[stella] Kid Vid Voice Module

["Russell Babylon" <babylon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

     I have recently acquired a battered but working Coleco Kid Vid Module with a Smurfs Save the Day cartridge and two of the three tapes that went with the game.  After some preliminary analysis of the disassembled game code I have found how you can play, or at least view, some of the games from an emulator instead of watching the little Smurf march back and forth on your monitor.  Using your favorite emulator program turn on the debug option.  Then load the Smurfs Save the Day ROM.  Let the program start and when you see the Smurf marching back and forth escape back to the debugger and load RAM memory location $FF with the hex value $B5.  Then load RAM memory location $82 with either $00, $01 or $02.  If you load $82 with $02 you will be able to play the sorting shapes game of the Handy Smurf portion of the game.  If you load $82 with $01 you will be able to play a PARTIAL game of the Harmony Smurf portion of the game.  If you load $82 with $00 you will be able to play the matching colors soda fountain portion of the game, this is the cassette tape that I am missing so I can't comment on how complete this is. 

 

The Kid Vid module was a pretty slick way to add voice and music to Atari games in the early 80's.  Each tape apparently had a preamble portion that had a sequence of high pitched tones that were filtered out by the Kid Vid Module and then sent in binary form to the 2600.  From this information the 2600 could determine which game on the cartridge it was supposed to play and then start it.  Once the game was under way the tape player was under program control from the 2600.  Sly DC has a web page with more information on the Kid Vid at  http://www.emuclassics.com/slydc/kidvid.htm

 

 

Russ Babylon