jbanes

FYI, if you can't get to the site, blame these guys. Awesome mod, BTW.

Thanks for that. I have been lurking the forums for a few days trying to find if someone else had asked my same question, but didn't find it. I'm currently reading the thread beginning to end. Say what? It ain't hard to find a VCS. 966644[/snapback] Perhaps I should have phrased that a bit better. Just like the NES, there are plenty of used VCSes lying around in various states of disrepair. Some are in excellent condition, others need work or are missing parts. (e.g. A missing power block is the reason why my old Nintendo sits in the closet.) At the end of the day, however, your average person is never going to have an opportunity to play some of these games without explicitly seeking out the old hardware to play them. Being that most game developers create games for others to enjoy, the 2600 severely limits the market to enthusiasts. Again, this is not a bad thing, just a very interesting choice.

Since this is bound to be an emotionally charged question, allow me to present a few credentials before I ask it. /ME holds hands up in the air as I step closer and carefully deposit two links on the ground. Java Games in 4K Gaming Console (Work in Progress) Now that I've (hopefully) established that I am also a classic gaming developer of sorts with a vested interest in the answer, I'd like to ask you guys what drives you to create new games for the Atari 2600? "Riding the beam" was always a pain, and the actual hardware hasn't been produced in well over a decade. At the same time, there are plenty of hardware devices still being produced that can offer the same challenges in design as the 2600 did. For example, I myself have participated in the Java 4K contest because I truly enjoy the challenge of trying to fit a fun game into 4K. Yet at the same time, the work I and others are doing also pushes the state of software technology with inventions like SuperPackME (a technology that has uses on Cell Phones and other embedded platforms). So is developing for the Atari just nastolgia, or does it run deeper than that? Does that interest potentially extend to developing games on a new platform that isn't running the $300/console rat race? Or is there something specific about the Atari that holds your interest over other consoles? Just to give a little background, I recently bumped into this site via Google, and I can't help but be impressed by the sheer size of the development community. I wouldn't have expected to find such a huge following for hardware that can be so difficult to obtain. I'm not against the idea of homebrewing these carts, just exceedingly curious as to the feelings and drives behind them. Thank you in advance for your answers. I'm sure they'll be very interesting. :-) P.S. Kudos on the Thrust cart! That was one of my favorite games in the earlier days of Linux. It's really too bad it didn't make it into the FB2. Edit: It occurs to me that I should have used the term "Racing the beam" rather than "riding the beam". I've heard both applied (though for some odd reason the latter seems to stick with me more; must be too much Tron ), but "racing" is probably more correct.