ewhac@well.UUCP (Leo 'Bols Ewhac' Schwab) (06/09/89)
[ I'm 400 articles behind on comp.sys.amiga; forgive me if you've seen this
already. ]
It was revealed on BIX a couple of nights ago that Atari will
manufacture a handheld cartridge-based game machine.
No, this isn't another one of those vapor announcements in response
to the competition that Atari has been so famous for making of late.
This is real.
It doesn't have a name yet, but how do these specs grab you:
o 4 MHz 65C02 (Not impressed? Read on.)
o Built-in backlit color LCD display
o 160 x 102 resolution (it's a dinky screen, folks)
o 16 colors out of 4096
o 4-channel sound (not stereo (yet))
o Carts can contain up to 2MB of data
o Built-in joypad and fire buttons
o Serial port for networking (up to eight machines)
o Super-high-performance "sprite" engine, with hardware flip,
tilt, and scaling (unlimited number of sprites (you feed the
hardware a linked list, and it goes)). In tests, 700 sprites
have been animated at better than 10 fps.
o Hardware assist for multiplication and division (16x16=32
multiplier, 32/16=32(16r) divider)
o Designed by Dave Needle and -=RJ Mical=-, formerly of Amiga,
currently of Epyx (there were doubtless others involved, but I
don't know who they are)
o Projected price: $149.95
Also, Epyx will be the final arbiter of what software gets
distributed for the system. And the software development system runs on
(guess what?) Amigas.
Now then. Why would you want to bother with the Nint-end-o Gameboy?
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Leo L. Schwab -- The Guy in The Cape INET: well!ewhac@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
\_ -_ Recumbent Bikes: UUCP: pacbell > !{well,unicom}!ewhac
O----^o The Only Way To Fly. hplabs / (pronounced "AE-wack")
"Work FOR? I don't work FOR anybody! I'm just having fun." -- The Doctor