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| BTW, "cubo" in italian means "cube". Do you see anything remotely cubic in this thing? |
The CUBO system is composed by a CD32, an expansion card plugged in the back connector and a jamma adapter board which is connected to this card, the controller ports and the audio connectors. The jamma adapter also provides RGB video output (taken from the expansion connector), which is normally unavailable on an off-the-shelf CD32.
This said, the system behaves as a stock CD32 console: the startup screen is the same and it even runs CD32 games without complaining except a few problems in the control department, as the JAMMA buttons are mapped on the controller in a weird way which has to take into inputs normally not available on joypads (such as the coin switches!).
C.D. Express developed their own games to go with this device, which are mostly simple rehashes of known concepts: card games, outline puzzle games, quizzes, etc.
I own three of them:
Magic Premium, which is a card based game...
Laserquiz, which is a quiz game (duh)...
and last but not least, Harem Challenge: an adult-themed outline puzzle game!
I used FS-UAE emulator to take the screenshots: which means that even if the label on the discs says "Compatible with CUBO CD32 only" they're fairly standard Amiga software with a custom input scheme.
By the way, look closely at the third Harem Challenge screenshot... Do you notice anything? No? Look at this then.
UPDATE: The developer of these games (and employee of CD Express) made contact! His name is Luca Crisafulli, and you can read an interview to him HERE (in italian).
All games programmed by me, in the 90s...
ReplyDeleteThat's great! Finding the original developer is more than what I was hoping.
DeleteThe interview is extremely interesting and I will link it in the main post (even though, it'll be hard to understand for non italian readers :-) )
I did not know that the later revisions of CUBO CD32 used an A1200, but that makes sense as those were easier to get than CD32s, I think...
How did you hook up the JAMMA adapter to that one? Using the A1200 expansion bus? Do you have any photo of the complete unit?
Sorry, no photos. We were in the analogic era. :-)
DeleteWe passed to A1200 because: 1) no more CD32s available 2) lot of A1200 mainboards from the supplier 3) passed from CDs to Ide HDDs, cheaper (buying in stock), faster and with a lot of writable memory. I don't remember the JAMMA part, there was a very little board, different from CD32 one in the middle. Moreover... I'm a programmer, not an hardware engineer. :-)
http://www.retrogamingplanet.it/intervista/intervista-a-luca-crisafulli-20-anni-di-programmazione-e-giochi-in-casa-commodore/
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteHi, if you want, I can translate the interview in English. Reply to my comment if you're interested.
ReplyDeleteHi Davide,
DeleteI appreciate your of taking upon yourself the translation, but I don't want to steal content from another website. Did you check with the owner of the original interview if he is interested in hosting the translation himself?