Everything here is experimental: every game, demo and download is a work in progress, still in development and testing, so expect rough edges and bugs. Sound warning: most of these play their music on the 7800's own TIA sound chip, which can be harsh on the ears, so you may want to turn the volume down or mute it. Games marked "POKEY" in their cartridge line sound much smoother on a cart with a POKEY chip.
Abysmal Games music on the 7800's own sound chips, in a jukebox with a music visualizer. Every track also has its own video (links below and the 7800 Music playlist on YouTube).
7800 Music
A jukebox of 17 tracks written for the 7800 with a music visualizer: 11 on the TIA and 6 on a POKEY. Seven DREAD songs, the tunes of the TechLab demos and Swarm Busters, and new pieces, each played by its own game player, with a spectrum analyzer, channel meters and an oscilloscope. Each track plays its intro and two loops, fades out and moves on to the next.
How to play:
Left / Right: previous / next track
Up / Down: visualizer: spectrum, channel meters, oscilloscope
Two new tracks for two POKEY chips, in the same jukebox: for the 7800 GameDrive only. Twin Signal and Echo Taps: eight voices on the POKEYs at $450 and $440, with an 8-channel spectrum. It needs both chips, which the 7800 GameDrive provides.
How to play:
Left / Right: previous / next track
Up / Down: visualizer: spectrum, channel meters, oscilloscope
Four dark synth tracks for the 7800, each with its own endless looping animation. A knight holding a crypt hall against endless demons, a runner fleeing a living shadow, an endless spiral stair and a bone mill. Every picture follows the music's frame counter and every loop is a whole number of bars, so each tape plays forever without a seam. The cartridge holds all four tapes; SELECT moves to the next one. The music plays on a POKEY chip at $450 (7800 GameDrive, Concerto or a POKEY cartridge) with the TIA. Each song also has its own ROM, and its MP3, in the 7800 jukebox.
Cartridge: 512K, SuperGame, 16K cart RAM, POKEY at $450
Music by Abysmal Games.
What's new: v1.1 (2026-11-05): Grinder: the wheels now turn into the bite, and the chain runs off the bottom of the drum. v1.0 (2026-11-05): Initial release.
Four dark synth loops on a sawtooth that the 7800's CPU draws on POKEY, step by step. POKEY has no sawtooth of its own, so the CPU draws one: a POKEY channel set to plain volume works as a 4-bit DAC, and POKEY's timer interrupt has the CPU write the next of 16 steps, 16 times every period of the note. Pages of pre-filtered waves sweep the tone from dark to bright. Glass Sweep, Long Fall, Sawtooth Prime and Iron Bass each give the saw a different role, around POKEY's other voices and the TIA. The cartridge holds all four; SELECT moves to the next one. It needs a POKEY at $450 whose interrupt line reaches the console: played on a 7800 GameDrive. Emulators have no such line, so there it polls the timer instead and still plays. Each track also has its own ROM, and its MP3, in the 7800 jukebox.
Hardware: the TIA tracks play on any Atari 7800. The POKEY tracks need a cartridge with a POKEY chip at $450, such as the 7800 GameDrive or Concerto+; without one the jukebox skips them. The 2xPOKEY ROM needs two POKEYs ($450 and $440) and runs on the 7800 GameDrive only. The Sawtooth Series also needs the POKEY's interrupt line to reach the console: tested on the 7800 GameDrive.
Runs on real Atari 7800 hardware (tested on 7800 GameDrive) and in A7800/MAME emulators. Games by Abysmal Games (c) Abysmal Games LLC: free to download and play; not for sale or redistribution on physical media without permission. Ports remain under their own licences (see each entry).
