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The 2018 Atari Awards!


ZeroPage Homebrew

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Love this idea, behind it 100%. I had hoped someone would do something like this for years. I will definitely participate in any way possible.

 

My only concern, and this has already been mentioned, is the idea of having too many categories. Then it all just becomes like a participation trophy and thats just lame.

 

Speaking of trophies, will these awards have their very own iconic award statue? Possibly the community could vote on its design? Award shows have no merit without a nice trophy. While some may disagree, a trophy is a lot more impressive than a framed certificate that says A Winner Is You. They hold about as much weight as that certificate I got from Guam saying that I am a doctor.

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I definitely think that physical release is an important criterion for judging. So much work goes into the process of prepping a game for physical release that I think almost any game with a physical release is superior to a game that exists solely in the ether. Maybe physical releases are their own category?

 

Definitely should be actual "trophies" for these awards. I still have all of the "award carts" that Albert made for the old Stan Awards. They were super cool.

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Speaking of trophies, will these awards have their very own iconic award statue? Possibly the community could vote on its design? Award shows have no merit without a nice trophy. While some may disagree, a trophy is a lot more impressive than a framed certificate that says A Winner Is You. They hold about as much weight as that certificate I got from Guam saying that I am a doctor.

 

Definitely should be actual "trophies" for these awards. I still have all of the "award carts" that Albert made for the old Stan Awards. They were super cool.

We came up with an idea already (I think it was mentioned in one of the Zeropage Homebrew shows), but we are open to suggestions! Maybe one will be better than ours. ;-)

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Has the category of "Best Technical Achievement" for a specific platform been mentioned yet? I think that's an important one. There are some HB games on the 2600 that just don't seem physically possible, but they exist and it's amazing. I like this category idea because it will encourage talented devs to swing for the fences, to milk every bit of power out of our classic consoles, and be rewarded for their technical brilliance in the process.

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Definitely! "Best Technical Achievement" is a category under consideration as there have been some mind blowing audio/visual games coming out lately for the VCS!

 

Has the category of "Best Technical Achievement" for a specific platform been mentioned yet? I think that's an important one. There are some HB games on the 2600 that just don't seem physically possible, but they exist and it's amazing. I like this category idea because it will encourage talented devs to swing for the fences, to milk every bit of power out of our classic consoles, and be rewarded for their technical brilliance in the process.

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Has the category of "Best Technical Achievement" for a specific platform been mentioned yet? I think that's an important one. There are some HB games on the 2600 that just don't seem physically possible, but they exist and it's amazing. I like this category idea because it will encourage talented devs to swing for the fences, to milk every bit of power out of our classic consoles, and be rewarded for their technical brilliance in the process.

Are we talking about general technical stuff or specific games here?

 

The former, e.g. getting the ARM utilized for being used in games and designing optimized drivers for it (DPC+, CDF, BUS) is IMO a major technical achievement. In that context building games based upon this provided infrastructure is not a technical achievement.

 

Or do you mean the latter, games which utilize the given hardware in an exceptional way?

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Thanks for the list!. The ROMs for most of these are available with just a few exceptions.

Maybe you should compile and post a ROM pack with all available final/latest versions in January to make voting easier.

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I think links for where to download, purchase or watch footage of all the 2018 Atari Awards Nominees is a great idea! We'll make that happen in January when the nominees are announced for each category.

 

 

Thanks for the list!. The ROMs for most of these are available with just a few exceptions.

Maybe you should compile and post a ROM pack with all available final/latest versions in January to make voting easier.

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Yes, quite awesome actually. Very clever. Just not for me.

 

For my own projects, I am also sticking close to original hardware.

 

 

It seems there are roughly 3 ways to develop Homebrew-games for the Atari 2600:

  1. 6502 assembly only
  2. a combination or ARM and 6502 programming (DCP+, bus stuffing, etc.)
  3. batari BASIC (also supporting DCP+)

I think all 3 serve their own needs:

  • 6502-only is how they mostly developed games during the hey-days of Atari 2600. Except Pitfall II of course, which used DPC (I'm not sure if more games used additional processors back then)
  • ARM/DPC+ is a natural evolution in cartridge hardware and enables games that weren't possible in the early days
  • batari BASIC allows for fast game development and targets those who are new to software- and game-development (less steep learning curve)

Myself, I'm sticking to original hardware limits: 6502 only and a maximum of 4K (so not even using bank-switching). I also take ice-water baths and for breakfast I drink raw eggs, haha.

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I'm just going through the list and realised that i was wrong - many of the ROMs are not available for download.

 

EDIT:

 

Or are there any ROMs available at the Atari 2600 Homebrew FB group? Can't check as i don't use Facebook.

Only a few may not be available for download (for one reason or another - currently) and some are WIP with no ROM released (at this moment) but I added them to list in anticipation of a ROM release before the end of this year.

 

And yes, some ROMs have been posted thru Scott Dayton's "Atari 2600 Homebrew FB group" exclusively and not here at AA.

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Good! Keep them coming!

 

BTW - the list has been updated! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TYGgJaphZRQ31LvNfCHovEWYB-c_g3Ba/view?usp=sharing

Good Job!

 

2 games need additional info:

 

Baby is also available at itch.io for $1.

 

Kelly Kangaroo is made with batari Basic and according to the itch.io page it's still a WIP.

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But the recent spate of coprocessors on the cartridge is definitely Not a level playing field. You can't fairly compare a game with an on board high speed Arm chip doing bus stuffing and other computational assists to a vanilla game limited to just the 6507 and what it can do. Those should be two distinct categories at least.

Agreed. A separate category should be mandatory for these. Best Vanilla game, and best hardware enhanced game etc.

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