In what language were programmed the Atari 2600 games in 1982?

[lorillo19]

Hi,

my name is Francisco Montes, I live in France. I hope you will understand my bad english.

I would like to know in what language were programmed the Atari 2600 commercial games in 1982 ?

Is it possible to get the program from a "*.bin" file ? I am looking for this program : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-rubik-s-cube-3-d_11878.html

Thank you very much for reading.

 

[Papa]

Pretty sure they used assembly and big ol' work stations like what is seen in a video of Atlantis during programming.

 

 

Starting at 6:08 you get a view of a programming workstation from the eighties. Remember them? I doooooooooooo! *zzzzzaaap

[+SpiceWare]

I would like to know in what language were programmed the Atari 2600 commercial games in 1982 ?

6502 assembly language. batari BASIC is a recent(2005 I think) creation.

 

Is it possible to get the program from a "*.bin" file ? I am looking for this program : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-rubik-s-cube-3-d_11878.html

Distella can be used to convert a BIN file into source code.

 

Do note that you'll end up with generic labels such as LF000 for the start of the cartridge. This is because none of the programmer's original labels are saved in the BIN file.

 

As such, it's up to you to decipher the code and replace the labels with ones that are more meaningful, like I was doing with Warlords before I decided it would be better to roll my own version of Warlords rather than hack it to add new features like multi-ball and the dragon.

[lorillo19]

Thank you Papa and SpiceWare for yours rapid and fair answers.

I hope you understand my bad english.

[Mr SQL]

Pretty sure they used assembly and big ol' work stations like what is seen in a video of Atlantis during programming.

 

 

Starting at 6:08 you get a view of a programming workstation from the eighties. Remember them? I doooooooooooo! *zzzzzaaap

 

LOL! 9:16 in the video cracked me up: A new company called Arcadia is frighteningly using cassettes.

 

lorillo programming in Assembly and modern BASIC are not the only options, you can use vintage Tiny BASIC and cassettes like Arcadia frighteningly did

[Nukey Shay]

In fact, they used the native AppleII monitor and its cassette port to create their games. Cheap method of cross-assembly, but effective at the time.

 

Rough disassembly of the binary. You should be able to move around (isolated) LFxxx labeled portions, but take caution for the IFxxx sections - these are routines that are arrived via indirect jump...and this program expects that the MSB's of each address matches what is "hard-coded" there (the MSB's are not stored in a table like the LSB's). Relocating any of these would require you to alter the comparison value before the indirect jump...or to add a table holding the MSB's.

R_Cube3D.asm

[Gip-Gip]

Is it possible to get the program from a "*.bin" file ? I am looking for this program : http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-rubik-s-cube-3-d_11878.html

 

 

 

Besides the methods given above, it's entirely possible(if you are completely insane) to read the files directly with a hex editor and transcribe them yourself . Here is a good reference for the 6502 assembly language/opcode list.

[lorillo19]

Thank you very much Gip-Gip !