Amiga Boing! Demo 2.0 - Atari 2600

Fans of Amiga computers will immediately recognize the nature of the Amiga Boing Demo 2.0. To help demonstrate the power of the Amiga, the Amiga Boing Ball demo was created. The demo consists of a checkered red and white ball bouncing within the confines of the screen, changing direction when hitting the walls, all the while spinning. With this demo running in the background (as the Amiga could multitask, which was a fairly unique feature at the time in personal computers), it as a powerful statement of the Amiga's capabilities. This demo ultimately became synonymous with the Amiga, and even today it used as part of the official Amiga identity.

Original Amiga Boing! Demo

For a period of time the Amiga Boing Demo was ported to just about every platform imaginable to demonstrate that, "Hey, we can do this, too!" And of course, the Atari 2600 was no exception! Several years ago, Rob Kudla created a simple version of the Amiga Boing Demo for the Atari 2600 as a tech demo that he posted to the Stella programmers mailing list.

Atari 2600 Amiga Boing! Demo 2.0

More recently, David Galloway (djmips in our forums), updated Rob's demo to make it truer to the original Amiga demo. His changes include:

• New graphics, and a larger ball, a full 48 pixels wide and 90 pixels tall (previous was 40 x 50)
• The world the ball bounces in now has gravity (as opposed to the ball moving at a constant velocity and in a straight line)
• The spin of the ball switches when it bounces against a side wall
• Corrected the number of scanlines to 262
• Audio pitch has been tweaked (lower for the side wall bounce) to better match the original demo
• User control of horizontal speed and gravity (wtih joystick)
• Random change of horizontal speed (after bounce with side wall)
• Colors can be switched between NTSC and PAL with B&W Switch

Additionally, the Amiga Boing! Demo 2.0 includes several variations:

• Amiga Ball against a white background (no flicker)
• Amiga Ball against a grey background (flicker, but closest in appearance to the original demo)
• Ball with rendered AtariAge logo against a grey background
• Amiga Ball against a black background (no flicker--effectively a red and black ball)
• AtariAge Ball against a blue background (no flicker)
• AtariAge Ball against a black background (no flicker)

Includes cartridge and manual, with a label designed by Dale Crum and manual by Tony Morse.