(3.0 / 5.0), 3
Fans of Amiga computers will immediately recognize the nature of the Amiga Boing Demo 2.0. To help demonstrate the power of the Amiga, the Amiga Boing Ball demo was created. The demo consists of a checkered red and white ball bouncing within the confines of the screen, changing direction when hitting the walls, all the while spinning. With this demo running in the background (as the Amiga could multitask, which was a fairly unique feature at the time in personal computers), it as a powerful statement of the Amiga's capabilities. This demo ultimately became synonymous with the Amiga, and even today it used as part of the official Amiga identity.
Original Amiga Boing! Demo
For a period of time the Amiga Boing Demo was ported to just about every platform imaginable to demonstrate that, "Hey, we can do this, too!" And of course, the Atari 2600 was no exception! Several years ago, Rob Kudla created a simple version of the Amiga Boing Demo for the Atari 2600 as a tech demo that he posted to the Stella programmers mailing list.
Atari 2600 Amiga Boing! Demo 2.0
More recently, David Galloway (djmips in our forums), updated Rob's demo to make it truer to the original Amiga demo. His changes include:
- New graphics, and a larger ball, a full 48 pixels wide and 90 pixels tall (previous was 40 x 50)
- The world the ball bounces in now has gravity (as opposed to the ball moving at a constant velocity and in a straight line)
- The spin of the ball switches when it bounces against a side wall
- Corrected the number of scanlines to 262
- Audio pitch has been tweaked (lower for the side wall bounce) to better match the original demo
- User control of horizontal speed and gravity (wtih joystick)
- Random change of horizontal speed (after bounce with side wall)
- Colors can be switched between NTSC and PAL with B&W Switch
Additionally, the Amiga Boing! Demo 2.0 includes several variations:
- Amiga Ball against a white background (no flicker)
- Amiga Ball against a grey background (flicker, but closest in appearance to the original demo)
- Ball with rendered AtariAge logo against a grey background
- Amiga Ball against a black background (no flicker--effectively a red and black ball)
- AtariAge Ball against a blue background (no flicker)
- AtariAge Ball against a black background (no flicker)
Includes cartridge and manual, with a label designed by Dale Crum and manual by Tony Morse.
| Author | David Galloway |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| Controller | Joystick Controller |
| Cartridge Size | 32K |
| Label Design | Dale Crum |
| Manual Design | Tony Morse |
Perhaps, if there is ever a 3.0, a mini-game based on the demo could be included, plus the name of the cartridge could be changed to Amiga Boing! 2600 Demo 3.0.
Basically, this is for completists and conversalitionists only.
While Boing 2600! may be interesting to watch for a few moments, the most interesting part of this cartridge is the backstory in the manual, recounting the history of the Amiga demo, and the development of the 2600 version. Unfortunately, there's really not much else to recommend with this. Some sort of mini-game like Pong or catch using the giant ball would have been a fun addition; or the inclusion of some music, or the option of changing the colors to anything the user wanted would have been a nice extra. As it is, Boing 2600! may be of interest to computer and video game history buffs, but others may have a hard time justifying the purchase.
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