---------------------------------------------------------------------------- STARPATH/ARCADIA FAQ last modified 12/4/94 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. What is the Starpath Supercharger? II. Game list III. What happened to Starpath IV. What is the Starpath CD project? A. Why it is being done B. What will be on it? C. How it is being done D. How do I get one?/How much? V. Can one program the Supercharger? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================================= ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. What is the Starpath Supercharger? It appears like an extra-long cartridge with a handle and an audio cable on the end. It is an interface to allow games to load from tape to the onboard RAM (6K). The virtue of running from RAM is that many new graphics techniques can be used. Therefore the tricks in many of these games are unique to these games alone. Some games also take advantage of the tape format, and store extra levels on tape. These are known as multiloaders. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. Game list Title Programmers Cat# Supercharger {Craig Nelson} + Phaser Patrol {Dennis Caswell} 1 AR-4000 Communist Mutants From Space {Steve Landrum} 2 AR-4101 Fireball {Scott Nelson} 3 AR-4300 Suicide Mission {Steve Hales, Steve Landrum} 4 AR-4102 Escape From The Mindmaster {Dennis Caswell} 5 AR-4200 Dragonstomper {STeve Landrum} 6 AR-4400 Killer Satellites {Kevin Norman} 7 AR-4103 Rabbit Transit {Brian McGhie} 8 AR-4104 The Official Frogger By Sega {Steve Landrum} 9 AR-4105 Party Mix {Dennis Caswell} 10 AR-44302 Sword Of Saros {Jon Leupp?} NA AR-4201 Survival Island {Scott Nelson} NA AR-4401 Sweat!: The Decathlon Game {Scott Nelson} NA ?? Notes: Sword Of Saros was originally Labyrinth? Dragonstomper was originally Excalibur Survival Island was originally Jungle? Sweat -- I am only aware of my unplayable copy as of yet; that should be noted until the playable versions actually surface so as not to get hopes up. PAL: 1-9 only according to my source in Belgium >>>>The others may be patchable for PAL on the CD! Hales had at least one unreleased game -- doesn't remember what it is or if he still has any code for it. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. What happened to Starpath Company was originally Arcadia until Emerson released their Arcadia 2001; made change to avoid potential legal troubles (and probably needn't have bothered). Starpath Demo Unit -- advertised in Electronic Games, apparently for store use but apparently unreleased. The end of Starpath: apparently some "firm commitments" for sales didn't come through, and they ran out of money. At roughly the same time Epyx lost a lot of staff who formed another company. Since they shared some common investors, the two companies merged in Nov 83. Later Epyx went bankrupt too, and were bought by Bridgestone Multimedia. No Starpathers seemed to go this far... Bridgestone owns the copyrights, but Atari was given exclusive usage rights on Atari systems in ~Mar 93 (I'll have to check the exact date -- remind me). What happened to Sweat? The market was crashing, Starpath didn't have any $$, Eventually became Epyx's Summer Games. The mail order games: At the end, Starpath (Epyx by this time if I remember correctly) needed to get rid of stock (to pay bills no doubt), so they sold everything (as far as I know) to A&B Sales, who got the up-til-then unreleased Swords Of Saros and Survival Island. As far as I know, these never had boxes or "normal" instructions and were shipped in a baggie. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. What is the Starpath CD project? A. Why it is being done I got a Supercharger recently and noted that the tapes were rare yet easy to copy, in a state of deterioration after more than a decade, and that Arcadia had long passed away, and thought that it was about time, in light of what happened with the Vectrex, to look into a preservation effort. There was talk on the nets about this, but noone was really doing anything so he decided to organize this project. B. What will be on it? Hopefully, everything that ever came out in both PAL and NTSC format as well as whatever versions can be found of the unreleased Sweat! In fact, there is hope that those games which never came out in PAL might be patchable. C. How it is being done This whole project was organized on the internet. Calls went out for 'tape donators' and a special hook was put into my email address to collect names onto a list of people interested in the CD once it is done. Eventually I gathered a team of people to help me. One person handling rights negotiation, one handling CD artwork, one handling the initial tape remastering and hopefully speeding up the loads, as well as other people and the CD duplication service. D. How do I get one?/How much? I want to keep the cost of the CD under $15. I think it MAY be possible to get it under $10 even, but we shall see. To express your desire to buy one when it is done, send an email address with a subject field containing exactly: CD_LIST The body of the message will be lost and only the return address will be appended to my CD_LIST. A mass emailing will go out when the CD is ready for sale. Separate inquiries concerning the CD should not have CD_LIST in the subject field. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ V. Can one program the Supercharger? Yes. Apparently so. Apple IIs were used for development machine, writing to tape via their optional tape interface. Jim Nitchals is onboard to load the tapes into binary format then go direct to DAT for better quality and hopefully faster loads. One can write to the Supercharger directly from the Apple for easy debugging. It may be possible to use an Apple II emulator to program the Supercharger, but getting preexisting games INTO an emulator might be tough. Getting them out is easy because all you need is a regular audio output. Hopefully as time goes on, more technical info on how to program for the Supercharger will be forthcoming. If you are interested in more details, email jimn8@netcom.com. Good Apple II emulators include (Email krishna@max.tiac.net or post a followup to clarify this list): Platform Name ------------------------ MAC There is one, name unknown. Amiga Apple 2000 is a very complete emulation Any more?