Download Bowling (Atari 2600)

Andion 2026-10-11 0 point

Both files are variants of the original U.S. Atari cartridge.

To make the Dactar / Milmar clone file match the Atari cartridge, make the change below:
Offset | Their byte |Atari’s byte
0x000 | 68 | 78

Atari’s cartridge starts with 78 (SEI, “disable interrupts”), the usual first instruction of 2600 games. The clone changed it to 68 (PLA, “pull a value off the stack”). Both are harmless at that point: the 2600’s CPU has no interrupt line, and the very next instructions clear everything anyway. So the game plays the same. I can’t tell why they changed it. It may have been just to make their copy different from Atari’s byte-for-byte, but that’s a guess.

You can edit the 208-in-1 (PAL) file as well, but you will get the U.S. version in the end, not the European version. These are the changes needed:
Offset | Their byte | Atari’s byte
0x02C | 4D | 2D
0x25F | 59 | 39

Those two values set the timer that controls how long the game waits at the top and bottom of each frame. The multicart raised both by $20 (32 timer steps), which adds extra blank lines to each frame. That’s the usual way an NTSC game is converted for PAL TVs, which draw more lines at 50 Hz. It explains the “(PAL)” in the file name: the gameplay was untouched and only the frame timing was stretched.