UPDATE 11/10/2020: A Bug’s Trip and Quadromania are now in stock! Songbird is excited to announce two new Lynx games coming November 2020: A Bug’s Trip, developed and enhanced by Fadest over the last few years, and Quadromania, a “lost” game originally developed by RPM Software in 1993! Check out the game previews below. Both games are part of […]
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CyberVirus LOST MISSIONS is now available for the Atari Lynx on a professionally molded cartridge. This game contains 9 all-new levels from the original version submitted to Atari for evaluation in 1993. Mission text and objectives are completely different than the later versions published by Songbird. Available now from Songbird. Read about it and also get […]
Waaaaay back in 2000, Songbird founder Carl Forhan interviewed the creator and programmer of Crystal Mines (NES) and Crystal Mines II (Lynx), Ken Beckett; and the Lead Level Designer, C. Scott Davis. At the time, Carl and Scott were working on the PC-based expansion for Crystal Mines II called “Buried Treasure,” which later was also […]
I was not planning on writing another article in this series, but then something unexpected happened: after all these months, I found a bug in Quadromania. Worse, it only took 10 minutes of playtesting to uncover! What was the bug, how did I miss it until now, and what could be done to avoid this […]
As you may have read in our recent newsletter, Songbird acquired the rights to Battlemorph for the Atari Jaguar last year. Now it’s time to do something with it. Thinking about making a soundtrack CD in addition to a reprint of the original Jaguar CD game. And if we dare to dream bigger, there could […]
Here we are, at the final installment of ROM hacking for Quadromania. I’ve got three areas left to discuss: Replacing graphics EEPROM support Encrypting scores to allow validated player score submissions online Replacing graphics is not for the faint at heart. Yes, aspiring Lynx developers do have wonderful tools at their disposal — including the […]
Songbird is super-excited to announce orders are open for Biniax 2 and Xump for the Atari Lynx! Biniax is a frantic push-your-luck puzzle game that includes Biniax 1 and Biniax 2, while Xump is a clever navigate-the-maze game with dozens of levels. Both games feature top-notch graphics and music to keep you entertained. First run of each game is limited to […]
At this point, I have a confession to make. I could not have done all this ROM hacking as quickly as I did without the partial source to Quadromania. Being able to see variable names, subroutine names, and the few odd comments here and there was an immense help. There are other Atari Jaguar/Lynx ROMs […]
One tried and true method for hacking ROMs is intercepting the controller input. If you can figure out where the game is inputting controls, then you can do a variety of things like enable new buttons not previously handled by the game, pulse a button on and off (for rapid fire, etc.), add sound f/x […]
We’ve been walking through the process of revitalizing an old 1990s era Lynx ROM called Quadromania. So far, most of the work has been focused on making existing features work. This time we’re going to try adding a brand new feature: stereo panning. Panning is only supported on the Lynx II model. I’ve even read […]