Daaamn, this video gave me such a huge rush of nostalgia. I grew up playing games but also programming in the ATARI 800XL. I became an electronic engineer mostly because I fell in love with computers, and ATARI was by a huge margin... the responsible of that :) :) Thanks a lot for sharing!!!
Some heavy reading here but I loved the Atari's too and bought this book on import for £80 and well worth the money back then.. www.atarimania.com/documents/Computer_Animation_Primer.pdf
Graphics wise this thing was way ahead of it's time. The "Shades and colors" thing was just a brilliant way of approaching graphics. You draw a background in shades, and then add 4 colors maximum per line. It doesn't sound like much, but it allows you a lot of color depth :) .
This demo I used in a school project back in the day, I carted my 600XL to school and used the class big CRT to show it on, my project was "computer graphics" i just simply played it back just like this and talked a little about what was happening on the screen. I still have a 130XE and should have this disk somewhere. Wonder if it all still works 😂
I still have my 130XE and 1050 floppy drive plus a bunch of floppies, including quite a lot of software I wrote myself (using the MAC/65 macro assembler), mostly graphics stuff and game development tools. Gives me a twinkle in the eye every time I come across it. I wish I still had my original Atari 800 machine. I so loved the design. Over time I also had the 600XL (incl. memory extension cartridge) and the 800XL, but the 130XE is all that is left now.
renderizer01 I still have my Atari 800 but I haven't plugged it in in decades. I'm had downloaded a game I wrote back in 1981 for Softside Magazine but my computer crashed and I can't find it anymore. It was a volley ball game I wrote in Basic and was the FIRST use of "player-missile" graphics for one of their published games. I KNOW I could improve it since it was my very first, very large, program.
bjbell52 Oh dear, the last time I plugged in mine must have been 1988. I'm pretty sure the floppies won't work anymore. Still it's nice to know that it's still there and I can take a look at it every now and then (usually when it's getting in my way...). ;O)
Its charming to see as an 44 year old guy. I also saw this when i was 13. Speed is basic -style. But still. one of the earliest demonstrations. Nice to watch again. and ... Atari can be sexy and charming.
That's approximately what I concluded as well, to a point, in trying to compare them. The Atari has way more features in it's graphics chips, but the combination of features is better thought out in the c64 (*note this said 'atari'. Can't believe I only spotted that 2 years later. XD), and more useful in practical terms. Still, when talking about colours specifically, you can't help but note that the ataris had a 128/256 colour master palette, and the c64 had 16... That explains the nature of some Atari demos... Then again, the closest relative of the Atari 8 bit systems is the Amiga. The more you look at the system designs, the more obvious that becomes. Whether that's a good thing or not is debatable, but gotta love that ANTIC can switch screen modes basically without CPU intervention almost as many times as there are visible image lines on the screen. Too bad the sprite logic is atrocious, and the colour limitations of what you can do on any given line of graphics is also quite restricted. If you had combined the capabilities of ANTIC with the way the c64 handles colours in multicolour modes, that would have been vastly superior to either solution on it's own...
I remember going in to Laskys in the early 80's and seeing this demo running on an Atari 800XL, as an C64 owner I was blown away by the Robot demo and saved hard and bought myself a 800XL with 1050 Disk Drive which became one of my favourite computers ever :) C64 vs Atari 8 bit I always thought of the C64 as having higher resolution I.e. Less chunky more detailed graphics and better sound but the Atari always felt a better quality machine and I got more pleasure and have fonder memories from using it.
Interesting idea. Not accurate, but interesting. - though I suppose the high resolution modes on the c64 were in more widespread use given they had better colour options. (High res on the Atari is 320x192, and it's identical on the c64. standard resolution is also 160x192 on both. Atari has 80x192 modes though. Plus some of it's other modes also lowered the effective resolution even further to save on RAM usage.)
That cassette storage for the Atari 8-bit was so painfully slow. I also had a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A as well where their disk drives were prohibitively expensive so I had to settle for cassette storage. It was faster on the TI than the Atari 8-bit but very unreliable because you had to use your own personal cassette player but you kept having to tweak the volume to get a program to successfully load. More often than not you get an error message.
Check out videos of AtariBLAST! - it will probably be finished end of this year? After 3 years work on it. It uses the hardly used GTIA modes - plus normal modes. For those who thought that the C-64 always overshadows the Atari 8-bits - will see this is not the case here... Graphics from various demos (and also games) are re-used here - showing what could have been done - back in the day. This demo game (WIP) does run on standard Atari 8-bit hardware. ie. `16K machines such as the Atari 400/800 - and also on the Atari 600XL/800XL/130XE/65XE (though using a flashcart as such) and special versions for the Atari 5200, and Atari 800 with 1088K. The latest WIP has not been publicly shown - and has some pretty impressive stuff going in it. If you don't have the original hardware - you can easily run it via emulation - via Altirra hooked up to your large screen LCD TV - which I do use to test out the graphics running on.
A follow-up demo should be made: extra MODE 0 colours using player/missile sprite colour mixing, using sprites to reshape playfield borders 3 playfield widths upside down text without having to redefine the character set custom display lists (all screen modes can be mixed on screen simultaneously and with care, dynamically changed) smooth scrolling display list interrupts.
Although I'm just wondering if it's just slow assembly code. I understand disk routines are being used too. But that robot demo seems too fast for basic and for the pictures, you need to change the GTIA mode EVERY single scanline... so I think it's slow on purpose. (Or some of it's basic and some of it is ASM.)
Matthew McFarlane True, but Atari computers were the sum of the parts (mainly the co-processor chips). This is NOT possible on the TIA /6507 alone. Atari 8 bit compiuters had a faster 6502, ANTIC, GTIA (unless you had a VERY early CTIA). Oh, and 128 Bytes of Ram in a 2600 vs 16, 48, or 64 KILOBytes of Ram in a computer. So, yes, 2600 VCS's are 8 Bit machines in a sense that both full size vans and corvettes had Chevy 350 V8s. Try racing the two. It's not only the "displacement" that makes it fast. So yes, this could not be done on a 2600, as anyone who ever played both a 2600 and an 8 bit would tell you.
To the C64 users commenting here, sure the C64 had a great sound chip, and 8 sprites, but, and I mean a big butt, the C64 had the worst, and by worst, I mean the ugliest damn color palette in the computer world, besides CGA 4 color graphics. The Atari had 256 colors, like a freakin rainbow, Not just 16 ugly colors, as the C64 had, the C64 didnt even have flesh tones? The C64 had like what, 3 shades of gray to pick from? Atari had 16 shades of gray, you could have pipes look like they were made of Chrome on an Atari, Sure the pixels were blocky in Graphics modes 9 thru 11 (80x192), but they had amazing color ranges, Plus a smart programmer could use display list interrupts to take the high Resolution graphics modes and slap way more color on them by changing the color registers each scan line of screen, which in mode 15 was a 160 pixels wide by 192 high screen with 4 colors . So you could change each of the 4 colors to 192 different colors , from a selection of 256 colors, down the screen by messing with color registers per scan line. Do that on a C64 and then we'll talk....
Tis sound is caused by the Atari OS trying to send a command on the SIO bus and getting no response (e.g. printer, second diskdrive etc.) . Each command causes a short pop sound and is repeated up to 26 times.
6:50 so what your telling me...If they wanted to...they could make games that look like that! I know back then they were given like,a day to make a game. But imagine if they took 4 years like modern games! I want to learn 2600 code just to try this out
Me too. C64 was cheaper and they made a whole lot more of them so they were available. A8's were built much better but they missed the '83 xmas season and that was critical juncture where C64 started to take over. The 800XL was not yet widely available. Also from day 1 Atari withheld vital documentation about how to program the graphics etc and that crippled the platform. Many more reasons but these were key. However A8 had a lot of advantages like a real DOS and faster CPU and much faster disk drive.
Daaamn, this video gave me such a huge rush of nostalgia.
I grew up playing games but also programming in the ATARI 800XL. I became an electronic engineer mostly because I fell in love with computers, and ATARI was by a huge margin... the responsible of that :) :)
Thanks a lot for sharing!!!
Fellow 800XL guy here! I programmed that thing nonstop and it was an amazing machine back in the day.
800XL here as well. Oh, sweet memories.
Some heavy reading here but I loved the Atari's too and bought this book on import for £80 and well worth the money back then.. www.atarimania.com/documents/Computer_Animation_Primer.pdf
And a headache from the sound bit
Agreed.
Probably the coolest part of this for me is the wrapping of the outer menu around what used to be standalone demos. Well done! 🙂
Graphics wise this thing was way ahead of it's time. The "Shades and colors" thing was just a brilliant way of approaching graphics. You draw a background in shades, and then add 4 colors maximum per line. It doesn't sound like much, but it allows you a lot of color depth :) .
This demo I used in a school project back in the day, I carted my 600XL to school and used the class big CRT to show it on, my project was "computer graphics" i just simply played it back just like this and talked a little about what was happening on the screen. I still have a 130XE and should have this disk somewhere. Wonder if it all still works 😂
These graphics were amazing back in the 80's. I sold my 800 XE back in 1986, but in some ways I wish I kept it.
There are very good Atari 800 emulators out there you can get.
I still have my 130XE and 1050 floppy drive plus a bunch of floppies, including quite a lot of software I wrote myself (using the MAC/65 macro assembler), mostly graphics stuff and game development tools. Gives me a twinkle in the eye every time I come across it. I wish I still had my original Atari 800 machine. I so loved the design. Over time I also had the 600XL (incl. memory extension cartridge) and the 800XL, but the 130XE is all that is left now.
renderizer01 I still have my Atari 800 but I haven't plugged it in in decades.
I'm had downloaded a game I wrote back in 1981 for Softside Magazine but my computer crashed and I can't find it anymore. It was a volley ball game I wrote in Basic and was the FIRST use of "player-missile" graphics for one of their published games. I KNOW I could improve it since it was my very first, very large, program.
bjbell52 Oh dear, the last time I plugged in mine must have been 1988. I'm pretty sure the floppies won't work anymore. Still it's nice to know that it's still there and I can take a look at it every now and then (usually when it's getting in my way...). ;O)
Martin Heermance Im amazed today.
Its charming to see as an 44 year old guy. I also saw this when i was 13. Speed is basic -style. But still. one of the earliest demonstrations. Nice to watch again. and ... Atari can be sexy and charming.
Colors on that thing are really nice way better then the C64
c64 can use its colours better, the c64 design is still superior IMO.
That's approximately what I concluded as well, to a point, in trying to compare them. The Atari has way more features in it's graphics chips, but the combination of features is better thought out in the c64 (*note this said 'atari'. Can't believe I only spotted that 2 years later. XD), and more useful in practical terms.
Still, when talking about colours specifically, you can't help but note that the ataris had a 128/256 colour master palette, and the c64 had 16...
That explains the nature of some Atari demos...
Then again, the closest relative of the Atari 8 bit systems is the Amiga.
The more you look at the system designs, the more obvious that becomes.
Whether that's a good thing or not is debatable, but gotta love that ANTIC can switch screen modes basically without CPU intervention almost as many times as there are visible image lines on the screen.
Too bad the sprite logic is atrocious, and the colour limitations of what you can do on any given line of graphics is also quite restricted.
If you had combined the capabilities of ANTIC with the way the c64 handles colours in multicolour modes, that would have been vastly superior to either solution on it's own...
KuraIthys was not Amiga hardware done by Atari people and then passed on to commodore? Can’t remember.
The C64 had real red and yellow, but the other colors are kinda meh
@@litjellyfish Jay Miner was involved in ANTIC/etc and the Amiga.
I remember going in to Laskys in the early 80's and seeing this demo running on an Atari 800XL, as an C64 owner I was blown away by the Robot demo and saved hard and bought myself a 800XL with 1050 Disk Drive which became one of my favourite computers ever :)
C64 vs Atari 8 bit
I always thought of the C64 as having higher resolution I.e. Less chunky more detailed graphics and better sound but the Atari always felt a better quality machine and I got more pleasure and have fonder memories from using it.
Interesting idea.
Not accurate, but interesting. - though I suppose the high resolution modes on the c64 were in more widespread use given they had better colour options.
(High res on the Atari is 320x192, and it's identical on the c64. standard resolution is also 160x192 on both. Atari has 80x192 modes though. Plus some of it's other modes also lowered the effective resolution even further to save on RAM usage.)
Still today Disk Drive is very very expensive
@@KuraIthys ....true, true.
That is, untill you add Player sprites + PRIOR 0 and changing colors mid scanline......
You've just sent me back to Christmas 1985 when I had a brand new 1050 drive :)
Beep! Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep Beep!!! Anyone with an Atari 8-bit knows that sound all too well.
It was quite an upgrade when I went from my 410 cassette to an 810 floppy. I had so much fun with that Atari 800.
That cassette storage for the Atari 8-bit was so painfully slow. I also had a Texas Instruments TI-99/4A as well where their disk drives were prohibitively expensive so I had to settle for cassette storage. It was faster on the TI than the Atari 8-bit but very unreliable because you had to use your own personal cassette player but you kept having to tweak the volume to get a program to successfully load. More often than not you get an error message.
It makes a great ringtone or notification sound too. 🤗
My childchood. Basic programming, Rive Raid and Montezuma's Revenge. I'm old :)
Nostalgia totally caught me hard at the Sound Effects demo...
This is the best time I've ever see this. I'm very impress for this past technology.
I can remember watching this as a kid on my trusty old atari 800xl.Nice to watch it again.
Check out videos of AtariBLAST! - it will probably be finished end of this year? After 3 years work on it. It uses the hardly used GTIA modes - plus normal modes. For those who thought that the C-64 always overshadows the Atari 8-bits - will see this is not the case here... Graphics from various demos (and also games) are re-used here - showing what could have been done - back in the day. This demo game (WIP) does run on standard Atari 8-bit hardware. ie. `16K machines such as the Atari 400/800 - and also on the Atari 600XL/800XL/130XE/65XE (though using a flashcart as such) and special versions for the Atari 5200, and Atari 800 with 1088K. The latest WIP has not been publicly shown - and has some pretty impressive stuff going in it.
If you don't have the original hardware - you can easily run it via emulation - via Altirra hooked up to your large screen LCD TV - which I do use to test out the graphics running on.
Absolutely incredible !!!!
I need these old graphic demos made into a screen saver, Atari logos and all.
Yeah, I had this one too. But still, I preferred amiga, 286 or 386 dx pc with mcga colour display.
A follow-up demo should be made:
extra MODE 0 colours using player/missile sprite colour mixing,
using sprites to reshape playfield borders
3 playfield widths
upside down text without having to redefine the character set
custom display lists (all screen modes can be mixed on screen simultaneously and with care, dynamically changed)
smooth scrolling
display list interrupts.
The 8bit can do way more in terms of graphics and sound... but for the basics, nice!
Although I'm just wondering if it's just slow assembly code. I understand disk routines are being used too. But that robot demo seems too fast for basic and for the pictures, you need to change the GTIA mode EVERY single scanline... so I think it's slow on purpose. (Or some of it's basic and some of it is ASM.)
Since when is the Atari 2600 not an 8 bit machine? It's powered by a MOS 6507 a derivative of Chuck Peddle's 6502 8Bit CPU.
Matthew McFarlane True, but Atari computers were the sum of the parts (mainly the co-processor chips). This is NOT possible on the TIA /6507 alone. Atari 8 bit compiuters had a faster 6502, ANTIC, GTIA (unless you had a VERY early CTIA). Oh, and 128 Bytes of Ram in a 2600 vs 16, 48, or 64 KILOBytes of Ram in a computer. So, yes, 2600 VCS's are 8 Bit machines in a sense that both full size vans and corvettes had Chevy 350 V8s. Try racing the two. It's not only the "displacement" that makes it fast.
So yes, this could not be done on a 2600, as anyone who ever played both a 2600 and an 8 bit would tell you.
To the C64 users commenting here, sure the C64 had a great sound chip, and 8 sprites, but, and I mean a big butt,
the C64 had the worst, and by worst, I mean the ugliest damn color palette in the computer world, besides CGA 4 color graphics.
The Atari had 256 colors, like a freakin rainbow,
Not just 16 ugly colors, as the C64 had, the C64 didnt even have flesh tones?
The C64 had like what, 3 shades of gray to pick from?
Atari had 16 shades of gray, you could have pipes look like they were made of Chrome on an Atari,
Sure the pixels were blocky in Graphics modes 9 thru 11 (80x192),
but they had amazing color ranges,
Plus a smart programmer could use display list interrupts to take the high Resolution graphics modes and slap way more color on them by changing the color registers each scan line of screen,
which in mode 15 was a 160 pixels wide by 192 high screen with 4 colors .
So you could change each of the 4 colors to 192 different colors , from a selection of 256 colors, down the screen by messing with color registers per scan line.
Do that on a C64 and then we'll talk....
The VIC-20 didn't even have grays, the TI-99/4 had one gray and EGA had two grays, so 3 grays is actually a lot for a 16 color palette.
C64 demos are still pretty beautiful looking though. Especially Booze Design and Censor Design's, IMO.
Also in the C64 you can’t PLOT or SOUND, everything is pokes.
But the sound makes it equally good. (Although that i love pokey.) Also, some games look much better on the Commodore 64. Like Panther (imo).
C64 had the worst color palette? Ever heard of the ZX Spectrum?
The CES Demo shown after 8:30 is being played at the wrong speed. It was designed for NTSC machines.
Fantastic demos!
Does anyone remember the "Rolling 3D wireframe ball in GWBASIC" for PC's ? It used _4_ graphics screens with page flipping ...
Edit: It seems to be written in basic (The speed is a clear sign) so it's very impressive for that!
That's cool still today.
Wow ! ... Do you have the disk image for this? I especially likeed the rocket launch with the sounds and stuff at the end ... that was darn cool ! :)
That hat kicks ass
I am curious but how much data does a full color picture of the guy sailing take? And can they make a video inside an Atari 2600 game?
Was this a "In Store" Demo?
Fantastic!
After the disk-read beeps, at 9:44 there's a series of rapid clicks. Can someone remind me what caused that?
Tis sound is caused by the Atari OS trying to send a command on the SIO bus and getting no response (e.g. printer, second diskdrive etc.) . Each command causes a short pop sound and is repeated up to 26 times.
Haven't seen this in a while!
6:52 Is that Cat Stevens? Lol
I remember that Robot !
Cool
nice one!
Page 6 was your friend.
Still better than an android
download link?
6:50 so what your telling me...If they wanted to...they could make games that look like that! I know back then they were given like,a day to make a game. But imagine if they took 4 years like modern games! I want to learn 2600 code just to try this out
It's on atarionline . pl
I think the Atari is superior to the C64. Why didn't it sell better?
Me too. C64 was cheaper and they made a whole lot more of them so they were available. A8's were built much better but they missed the '83 xmas season and that was critical juncture where C64 started to take over. The 800XL was not yet widely available. Also from day 1 Atari withheld vital documentation about how to program the graphics etc and that crippled the platform. Many more reasons but these were key. However A8 had a lot of advantages like a real DOS and faster CPU and much faster disk drive.
That's not a hat that is an oblate spherical...
Did you look it up bet you did.
I'd love to see the short circuit robot rendered.
The "Hat" demo origin j-b.livejournal.com/419883.html
Atari 2600 is not Atari 8-bit computer.
M'tari
👉Atari. 💩🤮
Only Amiga. ♥️💛💚💙💜💟
c64 was better anyway
+tom tailor how u reckon?
@@tharkthax3960 Superior in literally every way except for the BASIC and color palette.