All of my games have their own
individual section with a
description of the game,
screenshots, downloads for
source and binaries, and
downloads for any extras that
might be available for that game
(maps, manuals, etc). The
list at the top of this page is
designed to make it easier to
download games without having to
scroll down to each individual
game's section on this page.
There is a link to the original
AtariAge thread for each of my
games if you'd like to download
earlier releases or read about
the development of the game.
All of these homebrew games and
demos are for the Atari 2600.
I have additional homebrews for
the 7800 in
that section of my site.
All of my 2600 games were
written with
batariBasic along with some
added inline assembly in some
cases, for example the
title
screen in CaveIn is written
in pure assemmbly.
Cave In is a large adventure game for
the Atari 2600, inspired by the 2600 versions of Raiders
of the lost ark and Adventure. Below are the
download links and the instructions on how to play the
game, as well as other files and documents I created
during the development process. For more info, you can visit the AtariAge forum thread
here. Want to see CaveIn in action? Download
the Level One Playthrough
here. Be warned, it shows how to beat the game, so
don't watch if you want to figure it out for
yourself. Also, I'm on a free webhost with only
1GB of transfer per month. So please download it
once, then send it to all your friends! :) Cave In is
now
available for purchase at the AtariAge store. The $30
purchase price includes the cartridge and a
professionally printed manual, you can see screenshots
of both below.
All of my proceeds for Cave In will
be donated to
Autism
Speaks. Autism is one of the fastest growing
developmental disabilities in the US, with 1 in
91 children being diagnosed (as of October
2009). It knows no cultural or racial
boundaries, and that number is increasing every
year. My son was diagnosed with Autism at the
age of two, 9 years ago. So much has been
discovered and learned since then, but there is
still no cure. By purchasing Cave In you're not
just getting a great game for the Atari 2600,
you're also contributing to a great cause that
needs everyone's attention, and you're helping
to fund research that will hopefully find a
cure. Thank you for your support and your
interest in Cave In, and for helping my wife and
I support Autism Speaks.
Below are images of
the game on cartridge and the
instruction manual, available for
purchase at the AtariAge store.
Below are in game
screenshots of Cave In.
titlescreen
x
x
x
Video
Instruction Manual
Special thanks to David Exton (liveinabin), the
artist who created the instruction manual below.
You can click on the image for a larger version.
The pages are divided up for duplex printing to be
used as a folded booklet.
To
celebrate the 4th anniversary of
the release of Cave In in the
AtariAge store in January 2010 I
thought I'd share the hidden
secrets in Cave In, including
how to unlock the easter egg.
I included all of the secrets
within an image file so nothing
shows up in a google search,
you'll have to actually download
the file and look at it to see
the clues. Of course this
is a very big spoiler so don't
download it if you want to try
and solve everything in the game
by yourself.
Bombs Away is a fast paced action game inspired by
Activision's Kaboom.
Gameplay:
The object of the game is to zap the
falling bombs before they reach the city below. You have
a powerful laser beam that can be moved back and forth
to take out the bombs. The city also has a set of shield
defenses which will stop the bombs, but you won't score
any points for their desctruction. You also have one
super powerful laser blast that you can deploy at any
point during the game. It will destroy all of the
falling bombs on the screen. To activate the super
laser, push up on the joystick. You will receive 10
points for every bomb you destory, and as mentioned
before, no points for bombs destroyed by the city
shields.
The game is divided up into 12 levels, and with each
passing level you'll face a faster bombing raid on your
city. Once you reach level 12, it's a test of endurance
- there will be no more pauses in the action until you
reach the inevitable destruction of your city. You'll
see your city blow up when six bombs have hit. When the
game pauses at each level, press fire on the joystick
when you're ready to continue. There is a brief pause
built in so you don't accidently move past the level
change screen, the fire button won't work for a few
seconds.
The city can survive six direct bomb hits before it's
destroyed. Your six hits are indicated with the level
counter at the bottom of the screen. If you reach the
end of a level and you've taken at least one hit you
will gain one life back. Once you reach level 12, there
are no more opportunities to gain extra lives.
The game also includes options screen to customize the
difficulty level. You can select which level you want to
start on and whether or not you want the shields to be
activated. To select whether or not you want shields,
push left/right on the joystick. To select your level,
push up/down on the joystick. The default option is to
start on level 1 with the shields on. After you've made
your selections, press fire to start the game.
This game includes the option of having a second player
control the city's shields using the right joystick. If
no one is using the right joystick, the shields will
hover back and forth automatically.
Turbo is a 3D racing game. The object is go race
as far as you can and get as many points as you can
without destroying your car or running out of gas.
Gameplay:
When you start the game, it's night and you have a full
tank of gas. There is a pitstop/gas station that you can
enter to refill your gas tank and repair damage to your
car. The gas station will appear when you are getting
low on gas. To enter the gas station, run into the
"sign" on the right side of the road as it passes by.
The gas gauge will also flash with the gas pump road
sign when you're low on gas.
Once you're in the gas station, you'll see a top down
view of your car with a workbench to your left and a gas
pump to your right. Drive your car over the gas pump to
refill your tank, and drive your car over to the
workbench to repair your car. The workbench will have a
closed sign if your car has very minor damage, and may
appear closed if you have the difficulty set to a higher
level, which is explained later. When you're done, drive
off the top of the screen to re-enter the roadway.
Important! You'll want to refill and repair your car as
quickly as you can while you're at the gas station, as
your score continuously decreases for as long as your
remain in the gas station.
On the main screen, there is a gas gauge at the top left
of the screen. As the fuel bar decreases, it will change
from green to yellow to red... if you run out of fuel,
the game ends and "empty" will appear on the screen.
Press down on the joystick to return to the title
screen. If your car is destroyed, the car sprite will
change to a damaged car and the game ends. Press down on
the joystick to return to the title screen.
Weather will also affect the game. At night, it may
start to rain, which makes your car slide back and forth
a little bit as you drive. Oncoming traffic is also much
more difficult to see, as for they don't have
headlights. When the sun has fully risen, the screen is
a glaring white. Oncoming traffic is also more difficult
to see when the sun is in your eyes.
In the normal game mode, with the difficulty switches
set to B/B and the Color/BW switch set to color, the
game is farily easy. In order to make the game a little
more challenging, you can increase the difficulty in the
following ways:
B/W switch
- color mode - oncoming traffic moves at normal speed
- b/w mode - oncoming traffic will move twice as fast
Left Difficulty switch
- B - normal damage
- A - your car takes 3 times as much damage with each
hit.
Right Difficulty switch
- B - Normal Workbench operation
- A - Workbench will only be open when you are VERY low
on gasoline. You'll have to time it just right.
Hint: time how long it takes for you to run out of gas
when you get down to one bar left. When there is one bar
on the screen, you'll have to wait about 1/2 the time it
takes before you run out. This definitely adds a level
of challenge - timing is everything!
Drag Race is a 3D drag racing game with gameplay similar
to Activision's dragster.
Gameplay:
To start the game, hit the fire button on the title
screen. You will then start off in the staging area,
with a traffic light on each side of you. Wait for the
light to go from red to yellow to green, and smash the
throttle. Hit the throttle too early, and you'll get a
false start and have to begin again. It's a manual
transmission, so don't forget to shift by pushing the
joystick left - if you bury the tachometer in the red
you'll blow your engine. Just like Dragster, keep
pushing left to switch gears, there are 5 in all. The
gear you are currently in is displayed on the top of the
screen, along with your current elapsed time. Try to
keep the revs as close to or just barely into the red
zone of the tachomter to get the best times. Once you've
finished the race, push down on the joystick to start
over and re-enter the staging area. If you do nothing,
you'll reach the end of the drag strip in 15.99 seconds,
and the race will end. If you have a false start or blow
your engine, push down on the joystick to start over.
The object of the game is to put out
as much of the fire as you can and safely escape the
burning building.
You'll start off on a screen with a
burning building, 14 stories tall. Move your fireman to
the right to enter the building. Each of the 14 levels
has a timer, you have approximately 30 seconds to put
out as much of the fire as you can and safely exit the
room at the top. When the timer gets down to about 5
seconds, the score will start to flash and an alarm will
sound to let you know that time is about to expire. Each
level of the building has it's own unique floor plan,
some are more challenging to get through than others.
You'll score 10 points for each fire that you put out.
Once you've made it to the exit, you've cleared that
level of the building and can move on to the next. Each
time you clear a room, you'll go back to the building
screen and you'll see one level of fire disappear. Enter
the building again to move on to the next level. The
goal of the game is to clear as much fire from each room
as you can (racking up as many points as possible) and
safely exit the building. You can win the game without
putting out all of the flames.
There are three levels of difficulty which are
selectable at the title screen. Push up and down on the
joystick to select the level, then press fire to start
the game. The fire moves progressively more quickly in
each level, and in level three you begin with only 3
fireman rather than 6.
This is a collection of
five mini-games and three apps with a "OS like"
presentation where you have to click on icons on a
desktop to launch the individual programs. They all have
a similar theme, I was trying to give the appearance of
simple games in a desktop window similar to the old
Windows entertainment pack games in Windows 3.1. Sound
has not been implemented yet and there are some issues
with a few of the apps, but they do all work.
Navigating the 'GUI':
It's pretty easy - Move the pointer around with the
joystick and click on the icon you want to launch by
pressing the joystick button. The one thing that's not
so obvious is how to close out of a game or app without
resetting the entire program. Hit game select (F1 in
Stella) to exit a game and get your cursor arrow back,
you can then click on the top right corner of the window
to close it and get back to the main desktop.
Here's the
games:
Boulder. In this game
you have to run around and avoid the bouncing
boulder while at the same time shooting it to score
points. You get one life, if you're hit by the
boulder you die and the game ends.
Pong. You play
against the computer, and whoever gets five points
first wins the match. The computer has a basic AI
and will occassionally miss.
Tubes. The gameplay
is based on a game that atari2600land wrote a few
years ago called "Smiley", it's one of my favorites
from him. There are four pipes in each corner of the
playfield, and you control a ball that can roll
between the four corners. The object is to keep the
bombs from entering the tubes by rolling the ball
back and forth between the tubes. Once you start
rolling, you can't change direction until you hit a
corner. If three bombs explode the game ends.
Mountain. In this
game, you have move your crosshair to shoot the
bombs falling out of the sky before they hit the
mountain. You score one point for each bomb hit.
Once three hit the mountain and explode the game
ends.
Alley. This is
similar in gameplay to Hogan's Alley. You control a
crosshair looking at a building with nine windows.
Shoot the bad guys, don't shoot the friendly people.
You get three lives and score one point for each bad
guy shot. You get a few seconds to react, if you
don't shoot a bad guy in time you lose a life and if
you shoot a friendly person you lose a life.
Here's the Apps:
Tone Toy. It's pretty
much exactly the same code that Random Terrain wrote
years ago, you can change tones and frequencies to
select a sound for a bB game.
Calculator. It's
batari's code from his "bB Calc" demo he wrote a few
years ago. It works, but I had trouble modifying it
to work with pfres set to 32 so the cursor doesn't
hover over the numbers like it should.
Paintbrush. I also
had a hard time getting this to work properly with
the higher playfield resolution. The ball remains
pretty close to where the next playfield block is
painted, but it's not perfect.
Primate Plunge is based on a freeware game of the same
name. I created a somewhat simplified version of
the game for the 2600. You control a monkey
falling through the jungle, grabbing trees along the
way. The more branches you can grab before you
fall to the bottom, the higher your score.
Gameplay:
To start the game, hit the fire button on the title
screen. You'll immediately start falling. In
addition to the tree branches that you can grab during
your fall, there is also a tiny trampoline that will
bounce you up a little higher, and maybe help you grab
that next branch. There is a parachute pack
powerup that falls from the top of the screen on
occasion, grab it and you'll float in the air for 3 or 4
seconds, earning double points as long as you're holding
on to your chute. The game ends when you fall to
the very bottom of the screen. The game increases
in speed as you get farther in.
RoadBlaster is a driving game loosely
based on the old Atari Arcade game called 'RoadBlasters'.
The Goal in the game is to survive as long as possible
on the road, and of course, score as many points as
possible.
You have a missile equipped car, and can shoot oncoming
cars for points. Shooting cars will
sometimes make powerups appear, which will increase the
health of your car. Roadblocks randomly appear in
the roadway -- watch out, they may push you into
oncoming traffic! Your car sustains damage every
time you are hit by an oncoming car or are hit by an
enemy missile. Your car will change colors as you
take damage -- when it turns red, your car is in it's
final stage of destruction. You will gain points
for every second you are able to stay alive on the road.
The enemy cars will be more aggressive as the game progresses,
driving faster and more erratically to make it more
difficult for you to shoot & avoid them.
Other Features: Roadblaster has
audio routines -- there is a constant engine rumble,
which revs faster when you speed up and slower when you
slow down. There are also sounds when missiles are
fired. The game also pauses when it's over to
display your score -- I know you'll be recording it in
your official Atari High Score log book, right? :)
There is no cartridge release planned
for this game, however carts can be custom made at
AtariAge.Com.
I do plan on making a label for this game, which will be
posted here when it's complete.
Updated 6/5/2006 - A new
version of this game was created for the Midwest Gaming
Classic, with an improved title screen, death animation,
and bug fixes (it will now run on real hardware).
Jumper started out as an idea to clone
the old Epyx Jumpman game from the Commodore 64.
Due to the limitations of the programming environment, I
wasn't able to replicate it perfectly, but I think the
end result is a pretty fun to play game.
The object is to run and jump to the
top of the screen and collect the four treasures.
The next treasure appears after you've collected one,
they don't all show up at the same time. After
you've collected four, you'll move on to the next, more
challenging level. There are 12 levels of
increasing difficulty. Missiles fire at you as you
ascend to the top, and will change direction and shoot
when you cross their path.
Updated 6/5/2006 - The latest
version is now 16k, and includes many new features.
There is a level & treasure counter on the title screen,
12 unique levels, four of which feature dynamically
changing playfields. Jump to the AA Thread for all
of the latest info on this game (link below).
Updated 5/24/2007 - I won't be
developing on this game any further, consider .99 to be
the final version. There are no major bugs in the
game, there were just some gameplay tweaks that I was
planning on making that don't seem possible now using
the bB programming environment.
This is a demo, it is in no way a complete game yet!
It's still fun to play around with though, and I may
eventually finish it. You can follow it's
development in the
AA Forum
Thread.
Grand Theft Atari is a multi screen adventure (similar
to Cave In) that incorporates batari's Indy500 code, so
you're driving a car around rather than walking around.
I included 254 individual road screens for you to drive
around on. The goal I was thinking of was that you'd
have to burglarize the 50 houses that I spread out
around the map. You can currently enter all 50
multi-room houses, but there's not really anything to do
inside them yet.
I included the ability to pull up a road map screen that
shows you your exact location on the map. Activate the
map screen by toggling the color/bw switch. When you're
on the map screen, move left and right to see both parts
of the map. In order to enter houses, you'll have to
exit your car and walk into the "door" of the house.
Enter/exit your car by toggling the left A/B difficulty
switch. When you exit your car, you won't be able to
leave the screen you're on, but you'll be able to walk
into the houses. Houses you can enter have a different
colored door, if there's no door, you can't enter that
house. Also, to change the top speed of your car
(fast/slow), toggle the right difficulty switch.
When you're outside of your car, you can shoot the
pedestrians. When you're in your car, you can run
them over.
I'm still pretty early in the development process. All
of the graphics in the game will likely be changed
before I call this complete, some of the screens are
just placeholders. I'm not sure exactly where I'm going
to go with this yet, but it's been a lot of fun to make
it so far. I love driving games, and I especially love
Grand Theft Auto. There are likely still some bugs and
issues here and there, I've still got lots of work to
do!
The object is to run
through thirty horizontally placed screens (or "caves")
and grab the treasures on each level. Some backtracking
and creative jumping is required to reach some of them.
Once you have collected all the treasures the final
screen unlocks. If you successfully navigate the last
screen you win the game. You start the game with three
lives.
Obstacles:
Any of these obstacles will cause you to lose a life.
When you die you "explode" like a bomb, I threw that in
there from the beginning mostly because I thought it was
kind of funny. I have no specific explanation as to why
you explode when dying in this game.
- The Bat.There is a bat that flies around each screen, if it
touches you you will lose a life. The bat will disappear
after a hit just for the screen you are on, it will
reappear when you change screens. - The Pits.
If you fall off the bottom of the screen you will lose a
life. - Barriers.
Some screens have a barrier that moves back and forth.
If you hit it, it will push you to the right and could
cause you to fall into a pit. Be careful to time your
jumps and avoid them.
Treasures:
There are 2 treasures in each of the 31 rooms. Some move
in patterns that require precise jumps, others are
positioned so that you may have to fall into them to
collect them, and some are static. All 62 need to be
collected to win the game. You score 10,000 points for
each treasure, but it's more of a way to keep track of
how many you've collected. You'll end up with the same
score every time if you beat the game. I used batari's
5+1 score minikernel, so the right side represents your
remaining lives.
Options:
I've included an options screen at the beginning of the
game that lets you choose the speed of the bat, god mode
(which disables collisions with the bat and barriers),
gravity and jump velocity. To choose an option, move the
joystick up and down to select which option you want to
change, and then push the joystick left or right to
select the setting for that option. Pressing the fire
button will start the game. Please note that the default
options for gravity and jump velocity are what I
designed the with, some platforms are placed in a very
specific places that match up with the defaults.
Choosing different options is fun to play around with in
the game, but certain combinations of them could make
the game unwinnable.
- Bat Speed:
High or Low. Low is the default. High simply makes the
bat fly around faster.
- Player Speed:
High or Low. Low is the default. High makes the player
run faster.
- God Mode: On
or Off. Off is the default. Turning God mode on disables
collision detection with the bat and barriers, and also
allows you to fall into a pit and survive.
- Gravity:
High or Low. High Gravity is the default. Switching to
Low gravity will allow you to jump farther.
- Random Start:
On or Off. Off is the default, you'll always start in
the first room at the beginning of the map. Turning
random on will cause you to start in a random location.
- Velocity:
High or Low. Low velocity is the default. Switching to
High velocity will allow you to jump higher. High
velocity jumping may make it impossible to get to
certain treasures.
The Map Screen:
Press the color/BW switch (F4/F3 in Stella) to go to the
Map screen. The map screen shows all 31 rooms in order
from the top left down to the bottom right. It also
shows your current position on the map and which rooms
still have treasures in them that need to be picked up.
The remaining treasures will only be shown on the
current row you're in on the map screen.
Note: Cave Run, in
it's current version, is not 100% hardware compatible on
a real console. The screen will jitter a bit when
you walk.
Here's my experiment in making a 2k game,
it's the first time I've tried to. I thought I'd try my
luck just to see if I could make something fun to play
with some replay value as well. I know "fun" is relative
so I just made something I thought I might like to play
more than once. For a simple 2k game I think it
turned out well.
The object is to drive through the scrolling gates while
avoiding hitting the barriers, sides of the road, or oil
slicks. There's a clock timer (that shows
minutes/seconds/tenths of seconds) at the bottom and the
object is simply to survive on the road as long as you
can. Your final time is displayed when you crash,
hitting fire then restarts the game. I implemented left
and right velocity to make it more interesting (and
require more skill), and the gate size and location is
randomly generated. There is also a powerup you can
collect (a white block on the screen) that will make you
invincible for two gate passes.
Just like in the original
Gate Racer, the object is to drive through the scrolling gates while
avoiding hitting the barriers, sides of the road, or oil
slicks. This version was expanded to 4K to include some
new options.
New to Gate Racer II is the addition of
an options screen that lets you customize the difficulty
of the game, as well as a high score save option.
The default options are how I generally play the game
and match the 2K version. The new selectable
options are Velocity (on/off), Oil Slick (on/off), Car
Size (big/small) and Powerup (on/off).
The basic gameplay is the same, there's a clock timer (that shows
minutes/seconds/tenths of seconds) at the bottom and the
object is simply to survive on the road as long as you
can. Your final time is displayed when you crash. Hitting fire then restarts the game
to the title screen, saves your high score if it's
higher than your previous time, and displays your high
score at the bottom of the title screen.
Note that saving high scores will only
work if you have an AtariVox or SaveKey plugged in to
your console (if you're running this on a
harmony cart).
The save feature works in Stella too but you need to
activate the SaveKey on controller port 2. This can be
done by launching Stella from the command line with
stella -rc savekey GateRacerII.bin
or in the GUI by highlighting the game, clicking on
Options | Game Properties | Controller Tab | P1
Controller | SaveKey. If the titlescreen score remains a
blank white strip on the bottom of the screen after more
than one play, you probably haven't properly activated
the SaveKey in Stella
If you want to compile this game
yourself, you'll need all of the modified batari basic
include files (in a zip file in the downloads section)
along with the Atarivox include files from AA user
RevEng's post
here. The original AA Thread about this version of
the game is
here.
PDF Manual with French
Translation by Horeus from
AllGamers.fr
[10MB]
Screenshots
Private
Cart Run
Gate Racer II was my
first private cartridge
release. I had 20
numbered copies created
and I sold them to
AtariAge members.
Below is a pic of my
cart (#20) and a pic of
all the carts before I
shipped them out.
Horeus (who runs
AllGamers.fr)
created a box and shared
the template with me,
you can download it in
the Downloads section
above. He also
converted my instruction
manual into a French &
English pdf. Here
are a few notes from him
regarding the box and
manual:
- He printed the box on
photo paper first and
then pasted it onto
Bristol paper.
- The manual is designed
to be printed on both
sides of the page.
- You need to cut the
manual where it enters
the box to make it fit
correctly: 1.6cm on the
left and right side,
2.4cm on the bottom and
nothing on top.
Jungle Adventure is a platform game
inspired by Pitfall & Pitfall II (and dare I say Cave
in?). There are 15 screens you can freely roam
from left to right. The object is to collect as
many treasures as you can while avoiding the scorpions,
rolling logs, arrows, alligators and pits. You get three
lives and will restart at the original first screen if
you lose a life. There are three difficulty
levels/speeds. Right now the speed will ramp up twice,
after getting 5 and 15 treasures. There is no sound yet
and it still needs quite a bit of polish to be called
complete, but it's very playable.
This game uses the DPC+ kernel which
allows for much higher resolution graphics. The
latest version of batari basic with DPC+ kernel support
can be downloaded
here. It is fully compatible with the Harmony
Cart.
After playing
Kickoff on my iPhone it
insipired me to make a similar,
simple football game. The
object is to run past the
defenders and score a
touchdown. The pattern changes
when you score. Most of the
players run slowly down the
field, but there is one who will
relentlessly chase you. If you
get tackled, the score
resets. View the development
thread on AtariAge
here. I also made an
Atari 7800 version of this game
that you can view on my website
here.
Diamond Drop is a small 4k
game that is loosely based on
the iOS game 'Duet',
which I really enjoyed. You have
two Diamonds at the bottom of
the screen that will rotate in a
circle in either direction along
a diamond shaped path. Barriers
will fall from the top of the
screen in a random pattern and
you must avoid them by circling
around them (or through them if
there is a large enough
opening). Every barrier you pass
will score you a point. The game
will slowly get faster up to
it's maximum speed after you've
passed 20 barriers.
Gameplay Notes:
You can press down on the
joystick to move the
barriers down the screen
faster (just like Tetris).
It's useful if you've got
yourself positioned
correctly and just want to
quickly bypass the barrier.
You start each new game with
6 bombs which are indicated
as dots on the status bar.
Press the fire button to use
a bomb, which will erase the
current barrier on the
screen. It's useful if
it looks like you're not
going to be able to easily
pass it.
Your high score will be
saved on the title screen,
however it does not save
once you turn the game off.
You can select your speed on
the title screen. Push
up or down on the joystick
and you'll see either "Lo"
or "Hi" selected.
Press the fire button to
start the game. Your
speed selection will persist
in-between games.
You can select the size of
the rotating diamonds with
the left difficulty switch.
Slide it to 'A' for larger
diamonds, 'B' for smaller
diamonds.
I
cut and paste the dots that
outline the rotating path on the
in-game screenshot so you can
see the actual path for the
diamonds. In the actual game
those flicker. Note that
if you want to recompile this
game yourself in batari Basic
you will need to use the custom
include files included in the
zip file below.
