The Story of Mental Kombat

After years of programming on the Commodore 64, I recognized that the Atari VCS console contains a similar CPU and decided to develop a new game and create cartridges from it. To get started with VCS (or "Stella" as it was called internally back then) programming I decided to develop a small little game without too many usage of sprites. I also wanted to learn about playfield programming and the general check of the input ports. I remembered a little game from around 1998 on the Commodore 64 and thought that it would be an easy start on the VCS.

The Introduction Sequence

The intro starts with the "Mental Kombat" logo and the "Press Fire!" message dropping into sight from the top border along with some sound effects. The colors of the copyright text at the bottom should remind you of the game's origin: the Commodore 64.

Just as you'd expect it from a real arcade-machine: "Press Fire!" is flashing of course... ;-)

After pressing at least one button the following sequence prepares the players to get ready:

The additional sound of a bell starts the battle and the program continues...

General Rules

• Each player has got its own color.
• You have to connect tiles of your color vertically or horizontally.
• You can move every tile of every color, this means that you could connect a row of tiles of your opponent's color if you don't move carefully enough.
• To prevent deadlock situations you can't undo the last move.
• If you complete a row of your stones your opponent will lose energy.
• If one player runs out of energy the battle is over. (Now did you expect that? :-)

The players move the cursor (in the game it's flashing) in the middle of the screen. The cursor will then change places with the next tile in the moving direction. Example: If Player 1 pushes the cursor to the left, it will move one position left and therefore change places with the red square.

The little cursor below the players number at the bottom (in the game it's flashing, too) indicates, which player has to move next.

After some movement the screen could possibly look like this:

You see that player 2 has lost lost one bit of his energy, but player 1 has only got his last bit of energy remaining. As a warning to the player the energy bar will flicker when it is near to the end.

And some moves later again, Player 2 could have won the match:

Game Controls

• You can choose whether to use one or two joysticks by setting the first Difficulty-Switch.
• If only one joystick is used there will be a pause between the players moves to hand over the joystick.
• The second Difficulty-Switch adjusts if you want to connect 4 (easy) or 5 (hard) tiles in a row to win.
• Using the TV-Type-Switch you can choose PAL- or NTSC-mode (Color = NTSC-mode, B/W = PAL-mode).
• The Reset-Switch aborts the current game and resets the game to the introduction sequence.

Technical Details

The game consists of 4 KB (4096 Bytes) of coding, graphics and sounds. The development was performed on a Pentium-PC using a normal Text-Pad as editor and DASM V2.0 by Matthew Dillon as compiler. Testing was done using z26 V1.46 and V1.52 by John Saeger on PC aswell as on an original Atari VCS with a plugged in Arcadia/Starpath Supercharger.

Download of the Game

Production of Original Cartridges

To deliver this game on the original platform there will be a limited run of 100 numbered and signed cartridges at first and afterwards an unlimited run of as many carts as requested. Every ROM of the limited edition is slightly different, because it shows the individual number of the cart in the Introduction sequence.

There was a label-competition held at AtariAge.com and everybody was able to enter the contest by sending a labeldesign. My favorite picture was designed by Jason Parlee and will be used for every cartridge.

The label for the unlimited cartridge will of course look a bit different, because the serial number and signature are only available in the limited version. This means that there will be as many carts produced as requests appear, but only the first 100 carts will be numbered, signed and boxed.

Every of the limited games will contain one red and one yellow headband with printing on the frontside. Every band will be 120 cm long and will fit every head.

Pictures of the Limited Edition

All the 100 cartridges.


A boxed cart with manual.


A pair of headbands showing their prints.


Bonus: free merchandise button from Hozer VG.

Sale of the Unlimited Edition

Owners of the Limited Edition