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Unreleased Atari 2600 Game Found At Flea Market

Posted by kdawson on from the once-in-a-lifetime dept.

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 A few were unpublished or saw limited runs, like Video Hustler (billiards).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."

7 of 253 comments (clear)

  1. Launch Party by glittalogik · · Score: 5, Funny

    The unveiling and first attempt at this game requires:

    - 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 /. history. There could easily be as many as 5, even 6 guests! Rock on!

  2. What happens to today's games? by wandazulu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

    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.

    1. Re:What happens to today's games? by earthlandrealms · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      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.
      It's a lot easier to leak some files on the internet today, then it was to leak a cart back then, and a lot harder to stop.
      --
      Simpsons Earthland Realms RPG
  3. MAME Dumping Project by Thorwak · · Score: 5, Informative

    "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/

    --
    Connection closed by foreign host.
  4. Somebody is getting their comeuppance by bluemetal · · Score: 5, Funny

    Somebody was paid to spend time and work hard on that game, no matter how horrible it is. This is your time lonesome programmer... your moment of fame has finally arrived after so many long years of obscurity. Will the effort of years past pay off now, or will you simply fade away from whence you cam to that cold, bleak corner of gaming history.

    --
    "Taboo, like anything else, goes in and out of style."
  5. Re:Where do you live ? by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/

    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. 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/

    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/

    --
    echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
  6. Re:Cool by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 5, Funny

    > though note that the mouse makes a poor substitute for a paddle

    Richard Gere might disagree.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.