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."

Comments

NY Times article?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing the linked NY Times article has nothing to do with the submission, I was getting complacent knowing what I was about to read.

Re:NY Times article?

[clamatius]

I think this was the link the submitter meant.

RETRO fun

[Kaamoss]

Some of the best games I have ever played were on my father's anchient atari 5200. Back when games where focus on having challenging gameplay and great replay value. Since when has pac man or galazia or qbert gotten boring? It would seem most games nowadays are more focused on fancy visual effects rather than basic gameplay. It's a shame, but at least we still have the classics. Interesting wiki http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Videoga mes_history on the history of video games.

Re:RETRO fun

[snorklewacker]

> It would seem most games nowadays are more focused on fancy visual effects rather than basic gameplay

Oh just knock it off with the rose-colored nostalgia crap already. You only remember the games that were good, and not the loads of CRAP that was also released. You were also younger, and the games were more of a novelty, so they left a greater impression. There are perfectly good innovative games out there right now, and some of them don't even look like ass. There just happen to be a lot more of them than there were back in your imagined "golden age".

But don't take my word for it. Go get yourself an emulator, and hit it. You'll be wondering in no time what all the fuss was about.

Re:RETRO fun

[snorklewacker]

I'm 32 years old. I remember playing "Race" and "Tanks Plus" on my "Sears Tele-Games" -- an atari 2600 with everything relabelled. We called it the Atari though, so I sort of knew what was up. Being six, one doesn't really get the nuances. Friends of my parents had that pong thingie where you actually put the acetate sheets on the screen for the other games, but I never liked the controllers. I remember Space Invaders and Asteroids, and being utterly blown away by Gorf. "It talks!". I think I've established that I can piss as far if not further than you now.

Games bore you and me to death because we've played them all before. Yes, there's less originality in mainstream titles, largely due to market conditions. Go take a look at PopCap or some indie titles. But you don't even have to do that, let me grab my game collection:

Let's see, I have Morrowind ... oh wait, some 20 year old RPG did it all first, right? I'll grant it's derivative, but so are most books. Neverwinter nights ... heck even I can't call it original, but the DM tools are actually seeing some use now. How about The Sims? Oh yeah, Little Computer People. How about EVE Online. You going to tell me that's Elite 3? Going over to my console, I'll pick out Beyond Good and Evil and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Nitpick away.

That came out nastier than it should have, I suppose. I apologize for that.

I could pull out examples all day, but you'll find some way to conform it into some existing category. But this isn't limited to games: Joseph Campbell figured out that almost every "hero" myth is largely the same if you pull out the common elements.

In honor of the Atari 2600 ET game

[AtariAmarok]

This contest should be named in honor of that old Atari 2600 ET game, which, from looking at it, must have been designed and completed in two and a half hours.

Game creation kit?

[chrisbtoo]

The article says that they were given "a brief tutorial in the software they [used]" before starting hacking.

Was this some sort of game creation kit they were using? ISTM that for a machine like the 2600 (or any console, for that matter) you'd need more than a brief intro if you were going to write a decent game in 24 hours.

Re:Game creation kit?

[chrisbtoo]

Ah, it seems they used GameMaker.

Corrected Link

[morcheeba]

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

Gamemaker.nl required

[morcheeba]

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.

Re:Screenshots, Sorry, now good:

[beofli]

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...

Re:$60 for the atari console?

[Mumpsman]

The problem with the new console for me is that it's closed. "No need to swap caridges!" say the marketoids, like that's a good thing. I've got tons of old catridges sitting next to my TV, and would gladly pay $60 for new Atari hardware to play them on. I've purchased old and refurbished consoles in the past, and always burn them out.

Like the parent post says, if I don't care about having the an authentic Atari 2600 experience, I'll just buy the CD. Catridge switching is part of that experience.

I mean, how hard would it be for them to include the cart option?

Need articles before events

[slapout]

I'd be nice of /. to tell us about these events BEFORE they happen, so we could get involved or at least watch.

Not Atari 2600 games

[raindog2]

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.

Re:Not Atari 2600 games

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I was actually one of the people that helped run the event...believe it or not.

I just want to comment to say that figuring out the constraints was the most difficult part to figure out. We determined pretty quickly that the flashback--which the teams were ostensibly designing for--was actually a Nintendo-on-a-chip. In the end, after figuring out that none of these teams could really write assembly that quickly so as to match the 2600's real specs, we settled for using Gamemaker, keeping the size of the executable ('cartridge') under 3/4 of a meg or so, the event team prepared a set of 8-bit sound bytes, and we settled on a reasonable pixel size and resolution...don't remember offhand--some of you hardcore geeks could give a reasonable approximation I'm sure. I think the assumption was that in the end it'd have to be ported to whatever the flashback 2 was going to be anyways, which doesn't exist now...so, there you go.

It was really a fun event though. I think the thing to focus on was that the games that people made were really *fun* and it's amazing that these students got together and produced these awesome games (I played most of them, they are really fun and creative--and the sound for them really stands out, which unfortunately you can't get in screenshots) in less that 24 hours (it was actually 23 'cause of daylight savings time, we realized on the eve of the event). I'm hoping we can do it again next year.

Ninja Garden is really addictive by the way--the controls are really simple and fun, it sucks people in really quickly. It was the only two-player game created and in the end that proved to be a success with the judges. It deserved to win, even considering the high quality of the other games.