Could the Atari 2600 be more powerful than we thought?

[rhindlethereddragon]

It's easy to say, when looking at game such as Pac Man and many other games leading up to the crash that the Atari was relatively weak in comparison to other systems. But lately, I've been discovering a slew of games that I've never seen before due to moving on from the Atari in 1982. And judging by these later games, it now seems like there was nothing the Atari 2600 COULDN'T do. 3d? No problem (survival run & others) Verticle and side scrolling shooters? No problem.

 

But the game that really got me thinking the Atari 2600 was under-estimated was DEFENDER II. Nobody dreamed in 1981 the Atari could do such graphics, and by the time it (and a lot of other impressive games) came out, people had already moved on from the 2600 to a colecovision or home computer. I wonder how they got such graphics from this machine on Defender ii?

[+save2600]

Besides the architecture: brilliant, passionate, creative and patient programmers are behind some of the greatest 2600 feats

[rhindlethereddragon]

Besides the architecture: brilliant, passionate, creative and patient programmers are behind some of the greatest 2600 feats

 

I know that in the later years, some carts were released with extra RAM which greatly improved the capabilities of the system....... Defender II HAS to be one of them!

[+save2600]

Keep on searching buddy! There's the Starpath Supercharger, CBS extra RAM Plus carts and the Parker Bros. proprietary bank switching techniques also.

 

Atari 2600 does rock the free world!

[toymailman]

Yes, Defender II (aka Stargate) has the expanded RAM. The later Atari titles used a SARA (or Superchip). Below is the list of games that had this.

 

Crystal Castles

Dark Chambers

Defender II

Desert Falcon

Dig Dug

Fatal Run - PAL

Jr. Pac-Man

KLAX - PAL

Millipede

Off the Wall

Radar Lock

Secret Quest

Sprintmaster

Stargate

Super Football

 

We are playing Secret Quest in the HSC this week and it is great!

[Miss 2600]

Besides the architecture: brilliant, passionate, creative and patient programmers are behind some of the greatest 2600 feats

 

Aside from the extra RAM and stuff, programmers back in the day no doubt had strict deadlines to get their games out while the iron was hot (especially for games like Pac-Man and E.T.) so as to sell as many copies as possible. Patience and creativity probably had to take a backseat sometimes.

[+save2600]

Aside from the extra RAM and stuff, programmers back in the day no doubt had strict deadlines to get their games out while the iron was hot (especially for games like Pac-Man and E.T.) so as to sell as many copies as possible. Patience and creativity probably had to take a backseat sometimes.

For sure! Which is why my phrasing pays homage to the later homebrew developers Some incredible stuff has been released within the past 15 year for the 2600. Hopefully more to come!

[rhindlethereddragon]

Aside from the extra RAM and stuff, programmers back in the day no doubt had strict deadlines to get their games out while the iron was hot (especially for games like Pac-Man and E.T.) so as to sell as many copies as possible. Patience and creativity probably had to take a backseat sometimes.

For sure! Which is why my phrasing pays homage to the later homebrew developers Some incredible stuff has been released within the past 15 year for the 2600. Hopefully more to come!

 

Just out of curiosity, do homebrew programmers have anything like the SARA chip to work with these days?

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Just out of curiosity, do homebrew programmers have anything like the SARA chip to work with these days?

We could use it, but AFAIK no released homebrew uses extra RAM yet.

[R.O.T.S]

I suppose with so little memory available there were tricks in programming that allowed designers to cut corners,how much extra RAM was in Defender II?

I remember reading an article not so long back claiming that Pacman on the Atari2600 was so difficult to make that its programmers had to use every programming trick they new to create it,so that it was quite advanced for its time. ,if i come across this hilarious article again i wil add a link to it.

[maiki]

The question is - is it still Atari 2600 game when you start adding extra RAM, bankswitching... For sure the only hardcore genuine game would be the one that fits the system specs from 1977 - meaning the real professional Atari 2600 coder wants to make a game that fits into 4k ROM 128 bytes RAM full stop.

 

I guess Pitfall I is one of those masterpieces I'm talking about...

[Algus]

Have you seen A-VCS-Tec Challenge? Its homebrew so it doesn't represent the typical kind of game that was coming out in the Atari 2600's heyday but its visuals are eye-popping.

 

Also what is that game that managed to have an actual starfield? That looked impressive as hell as well and IIRC it did come out during the 2600's commercial lifetime

[Thomas Jentzsch]

The question is - is it still Atari 2600 game when you start adding extra RAM, bankswitching... For sure the only hardcore genuine game would be the one that fits the system specs from 1977 - meaning the real professional Atari 2600 coder wants to make a game that fits into 4k ROM 128 bytes RAM full stop.

Actually 2k (1977 standard)

[OldAtarian]

The one that really gets me is Pete Rose Baseball. That game looks amazing considering the system it is running on.

[ibogost]

The question is - is it still Atari 2600 game when you start adding extra RAM, bankswitching... For sure the only hardcore genuine game would be the one that fits the system specs from 1977 - meaning the real professional Atari 2600 coder wants to make a game that fits into 4k ROM 128 bytes RAM full stop.

Actually 2k (1977 standard)

 

I prefer to think that there are multiple aesthetics for VCS games. Some are keyed to specific moments in the machine's history, such as the 1977 2k period, or the Activision/Imagic era, or the 8k bankswitched game. Others focus on trying new approaches that were never viable or obvious during the machine's commercial life, such as the contemporary demake, and so forth.

 

If I dare quote myself (from Racing the Beam), here's a plausible summary of why the 2600 feels so powerful:

 

"So much was possible on the Atari VCS, and not because it was a powerful computer. It wasn’t powerful at all. Rather, so much was possible because the machine was so simple. The very few things it could do well—drawing a few movable objects on the screen one line at a time while uttering sounds using square waves and noise—could be put together in a wide variety of ways to achieve surprising results."

Edited November 27, 2010 by ibogost

[+batari]

Just out of curiosity, do homebrew programmers have anything like the SARA chip to work with these days?

We could use it, but AFAIK no released homebrew uses extra RAM yet.

Cave-in does.

[ZylonBane]

And judging by these later games, it now seems like there was nothing the Atari 2600 COULDN'T do. 3d? No problem (survival run & others) Verticle and side scrolling shooters? No problem.

Spoken like someone who doesn't have a clue how much effort it takes to do these things.

[+RevEng]

The question is - is it still Atari 2600 game when you start adding extra RAM, bankswitching... For sure the only hardcore genuine game would be the one that fits the system specs from 1977 - meaning the real professional Atari 2600 coder wants to make a game that fits into 4k ROM 128 bytes RAM full stop.

Actually 2k (1977 standard)

Yup.

 

And the Real Professional Atari 2600 Coder wants to make a game using only techniques documented or known from 1977 too.

 

Its still a 2600 game when you add bankswitching and extra ram. Neither of these things is a panacea; you're still pushing everything through TIA and you're still squeezing code pieces into the jigsaw puzzle of your kernel.

 

IMO The Real 2600 Homebrewer uses bankswitching or sc ram when he wants; not as a cheat, but to deliver an experience that wouldn't have been possible without them.

[OldAtarian]

The question is - is it still Atari 2600 game when you start adding extra RAM, bankswitching... For sure the only hardcore genuine game would be the one that fits the system specs from 1977 - meaning the real professional Atari 2600 coder wants to make a game that fits into 4k ROM 128 bytes RAM full stop.

Actually 2k (1977 standard)

 

I prefer to think that there are multiple aesthetics for VCS games. Some are keyed to specific moments in the machine's history, such as the 1977 2k period, or the Activision/Imagic era, or the 8k bankswitched game. Others focus on trying new approaches that were never viable or obvious during the machine's commercial life, such as the contemporary demake, and so forth.

 

If I dare quote myself (from Racing the Beam), here's a plausible summary of why the 2600 feels so powerful:

 

"So much was possible on the Atari VCS, and not because it was a powerful computer. It wasn’t powerful at all. Rather, so much was possible because the machine was so simple. The very few things it could do well—drawing a few movable objects on the screen one line at a time while uttering sounds using square waves and noise—could be put together in a wide variety of ways to achieve surprising results."

 

So simple? Then why does everyone complain about hard it is to develop for?

[Silntdoogood]

(To my knowledge) That's why Arcadia made the Supercharger. A lot of the limitation is in the cart, not the system. They made a giant friggan cart unit. Seeing the game play, graphics, and sounds that come off these games played on the Atari system is astounding.

[ibogost]

So simple? Then why does everyone complain about hard it is to develop for?

 

No, no the design of the system was simple. That's also what makes it hard to program!

 

Although truth be told, it's mostly weird to program, rather than hard.

[rhindlethereddragon]

Besides the architecture: brilliant, passionate, creative and patient programmers are behind some of the greatest 2600 feats

 

Aside from the extra RAM and stuff, programmers back in the day no doubt had strict deadlines to get their games out while the iron was hot (especially for games like Pac-Man and E.T.) so as to sell as many copies as possible. Patience and creativity probably had to take a backseat sometimes.

I always wondered when they had such deadlines (as they did with Pac Man) why they didn't put "teams" of programmers working around the clock on a game, instead of assigning the game to one programmer to finish it all.

[ZylonBane]

I always wondered when they had such deadlines (as they did with Pac Man) why they didn't put "teams" of programmers working around the clock on a game, instead of assigning the game to one programmer to finish it all.

Because 99% of the time, that's not how 2600 coding works.

[Rex Dart]

I always wondered when they had such deadlines (as they did with Pac Man) why they didn't put "teams" of programmers working around the clock on a game, instead of assigning the game to one programmer to finish it all.

Because 99% of the time, that's not how 2600 coding works.

 

 

Yeah, but surely there are times when a second pair of eyes proofreading your code could yield a "hey, this bit is crap, why don't you try ______ instead", right?

I figure Atari didn't do this because if you put two guys working on Pac-Man, you're wasting precious man-hours that the second guy could spend churning out E.T.

[Brian O]

I always wondered when they had such deadlines (as they did with Pac Man) why they didn't put "teams" of programmers working around the clock on a game, instead of assigning the game to one programmer to finish it all.

Because 99% of the time, that's not how 2600 coding works.

 

 

Yeah, but surely there are times when a second pair of eyes proofreading your code could yield a "hey, this bit is crap, why don't you try ______ instead", right?

I figure Atari didn't do this because if you put two guys working on Pac-Man, you're wasting precious man-hours that the second guy could spend churning out E.T.

 

I think you can just chalk it up to being a different time back then. Most coin-op games were developed by single-person teams as well, I believe, and I think the console game development followed this process. I'm sure there was some method of QA, however. Most coin-op guys left the game up for other developers / employees to play, and would know if they were on to something if there was internal demand for the game. They'd also get feedback on their games from other employees. I would imagine the console game developers had a similar process. But I could be wrong.

 

Doing it that way also kept costs down, too. One person would create the art, music, code, etc., all for the same salary as a typical engineer was making at the time, and no royalties.

 

-B