Starpath Supercharger
The Supercharger and a few game boxes
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| Design firm | Starpath |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | Starpath |
| Introduced | August 1982 |
| Discontinued | 1984 |
| Cost | 69.95 US$ (included one game: Phaser Patrol) |
| Type | Expansion peripheral cartridge |
| Memory | 6 KB RAM |
| Connection | Cable earphone jack for cassette |
The Starpath Supercharger (originally called the Arcadia Supercharger) is an expansion peripheral cartridge created by Starpath, for playing cassette-based proprietary games on the Atari 2600 video game console.
The device consists of a long cartridge with a handle on the end, and an audio cassette cable. It adds 6 KB to the Atari 2600's 128 bytes of RAM (increasing it to 6,272 bytes of RAM or 49-fold), allowing for the creation of specially compatible games which are larger and have higher resolution graphics than normal cartridges. A cable coming out of the side of the cartridge plugs into the earphone jack of any standard cassette player, for loading all Supercharger games from standard audio cassettes.
All Supercharger games were developed by Starpath.
Listed in order of release:
These games were available only via mail order after Starpath declared bankruptcy.
The Supercharger is compatible with Atari 2600, Atari 2600 Jr., and the Sears Video Arcade consoles.
Due to the shape of the Supercharger, it would not normally fit into the ColecoVision's Expansion Module #1, which is an adapter that allows the ColecoVision to play Atari 2600 games. However, if the cover of the expansion module is removed or an extender is used, the Supercharger will work. Extenders were sent to customers who called Starpath about such issues.
The Supercharger did not work on many Atari 7800 systems (which is typically backward compatible with the Atari 2600), although it does with some early models of the system. After Atari installed a circuit to fix a compatibility issue with the 2600 version of Dark Chambers, it subsequently caused incompatibility with the Supercharger and some other games that use the FE bank switching method.
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