Atari 7800 Homebrews
Below is a list of all of the Atari 7800 Homebrews, Demos, and Utilities that I have created from 2015-2024. I will be releasing a new game on July 9th, 2024. My released homebrew games are: Death Merchant, Drone Patrol, Dungeon Stalker, Jacks or Better Poker, Legend of Silverpeak, Touchdown Challenge, and The Time Machine (Book Cart).
Homebrew Games
You set out for a relaxing afternoon of skiing, greeted by perfect weather. As you began your descent down the slope, a terrifying roar echoed from the mountain peak! The legend of the Alpine Avenger, once dismissed as a children’s fairy tale, suddenly seemed all too real. What could possibly be happening here?
Death Merchant is set in a post-apocalyptic world. You will fight to survive for a month in the harshest of environments. kill or be killed, survival of the fittest, and almost everyone you’ll encounter is out to get you. The object of the game is to survive for 31 days and earn as much money as you can in the process by buying and selling survival gear and obtaining money from fights along the way.
Our city is under attack! It’s your job as the commander of the city’s drone patrol to destroy the invading infantry and mechanized vehicles and prevent the destruction of our city. The enemy is unleashing a counterattack with cannons and missiles in an effort to destroy our fleet of drones. We can’t let that happen! Fire at will!
Welcome to Dungeon Stalker! Get ready for an exciting run through a dangerous dungeon. You’ll encounter waves of enemies that will pursue you relentlessly. There’s no way out… It’s
you against them until the end! Your character is a fearless female archer stuck in a dungeon with no exits. Her only option is to fight and try to survive. As points are earned, you will
level up and face increasingly more difficult and dangerous enemies in the dungeon. The object is to fight as long as you can and get as high a score as possible.
You start the game with 160 coins displayed in the bottom middle of the screen ($40 in quarters!). You can play until you run out of coins. At the top of the screen your credits are displayed, the object is to get as many credits as you can with the 160 credits you start with. If you wind up with more than 160, you’re doing great!
When you start the game, you first need to make your bet. You can bet up to four coins at once, and the payouts are highlighted at the top of the screen. After the initial draw, you can’t change your bet. With the “Bet” button highlighted, press the fire button to cycle between 1-4 coins per hand. Once you’ve chosen your bet, push right and push the fire button with “Draw” highlighted. 5 cards will be presented. Here you can choose to hold or drop each card. Select HOLD with the left fire button and DROP with the right fire button. After you have made your choices, push down to go back to the “Draw” button and push fire. Your hand will be analyzed for a win. After winning or losing that hand, the “New Hand” button will be highlighted. Push fire to start with 5 new cards.
You are Azémar Rehn, a simple woodsman from Mountain Home Grove, a beautiful patch of forest just east of the Silver Mountains. You set out from your homeland to reunite with your Uncle after your father’s death. Unfortunately, upon your arrival, your Uncle is no where to be found. A short note is left in the Cabin, but it’s not as helpful as you’d like it to be.
You’d heard of the war, and how all the most virtuous crystals that were revered by the people of Midlothia were captured and scattered into the deepest dungeons. They are fiercely guarded by powerful men who are determined to crush the will and spirit of the people. Without their beloved symbols of virtue, the entire realm had been taken over by mercenaries and theives, bent on taking whatever they can for their own selfish gain. No power or virtue of man could ever have deserved that, what has been fated should not have taken place. Feelings of hopelessness and misery abound, and no one has risen to the challenge of ridding the land of these thieves.
No one with good intent, that is. One powerful warrior, who calls himself Nonnag, who’s mere prescences strikes fear in the hearts of men, has spread his evil throughout the realm. He created the the Crystal of Wrath, which serves as a beacon for those who serve his evil purposes. It must be captured and destroyed in order to bring peace, light, and life back to Midlothia. The common people are waiting for a hero to emerge. Once who can vanquish the evil, recapture the crystals, and restore the rod of life. Only this man is worthy of being crowned the next King of Midlothia. Great crisis produce great men and great deeds of courage.
The Midlothian army has long disbanded. With their tragic losses and lack of leadership, hope was lost. Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land, drawing no dividend from time’s tomorrows. It is now up to Azémar to restore order, to agree to the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of his homeland. As soon as sacrifice becomes a duty and necessity to mankind, there is no limit to the horizon which opens before him. It’s time to fulfill your destiny.
Touchdown challenge is a fast-paced arcade style football game. Try and score a touchdown with four downs, and the count is reset when you score. You can pass or run the ball. There is AtariVox speech included.
I wrote this in one day as a fun little diversion from working on Drone Patrol. I needed a little break from that. It’s a book cart and contains the entire text of H.G. Well’s “The Time Machine”. Press fire at any time to bring up the options menu to change the background and text colors, and push left and right on the joystick to turn the pages. There are much easier ways to read this book, but why not?
Game Demos
This demo accurately replicates the original map from Zelda. This is only a map demo and there’s nothing to do but walk around the overworld and look around. There are no enemies, no dungeons, no weapons, nothing else. You can press the fire button to see a sample inventory/status screen. As I mentioned back in June, due to Nintendo’s copyrights I won’t be releasing an actual game with Zelda graphics and I won’t be posting the code, graphics, or screen maps for this version. This is just a binary release to show what “could” be done on the 7800.
7800basic is a ton of fun to develop with compared to batariBasic because so many limitations are lifted. You can have over 1500 variables, a bitmapped display, 24+ on screen sprites with no flicker or slowdown, CPU usage is much less of a concern, and you can plot text directly on-screen. I really enjoy it, and there’s a much smaller gap between what’s possible with assembly vs. 7800basic compared to batariBasic. Space Junk was created as part of the 7800basic tutorial that I authored in 2017.
The basic gameplay is similar to Activision’s Kaboom. There are 5 levels that get progressively faster, once you’re on level 5 the speed doesn’t change. Your bucket will wrap to the other side of the screen when you reach the edge, it makes it a bit easier to get to bombs on both edges of the screen. You start with three buckets, if you miss a bomb you will lose one. You get 10 points per bomb caught. Once you’ve lost all 3 buckets you will go back to the title screen and your current score will be displayed.
This is a random maze generator for the 7800. I wrote this using the binary tree maze creation algorithm, which is fairly simple. Each block in the maze is checked for an opening in two adjacent directions (in this case south and west), and if no openings exist one is created. If an opening already exists in either direction the block is skipped.
A simple sample game I wrote that is currently included in the 7800basic distribution.
This was posted in the 7800basic tutorial thread as I was testing 320B Graphics. It is a simple asteroids-like demo and based on code that’s included in the 7800basic distribution.
An answer to the question: “Could someone make a tutorial on how to create a sprite coming from another sprite and that sprite has X/Y movement? For instance, a creature that by pushing the fire button while standing in one of four directions spits a fireball and the fireball travels in that direction?”
Utilities
A sample of what the famous Commodore 64 “10 Print” maze would look like on the 7800.
A utility I wrote during the development of Death Merchant that does 24 bit value comparisons.
A utility I wrote during the development of Dungeon Stalker for creating and testing AtariVox speech phrases.
A utility I wrote during the development of Death Merchant for testing random values.