A new flash cartridge has been released for the Mattel Intellivision.  Imaginatively named the LTO Flash! this little device does what you would think. Designer, Joe Zbiciak, is quite involved in the retrogaming community- primarily the Mattel Intellivision sub-genre. 

Joe Zbiciak had this to say about the LTO Flash!, “The LTO Flash! development process primarily involved myself and Steve Orth.  I designed and implemented the hardware, firmware, and software tooling, and Steve Orth designed and implemented the GUI.  He was also an invaluable sounding board for many technical aspects of the project, helping me refine my design, and has done extensive testing for me.”

Joe is the wizard behind the Mattel Intellivision emulator, jzIntv, and the SDK-1600 Software Development Kit (SDK).  He has also been involved in Intellivision work back to the Cuttle Cart 3 and the Intellicart (who reading this remembers either of those?).  Joe Zbiciak has also released a custom cartridge design that is used in many Mattel Intellivision homebrew/independent releases.  Why am I telling you all of this?  Well, for one, this would be a short article if it was just about the LTO Flash! cartridge and second- I want you all to get to know the man behind this awesome piece of tech.

The technical stuff is coming, here I will let Joe Zbiciak explain it, “LTO Flash! builds on JLP, adding 1MB RAM, 32MB of onboard flash, and a high speed 2Mbps USB 2.0 link.  It doesn’t use an SD card; rather, all the games are stored self-contained within the cart.  A custom GUI for Windows and Mac sets up the cartridge.  You drag all your ROMs into a menu layout, and click a button to send it all to the cart.  If you want to change the layout, add/remove ROMs, whatever, just update it in the GUI and click the button again.  Or, if you’re developing a game, you can directly download a ROM to a powered-up Intellivision without dragging it into the menu.  That’s great for tight edit-compile-debug cycles, and is exactly how some folks use my cart.

LTO Flash! supports games up to 1MB, and supports the acceleration and flash-save features from JLP.  You can develop your game using LTO Flash!, and then later press it onto cartridges with JLP.”\

Dude has the experience and the “street cred” in retrogaming as a quality product maker.  Show him some support so we can keep him around and making cool product.  Head over to the LTO Flash! website to purchase one.

Carl Williams

It is time gaming journalism takes its rightful place as proper sources and not fanboys giving free advertising. If you wish to support writers like Carl please use the links below. https://www.paypal.me/WCW https://www.patreon.com/CarlWilliams