Angry Birds on the Atari 2600

[Dr Manhattan]

Let's talk about this for a moment.

 

Would you be open to the idea of an Angry Birds game on the Atari 2600? Do you think the 2600 could support such a game? How would it work? What would it look like? Give me your best speculation on this subject. I'm very interested to hear your replies.

 

IMO, I think a talented homebrew developer could pull this one off. It might even be really fun too.

[roberto]

First of all, I'd definitely go with paddle controllers to choose the angle of the slingshot instead of joysticks!

 

Seriously though, while Angry Birds is really a straightforward concept, I am not sure the VCS could handle a physics based game like this, despite its simplicity. Is there any game for the 2600 showing some realistic physics with several objects colliding and bouncing with each other?

[lucifershalo]

Human Cannonball....

[GroovyBee]

Is there any game for the 2600 showing some realistic physics with several objects colliding and bouncing with each other?

 

How about the homebrew Thrust?

[purduecrum]

Some type of "tank wars" game? Perhaps a canyon bomber hack?

[Rybags]

I actually put some thought about a computer version. It'd need much more simplified physics.

 

For the 2600, I imagine some sort of hybrid of Angry Birds, Breakout and Boulder Dash algorithms.

 

The destruction/deformation could be a combination of objects moving/reacting to impact and falling due to creation of voids below them. Have different object types (just like the real thing) so you can have all manner of reactions without too much programming headaches.

 

So, things occur on some arbitrary "character boundaries" like Boulder Dash, but you still get some illusion of fluid motion, the objects could move in partial character steps in between stops.

[solidcorp]

Great idea! and I totally agree with the paddle controls.

 

It certainly could be done on a larger cartridge with more RAM. Simple rigid body dynamics are not that complicated but given 128 bytes, you can't store many positions, orientations, velocities, constraints... Even with a simplified system of circles instead of rectangles, the RAM gets full too fast. I'm not exactly sure how you would draw so many discrete elements but I am sure that there are several people here who could do it well.

[mtshark7]

I'd like to see Angry Birds released as a homebrew game, I'd buy it!

[Rybags]

I can't see the point of paddles. With joystick you can just provide a cursor and it's relationship to the slingshot can give angle and velocity. With paddle you can control angle only.

 

With either, you can use the button for velocity control but IMO using a paddle with such a game would produce a "detached" feeling for the player.

 

How about mouse? 2600 can read a mouse just as easily as a 7800 or 8-bitter.

And it gives the best feel.

A touch tablet would be a close second.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

How about mouse? 2600 can read a mouse just as easily as a 7800 or 8-bitter.

That's not exactly true. Like for a paddle, you have to poll the controller constantly. Just with two axis instead of just one and at a higher frequency and with somewhat more complex code.

 

To be able to do this, you have to make the display kernel quite simple.

[Syntaxerror999]

The history of Atari ports is that the game captures the essence of the game. Perhaps an angry birds port could be a fusion of breakout, human cannonball, and air-sea battle. Pigs are buried under a mound in little gaps and you have to chisel your way to them in the fewest amount of birds. The gaps and number of pigs could be random. And various settings could be avalible for the birds.

[Rex Dart]

I can't see the point of paddles. With joystick you can just provide a cursor and it's relationship to the slingshot can give angle and velocity. With paddle you can control angle only.

 

Ever play Worms? Your firing controls are just putting in an angle (paddle's dial for Birds 2600) and holding down the Fire button until the desired strength's reached (paddle button for Birds 2600).

Worms has been fairly successful with this scheme.

[FireStar]

There's an LCD game version of angry birds, you could take some ideas from it for your simplification.

[Tin_Lunchbox]

I don't think Angry Birds per se could be done on the 2600/VCS, but one could possibly do some drastic simplification.

 

One could do a game in which a few varieties of bird weapons were launched at sequential structures in order to collapse the structures to crush pig targets hiding within. For aiming the birds, I think Imagic's Trick Shot pool game would be instructive to look at for ideas. The collapsing of the structures would probably have to be more Tetris style collapse than the relatively-advanced goings on in Angry Birds. What I mean is that you knock out some blocks with your bird and the ones above drop.

 

Well, perhaps what I just said means I think Angry Birds could be done on the 2600/VCS.

[Underball]

I'm amazed that a thread about angry birds anywhere on the internet has gone on this long without someone making a joyless "I liked angry birds better 10 years ago when it was *insert name of obscure java based brick breaker type game*!"

 

Lol

[Zap!]

I haven't played it in eons, but isn't Angry Birds like that old Xonox double ender game Artillery Duel? A decade later in the early 90's, I also played a PC gamed called Scorched Earth that was similar, at least going on memory.

[Cynicaster]

I'm amazed that a thread about angry birds anywhere on the internet has gone on this long without someone making a joyless "I liked angry birds better 10 years ago when it was *insert name of obscure java based brick breaker type game*!"

 

Lol

 

Alright, I'll play.

 

I liked Angry Birds better when it didn't exist.

 

I've never seen so much hype and talk over something so dull in my entire life.

 

Anyway, sorry to interrupt...

[Master Phruby]

Just like the iPad made computing simple enough for grandma to use, Angry Birds made video games easy enough for the masses to play.

Edited March 25, 2012 by Master Phruby

[Atari2600Lives]

Cool idea

[Matthew]

There is only a handful of programmers here that could pull this off, if it is possible at all.

 

Like solidcorp already said, keeping track of all those objects (position, angle, rotation, velocity...etc) would take up a lot of memory. Updating that many object simultaneous would be processor intensive too.

 

This game often lags my phone 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 based CPU core with a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU, an atari 2600 doesn't have a hope.

 

I don't think this is possible, but then again, with games like Thrust, Star Castle and Boulder Dash having been developed, who knows.

Edited March 25, 2012 by Matthew

[Godzilla]

http://toomuchgaming.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/angry-birds-tiger-electronics.jpg

 

http://www.amazon.com/ANGRY-BIRDS-Electronic-Handheld-Game/dp/B006SBCTN6

 

http://technabob.com/blog/2011/12/11/angry-birds-psp-handheld/

[Tjoppen]

Some kind of demake is definately possible, probably involving greatly simplified physics (rigid body would probably be too costly). I would call it Irate Fowl.

[Godzilla]

perturbed (poultry/pidgeons/peacocks)

[tremoloman2006]

I feel Angry Birds is an overhyped ripoff of "Crush The Castle", which is arguably a superior game.

CTC would be easier to pull off due to the ease of controls and no need for a touch screen.

 

Press fire button to launch, press fire button again to release!

 

Give it a shot and see what you think:

http://armorgames.co...rush-the-castle

[BladeJunker]

I'm open to Angry Birds for the 2600. Crush The Castle may be better but Angry Birds taps into that mascot appeal that brings people in so effectively, if your mascot sucks obviously it doesn't work(See the 90s and the animal platformer explosion.).

 

Control definitely has plenty of options and setups, no reason all controller types couldn't be supported. The true deal breaker is the physics simulation.

 

I'd say approximation of effect would be a good route as in predefined animation of rectangles falling over or rotation where you let more standard sprite collision methods influence the movement of the pillars rotation clockwise or counter-clockwise. There would still be a physics simulation but most of the more heavy calculations of so many objects colliding with true physics math could be culled way down.

I'm not an expert but even if you use the most basic display kernel I really doubt the CPU could keep up effectively and you'd still lose any chance of character recognition in the sprites if for example the pillars are rendered with the Player objects and the birds and pigs end up being red and pink squares.

 

Thrust is a great example of physics in a 2600 game but there is only one ship with the rest of the game graphics being terrain so it has a lighter load in calculations to that of multi-pillared buildings getting hit by a projectile ijs.