Genre: Music

Music cartridges turn the Atari 2600’s two-channel sound chip into an instrument instead of a game. Both titles here are homebrews made by hobbyists. Sound X, by Ed Federmeyer in the mid-1990s, lets you explore the console’s noises and is one of the earliest 2600 homebrews. Synthcart (2002), by Paul Slocum, adds an arpeggiator and a drum machine, but it needs two keypad controllers that the emulator does not support.
Load either cartridge below and listen to the 2600 in your browser.

Synthcart

Synthcart is not a game at all: it is a homebrew cartridge from 2002 that turns the Atari 2600 into a small synthesizer, with an arpeggiator and a built-in drum machine. It was written by musician and programmer…

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Sound X

Sound X is not a game but a sound experimenting cartridge for the Atari 2600, written by the hobbyist programmer Ed Federmeyer in the mid-1990s. It lets you explore the noises the console's sound chip can make. Its…

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