Commodore 64 All-in-One Joystick!

[Flack]

I actually saw a commercial for it this morning on Nick. I'll see if I can dig up some more information. I saw Winter Games and Uridium for sure on the commercial.

I was coming out of the shower and heard Winter Games and was like "WTF is that?" and came running out of the bathroom and just saw the end of the commercial. I believe they said coming this November. Can't wait!!!

[Graham Mitchell]

Wow, I had no idea that was in the works. I figured that since Commodore basically doesn't exist anymore that no one would bother with this, but I was wrong!

Now let's hope for the Amiga all-in-one joystick! (Yeah, right.)

[le geek]

I actually saw a commercial for it this morning on Nick. I'll see if I can dig up some more information. I saw Winter Games and Uridium for sure on the commercial.

I was coming out of the shower and heard Winter Games and was like "WTF is that?" and came running out of the bathroom and just saw the end of the commercial. I believe they said coming this November. Can't wait!!!

Awesome! This is the one I was waiting for

[Flack]

I mentioned this one in this thread: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28509 (there's also a link to a website for it). Makes me wonder when models for other systems will be coming out.

Sure enough SS -- what's funny if I've been following that thread and I completely missed it.

For those searching for the unit, it's official name is the "C64 Direct-to-TV". Street date is November 26th.

[SoulBlazer]

Who is publishing it and where did they get the rights from? Who DOES have Commodore's rights these days anyway?

ANy idea of what games are on it?

[Mayhem]

Tulip/Ironstone Publishing. Who also hold the rights to the games by Hewson and Epyx. Which is no surprise why most of the games on the stick are from those two companies. No complaints really, there's a lot of good gaming to be had by them...

[Flack]

http://www.tulip.com/news/article.asp?nid=109

[icbrkr]

and Jeri who designed it (also the designer of the C-one, http://c64upgra.de/c-one/) mentioned there may be "solder traces left on the circuit board for an IEC bus and PS/2 keyboard". If you don't know what this means, it means being able to hack it and hook up C64 disk drives and IBM keyboards to it. I don't have the page currently, but someone has already hacked the prototype model and has screenshots of him running BASIC. Again, why would this matter? Well for one, it has 128K as opposed to the C64's 64K (duh), and it's VIC-II chip has been modified to display 128 (?) colors at least instead of the normal 16.

[Keir]

Found some more info, including a list of games and how to order, from the Fresno Commodore User Group:

The C64 DTV is coming your way on November 26! How has this information
been corraborated? The creator of the device told me so!

C= ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the creator of the C64 DTV
30-games-in-one joystick... Jeri Ellsworth. In a long phone call tonight,
Jeri revealed to me that Tulip/Ironstone has given permission to reveal
some details (but not all) of this reincarnation of the beloved Commodore
64.

So much information to sort... well, here goes.

Designers/engineers/troubleshooters of the C64 DTV - Jeri Ellsworth,
Jason Compton, Adrian Gonzalez, Robin Harbron, Per Olofsson, and Mark
Seelye. Heroes all!

Production details - 250,000 C64 DTV's have been produced or are in
production at the Mammoth Toys factory, one hour outside of Hong Kong.
Presently, only NTSC units are being built. 30,000 units are going to
the warehouse of QVC, the television shopping network.

Vendor details - QVC has the exclusive rights to sell the C64 DTV until
the first of the year. (After the first of year... unknown) QVC will
start selling the units, starting on November 26. On that first day, QVC
will advertise the DTV as "Today's Special Value", which means an ad for
it will be shown once an hour. Estimated price - $25 US, though QVC will
set its own price. Unknown whether QVC will sell the DTV from the QVC
website.

Note: QVC is looking to sell the DTV against a backdrop of a classic C64
keyboard and original boxes of the DTV included games (see below). If
you have good-looking boxes of the games, then let it be known, and your
boxes can show up on t.v.!

DTV game details - All games have been legally obtained and modified for
use in the DTV. Games are from Epyx, Hewson, and others. The games are:
Championship Wrestling, Cyberdyne Warrior, Cybernoid, Cybernoid II,
Eliminator, Excelon, Firelord, Gateway to Apshai, Impossible Mission,
Impossible Mission II, Jumpman Jr., Paradroid, Pitstop, Pitstop II,
Ranarama, Silicon Warrior, Speedball, Summer Games, Supercycle, Sword
of Fargoal, Tower Toppler, Uridium, Winter Games, World Karate
Championship A, World Karate Championship B, Zynaps, (games split out from
others) bull-riding, flying disc, sumo-wrestling, and surfing.

DTV details - Exterior color unknown, though pre-production models were
black. Two firebuttons, four function buttons. Battery-powered, using
four double-A batteries. Lifespan of batteries in the unit -- long (Jeri
says that she has used hers for 5 hours without any sign of the batteries
weakening.) Composite video-out. Paper box, no plastic "blister" pack.
No second port for connecting another joystick. Warranty unknown at this
point.

Nitty-gritty details - The DTV board is roughly the size of a playing
card. Under what look like 3 blobs of epoxy on the board lies a custom
ASIC chip at .35 microns. The 6 volts of battery power is regulated down
to 3.3 volts on the board. Jeri emphasizes that the ASIC is very
compatible in terms of being a C64. The DTV is hard-coded to run at 1
mhz.. There is 128K RAM and 2 meg of ROM. 256 colors available
on-screen. Single SID sound with the 3 voices and "volume" mixed
externally. The solder pads are there on the board; in other words,
enterprising hackers can solder on a serial port in order to connect
a Commodore-compatible drive and can attach a PC keyboard.

SWEET.

[SMB]

I actually saw a commercial for it this morning on Nick. I'll see if I can dig up some more information. I saw Winter Games and Uridium for sure on the commercial.

I was coming out of the shower and heard Winter Games and was like "WTF is that?" and came running out of the bathroom and just saw the end of the commercial. I believe they said coming this November. Can't wait!!!

I have a question about that commercial, what is that game with that frog that is kicking little silver balls?

[KJN]

I have a question about that commercial, what is that game with that frog that is kicking little silver balls?

That would be Nebulus (Tower Toppler in US), here is a flash remake.

[SMB]

I think I will start to get into Commodore 64 now

[Nubiandaze]

Hey All,
Does anyone know which joystick they'll be using fo this c64 package? I know Atari used it's orange button controller for their package. Maybe they should use a classic like the BOSS or maybe a Quickshot II turbo. I hope they don't use the original black & white c64 controller though it would be authentic.

Regards,

Nubian.

[ddockery]

Whatever they do for the hardware, if it's anything like the namco 5-in-1, it will be destroyed by playingnthe Summer games stuff in about 5 minutes. Those things were not built to last.

[Keir]

Got mine yesterday. The display seemed kind of dark, but that could be a problem with my TV. Otherwise I love it!

The joystick itself is the same as the old Competition Pro joysticks so you shouldn't have to worry about it breaking.