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Mario Bros. Clone Released For Atari 2600
YokimaSun writes "The world of Homebrew Coding never ceases to amaze, even on an old system like the Atari 2600 a coder over at the Atariage forums has released a clone of the original Nes game Super Mario Bros with video, which has the first level from the classic game and eventually will have the first four worlds. Equally as impressive is this 3D Mario game written for the Sega Saturn."
I had no idea the Atari could actually handle that many simultaneous colors. I'm also curious to know how the programmer managed to do separate fire / jump when the controller only has one button. Does "up" on the controller do jump (could be a problem when climbing vines).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The rule about Super Mario Bros is that you NEVER refer to it as "Mario Bros". They are two completely separate games. Mario Bros was even made for the Atari 2600 back in the day.
This must be a new usage of "impressive" with which I was previously unfamiliar
And stay off the lawn... uh, ugly dead weeds.... damn drought.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
1. Invent Super Mario Bros for Atari 2600
2. Time travel to 1982
3. Profit!
Mario Bros != Super Mario Bros != Super Mario World
Also, this is far from being a clone...
/* No Comment */
Programmed in BASIC.
Which also explains the end result:
Saturn is the latest of the "old generation" of 32bits console with really weird architecture.
It's got dual main RISC CPUs (two Hitachi SH-2. Something like a souped-up 32x (dual SH-1))
It's got extra CPU (Motorola 68k)
It's got weird coprocessors (the graphic engine: Some mixed monstruosity between a souped-up tile engine and an early polygon engine with blitter, all this split across 2 chips, and not using triangle as basic poly shape. And a few DSPs trown in the mix)
And all of this are connected in weird ways, have timing issue to access shared resources, don't all access the same resources, etc.
And a firmware which was basically what was needed to load a the game.
It's simply the logical extension of previous generations of console (16 bit consoles which had an extra 8bit chip to handle sound and some specific IO and which didn't have access to all resources. Or like the MegaCD which connected an extra 68k, which could help render advanced graphics effects, but had to pipe them through the main CPU), they tried to cram as many interesting functions in this hardware.
Contrast this with the first "new gen" 32bits console : the PlayStation.
Simple "PC-like" design.
A main CPU (a MIPS), a 3D GPU outputing to a simple framebuffer (although the geometry acceleration is inside the CPU package), a hardware MPEG decoder.
And that's it.
Not that much different conceptually, from a PC machine with a Pentium and 3Dfx GPU + Sigma Designs video decoder + Soundblaster PCI cards.
On the paper, Saturn was fucking incredibly powerful.
But that requires deep knowledge of the hardware, precise timing and modelling of everything, writing tons of code in assembler, etc.
Its "dev environment" consisted in reading tons of hardware documentation, and crafting your own stuff in assembler.
Creating amazing stuff on this machine was more of an art.
Meanwhile, on the Playstation, all what the devs needed is to fire up a C compiler and use the nice libraries and API that sony provided. (Similar to just writing a regular PC application relying on OpenGL and the like). Its dev environment wasn't that remote to what can be seen in Visual Studio and the like. Just use a standard compiler and the official API. Porting games is a breeze.
Programming Saturn games required extensive experience and culture in the old-school consoles. Without console know-how, hard to use it to its full potential.
Programming Playstation games could tap into the small studios which were used to program PC games.
End result:
- SEGA's own studios (composed of dev teams used on console and arcade machines) did put some impressive games.
- Some japanese studios which had a long tradition of console development and were used to "go the assembly way" developped quite a few "japanese-market-only, sorry no ports for you" successes ont the Saturn.
- Most of the other studios decided to "just say fuck it", they ditched most of the docs, and run the machine as simply as possible: Use only one SH-2, etc.
- Meanwhile developing on the Playstation was a breeze. Lots of studios which weren't heard in the console world before got suddenly quite some success. Specially lots of north american and european developers.
- The Playstation also got lots of ports thank to its easy structure.
Lots of ports of PC games (because the concepts of the sony dev environment map nicely)
Even ports of japanese RPG which were successes on the Saturn in their home country. (Just because the PS was more popular in foreign market and was easy to port to).
(what helped the Playstation a lot and worked against the Saturn, is that instead of creating several games for each different console like in the past, studio now preferred to make 1 single game and port it to as much machines as possible. Machine with a standard easy to develop-for architecture were strongly favored above mach
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I was exactly in the target demographic for the Atari 2600, "too young to know better". If I had about 20 more IQ points at the time I would have seen the immense leap in quality between 1982ish to about 1986 when the 8 Bit era was in full swing.
"Citations as needed" ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600
"...in 1982, the VCS was renamed "Atari 2600", after the unit's Atari part number, CX2600"
"It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in."
"The console had only 128 bytes of RAM for run-time data that included the call stack and the state of the game world. There was no frame buffer, as the necessary RAM would have been too expensive. Instead the video device had two bitmapped sprites, two one-pixel "missile" sprites, a one-pixel "ball," and a 40-pixel "playfield" that was drawn by writing a bit pattern for each line into a register just before the television scanned that line.
"The video hardware gave the 2600 a reputation as one of the most complex machines in the world to program..."
If we talk about "progress per year" I was lucky enough to experience it in exactly the correct order, because once I got my Commodore 128 in about 1987 I could never go back to the Atari 2600. Compare that to me being a holdout of Windows XP today and the difference is telling.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
>>>If we talk about "progress per year" I was lucky enough to experience it in exactly the correct order, because once I got my Commodore 128 in about 1987 I could never go back to the Atari 2600. Compare that to me being a holdout of Windows XP today and the difference is telling.
+1 for the last paragraph.
I've made the same observation that progress has slowed to almost nothing. I'm still using a PC that is 11 years old and can run the latest software (just need to boost the RAM space). You would be hard-pressed to buy a 1979 Atari computer and be able to play the latest full-screen video game in 1990. Progress was very very rapid in the 80s and early 90s, and then all but stopped.
BTW I still played my Atari even after my C128 arrived. I even upgraded to a 7800 ProSystem after the old 2600 died. I love old Atari games..... good memories.
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