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Atari 2600 Game Development

Posted by timothy on from the support-your-local-thriftstore dept.

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.'"

3 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. That's ongoing development, not news by lightspawn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out, for example, the homebrew projects at Atari Age.

  2. Rom Size by skintigh2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    '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.'

    Initially, games were 4KB. But there were also 8KB games (I believe on a single ROM, but I may be wrong) and with an extra chip in the cartridge to handle addressing games of 16KB could be squeezed in.

    For instance, Solaris, which was the best gane ever. http://skintigh.tripod.com/atari/solaris.html

    Less related: there were cartridges that I assume had 64 4KB roms. The first was a menu to select which of the games to play. I also assume this was done without permission of the copyright holders. Then there were tape drives...

  3. 2600 Homebrew Games Already Released by TheAlchemist · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is a fairly comprehensive list of the homebrew games that have been released for the 2600 in recent years:

    2600 Homebrew Search Results

    And here is a list of games that are currently in development for the various Atari consoles. This list changes pretty frequently, and there are some projects not yet listed as the authors aren't very far along with them (Yes, I know that last link is listed in the linked story, just including it here for the convenience):

    Titles In Development

    A list of Atari 2600 games that have been hacked to change the graphics, sounds, colors, and more!

    Atari 2600 Hacks

    And finally, many games that were only released in either NTSC or PAL formats have been modified to work with the other television standard. This is useful for people who have the ability (such as through a Cuttle Cart) to play these binaries on a real television:

    Atari 2600 TV Format Conversions

    Enjoy!