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 […]
Category Archives: Lynx
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 […]
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 […]
In my previous post, I documented the process of expanding Quadromania from 128KB to 256KB, and adding music to the menu screens. This time I’ll walk through my attempts to modify in-game audio. Naturally it would be fun to have in-game music. So, I started with what I had: a digital audio player already baked […]
In early 2020, Songbird picked up the rights to an old, unpublished Lynx game from the 1990s called Quadromania. This was a great find by an Atari fan in Europe, and the demo ROM was released on a small quantity of carts before finding its way to Songbird. As-is, Quadromania is a solid game, but […]
More games join the Songbird family, including Ishido, Quadromania, and Sky Raider!
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