusual thing with how the Supercharger handles multi-load games, on all other tape systems I've used(C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum and Atari XE), you would typically have the game "engine" on side A and level data on side B, because it would save loading when you get a game over and need to return to stage one, as it doesn't need to load the data from side A again and saves about 2-3 minutes a game. Guess they hadn't thought of that in '82. The dual sided games I had are typically from '85 or later.
Yeah. Could be. I bet part of it comes down to the controller IC in the cartridge. I want to find out more about it. It is branded Arcadia, but I am not 100% sure if it is custom or not.
@@RetroHackShack I don't think there would be any technical limitation for it, even with the hardware, it's just they hadn't thought of it yet. Maybe with the meagre storage available they couldn't code in the "turn the tape over" message. The IC is very likely to be custom considering all the other chips have Hitachi logos, the custom chip likely just being there to convert the audio to bits and feed it to the RAM, with the ROM having the drivers(or Firmware as they'd call it these days) for it.
Had one of the Arcadia versions when it first came out. Mindmaster, Rabbit Transit, Frogger, Phaser Patrol, and DragonStomper. I believe DragonStomper was the only multi tape game, 4 I think. Took multiple days to beat it, and there was no way to save! Had to switch back to antenna when someone else wanted to use the TV, and hope the atari didn't get unplugged. I remember they later came out with a modem and subscription service, but the long distance phone calls would have been way too expensive for me. The supercharger came out right at the tail end of the 2600's life, and in my case definately gave it 2-3 years more lifespan.
Dragonstomper was likely the granddaddy of every graphical fantasy RPG that came later. It was a great game my brothers and I played for hours, even taking turns while we grinded for the gold and gear we needed for parts 2 and 3.
I don't remember ever owning a VCS/2600. It was an interesting system, and certainly makes the most of its very limited hardware. Congratulations on your 100th video! The link to your second channel was initially hard to find (it wasn't BLUE) but eventually I realized it was a RU-vid "embedded" link (not sure that's the right term...). SUBSCRIBED, and thank you again. I wonder if the model number "2600" was inspired by the 2600 Hz tone made so famous in phone phreaking? I've tried the old Captain Crunch whistle trick (just for research purposes, mind...), and it actually did work. (Wish I still had one of the whistles. It would be a great historical curiosity.)
I bought one back in the day, and I have to say it was my favourite accessory. Being the nature of the games were on cassette, they were also easy to share with friends as well because they could be copied. As a side note, you can also load the binaries to a Harmony cartridge. It's certainly less cumbersome than playing from a cassette player.
I though Adventure was good...when we got Dragonstomper it was only surpassed once we got a Commodore 64 and I played RPGs like Ultima, Bard's Tale, and Phantasie.
I got the starpath in the 80's. Phaser patrol is an awesome game. I think you were forgetting to bring your shield up. Lol. Thats why you were taking so much damage. Escape from the mindmaster i think was so advanced for its time. And Survival Island is a more resent game i been playing. Didnt have it as a kid that i think its very good. You actually reach the island and you play in the island too. Something you did not see back in those days. And to this day at my job when I talk to a customer says something that is so mistaken when I hang up the phone I call them a communist mutant from space . And know one from work knows were I got that from lol 😂
The Starpath was AMAZING in comparison to regular Atarci VCS games! Dragon Stomper & Escape from the Mindmaster STILL haunt my dreams! Very AFFECTIVE games!
Phaser Patrol looks dope for a 2nd gen console/game. From a technical perspective it looks amazing. A lot of stuff on screen for a system that's all about *_racing_* *_the_* *_beam._*
I am pretty sure it was a cheap way to add some attenuation instead of using a resistor. I have seen that in other PCB designs when you need to really fine tune something on your board.
I believe that I have that cartridge and a number of those games on cassette like Escape From the Mind Master and also Phaser Patrol for it buried in my closet with my 2600. I completely forgot that I owned it until I saw your video here! Unfortunately, my closet gets VERY warm and humid in the summer and I hope that the cassettes still work. They have been in that closet for MANY years now. I also have a very similar cassette tape player as yours, but the only thing is is that the belts inside have degraded to a sticky, gooey mess and need to be replaced for it to work again. I have to get into that now jam packed storage closet to find those, but it's SO cluttered in there and you have to stoop low to move around in it that it kills my extremely bad back! Damn.....I REALLY WANT to find that stuff now! 🤔
With 6 kilobytes of RAM and using cassettes ment it could do a game way over 64 kilobytes of ROM which was the largest rom cartridge released on the Atari 2600 in the early 90s towards the end of its retail days. As an audio cassette could hold over a megabyte of rom data.
But some people complained about the games not instantly loading. It was like loading a C64 tape and they didn't fuss about C64 tapes taking time to load.
I have the Starpath Supercharger for the Atari 2600 VCS and the first four cassette tapes in the series. I unfortunately was never able to get the Frogger cassette tape and when I thought that I was going to finally going to get it, it turned out that the seller listed the cassette tape but actually sold to me the Parker Brothers cartridge instead.
The detection of stop is probably by lack of tape hiss over the audio out. I've only seen one deck that didn't generate more hiss when rolling on pristine tape than when stopped - and that was a Nakamichi professional studio deck in a professional context. Non-pristine tape? Even the Nakamichi had more hiss while rolling than not.
Have you listened to the program tapes? I'd guess that there is a tone or data continuing after the game data that tells the system that the tape has not been stopped until it is. Starting at 3:57, spiral traces on the PC board to act as RFI blocking inductors? Phaser Patrol on 2600 hardware is AMAZING and the tape loading times were fast because of how small the assembly language programs were.
@@RetroHackShack Combined with that wav file from phone game loading method, I'd love to see someone make an FPGA clone of these once they get more expensive than they are now. For now, some seem to sell for around $100. I'm sure that will increase with time. Look at what heavy sixers are going for these days!
Yes, each cassette had a tone that let the Supercharger know that it was done. With a game like Dragonstomper, where you had multiple loads for the game, if you let the tape keep going past the next section, you would have to rewind the tape to the beginning and re-load the previous level, then it would continue to the next level load before giving you the Stop Tape screen. We were young and foolish, and we thought the actual music for the game was on the cassette, so we did play it and cause ourselves all kinds of hearing damage. I'm not sure why, but the second side seemed to load slower. I'm not sure if that was by design or not. Most of the games used about 2/3 of the length for the first side, but almost the entire length for the second. I'm sure there was something in the manual that explained it, but I was 12 and not about to read some dumb instructions when I could be shooting down Communist Mutants.
Regarding pressing stop: I can't think how it would 'know' that you'd pressed stop, and I'm wondering if its more likely that there's some kind of background carrier tone on the tape? And when the tone stops, it knows that the tape has been stopped too. Just a guess. Cool video!
The one I own is the Arcadia supercharger, not using the starpath name.The starpath version is a later release. I assume that everyone calls it the starpath supercharger because starpath is what they changed their name to. The starpath version is probably the more common version. I load games on mine from a burned cd on an old cd player. Update: The original supercharger cartridge isn't even needed to play the games on original hardware. You can just buy a harmony cart or build an uno cart. It's another option with an actual supercharger cartridge being very expensive.
I bought one of these Supercharger cartridges a year ago and it doesn't mention the Starpath name, only Arcadia. It was in a bundle with an Atari 410 deck and a few games on cassette.
That inside view of the SuperCharger at 4:29 is really weird. There are two disconnected resistors just dangling over the ROM chip, and what are those two long spiral maze traces?
Yeah. So, I didn't want to take mine apart (rare for me😁). That image was from AtariAge where someone discovered that the previous owner had started the 7800 mod, but never finished it.
Definitely bad release timing heh, but a really good idea that I'm glad it came out. Probably one of the harder things to do in the past, loading custom programs into game consoles. I have to laugh at all the "formerly Arcadia Corporation" stamped all over the place since it's kind of an eyesore. Must have been a strict legal matter since I think most people then and now are more familiar with their Starpath name. Definitely had some strong games for the product, so many other peripherals historically have had weak initial support from the company's that released them Eg. the Power Glove. So very sad the market dropped out for them. Lol Apple "Legacy support, what's that?", the cutting edge is all that matters to them and wired peripherals don't exist.🙄
Hi Aaron, I am curious, how is possible that MP3 been a format that loose quality to be able to reproduce the content of the binary tape with no problems. Love the end of the video with the TRON movie line "End of Line" 🥰
before flash carts we used to mod these so we could boot all 2 and 4k games from a pc hard drive. a toggle switch was soldered in and a wave converter was used to send the game from pc to starpath
Host? Concerning your Yars Revenge shirt: the video game Adventure had a "hack/easter egg" that allowed you to see the creators name, Warren Robenette, I believe. What was the creator's name for Yars Revenge when you did the "hack"? I had a direct next door neighbor friend whose dad owned a video rental store, and he showed me so many Atari 2600 hacks. I have no idea why this was recommended to me, as I haven't searched anything about video games, but am not complaining 🙂
21:00 I wonder if those blinking dots and dashes are actual game code similar to what you see in Yar's Revenge where the Neutral Zone graphic is not actually random but is actual code from the game.
The reason cassettes didn't catch on is because the tape can wear out,get snagged and break,get crumpled ect. Carts have none of those problems and are easier to make and store.
Being from Europe, I grew up with the ZX Spectrum and cassette-loading games. But once I got a floppy disk system for the Spectrum I was blown away by the improved load times, and never wanted to go back to buying games on cassette! Cartridge-based consoles too; no loading time at all.
The baud rate when loading doesn't seem to be inferior to later 8 bit computers since with these small size games loading times are accordingly quite short!
Good point! Please excuse my ignorance. I also forget to say "Zed" sometimes instead of "Zee" for the letter Z when talking about British products like the Z80. There must have been a thriving Atari scene in Brazil back then. I got lots of comments from Brazilians on my last video.
@@RetroHackShack not really ignorance as Portuguese isn't as universal as english, just wanted to tell that we used K7 as an easy way to refer to cassette tapes 😁 by the way, great video 👍
@@ducasp yes i am,but in the 80's and 90' s K7 signified an Helmet would you believe ( capacete/ K7 in portuguese)so we said cassettes.and we used tons of them for the Spectrum micro even today we enjoy those games in emulation (try Bruce Lee)and those covers are delightfull.them the Amiga came up
Not No idea about the Grminicompatible with Colecovision VCS exoansion moduke either. Supercharger is too wide to completely fit in and circuit boards don''t quite touch. Should work with the Intellivision expansion module...I think. No idea about te Gemini.
16:35 LOL, look at the symbol labeled Dracon Occupied Sector.... That's a Recognizer from Tron. Maybe the guy who wrote this game was a fan of the movie?
Game programmers borrowed a lot of ideas from already-established franchises. For example, even before Phaser Patrol and the games similar to it (Star Raiders and Starmaster) it was a game called Star Trek, on home computers of the time. Lacking disk drives, it took me a month to type the game in on my TRS-80, but it was worth it. Had the same concepts--energy shared into shields, phasers, and photon torpedoes, sector map, star bases to repair and refuel, and in that version, Klingon warbirds to destroy instead of recognizer "Dracons". Also, it used ascii instead of pixels.
David Crane and Carol Shaw are of course great, but so are the programmers behind these games, like Dennis Caswell and Stephen Landrum. More games for the system would have been welcome, but Escape from the Mindmaster and some of the other titles were pushing the SuperCharger pretty much to the limit.
It was a lot of fun to see this Supercharger enhancement product for the Atari 2600. Thank you! Once I saw the title with the 3D maze, it reminded me of a great game called, "Tunnels of Doom" that I played a lot of on my first computer, the Ti-99 4/A. I got that computer a few years after having the Atari (technically, the Tele-Games system), and so, if I had seen this cassette loading line in a store, I would have wanted one. Being that I already had the experience of loading games through a cassette recorder with a home computer, it wouldn't be foreign or laborious to me. However, I do think that without cassette data loading experience (at the early age of 12 years old, approximately), it may have appeared to be too much of a risk on a gimmick, or extra work for the average Atari-only user. I could be wrong, but I think that it would require good marketing to persuade both minor users and their parents for purchasing. At a later age, of course, it has a quality of being a previously unknown novelty item categorized somewhere in the "what if" area of Atari. Oh, and the other thing worth mentioning, is that I got an Atari 800xl computer in the early eighties with a floppy disk drive which would lessen the probability and interest in trying to supe up the 2600 when I already had an "advanced" gaming system that I really enjoyed. I would think that many may relate to my experience, in this regard. With that said, thanks again for the descriptive presentation. It's greatly appreciated.
I know. I have 7 or 8 of these and even the junkiest most abused one I have worked the first time I tested it. I haven't done a repair video for the 2600 yet because I can't find a dead one.
@@RetroHackShack Logically there's no reason why it wouldn't be, since it's essentially a jacked up 2600 cartridge with an RCA input from which to load the game ROM. The 7800 BIOS would still read it as a 2600 cartridge and boot into 2600 mode.
I tested Starpath games when I was a kid. They gave me numerous prototypes to test. Most of which I still have. I can’t believe it, but they still work!
@@8_Bit I believe I did. At the very least Sword of Saros, Sweat, and Survival Island that I can recall right now off the top of the head. Ive got prototype copies of these. I’ve also got copies of many of the released games in various stages of development as well.
I bought a supercharger at the mall one day because it was steeply discounted. I can't recall the year but it was likely 1983 or 1984. My memories of the purchase are well faded at this point. Nonetheless, I mastered Phaser Patrol and some time later I bought "Fireball"...which was a great "breakout" type of game. A juggler sprite replaced the breakout flat bar that bounced balls upward. I feel very lucky to have experienced it back in the day. Playing Frogger would have been epic back then!
Would be really cool to see how you convert the normal Atari 2600 Rom Files to the Starpath Tape files and then load them from the cassette player. I guess it would not have been possible to do that back in the day. How would you of dumped a real Atari 2600 cartridge in the first place to obtain the Rom File ? If you could of been able to do that then this thing would of sold very very well i guess.
Here is the link where I found the details on the wayback machine from Bob Colbert. Hopefully all this is also archived elsewhere on AtariAge, etc. web.archive.org/web/20090605073820/members.cox.net/rcolbert/index.htm
@@Mrshoujo It is just my British Slang I am from a place like where John Snow comes from in Game Of Thrones. Thanks for the CD Worship info though. Seems like with that you don't even need to modify the Star Charger. but saying that i think i will just stick to the Harmony cart route.
Uh yeah… the supercharger hears the “sharp click” the tape deck made when you stopped it. Lol. What a dullard. Anyways back in the day it was Dragonstomper that converted me to a fan.
It knows exactly when you press play or stop then it continues.. it does it by paly= noise on the signal input and it knows when you press the stop button because of the noise no longer present on the signal input.. if you press FF or RW it would think you pressed the stop button because it would have no noise on the signal input.. it's not very technical..
