2600 with good music, also what is the best

[Shawn]

Ring Of Fire as the title screen tune? Ya, you can't beat the man in black!

 

[Colmino]

why not, actually would be nice to know every 2600 game with music

 

Every game?

 

A few games with single-voice music that I can recall:

 

Sneak 'n Peek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZsCDIfyh6A&t=0m5s A potentially fun game as long as you actually have two people.

 

Reactor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tn2hXDc5ZY&t=0m5s Also fun. Genuinely good arcade action. But mostly I remembered the music. I even recreated it on the Apple II at some point.

 

Venture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvmEhlAJGww&t=0m2s The arcade version of Venture - a very rare beast that I only saw fully functional once - left a permanent impression on me, it being the first game I ever experienced that had a robust soundtrack. The hallway music was particularly enchanting because it was such an unusual chord progression. When the game became available on the 2600, I was already braced for a downgrade, but the great hallway music was reduced to a repeating two-tone "tune" lasting 0.5 seconds in total. Still, there is something hypnotic about it. Speaking of the arcade version of Venture, incidentally, the opening theme (upon starting the game) never gets to play in its entirety, as it is quickly interrupted by the hallway music. Some time ago, I undertook to isolate the opening tune and permit it to play in full. This makes me the only person on the planet besides the composer ever to have heard the full tune.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Colmino

[G-type]

How about Journey the Escape... I think the little 8-bit rendition of Don't Stop Believing is kind of cute.

[GameGirl420]

Some of the later Activision games has good music such as..

 

 

Double Dragon

 

 

 

Ghostbusters

 

 

 

 

Catchy little tunes LOL

[masschamber]

 

Every game?

 

A few games with single-voice music that I can recall:

 

Sneak 'n Peek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZsCDIfyh6A&t=0m5s A potentially fun game as long as you actually have two people.

 

Reactor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tn2hXDc5ZY&t=0m5s Also fun. Genuinely good arcade action. But mostly I remembered the music. I even recreated it on the Apple II at some point.

 

Venture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvmEhlAJGww&t=0m2s The arcade version of Venture - a very rare beast that I only saw fully functional once - left a permanent impression on me, it being the first game I ever experienced that had a robust soundtrack. The hallway music was particularly enchanting because it was such an unusual chord progression. When the game became available on the 2600, I was already braced for a downgrade, but the great hallway music was reduced to a repeating two-tone "tune" lasting 0.5 seconds in total. Still, there is something hypnotic about it. Speaking of the arcade version of Venture, incidentally, the opening theme (upon starting the game) never gets to play in its entirety, as it is quickly interrupted by the hallway music. Some time ago, I undertook to isolate the opening tune and permit it to play in full. This makes me the only person on the planet besides the composer ever to have heard the full tune.

how many 2600 games do you think have music?

[iesposta]

The upcoming Zippy has amazing music.

Another example of an artist pulling out the best with very limited hardware ability.

 

This batari Basic tune is also brilliant:

underwater_delay4m.bas.bin

[Two-in-the-Belfry]

The music in Sorceror is okay...it would be better if it stopped once in awhile. It starts to sound like nails on a chalkboard after a few minutes.

https://youtu.be/jkT12XF2dB8

Pressure Cooker has some really catchy music.

https://youtu.be/P9ONGy1Xgvc

[+SpiceWare]

So David Crane came up with enclosing an extra chip for anything other than RAM, eg music?

Because later, companies like Nintendo and Sega did exactly the same.

 

 

Yep - it was called Display Processor Chip (DPC) and did more than just add music. It was a coprocessor that greatly streamlined sprite and other processing. An example, to update a multi-color sprite you might use a routine like this in a typical 2600 game:

   lda #SPRITEHEIGHT
   dcp SpriteTemp
   bcs DoDraw
   lda #0
   .byte $2C
DoDraw
   lda (GfxPtr),Y
   sta GRP0  ;+18 cycles
   lda (ColorPtr),y
   sta COLUP0 

---

That's known as DoDraw and takes 26 cycles of time. With DPC you could accomplish the same thing in 14 cycles with this bit of code:

   LDA DF0DATAW ; 4
   STA GRP0     ; 3
   LDA DF1DATA  ; 4
   STA COLUP0   ; 3

---

There's only 76 cycles of processing time per scanline so using DPC gives you time for additional updates of the video chip, which result in better graphics.

 

Here's an interview with David Crane where he talks about it and how the video game market crashed before they could utilize it in any other games. It would have been neat to see what else they could have made the 2600 do with it as there are features in DPC that were not used in Pitfall II.

[iesposta]

This is one of the best music chiptunes demos, in my opinion, written in an new early version of a tracker for 7800 games. Specifically for his 7800 game Salvo's Title Screen.

Since the 2600 uses the TIA like the 7800, I asked RevEng if it was easy to make a bin that plays the music on the 2600.

He said it wasn't too hard, and posted the Salvo theme music, proving that the mighty 2600 can do what sounds like the C64 and NES were doing 7 years later.

I made part a ringtone because I'm stil in disbelief that's the 2600's TIA, using no tricks, and it all sounds in tune.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/247042-tia-perceptual-tuning/?p=3429431

 

 

Paul Slocum's percussion and music demos are just are just as good.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I am big fan of the Star Fire music. Pauls Slocum rocks!

[ferghead]

The Super Cobra beginning and end stage themes are polyphonic and done well. Not sure if it counts since they're not through the entire game.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR-PjXIFHNQ

[chavert]

nice musics in coco bongo and up' n down.

[maiki]

Up 'n' Down? Are you serious? It is totally out of tune. Just compare it with the C64 version for example.

[chavert]

 

 

maiki: Up 'n' Down? Are you serious? It is totally out of tune. Just compare it with the C64 version for example.

 

 

I prefer the music on atari 2600.

[+Random Terrain]

We all know the 2600 had some limits on the sound hardware, but what games got decent music out of it . . .

 

batari Basic users can make their own music that isn't out of tune thanks to Visual batari Basic's Music and Sound Editor. I slapped this single-channel piece of junk together the other day:

 

tune_01_2016y_02m_06d_1109t.bin

 

I wouldn't use it in an actual game, but it's good enough for an example program. You could have some fun trying to make your own real music with both channels while using notes that are as close to in tune as you can get.