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| Fifty SCSIcide cartridges
with a special edition label will be released at PhillyClassic
3 in Philadelphia, PA, April 26 and 27. The label is being designed
in conjunction with AtariAge
and the cartridge will be sold at their table. The game is identical to
that produced by Hozer Video Games and will come with the custom label,
game program manual, and anti-static bag (as the original SCSIcide release
did).
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| François Houste,
webmaster of French classic gaming site Pac-News,
has released an interview entitled "The
Secrets of SCSIcide" which provides insight into my twisted thoughts
about classic gaming and homebrew development. Those who cannot read French
can read the original English responses.
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| Chris Cavanaugh, the famed editor-in-chief of Classic Gamer Magazine and assistant editor of All Game Guide, has chosen SCSIcide as one of the Best of 2001. I humbly accept the selection! |  |
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| I
am pleased to announce that Hozer
Video Games will be manufacturing and selling SCSIcide cartridges.
Each will come with the game program instructions and a special version
of the cartridge label. Hozer has been an active member of the classic
gaming community for years, providing many of the Atari 2600 homebrew games
in cartridge form for the general public.
All versions of the SCSIcide source
code and binary images will remain available on this site for free.
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| Blake Fischer covers the Classic Gaming Expo 2001 in NextGen magazine (Lifecycle 2 Vol3 #10 10/01). The news article is subtitled "Old Programmers, old Games, and old Vegas - classic to the core". The "New Classics" sidebar shows off some of the homebrew and previously undiscovered games released at the expo. The SCSIcide screenshot is prominently displayed at the bottom of the column. |  |
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| The CGE2K1
Special Release of SCSIcide was a smashing success. All fifty cartridges
sold out almost instantly. The annual SC3
party on the eve of the Classic Gaming Expo 2001 served as the debut for
SCSIcide. View some pictures:
1. Geoff
Voigt of SC3, one of the first to play SCSIcide at its release
An additional limited run of fifty
cartridges were made after the show to fill the demand and provide SCSIcide
to folks who were unable to attend. Like the CGE2K1 Special Release, the
game was packaged with a custom color label, two-sided color manual, and
static-free bag. All fifty of these Post-CGE2K1 cartridges have been spoken
for.
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| The programming and cartridge
assembly of SCSIcide has been completed. I'd like to thank everyone on
the Stella
Development List and numerous others for comments, suggestions,
and coding help.
View some pictures of the process:
My
development environment, soldering
components onto the custom printed circuit boards, preparing
cartridges for old label removal,
removing
the labels,
fully
populated circuit boards, testing
the boards, making
the cartridges, and finally putting
on the new labels.
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| Howard
Wen offers his view of the current Atari 2600/classic gaming community
in an article entitled "Atari
Lives!" for Salon.com.
See the bottom paragraphs of Page
2 for a mention of SCSIcide and my thought-provoking insight.
Photomontage by Laura Copenhaver/Salon.
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| Thanks to Ian Primus, a prototype cartridge label concept for SCSIcide now exists. A similar design will be used on the production version of the game. |  |
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| I have created custom printed circuit boards for use in the cartridges I am producing. Each board uses a 2732 EPROM for game binary storage and a 7404 Hex Inverter for the necessary chip select line inversion. They fit the standard Atari cartridge plastics. Quantities of these boards are available for purchase for use in other projects. |  |
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| I am planning the debut and special edition release of SCSIcide at the Classic Gaming Expo 2001 in Las Vegas, August 11 and 12. Each cartridge will come with a custom label, game program manual, and will be distributed in a static-free bag (as hard drives commonly are). An additional run of cartridges may become available after the show. |  |
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| Final release versions
of SCSIcide. The gameplay is identical between all three releases. The
only difference is what is displayed when the easter
egg is activated.
CGE2K1 Special Release v1.30
Post-CGE2K1 v1.31
Hozer Video Games Production Release
v1.32
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| Difficulty
switch settings added: Left switches between normal- and over-sized drivehead.
Right switches between smooth and track-to-track motion of the drivehead.
Added easter
egg and title screen with color cycling
of the SCSIcide logo.
Removed the Select switch functionality which was unused. Changed score font back to original font which is easier to read on poor TV displays. This version
is the CGE2K1 Special Release.
Source code and binary are available in the Current Version section above.
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| Graphics
updated for score font, drivehead, and data bits. Colors updated for optimal
TV display and to avoid confusion between bits. This is difficult to do
given the variation in color of different television sets.
Added sound effects for the following events: Correct data bit read, incorrect data bit read, and missed data bit. Ambient sound represents a hard drive spinning and increases in pitch every level to reflect increased drive speed. |
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| To
start a new level, hit the fire button on the paddle. Select switch functionality
is enabled to support multiple game variations. When the game is over,
the hard drive head will disappear from the screen.
Optimized routines to precalculate color and match order of data bits to reduce flicker. Changed scoring system to something that make sense. |
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| The
Bit Counter has been increased to 10 bits (to correspond to the 10 tracks
of the hard drive). After 10 bits have been read, the level increases.
The horizontal positioning and color order of the data bits are randomly
selected for each level. Each data bit travels at the same speed, but the
speed increases every other level.
The drivehead and score change color to reflect the next required bit. If an incorrect data bit is read, score decreases. The Latency Buffer decreases when the required data bit is missed. The buffer refills and bonus points are given after each correct data bit is read. When buffer runs out, the game is over. |
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| Added moving data bits
(one per track, left to right). This demo shows the possible horizontal
speeds of the data bits (ranging from slow to dizzyingly fast). As the
bits reach the right side of the screen, they will wrap around to start
again at the left.
Many thanks to Piero Cavina for allowing me to use the display kernel from his PCMSD1.1 demo. |
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| Added a Data Latency Buffer (left) and Bit Counter (right). For test purposes, moving the joystick up will increase the Latency Buffer and change the color of the score and Bit Counter. Moving the joystick down will decrease the Latency Buffer and increase the Bit Counter. Removed the SCSIcide logo (hopefully there will be a title screen instead). |  |
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| Modified the playfield kernel to draw tracks. Added a 6-digit hexadecimal score display. This demo increases the score by $FF every frame to test the score handling routine. Added a SCSIcide logo at the bottom of the screen. |  |
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| Used Nick Bensema's "How To Draw A Playfield" as a boiler plate to display the initial playfield. Examined lots of other sample source code and documentation to get a feel for the nuances of 2600 programming. This version also has vertical movement of the drivehead using the joystick. |  |
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| After discussions, it was decided that a linear concept would lend itself to an easier design. To the right is a mock-up of the intial playfield as drawn in Adobe Photoshop. Looks a bit like Freeway. |  |
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| As originally posted
on the Stella
Development List, the game is based loosely on the operation of
a hard disk drive.
The player controls the hard drive head using the paddle and is required
to read particular data blocks. The concept is reminiscent of Kaboom!
and Milton Bradley's Simon.
This area of the web site will detail and follow the progression of the game from concept through completion, including versions of commented source code and compiled binaries. |
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