sudoku for atari 2600?

[rubixcube]

is there a sudoku game for the atari 2600.

[rubixcube]

heres the website if you dont know what im talking about http://www.sudoku.com/

[Dusk2600]

i doubt soduku was in the us around atari's era, but someone might make one soon.....

[Jess Ragan]

I think it was, but it just wasn't popular enough to warrant a video game... and game systems weren't really powerful enough to make the concept work. I mean, Sudoku is Sudoku, but you've got to at least have crisp enough graphics to display the numbers. A scratch space for guesses also helps.

 

I dunno, maybe the game could have worked on the ColecoVision. It's got that numeric pad as well as a perfectly readable (if kind of ugly) font set.

 

JR

[Happy_Dude]

I can't find the thread now but there was a 2600 demo recently that had more than

enough digits displayed on screen to make a sudoku game possible.

[+batari]

I can't find the thread now but there was a 2600 demo recently that had more than

enough digits displayed on screen to make a sudoku game possible.

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=79626

[Atari-Jess]

Sudoku became popular in japan in 85, so it would have been very unlikely. Hell, there aren't even any Sudoku NES/SNES titles. (AFAIK)

[compacho]

I'm sorry, but when I read the topic title I laughed for a long time

[ninjarabbit]

Sounds like a homebrew project

[Student Driver]

Jess Ragan is right-- the game in its modern form debuted in the US in the late '70s in Dell puzzle magazines (also the same company and time frame responsible for kakuro), although the similar magic square puzzles have existed for hundreds of years... I just don't think it was terribly popular, and Dell magazines weren't as high-profile as Games Magazine. And AtariJess is right about it not becoming popular until 1985 in Japan. Interestingly, Wikipedia mentions a sudoku game published in Loadstar for the Commodore 64 in the late 80s, apparently the first electronic adaptation.

 

The problem of a "scratch area" could be eliminated by using the dot-marking technique: a 3x3 matrix of dots to represent each potential numeral in a box; turn the upper left dot on to show "1" could potentially belong, etc. Not sure if that's feasible on the 2600, but I think other consoles could handle it with ease... with a single row's scrolling, it'd be perfect for the "capabilities" of the Odyssey 2.

[Lord Thag]

Also, you don't have to have the scratch area. I have a couple of Sudoku LCD games that have no such features. It actually teaches you to be better at the puzzles. The hard part would be coding a puzzle generator that could make legit (One solution) sudokus. You could just go with premade puzzles, I guess, but there wouldn't be that many with the limited rom space of the 2600. I guess you could rotate 'em for variety, though.

 

I'd buy one if someone ever programs a homebrew.

Edited June 12, 2006 by Lord Thag

[snorlaxnut]

Interestingly, Wikipedia mentions a sudoku game published in Loadstar for the Commodore 64 in the late 80s, apparently the first electronic adaptation.

 

Digithunt

 

http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=12694&d=45&h=0

 

I think a sudoku game would be good on the Atari 8-bit computers instead. I don't think you can put that many different puzzles on a 2600 cart.

[supercat]

You could just go with premade puzzles, I guess, but there wouldn't be that many with the limited rom space of the 2600. I guess you could rotate 'em for variety, though.

 

There are a number of ways that a very large number of premade puzzles can be accommodated with a reasonable amount of ROM. The simplest approach is probably to use a seed-based random-number generator and then have a list of the seeds that generate valid puzzles. In addition, almost any valid puzzle can be easily transformed into 9!*3!^6*2 (about 34 billion) other valid puzzles through isomorphic transformations. If there were only a handful of puzzles, such transformations would be pretty recognizable. But if there's a decent pool of starting puzzles (say a hundred or so) that shouldn't be a problem.

[Schmead55]

ok, so who's gunna take the first step?

[Video]

Actually, Sudoku, if I remember right, was a 9x9 grid. Wasn't it? And the 2600 can handle 12 charactures in a row no problem at all. Many games do it, using BG images. Thing is, could you get a grid? I have an Idea for a grid even, using sprites themselves, it'd be one really big sprite, and rather than dreaw a line between the numbers, you'd draw a line under the numbers, so you'd have alternating colors for the grid.

 

Kind of hard to explain, but I could show a shoddy mockup if you wanted.

 

[edit] well, apparently, I can't, cause there's no way to browse the computer to get pictures.[/edit]

Edited June 18, 2006 by Video

[sega saturn x]

Sounds like a great intelly/coleco project

[xxl]

there is sudoku for 8bit atari:

http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=5141

 

routine to generate and check sudoku is 1,5 kb object code. i think sudoku is posible for a2600

Edited June 25, 2006 by xxl