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Atari 2600 Lord of the Rings Discovered
TheAlchemist writes "Eighteen years ago a Lord of the Rings game appeared in a Parker Brothers catalog for the Atari 2600. Unfortunately, the game was never released, along with several other titles that appeared alongside it. Just in time for the first Lord of the Rings movie release next week, AtariAge.com has discovered a long lost prototype of this game, probably one of the most sought after 2600 vaporware titles. You can look at screenshots, a picture of the prototype box, the prototype cartridge, and download the binary image that you can then run in one of several Atari 2600 emulators. More information about the game can be gleaned here."
From the site :
A former Parker Brothers employee says this about the game: "You spent a lot of time roaming through similar-looking screens, and then the damn Nazgul would jump out and you'd run around like crazy. I forget most of the details. It was a competent but not stellar game I think."
Sure sounds dull... Not stellar? I hope this former employee isn't a developer. Last time a programmer told me his code was "competent but not stellar"... ouch!
Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end
In the world of atari the development costs were almost 0, so the only real risk was manufacturing cartridges that wouldn't sell -- thus it was somewhat common for games to be made but unreleased.
... Remember there was no art to be done, no music to be written ... just 4k of code :)
From what I know, usually 1 person was contracted to write the game, usually for a few thousand dollars
There was also lots of money to be made for a good game. Rick Mauer, was paid 11,000$ to make Space Invaders for the 2600. The game grossed over 100 million dollars! (source: despair 2000 calander:)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Let's see, do I want to wait six hours for a story, or do I want the site to be down so I cannot actually get the details of the story? Hmm, this sure is a hard decision!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some thoughts on Atari 2600...
The cool cover art on Atari games always made the crappy game graphics look even worse in comparison.
In the game Combat when you ran your tanks together they looked like they were having sex.
The game Adventure had a secret area.
The manual for Pitfall implied that there was a secret area at the end of the game. My friend and I spent many all nighters trying to get to the end and never found it.
There's a reasonably good documentary about the insanity inside Atari at scottw.com
* cough * sputter *
You said that with a straight face? Yes, art, yes, music, and yes, 4K of code, which constitues art in and of itself!
I =have= done 8-bit wide sprite animation, and it's not for sissies, bucko...