Despite the play, the Atari 2600 version is preferred

[Andromeda Stardust]

One thing that has always intrigued me with good 2600 arcade ports, even to this day it the technical restraints developers had to face. Later games like Pole Position, Dig Dug or Gravitar would never seem possible with hardware designed for such limited shelf life in 1977, yet it's pulled it off very well. I play 2600 games always with that in mind.

I just want to know how they pulled off Defender II/Stargate so well. It's a phenomenal Atari 2600 game with all the effects and it seems nary a flicker.

Exploiing the technical constraints of the system is the only way to program. The fact that you can race the beam and are required to set up every scanline really makes it so you have to exploit the kernel. As crappy as the game is claimed to be, I think Pacman was a milestone by exploiting the playfield using mid-screen writes to generate an asymmetric screen.

 

But the use of DPC+ ARM to create games like Chetiry or Space Rocks is truly legendary. I love some of the amazing games that programmers churn out.