Can you play Synthcart online?
Only partly. Synthcart is played with two Atari keypad controllers (the 12-key Keyboard Controller, the Video Touch Pad or the Kid’s Controller), one plugged into each port. Our browser emulator does not emulate keypad controllers, so you cannot play notes or start drum beats from your keyboard. What you can see here is the display screen with the current settings. To really use Synthcart you need a real Atari 2600 or 7800 with two keypads, or an emulator on your computer that supports keypad input.
How Synthcart works
The 2600 has two sound channels, and Synthcart gives one to each keypad. Pressing a key plays a note, and each keypad can use a different sound, so you can play a bass line on one side and a lead on the other. Hold down several keys at once and the arpeggiator plays them in turn, going up, down or mixed, at 8th, 16th or 32nd-note speed.
The right keypad can also run the beat box, which holds 33 pre-programmed beats and fills. You can run two of them at once to build a new rhythm, and a flashing Atari logo on screen works as a metronome. There are ten preset tempos, from about 69 to 225 beats per minute, plus tremolo and attack/release settings that shape how each note starts and fades.
Slocum designed the controls so that you can play without looking at a TV, like a stand-alone instrument. The console switches choose which pair of sounds is active: the Colour/B&W switch and both difficulty switches each change the combination. Reset opens the options mode and Select opens the advanced options.
Hidden light show
Synthcart has an Easter egg: a light show mode that fills the screen with colour patterns that follow the sound. According to Slocum, you set the scale to “major”, put the left keypad on the “pitfall” or “saw” sound, and play the notes 4, 7, 8, 9, 8, 9.
Background
Paul Slocum uses old hardware in his music and art, and he has also made a Commodore 64 synth called Cynthcart and other Atari 2600 music tools. In early 2002 AtariAge ran a beat programming contest in which users wrote their own drum patterns for Synthcart. The 2600 has only 128 bytes of RAM, so the beats cannot be edited on the cartridge itself. Slocum released the source code, though, so people who know assembly language can change the beats and build their own version. Synthcart runs on NTSC and PAL consoles, and on an Atari 7800 if the console has been modified with a B&W switch.
Similar games to play next
- The Music Machine – a 1983 cartridge where making music is part of the game
- Grover’s Music Maker – a Sesame Street music cartridge for young players
- Halo 2600 – another modern homebrew released through AtariAge
- Oystron – one of the earliest homebrew games for the 2600