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The C64 Direct-to-TV, or DTV for short, is a single chip implementation of the Commodore 64 contained in a joystick and with 30 built in games designed by Jeri Ellsworth, a self-taught computer chip designer. The design is similar to the Atari Classics 10-in-1 TV Game. It runs on four AAA batteries, has a Composite video output, and monaural audio output. The joystick has two fire buttons, and four function buttons.
The official games for the unit are mostly a mix of Epyx and Hewson C64 games. The following games list is sorted by original publisher.
EPYX
- Summer Games I
- Winter Games I
- Pitstop I
- Pitstop II
- Supercycle
- Jumpman Jr.
- Impossible Mission I
- Impossible Mission II
- Championship Wrestling
- Gateway to Apshai
- Sword of Fargoal
- Silicon Warrior
- World Karate Champion
- Several events taken from Epyx "Games" series, including Bull Riding, Sumo Wrestling, Flying Disks, Surfing
Hewson
Image Works
It also contains several Easter eggs, planted by the software developers, that are accesed by wiggling the joystick left to right when the C64DTV enters the "LOAD" command to enable hidden functions such as a Commodore BASIC editor with an on-screen keyboard, and 6 additional bonus games.
Mammoth Toys produced the units with the software included licensed from Ironstone Partners. QVC purchased the entire first production run of 250,000 units and sold 70,000 of them the first day they were offered.
The internal circuit boards have exposed solder points for data and keyboard ports and detailed instructions for adding them is avaialble.
Specifications
The hardware is a clone of the C64 and thus has the same features and limitations, but it lacks the keyboard and I/O ports (though some of these are available as solder pads on the PCB). It has a few new features:
- The palette is reprogrammable, with 4 bits of luma and 4 bits of chroma.
- There is 64 kB of extra RAM, and a 2 MB ROM for the built in games.
- It has DMA engine that can be used to copy data between system RAM and the game ROM and extra RAM.
See also
External links
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