Alpha One

Atari · 1983

by Daniel Ferrer

Details

Original hardware

Atari 6502, AVG

Romset

roms/alphaone.zip

Controls

Button 3 inserts a coin and is the shield, button 4 starts and fires; the stick left and right turns the roller. On the web: C and V, and the arrow keys.

Orientation

Horizontal game: drawn rotated 90°

Last update

2026-11-08

Changelog

1. v1.42026-11-08
   • The romset can live in any folder of the card. The game looks in .roms/, then roms/, then searches the whole card, and remembers where it found it (.conf/<romset>.loc), so the next start goes straight there; if it is moved, it is searched for again.
   • Settings go in .conf/ and romsets in .roms/: the UVMC2's menu hides folders whose name starts with a dot, so the card shows only the games. A card set up before keeps everything: the old config/ and roms/ are still read, and nothing is written to them any more.
   • Without the romset on the card the screen says ROM FILE NOT FOUND and the name of the zip it wants.
2. v1.32026-11-06
   • The game runs at the machine's speed: it used to hand the console a picture every time the arcade redrew the screen and waited for each one. Now one picture a game frame, paced by the machine's own clock, drawn when the console is ready for it.
   • The cartridge's processor runs at 300 MHz: heavy scenes no longer fall behind.
3. v1.22026-11-05
   • Built with uvmc2-sdk v1.4.12: the Vectrex Studio intro before the options screen, which 1.1 did not show, and the frame filler that fits the refresh period (on the older SDK every frame overran and the game ran a few frames a second short).
4. v1.12026-11-04
   • The prototype's two POKEYs emulated in full and played through the UVMC2 jack, or squeezed onto the Vectrex's own sound chip.
   • An options screen at start: screen vertical or horizontal, sound output, refresh, brightness and calibration.