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Atari 2600 Hacks
olclops writes "Check out this guy's projects. He's an Atari 2600 programmer who's created, among other things, a cartridge that uses the 2600's sound generators to turn your atari into a full polyphonic synthesizer! The demos sound insane. Imagine being able to play console-perfect pitfall music from an atari hooked up to an amp. His other games look cool, too. Apparently, he'll be at the Classic Gaming Expo next weekend."
This is pretty geeky. What could be geekier? Well, for one, hooking it up to this
Buying a Dell computer is equivalent to dropping the soap in a prison shower.
Introducing the New Old School Band, with Lenny on the Atari with Synthcart, Joey on a Commodore 64 hacked to do guitar, Danny with the Drumsticks on the Apple IIes...
On another note, if we put together a beowulf cluster of these, would we have a symphony? "Slashdot Symphony in AC Major..."
This
Now there's something that looks good on the 'ol resume.
...do I hear some reverb in there? Dont' expect your polyphonic synth to sound like anything but an original atari 2600.
Still, old sound chips do have many unique qualities. I'd love one of these. Now if only he'd sodder MIDI into one...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
We've seen C64 SID chips make a comeback in the form of the SIDstation
But, the terible part about this is that to make one of these, 2 C= 64's have to "die". Last I checked, noone was making the chip and since noone is making the C=64 now, this is sadly causing the destruction of the last "good" C-64's.
I truly think the SIDstation is kewl, but I'ld actually like to see them start making new chips for this purpose. Or, better yet, break the C=64 down to a single chip (more than do-able) and turn it into a PDA...imagine all of the applications for a handheld C= 64...this way they would also have some processing power with that SID chip...
If you want to talk real Atari 2600 music, then at least pick something cool like California Games ('Louie, Louie' and 'Wipeout') or BMX Airmaster. Heck, even Pressure Cooker had a catchy freakin' tune that puts Pitfall to shame.
If by Pitfall you really mean Pitfall II, then that wasn't really the Atari 2600 doing all the sound. That was a special chip on the cartridge (similar to the hack done with Ballblazer on the Atari 7800) that was handlin the cool music. It was awesome, that I'll admit, but it really isn't the 2600 doing the work and the emulators that support it had to add specific support for that particular cartridge to make the music work correctly.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
I haven't seen mention of the relatively new song found on Andrew W.K.'s I Get Wet warning: the album has caused some controversy over the artist's bloodied face on the cover. The track is called "Ready To Die" and it features an intro done on what sounds like a PSX...it sounds similar to the chocobo music in the Final Fantasy series and the whole album is a very interesting mix of synth, guitar, and piano.
and from the majority of comments on here i can see that most of you don't. you don't see the point. he ddi this for his own enjoyment. to make a machine to something it wasn't designed to. to push the bounderies.
most of the comments on this story have been trolls, or sad people on about why does this belong here. it belongs because it's cool.
slashdot may be news for nerds and stuff that matters, but stuff appears on slashdot also because of it's encentric appeal or sheer coolness. don't forget it.
btw, i had a 2600 with star raiders back in the early eighties. it came with one of those 'keyboard' pads, which i tried to plug into my spectrum and monitor the outputs so that i could use it with a game i was writing. i got nothing out of it that the machine could read, so i'm actaully glad that someone used them for something else apart from the one or two games that needed them.
/usr/bin/awake/too/long
aww JEAH! old sk00l ghetto synth in da hizzaus!
as mentioned above, the sidstation uses SID chips from the commodore 64 to generate all sorts of crazeh beeps and gronks-- the site also has a ton of demos as well.
for all you crazeh c64 SID toon fans, be sure to check out the High Voltage SID Collection! tons of great SID toons from your childhood, including, but not limited to:
- Contra! bew bew bee boop ba boodaboop!
- Commando! chikkachikkabowgronk!
- Ultima IV! ba blinng! ba da bling! ba da bling. ba da blonng...
- and who could forget the cutting edge voice synth of Neuromancer? SSSHOMM SHINNGS MMEEEVVERR CHANNNSGE!
you'll need the SIDPlay plugin to listen to these things with winamp. don't forget you can move the slider doohickey to choose from multiple tracks within each SID toon! WOOHOO!