Black Widow

Atari · 1982

by Daniel Ferrer

Details

Original hardware

Atari 6502, AVG, 2× POKEY

Romset

roms/bwidow.zip

Controls

The stick moves; buttons 1, 2, 3 and 4 fire up, down, left and right, and two together fire on the diagonal. Buttons 1+2 together insert a coin and start; buttons 3+4 together are START alone, for the wave and difficulty screens. On the web: Z, X, C, V and the arrow keys.

Analog controls

–

Orientation

Horizontal game: drawn rotated 90°

Last update

2026-11-08

Changelog

1. v1.22026-11-08
   • 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. v1.12026-11-06
   • Built with uvmc2-sdk v1.4.12, whose frame filler fits the refresh period (the older one overran every frame).
   • One picture a frame, as Gravitar on the same board, and the vector generator's dots drawn.
3. v1.02026-11-04
   • First release.
   • Controls for one pad: the stick moves and the buttons fire, with the diagonals by pressing two. Coin and start are on buttons together; they used to be pressed by themselves once at power-on, so after one game there was no playing again.
   • Sound through the jack: the two POKEYs emulated, at MAME's level.
   • The cabinet's switches as it ships (medium difficulty, starting waves up to 21); they read as zero.
   • Coloured vectors as bright as white ones: the blue web was drawn at a third of its brightness.
   • The picture keeps the cabinet's 4:3 shape and fills the screen, upright and with the console on its side.
   • Runs at the arcade's own 60 Hz.
   • An options screen at start, after the Vectrex Studio intro: screen vertical or horizontal, refresh, brightness, controls (the buttons can be remapped, and the choice is saved) and calibration.