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A Very 2600 Christmas


Ben_Larson

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It has come to my attention that there has been a disturbing lack of Atari holiday cheer 'round these parts in recent years. ;)

 

To rectify this situation, I have taken the liberty of embarking on a crash homebrew project which I am tentatively calling 'A Very 2600 Christmas'. Basically I am arranging a bunch of Christmas songs for the Atari 2600 using some of the music code I took out of Panky the Panda as a starting point.

 

I've got 4 songs done so far, which I am previewing here in this rom. The songs done so far are:

 

* Jingle Bells

* Deck the Halls

* Silent Night

* We Three Kings

 

Use joystick left right to change songs.

 

There's no visuals yet (literally it's just a black screen :) ), so I'm open to suggestions (or help!) in that regard. Let me know what you guys think...

very2600xmas.bin

Edited by Ben_Larson
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:thumbsup:

 

Very nice.

 

As far as images/animations, I would start with a main title screen that says "A Very 2600 Christmas" with a 2600 under a tree or a stocking w/ the Atari logo on it.

 

Moving left or right should take the user to the first song. I think a quick, looping animation should accompany each song:

 

-- Jingle Bells: An animation of a one-horse open sleigh riding across a snowy backdrop

-- Deck the Halls: Not sure what to use for this one...

-- Silent Night: Perhaps the nativity scene w/ a sparkling star above it

-- We Three Kings: An animation of the 3 wise men on camels walking through the desert following the star

 

Just my 2 cents :)

 

It's a really good start!

 

-B

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  • 2 weeks later...

It has come to my attention that there has been a disturbing lack of Atari holiday cheer 'round these parts in recent years. ;)

 

We tried to fix that last year, but had all sorts of issues that were finally resolved while working on Frantic. Namely we didn't know about the MAM bug which was causing all sorts of random crashing in Chun-Li*.

 

 

 

* of which you can see some screenshots of in the slides from my presentation last weekend. Check my site.

Edited by SpiceWare
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I kept it on Jingle Bells for background music while I work on stuff, and there was a couple of seconds of silence before it switched to Deck The Halls. I like the music, but it seems a bit weird changing octaves and channels like it does.

 

Yea, certain notes are only "in tune" in certain octaves, so some songs work better than others. Then you have certain songs which aren't doable period because they contain out-of-key notes (i.e. accidentals) - I actually started on What Child (aka Greensleeves), but had to give up on it for this reason.

 

I've tried to make some of the octave switching not so noticable but some songs work better than others. We Wish You a Merry Christmas is probably the worst offender so far in this regard... :)

 

The silence is on purpose, since it seemed kinda weird going straight into the next song...

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Ok I told myself when I started in October that December 1 was my deadline, so I think this may be the final version - for this year at least. ;)

 

Changes since last one:

 

1. Changed Jingle Bells to start on the verse instead of the chorus

2. Slowed down Adeste Fideles aka O Come All Ye Faithful

3. Added Good King Wenceslas

 

Here's the final track list:

 

1 - Jingle Bells

2 - Deck The Halls

3 - Silent Night

4 - We Three Kings

5 - Carol of the Bells

6 - Adeste Fideles

7 - Good King Wenceslas

8 - We Wish You A Merry Christmas

 

Enjoy!

very2600xmas.bin

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  • 2 years later...

Thanks for the bump, I missed this the first time. This is really fun. If Ben still looks at this maybe he would consider adding a couple more songs to make it a full length album. Here are some suggestions:

 

1. The First Noel

2. The Twelve Days of Christmas

3. Anything from the Christmas in the Stars Album (Maybe What would you get a Wookie for Christmas)

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