Atari 2600 Game Development

gjb6676 writes "An article over at ExtremeTech is covering recent game development projects on the Atari 2600. The amount of cartridge space they have to work with is a sobering thought: 'A two-word file in Word 2002, for example, requires 20 Kbytes. "That's 20 Kbytes, five times the amount of (ROM) space developers had to work with in the 2600.'"

Comments

I think..

[Equidist]

I think that says more about Word 2002 than it does about the 2600.

thats microsoft....

[tadheckaman]

20KB of data for a 2 word document? thats insane. .TXT is best!

Re:thats microsoft....

[andrew_0812]

Actually, the two words and all formatting only takes about 500 bytes. The 19.5KB is data user tracking, DMCA signatures, and EULA monitoring devices.

Re:oo.o rules

[DougJohnson]

So this means you could fit exactly 1 whole empty OO.o file on a 2600 cartridge.... Great!

Custer's Revenge

[use_compress]

Why not start porting some of the 2600 games to the X-Box? I'm still waiting for Custer's Revenge 2!

Re:Custer's Revenge

[luzrek]

Since a 2 word Word 2002 document takes 20kB I don't think that the Xbox has enough resources for the MS version of a 2600 game.

Sobering thought?

[Sloppy]

Is the "sobering thought" really the 2600's limit, or is it MS Word's docu-bloat? Remember that Moore's Law doesn't get you anything if Gates' Law is also in effect.

The trick is to exploit Moore's Law, and avoid Gates. Then technology becomes a Good Thing.

4K

[grub]

Can't fit much pr0n in 4K.

Sequels to 2600 games I want to see

[Marco_polo]

Defender 2 'the revenge'
space invaders 'EXTREME'
Atari Football 2003
Night Driver with Infrared Goggles
and Combat: Gulf War

duck pond

[twiggy]

as long as they code "duck pond" and put it in a cartridge so I can play it in my old Intellivision with the Atari adapter, I'll be happy...

mmmm, duck pond.. now with new color graphics!

When I was a youngin'

[Anonymous Coward]

We paid a buck a byte, and we liked it! None of them fancy schmancy kilobytes, and most definately not 20 of em! With 20 of em, we could've written programs to launch people to the moon, and get em back safely again! And still had room to fit the bible in too! Heck, we could've done that in 10! You kids these days and your fancy megabytes, and gigabytes... I bet you've never had to walk to and from school up hill in both directions, either.

I suppose...

[Call Me Black Cloud]

...it also depends on how long the words are.

Re:oo.o rules

[gewalker]

The bloat for a Word document is no doubt completely justified by its ability to host a virus capable of bring the Internet to its knees.
The 4K Atari cartridge ROM is only capable of enabling you to play a silly game on your television.

20kb

[istartedi]

Well, if they didn't append your medical records to every Word file, it really wouldn't be that bad. :)

Re:Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine that, programmers having to write efficient code for a change.

That would be great --- imagine it: every piece of software would take ten times as long to write and a hundred times as long to debug, and I'd see all the benefit of 17KB extra space on my 100GB hard drive. Where can I sign up to this marvellous dream?

Massively Parallel Word-Processing Supercomputer!

[Tsar]

"A two-word file in Word 2002, for example, requires 20 Kbytes."

Did anyone else read that and think "10,240-BIT WORDS? What kind of workstation is that running on?"

Re:oo.o rules

[bloo9298]

If you want efficiency, use HTML.

*Choke*. You're under 25, right?

My Project

[Wolfier]

I and my team is still making a game for the abacus. It'll be very exciting and its name will be "Dude Abacus Forever"

Doom has been ported to everythinge else...

[Dugsmyname]

Doom has been ported to everythinge else, I can't wait to see the 4Kb version on the Atari 2600.

Support until 1997!

[bloo9298]

From the article:

The Atari 2600 was released in 1977, discontinued in 1984, and support was dropped in 1997, according to Machine-Room.org, a site tracking old computer systems.

Support until 1997? Microsoft won't want us to know about companies that do that. My next OS will be from Atari! Or maybe an Amiga, because it looks there'll be a company called Amiga for the rest of my lifetime.

4K Goatsex could work!

[YetAnotherName]

Finally ... the only safe way to view the goatse.cx picture.

Re:No offense but. .

[Bastian]

at 18kb for the Word *.doc version of my term paper and 8kb for the OpenOffice *.sxw version, I don't think either of them would fit on an Atari 2600 cart.

Granted, the OpenOffice file is merely bloated while the Word one is reminiscent of the restauraunt scene in Monty Python's The Meanting of Life.

Re:Where will the programmers come from?

[Dark Lord Seth]

Assembly is King.

Oh noes! 14 year old script kiddies recruited by Al-Queada are going to DDOS the White House using NETBIOS over TCP/IP exploits they found out when portscanning stuff with NANOPROBES who all buffer overflowed million of WindowsXP UNIVERSAL PLUG AND PLAY ports while zip disks all over the world are DYING along with BSD! Oh woe is me! Fortunately, our New Age online Messiah Steve Gibson will save us with his 1337 routers that can stop DDoSes and his advanced godlike ASM programming skills! HUZZAH FOR LORD GIBSON!

Word? D'oh!

[mraymer]

Yeah, we've all heard that MS leans toward bloatware. Well, rightly so... the target market for Word XP is computers with more than enough disk space for 20K files. But here's a song from back in the day... It may be out of date in the technical aspects, but its message rings clear. ;)

Nine-tenths of a gig,
Biggest ever seen,
God this program's big:
MS Word 15!
Comes on 10 CD's,
And requires -- Damn!
Word is fine, but jeez:
60 megs of RAM!?

Oh, Microsoft, Microsoft, bloatware all the way!
I've sat here installing Word since breakfast yesterday.
Oh, Microsoft, Microsoft, moderation please!
Guess you hadn't noticed -- 4-gig drives don't grow on trees!