Cartridge Releases

News|Revival 8/9/2021 10:22:33 PM

I have been working on restoring all the source code to the original Electric Adventures titles, and in the process have also setup a cross development environment that will allow me to re-release the original titles along with enhanced versions.

The original Electric Adventures titles were only released on cassette, with a couple of titles available on 3.5" floppy disks. I never had the resources required to make cartridge versions (which perhaps could have helped when ASCII Corporation came knocking on my door all those years ago).

I have also been looking at how to convert my titles into cartridge releases for both the Colecovision game console and the Sega SC-3000 computers and the SG-1000 home consoles. Quite a few MSX games have been converted to both these systems, the only real limitations being they both have only 1K of Ram, but so far my machine code titles don't exceed that.

They both have a different sound processor to the MSX/Spectravideo one. So I have to redo the sound effects and music. This is actually good as back when I wrote my titles I only had a tape based environment, and no tools to create music, so it allows me to make the cartridge releases enhanced versions.

The new releases will be released in cartridge form with proper full colour cardboard boxes, inlays and instruction manuals.

So what have I done so far:


  • Setup cross development environment
  • Cleaned the original MSX code, fixing addressing, testing on original MSX hardware
  • Ported Meteor Swarm & Birds of Orion original code to Colecovision (with no sound)
  • Created an Electric Adventures 8-bit logo (I will release a preview of this shortly)
  • Started work on the menu selection system for the cartridges
  • Researched the availability of cartridge cases and circuit boards for each of the systems


Planned Releases

The planned releases are as follows:

EA Classics I

This is a multi-game cartridge with the following titles:


  • Meteor Swarm - enhanced sound effects
  • Birds Of Orion - enhanced sound effects, additional stages (will be playable in original form)
  • Munch Mania - enhanced sound effects


Pyxidis

This is also a multi-cart containing:
  • Pyxidis - original form, but with enhanced sound
  • Pyxidis Enhanced - multiple enemy types, each stage has a different end boss, original length stage design

Cavern Fighter



 

This is my previously incomplete, but almost finished new game (see the demo on my Youtube channel). It still needs more work until all of the game play has been completed, but most of the stages, collision detection, scoring etc are all working well.



Issues

There are however some issues I need to deal with, mainly that a reliable source of cartridge shells need to be sorted out for both the MSX and the Sega systems. The Colecovision versions will probably be published through one of the two current home brew publishers that both have access to the necesary stock of cartridges.

I am currently pursuing obtaining MSX cartridge shells, as a mold does exists, but so far there does not exist a mold and supply of shells for the Sega systems. There is however some work being performed on this, so I will keep you updated.

Release Schedule

As the mechanism for publishing Colecovision cartridges already exists (and the end market is probably larger), these versions will be released first followed by the MSX and then Sega versions once the issues of cartridge shells has been solved.

EA Classics I

Colecovision: December 2012

MSX: January 2013

Sega SC-3000/SG-1000: February 2013

Pyxidis

Colecovision: January 2013

MSX: February 2013

Sega SC-3000/SG-1000: February 2013


Cavern Fighter

Colecovision: March 2013

MSX: March 2013

Sega SC-3000/SG-1000: March 2013

I will adjust these dates as more information about the cartridge shells and production of the cartridges progress.