| HOME BUILT (Well Assembled Actually) UnoCart The Brewing Academy, 2018/CreepingNet 2025 |
 
The Brewing Academy Released their OpenSource Atari 2600 Flash Cartridge called the UnoCart in 2018. There are many varations of the hardware out that that use full sized and microSD Cards. I purchased mine on e-bay for $40, and a $5 plastic cartridge case in transparent gray to house it (which I had to modify).
This is basically the Atari 2600 version of the "Everdrive", basically, except it also contains an enhanced chipset that allows me to emulate some rare (read: ~SUPER FREAKIN EXPENSIVE~) Starpath Supercharger games, games that use the DPC+ Batari BASIC KErnel (DPC was the upgrade chip in PItfall II that gave it full music like an NES Game with sound effects, newer DPCs can do even more with the VCS...stuff I think Jay Miner and Joe Decuir couldn't even dream of in 1976). The menus are navigated using the select and reset switches, or the Joystick controller (or in my case CX-78+, which one of the two buttons acts as a "Back" button, so real bonus to you 7800 controller fans as it gives extended functionality to the 2600 in this case, hehe). The UnoCart is one of a few different variations of these devices available, others include the Harmony Cart sold at AtariAge, and the "PlusCart" which is really a WiFi Connected UnoCart that connects to the "Plus Server" to allow you to play Atari Games and load Atari 2600 games off the cloud. That's right, there's a friggin version of this that puts the Atari 2600 on your WiFi network, crazy huh? The draw of such devices is multifold including: game developers (like myself) who want to run their own developments on an actual console to see if they work, people who don't like clutter (also like myself), people who don't feel like digging out 1000 cartridges to play a bunch of games, people who are sick of the high prices of "collector carts" or hardware like the Starpath Supercharger, people who are not totally sold on buying a game 100%Now I Can Stop Hauling Cartridges around my freakin' House! - My Experiences One trend I've seen in my retro gaming, and formerly retro-collecting, was that I always end up with DOUBLE the number of Atari 2600 games as I do NES Games. At my peak, I had 150 NES Games, but I had over 314 Atari 2600 games at that point. Right now the Atari has about 53 cartridges, my NES, about 25, including Famicom. What really prompted this though was my beginning to mess around in Batari BASIC last december and wound up kinda-sorta improvising a game called "Wall War". On top of it, I saw what others were doing with cartridges and figured for $40, I'd take a chance at some point. So I did. I bought a SDCARD standard board from e-bay for $40, and the case for around $10 total on e-bay. I then proceeded to put it together with a 64GB SDCARD. I know, overkill. So I loaded it up with a bunch of ROMs including Wall War, slapped it in the Heavy Sixer, and have taken it for a spin for about 2 hours total (because for some crazy reason people can't leave me alone all day for even an hour). So I've got some time in, and to be honest, pretty cool. It runs Starpath Supercharger games, it runs some pretty swanky homebrews, including my own. So I'm pretty happy with it. Have not even looked into the Firmware yet. Right now just running the default. Videos |
