Slashdot Mirror
24-Hour Atari 2600 Video Game Design Contest
morcheeba writes "Retro Redux was a 24-hour video game programming contest held last weekend in New York. Nine teams worked through the night to produce new Atari 2600 compatible games. Awards were given for the most innovative game, best
visuals, and best sound. The best game overall was "Ninja Garden," and it will be featured in a future version of the Atari® Flashback(TM) Game Console. The New York Times was there with event coverage."
I think this was the link the submitter meant.
Oh, whoa, am I embarrassed! I even double-checked it, too, argh... Here are the corrected links:
No-registration required link (thanks to the NY Times link generator!)
registration-required link
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Yeah, this was required. The contest's introduction/sample design document is here (zip w/ MS Word files). It looks like gamemaker isn't 2600-specific, and, in fact, the rules say to use snap-to-grid to approximate the resolution of the 2600. That's kindof disappointing - I'm guessing that the gamemaker can do a whole lot more in terms of control logic than the limited memory of the 2600.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
E.T. was actually given eight weeks, which still is, for one programmer, a pretty short time to design and implement a game that's supposed to sell millions and millions...
screenshots
I always found that these kind of pixel games, because they lack details, set our imagination to work, giving them a lot of 'atmosphere'. -- I rest my case...
The Atari Flashback isn't based on any Atari hardware, but "Famiclone" technology (most similar to the NES) like all those "system in a controller" devices. In fact, just looking at the screenshots , I can't even find one that it'd be possible to render on the 2600 (having done some coding on it myself.) They all have either too many pixels or too many colors per scanline, though obviosuly not too many for NES hardware.
For me, this contest might have actually been more challenging than writing a 2600 game in 24 hours, since I know the 2600 but I'm not familiar with coding for the NES nor with the development tools they were using (which was apparently the Windows program "Game Maker" with a limited set of sound effects and limitations on resolution and colors.)
To be fair, though, the game that won ("Ninja Garden") was the closest of all the games to looking like an actual 2600 game.