Atari 2600 Excellence Awards Announced

Thanks to AtariAge for its 2003 Stan's Atari Excellence Awards, commemorating "fascinating advancements in Homebrews, Hacks, Programming Technology, [and] Hardware" for the Atari 2600 in the last year. Highlights include Hack Of The Years for Adventure Plus ("an incredible example of taking a game you know by heart and giving it new life"), and Homebrew Of The Year for Star Fire ("an exceptional port that actually improves on its classic predecessor.")

Comments

NES equivilent?

[BTWR]

Now, don't get me wrong... I respect Atari, insomuch as perhaps without them we might not have the home videogame industry we have today. However, I have never enjoyed Atari as a fun system, personally. I've never been one for pretty graphics, but I remember even as a 3 year old in the 80s thinking the games were slow and ugly. For me, the first awesome system was the NES.

Is there an equivilent hacking/programming culture for the NES? That'd rule big time. I once saw an NES hack of Zelda, to create a sort of "third quest" but that's basically it. Anyone know of more?

Re:NES equivilent?

[bjb]

I think you have to realize two things that make these programs for the 2600 meaningful (besides pure nostalgia for people over 30):

• The Atari 2600 was the first widely successful system. Yes, you laugh when you see the "Degenetron" type graphics, but for those of us who were old enough to appreciate these machines when they were out, it was fantastic.
• The Atari 2600 is extremely difficult to program for. Sure, the NES appeals to people in their low-to-mid 20s because it was their first system, but it was a breeze to program for comparatively.

I guess I need to expand on that second point. Given the right tools, anyone could program something of 8-bit NES quality that looks and plays decently. However, to do something amazing on the Atari 2600 requires an in-depth knowledge of the 2600's hardware and the timing of every instruction of the 6502 processor (well, 6507). Heck, you didn't have a frame buffer to work with; you had to spend time actually drawing the pixels on the screen for EVERY refresh!

I guess you can always tell the 2600 from the NES people by a 10-year difference in age.

Re:NES equivilent?

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe there's a quite active aftermarket scene in Japan for every one of Nintendo's consoles, including the NES (nee Famicom).

Re:NES equivilent?

[radimvice]

Is there an equivilent hacking/programming culture for the NES? That'd rule big time.

Indeed there is. The NES hacking community has done amazing things with classic games such as Metroid and the Mario, Zelda and Megaman series. The community has evolved from simple graphics and text hacking to recreating entirely new challenging levels, intricate assembly code modifications (ever wanted to play Megaman in time-attack mode, or Mario 3 with a day/night system?), and there are even some interesting homebrewn games in development. Check out The Challenge Games Community for a good starting place. Be sure to check out Mario Adventure and Zelda Challenge as two good examples of high-quality hacks.

There's also an older community dedicated to producing translations of Japanese console games that do similarly intense hacks to NES games, but with a more practical objective. The Whirlpool is a good starting point here. Check out FFII,III,IV (hard type),V, Star Ocean, Seiken Densetsu 3, Tales of Phantasia and Dragon Quest V,VI for some of the completed translations of high-profile games.

Re:NES equivilent?

[ClosedSource]

I might add that many 2600 developers were working from reverse-engineered specs so that made it even more difficult.

Re:NES equivilent?

[Ayaress]

While you're looking at the games listed above, I'll also suggest the translatioins of Front Mission and Bahamut Lagoon (although the BL translation by DeJap isn't much better than Engrish, it's still a pretty fun game). Also, the Star Ocean translation isn't "finished," just "complete." It's a good game, but I'd hold off on playing it for a while. At the very least, maybe ZSNES/Snes9x will improve their SDD-1 emulation and you'll be able to skip messing with the graphics packs if you wait.

Zophar.net is another site for this sort of thing. That and the Whirlpool have a lot of hacks/mods for different games. Most of the NES/SNES/GB hacks are translations, since a lot of the best games on all three systems never saw the light of day in the US, but there are also a lot of gameplay hacks, especially for games like the Zelda and Mario series.

Re:NES equivilent?

[Q-Mont]

There are some NES hacks of a similar nature here.Just run them on your emulator and check them out. Most are just things that change the look of the game but not the game itself. But a few have new levels.

Re:NES equivilent?

[Eil]

I guess you can always tell the 2600 from the NES people by a 10-year difference in age.

I guess you can always tell an elitist from his sweeping overgeneralizations.

Re:NES equivilent?

[macshune]

Yeah, I really like some of those hacks. One time, well, actually a couple of times my friends and I have played Dragon Warrior with the frameskip up as high as it goes. Turn down the music and you've got 2 1/2 hours of unbridled dragon slaying and adrenline as everybody races to slay the Dragon Lord first. Save states really make for a fun game too, because you can get Erdrick's armor at a very low level by continually resetting the game until you score a critical hit. Be careful though, don't accidentally save your game over itself, instead of hitting reload. Always keep many save files from the recent past on hand in case something like this should happen. Anyhow, this is a fun way to blow a couple of hours and for some reason I also feel the need to state:

R1V3R C1TY R4N50M RUL3Z!!!

Re:NES equivilent?

[bjb]

I guess you can always tell an elitist from his sweeping overgeneralizations.

You're missing the point, or maybe I wasn't clear enough about it. My point being that whenever there is a story or thread that talks about the 2600, there is always someone saying how the NES was better. Then you also find people talking about the 2600 on NES threads. It goes both ways. The thing is, when we talk about these old systems, we're hitting largely on a nostalgia trip for most people. I owned both systems when they came out (and a Pong variation before that) and I enjoyed both. However, I would figure that if given the choice, one would tend to go with their first system before something else (again, this nostalgia thing; wanting to be that young person you once were). The 10 year difference is an observation; seeing how the 2600 and NES introductions are separated by several years, you get a different age group that hits the right age for the "first system".

Again, this is just my opinion. You're entitled to call it elitist, but that is not what I meant to convey.

Re:NES equivilent?

[slothman32]

Well Zelda Classic isn't a ROM but a actual PC program. Besides letting you play the original 2 quests a third has been made. You can even make you own. You can find it at: http://www.armageddongames.net/forums/index.php?s= It is still being worked on so more stuff will come. It comes in Windows and even Linux. But DOS right now is more bugless.

For the Nostalgia-Challenged...

[shadowcabbit]

For those of us either too young to have played the Atari 2600's classic library or for those who just never got around to it, might I suggest picking up either a collection disc or one of those joystick-that-plugs-into-the-tv collections? Myself, I'm looking forward to the Paddle collection (as, AFAIK, no similar controller exists for a modern machine, so a collection disc would be kind of pointless).

Of course, emulation is always an option, too.

Actually(+)

[Mycroft_514]

Years ago, I hacked the hardware for 4 Atari Paddles to run off the IBM PC Joystick port. (the 15 pin one).

Add a 15 pin to USB adapter (I think Radio Shack sells them) and there you go.

I only needed 3 plugs and some wire to make the converter. I did write a test program and it worked, but never got around to doing any games. I wrote up the pin outs and released them years ago on my then BBS.

One to watch out for....

[curtisk]

if you are into the whole retro gaming scene is the excellent looking (and so far, playing) Adventure 2 for the Atari 5200. Where the 2600 is a bit more on the difficulty curve to program, the 5200 is nice that it is basically the same as the Atari 800 computer, so programming is a bit easier allowing the developers to push it further

If you happened to visit the recent Philly Classic you'd know that there is a tsunami of homebrew activity on the 2600, which is both good and bad IMHO as some titles feel and play like shovelware

Ambition??

[Anonymous Coward]

Who was it that was going to program the card game Ambition? For what system? Did that ever come to term?

Another Option: Stelladaptor

[Anonymous Coward]

For anyone who's all thumbs when it comes to electronics, there is a device already available called the Stelladaptor, which is basically a USB-to-Atari joystick adaptor. It works with joysticks, paddles, the Star Raiders keypad, and even the Indy 500 driving controller, letting you use them all in the 2600 emulator Z26.

Unfortunately, the device only provides one joystick port, so you're out of luck for 2-player games joystick games or 4-player paddle games.

Re:Another Option: Stelladaptor

[vrai]

Doesn't the StellaAdaptor mount as a normal joystick under Windows? If that's the case then you could simply buy two and configure Stella to use Joystick X for player one and Y for player two.

Note that I haven't even tried using one of these things - let alone two. I've got a mint condition 1978 six switcher which negates the need for emulation :)

Try It, You'll Like It

[robbway]

I tried Adventure + last night. The basic quest, game 1, was very well though out! It was very much like playing Adventure for the first time. The really clever part is there is a trap in there for careless button pressing that could easily force you to reset just when you thought you'd won.

They picked a real winner in the hack category. Unfortunately, the remake of Starfire won over a completely original game. I think that kind of violates the "original" award's spirit. If Starfire had no decent competition, I'd understand the choice. Still, remembering how bad Space War was, shooting sherbert and teddy bears, StarFire would've been wonderful.

I think the proper way to look at the awards is to see what kind of games were possible in the 80's and how some sort of pop-culture related video-game backlash caused an unnecessary drought in Atari software.

Atari Age is worth a look. And if you think there's no market for original 2600 games, the latest versions of Activision Anthology have some of these recent homebrews packed in.