Site news (2024)

[MADrigal]

28th April 2024

Long overdue piece of news this time. I originally had plans to post this large update earlier this year but then life outside of this monitor got way too busy. And meanwhile the amount of new materials worth publishing kept growing... So I have eventually decided to wrap it up and share all the new stuff with the community!

On this update, I will mostly focus on newly released homebrew games. I will shortly write one or two more posts regarding recently found articles from old magazines, an interview with a programmer of CreatiVision games, and some resources for programmers wishing to develop new games/programs for our beloved system.

Firstly, a good old friend pointed me to a homebrew games project I was totally unaware of. Not one but sixteen (and counting) games by an Asian programmer with the nickname of Inufuto, owner of a Youtube channel named RetroPC. All his creations are available for an endless list of 8-bit computers, including the CreatiVision. As of today, the available games on CreatiVision ROM format are:
- Aerial - a Scramble clone
- AntiAir - a Galaxian-inspired game
- Ascend - a platform puzzle game
- Battlot - a sort of Wizard of Wor
- Bootskell - a Pengo clone
- Cacorm - a Qix-inspired puzzle game
- Cavit - a Dig Dug clone
- Cracky - a platform puzzle game
- Guntus - a Galaxian clone
- Hopman - a horizontally scrolling platform game
- Impetus - a vertically scrolling shoot'em up
- Lift - a platform climbing game
- Mazy - a scrolling maze escape game
- Neuras - a platform puzzle game
- Ruptus - a Bosconian clone
- Yewdow - a puzzle maze game

Still on the "homebrew" topic, we have a few additions from our super talented and active CreatiVision community:

Mobsie has released two new versions of his excellent Escape game: one for use with emulators and the other bank-swapped, ready to be written on an EPROM for use on actual hardware.

Kym Greenshields has created the CreatiVision version of the popular 2002 puzzle game by Michael Tyrell, Mazezam. His conversion is named The Great MazezaM and is available in two versions: 10 and 35 levels.

All the games listed above are available for download in our Emulation/ROM Programs section.
Note: The ROMs of the games by Inufuto are in "linear mode" and if you wish to use them with Kym's CreatiVision-Emulator emulator, use the "-g" option from commandline.

Our new contributor Joe Bodily from the USA has undertaken a full-scale testing the WAV recordings of original CreatiVision cassettes (from our Releases/Software page on his hardware setup and found out that a few had inaccuracies. He then spent considerable time cutting, stiching and testing the data and crafted fixed versions of six WAV files: Battleships, Bowling, Code Breaker, Concentration, Draughts and Lunar Landing. The files are now available for download in the Releases/Software section.

[MADrigal]

12th August, 2024

This update was certainly unplanned and I am writing this post because something really exceptional happened today and I feel like sharing it right now! I would probably call this "Breaking news".

I previously posted about the "lost" ultra rare CreatiVision CPU diagnostic cartridge I purchased in 2008 and the sad story of its EPROM getting damaged and then lost before we could get a complete dump. The story was told in the January 2023 post now in the News Archive. Well, a new member of our little community of enthusiasts, Mexican gentleman that goes by the nickname of Nanochess, has successfully fixed the damaged ROM dump and made it perfectly working! It was certainly a mammoth task that deserves all our deepest gratitude! Needless to say, the file is now available for download from our Emulation/ROM Programs section, together with the ASM disassembly, detailed notes and a little tool he created during the process. The file is called Diagnostic C.

Speaking of "new" ROM releases, I have received authorisation from our long time contributor Anders Carlsson to release his unfinished (but fully playable!) demo of the Reversi (Othello) game that he coded back in 2013, with graphics provided by me. The released build is dated 3rd August 2014 (ten years ago, wow!) and plays great on emulators but, unfortunately, suffers from VRAM sync issues on actual hardware. A fix may be around the corner, so go Anders go! This is also available for download from the Emulation/ROM Programs page.

And the icing on the cake still sees Nanochess as the protagonist. After having developed games and emulators for many retro consoles for more than a decade, he has recently started a really interesting project: building a BASIC interpreter and compiler for a few TMS992x-based old systems such as MSX, Colecovision and... CreatiVision!
His CVBasic version 0.6.0 features compiler, excellent manuals and even a few program examples to help you build your own retrogames. There is not yet an official website for the project and the file can be downloaded from this thread on the Atari Age forum. Don't miss it!

[MADrigal]

7th September, 2024

Yet another whole ton of juicy updates that will make the CreatiVision fans happy. There is enough to satisfy every kind of appetite: from emulation to ROM dumping and homebrew (both games and new hardware!) from our ever growing community of enthusiasts! Let's dig in...

Let's start with an update on the CVbasic development environment by Nanochess. A new version was released a few days ago that now supports an option to compile the games for TI99/4A and a few obscure systems such as the Casio PV2000 and Soundic Pencil II (more info at this page).

Still related to the above, an U.S. programmer by the name of Jess Ragan published a really cool game based on the classic "Mole Attack". He coded it entirely with CVbasic. The title is "Whack'em Smack'em Byrons". The ROM is free for download from the usual Emulation/ROM Programs page.
Note: the game can be controlled either via joystick or QWE/ASD/ZXC keys. Use the latter controls on emulator if the diagonals aren't supported.

For those into emulation, there's an important update on ColecoDS that allows playing CreatiVision (and ColecoVision, of course) on NintendoDS. The new version (10.1) provides a much more accurate emulation of the 6502 CPU that results in more games being emulated and playable. The executable and source code are available for download from the official Github repository.

Still on the "ColecoVision" topic, we have a really huge update. Australian gentleman Mark McDougall was able to dump the BIOS of the ultra rare Laser 2001 Expansion Module #1. It was released by VTech in 1983 and allowed playing ColecoVision cartridges on CreatiVision hardware. I own a copy of this "holy grail" and always wanted its BIOS to be preserved. The BIOS EPROMs had a few issues that caused the dump to be defective. Mark spent endless hours to fix the EPROMs and obtain a perfect dump!
The dump is suitable for use with ColecoVision emulators, best if based on the Laser 2001 hardware. Since such "hybrid" emulators do not exist yet, at this stage the only option is to use it in conjunction with any available ColecoVision emulators instead. Note that the keypad mapping differs between the Laser 2001 and ColecoVision - this resulting in inaccurate emulation of the inputs. Kym Greenshields has "patched" the original BIOS to make it fully compatible with the ColecoVision key mapping - so that works with emulators such as (e.g. Colem).
Both versions of the BIOS are available for download from the Emulation/ROM Programs page. Also don't miss to read the whole story in this thread of the AtariAge forum. A complete disassembly of the BIOS will also be made available sometimes soon.

Let's conclude the "emulation" topic with one last update. Thanks to the help from tireless contributor Kym Greenshields, we have added the entire package of ROMs in "MAME format" (for use with the "software lists") to the Emulation/ROM Programs page. The file is for use with MAME 0.265 and we will endeavour to keep it updated in the future.

And now an update "for all historians of retro computing out there". We were recently informed by a Salvadoran (i.e. from El Salvador) gentleman with the nickname of xfce-enjoyer, that CreatiVision sold in El Salvador around 1983 through a local chain of supermarkets called Kismet. Games were sold with Spanish names such as "Pollo Loco"(Crazy Chicky), "Futbol 82"(Soccer) and "Ataque Aeromarino"(Air Sea Attack). The system was NTSC and did not sell well, which would make it one of the rarest variants of the CreatiVision around! We received a few scans of articles and flyers from Salvadoran magazines that confirm this. We will publish them as soon as we get the high-resolution version. Meanwhile, the entry was added to the History and Releases/Hardware pages.

The last piece of news is about an amazing homebrew hardware project called Minimalist Europe Card bus by Newzealander gentleman Greg Clare. The system is a modular computer with pieces that can be combined together to invent new machines or to replicate existing. The first 'module' in his creation is... a CreatiVision! The module uses real hardware so this is not emulation: it is a real miniature CreatiVision! At present the MECB runs original CreatiVision games but still lacking controllers and keyboard. This is Greg's next step. We can watch the MECB CreatiVision as it is programmed and assembled, and a test with Sonic Invader running on this Youtube video. More information on Greg's blog. Make sure to visit it regularly for more updates!

...and that's all folks. See you with the next update!