Battlezone

Atari · 1980

by Daniel Ferrer

Details

Original hardware

Atari 6502 + mathbox, AVG

Romset

roms/bzone.zip

Controls

The stick drives the tank: forward and back, left and right to turn. Button 1 fires, button 3 inserts a coin, button 4 starts. On the web: Z, 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, a few fps short of the refresh in every game built on it); now 39.5-39.7 fps of 40 on the console.
   • No more beat: the board draws at 40.96 Hz and the console at 40, so about once a second two pictures fell into one frame. One picture a frame now, as in Red Baron.
3. v1.02026-11-04
   • First release.
   • The controls respond: two of the cabinet's inputs were read as held for good, so the game took no coin and played a constant tone.
   • Sound through the jack: the engine (at both revs), the shells and the explosions are the cabinet's circuits, recorded one at a time from MAME's emulation of them; the POKEY is emulated. Checked against MAME over a whole game: the same levels within a few percent.
   • The cabinet's switches as it ships (three lives, bonus at 15000 and 100000), with one coin a credit; they read as Free Play.
   • Only the screen is drawn: the world the vector generator draws past the monitor's edges is cut at them, as on the cabinet.
   • 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 40 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.