e1will

Hi all. Is there a good disassembly of Video Pinball around anyplace? I'd like to do a hack that would (1) vary the color scheme based on the score, (2) add a couple of digits onto the score counter, and (3) change the multipliers to hexadecimal (yes, really). I think it would be fun to have start at 0x instead of 1x, then increment up to "F" for a 15x multiplier. Fun, for me at least. --Will

Yeah, it's always cool seeing a Duck Attack mention! I just stumbled across that looking for something else, interestingly enough. Of course, any list that's limited to five Atari 2600 homebrews is guaranteed to miss out on a lot of great ones (Lady Bug, Juno First, Medieval Mayhem... Oystron's my current addiction.) I've been toying with the idea of writing a "2600 homebrew of the week" column someplace. Could keep that going for years just on what's already out there. --Will

Thanks!

Yeah, that was an odd comment... I never thought that either. The 2600 joystick was among the best controllers, IMO. Still, if they think the NES homebrew version controls better, it makes me curious to try it. --Will

Atari 2600 homebrews Halo 2600, Duck Attack!, Super 3D Portals, Mega Man 2600 and Evil Magician's Return all get a mention. http://www.1up.com/features/31-homebrew-games-worth-playing --Will

Atari 2600 homebrews Halo 2600, Duck Attack!, Super 3D Portals, Mega Man 2600 and Evil Magician's Return all get a mention. http://www.1up.com/features/31-homebrew-games-worth-playing --Will

My favorites are "It's Fucking Checkers" and "Gay French Mario Bros.". Yeah, those two are equally awesome.

I laugh every time I see that one. "Oh! I Say!™" "Tim Curry's Magic Board™" "Old-Timey Cop With A Stick™" - great stuff.

Interesting how he doesn't even use an actual screenshot of Adventure; in the original game the square is always the same color as the walls. Talk about misleading...

Excellent work, this is great.

Excellent job all! This rocks. --Will

Just a playful tribute to the original. No actual checks are done, according to the developer. --Will

FWIW, the 255-room limit in Adventure is fairly easy to overcome. I'm currently working on a 300+ room version that may end up with about 400 before I'm done. --Will

There's actually a sufficient range of inputs in the two joystick ports to handle four joysticks; you'd just need to custom-build them and code the game to understand the signals. You could even support more josyticks (six? eight?) with a little creativity. --Will

It would be entirely possible to design a WiFi-enabled peripheral that attaches to a joystick port that would allow you to play against someone over the Internet. Depending on the quality of your Internet connection, a turn-based game like chess would probably be better than, say, Warlords. It'd be a lot of work, but it's definitely possible. Similarly, you could design a WiFi-enabled cartridge. Heck, you could even design a "Twitter" cartridge that would display your Twitter feed as text that you could then shoot for points with a spaceship controlled by your joystick. The possibilities are endless. --Will

I love reading The Video Game Critic's reviews. He's kind of like Roger Ebert in a way... even when he's completely off-base, he's still interesting, and he's obviously got a passion for what he's doing. Plus, you have to give him props for covering homebrews, even if you disagree with some of his ratings (and you can probably guess at least one I disagree with.) The sheer breadth of his coverage is impressive... lots of games I'd never heard of, he takes the time to play and review. --Will

Ah, perfect! Thanks! --Will

Does anyone know the exact date Warlords for the 2600 was released? I know the year was 1981, does anyone know the month and day as well? --Will

Well, you're probably not going to like this... but I think it would be much better in color than monochrome.

Awesome, let me know if you find the Easter Egg! --Will

Heh. This is actually the project I'm working on now, so stay tuned. I decided to redo 3 of the 4 display kernels I had, so that's taking some time, but I should have something to play with before too long. --Will

I thought they did a pretty decent job de-olding Jeff Bridges, and it actually gave me a glimmer of hope that Bob Zemeckis might see that and reconsider doing Back to the Future IV with a 15-year-old Michael J. Fox. I did like the Ed Dillinger, Jr., bit, even if it was the tiniest of parts.

Racketboy.com has just posted a two-segment podcast on Atari 2600 homebrews Halo 2600 and Duck Attack! The very talented Ed Fries is the first guest and I'm the second. It's about 80 minutes long. Enjoy! http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2010/12/racketboy-podcast-19-%E2%80%93-atari-2600-homebrew.html --Will

Right next to the bronze statue, left side of the page. --Will

The excellent Atari 2600 homebrew game Medieval Mayhem is being featured on the front page of Wikipedia right now. --Will