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Atari 2600 Hacks

Posted by michael on from the things-man-was-not-meant-to-know dept.

olclops writes "Check out this guy's projects. He's an Atari 2600 programmer who's created, among other things, a cartridge that uses the 2600's sound generators to turn your atari into a full polyphonic synthesizer! The demos sound insane. Imagine being able to play console-perfect pitfall music from an atari hooked up to an amp. His other games look cool, too. Apparently, he'll be at the Classic Gaming Expo next weekend."

4 of 107 comments (clear)

  1. Why? by Kaz+Riprock · · Score: 2, Insightful

    For some things, "Because you can." just really isn't a good answer.

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    Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
  2. Re:very cool by faeryman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh yeah..I don't mean that only this particular 'game' runs in 128 bytes (I assume all the 2600 games did), but rather that it's so small by today's standards but can support something useable. I think it's really cool when people make projects on old systems like this since it's such a difference from computers with a gig of RAM.

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    faeryman
  3. At least pick good music by jvmatthe · · Score: 3, Insightful
    ...console-perfect pitfall music...
    Yeesh. That's a terrible choice. The 'music' in Pitfall consisted mostly of Pitfall Harry doing a Tarzan yodel over on a vine, right? Maybe there was some bit of music when you started the game, but it was minimal.

    If you want to talk real Atari 2600 music, then at least pick something cool like California Games ('Louie, Louie' and 'Wipeout') or BMX Airmaster. Heck, even Pressure Cooker had a catchy freakin' tune that puts Pitfall to shame.

    If by Pitfall you really mean Pitfall II, then that wasn't really the Atari 2600 doing all the sound. That was a special chip on the cartridge (similar to the hack done with Ballblazer on the Atari 7800) that was handlin the cool music. It was awesome, that I'll admit, but it really isn't the 2600 doing the work and the emulators that support it had to add specific support for that particular cartridge to make the music work correctly.

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    Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
  4. i like it... by mattbland · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and from the majority of comments on here i can see that most of you don't. you don't see the point. he ddi this for his own enjoyment. to make a machine to something it wasn't designed to. to push the bounderies.

    most of the comments on this story have been trolls, or sad people on about why does this belong here. it belongs because it's cool.

    slashdot may be news for nerds and stuff that matters, but stuff appears on slashdot also because of it's encentric appeal or sheer coolness. don't forget it.

    btw, i had a 2600 with star raiders back in the early eighties. it came with one of those 'keyboard' pads, which i tried to plug into my spectrum and monitor the outputs so that i could use it with a game i was writing. i got nothing out of it that the machine could read, so i'm actaully glad that someone used them for something else apart from the one or two games that needed them.

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