The Story of KITE!

In my sparetime I worked for a kite company in the 1990ies and when 2008 came and I was thinking about a new theme for my next Atari VCS programming project I thought that a videogame about kites may be something new for videogame consoles. In fact I only know one unreleased prototype of a kite videogame from 1984. Sure there are some Flash games on PC about this theme, but to my knowledge, no videogame about kites was released for a game console by now. According to the theme I thought that controlling that kite with two joysticks (emulating two kite handles) would be something new, too.

The game is dedicated to and supported by the german kite company ELLIOT.

The Introduction Sequence

The cartridge starts up by displaying the titlescreen showing the game name and copyright information. You can move both joysticks left and right to choose the controls for the game. You can either play the game with two joysticks (using direction down on both joysticks) or with one joystick (using directions left and right). You can also choose one of four colors for your kite by pushing the joystick down. Press fire to start the game and launch the kite.

The Game

You start your kite flight early in the morning. The sun has not been risen and the sky is dark. Your kite launches automatically and you can instantly start collecting the small dots on screen.

Depending on the duration of your game play the difficulty increases and different levels offer different obstacles. Avoid the lightning while the periods between them get shorter in later levels. Watch the bird closely - it sometimes changes from moving horizontally to diagaonally. Th dot is on fixed random positions at the beginning, but in later levels it will also move. Sometimes it moves according to the cloud and sometimes it moves along close to the bird. And sometimes everything happens together. :)

Scoring

You fetch points for every collected dot. The amount of points depends on the number of hits your kite has already taken. You start with three possible hits and receive three points for each collected dot then. After the first hit you only receive two points for a collected dot. After the second hit you still receive one point. And after the third hit... well... you crash into the ground and the game is over!

General Game Controls

The game offers two different control possibilities as you can play the game with one or two joysticks. You choose the amount of joysticks on the introduction screen.

The game was initially designed to be played with two joysticks: one joystick for each hand. Pushing the left joystick down makes the kite turn counter clockwise while pushing the right joystick down lets the kite turn clockwise. These controls offer better authenticity as you control a normal kite with two handles, too. You should use joysticks with suction cups for best control results.

When using only one joystick you press it left to pull the left hand and line on screen which causes the kite to roll counter clockwise. Press right to pull the right hand and line which makes the kite turn clockwise.

Technical Details

The game is written in 6507 assembly and consists of 4 KB (4096 Bytes) of coding, graphics, sounds and all data. KITE! is written for the PAL version of the Atari VCS.

The development is performed on a Pentium-PC using a normal Text-Pad as editor and DASM V2.12 as compiler. Testing is done using the emulators z26 V1.58 and Stella V2.4.2 and finally on real hardware of course.

Download of the Game

Production of Original Cartridges

You can order your copy of KITE! (PAL game cartridge with labels and manual) directly from www.GoodDealGames.com - a great source for homebrew games. My other games are available there, too.

Pictures of the Limited Edition

The first release of the game was as a limited edition of 35 copies. The limited edition contains these items: PAL cartridge, plastic box with color cover, instruction manual, window kite, serialnumber and signature. The limited edition is sold out!

A complete copy of the limited edition.


All 35 boxes of the limited edition.

Owners of the Limited Edition