Starpath Supercharger

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The Supercharger and a few game boxes
The Supercharger and a few game boxes

The Starpath Supercharger was an add-on module created by Starpath to expand the game capabilities of the Atari 2600 video game console. The device resembled a long game cartridge with a handle on one end. The Supercharger interface multiplied the Atari 2600's RAM 49-fold, from its meager built-in 128 bytes to 6,272 bytes, i.e. giving it an extra 6 KB, allowing for larger games with higher resolution graphics. A cord coming out of the side of the cartridge plugged into the earphone jack of any standard cassette player. Games for the Supercharger were stored on normal audio cassettes.

By providing these capabilities, the Supercharger made the Atari 2600 much more like the low end home computers of the era, aside from the alphanumeric keyboard the console lacked (simple numeric keypads were available from Atari as add-ons, however).

With a small modification, the Supercharger can be used to easily test homebrew code for the Atari 2600 on a real system.

[edit] Supercharger games

[edit] Known prototypes

  • Labyrinth (early version of Escape From the Mindmaster)
  • Sweat: The Decathlon Game

All Supercharger games were developed by Starpath.

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