Crazy Limit Pushing Games From the Last Years of the Atari 2600!
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/ sharopolis
The Atari 2600 had a very long life indeed, it could have, maybe it should have died in the mid 80s, but it didn't. I'm going to be taking a look at some of the serious limit pushers from its last years.
00:00 Intro waffle
01:00 Dark Chambers
03:00 Secret Quest
04:07 Kung Fu Master
07:27 F-14 Tomcat
10:30 Radar Lock
13:50 Fatal Run
16:28 Road Runner
18:05 California Games
21:25 Ghostbusters II
24:09 Ending waffle and Patreon thanks.
Music:
Patrick Patrikios -
Dude
Bad Snacks -
City Night Lights
In the Atmosphere
The Brothers Records-
Sleeplessness
Sarah, The Illstrumentalist -
Space Navigator
Yellow Flamingo
Outside Visitors
Ofshane-
Sunset n Beachz - เกม
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I love that you go into detail about the technical things that make these games possible, instead of just saying "the game came out in 19XX and it looks good"
1:44 It just blows your mind to think that an extra 128 bytes (not kilobytes, but just plain old bytes that you almost *never* hear spoken of today) of RAM could make such a big difference, but it sure did back then.
I very much appreciate that you take pains to underscore that the 2600 was only ever meant to play basically Combat and Super Pong, and anything more complicated was literally not intended nor anticipated by its creators. There will never be another platform whose final capabilities proved so unbelievably advanced compared to its design specifications. The other examples I can think of are the SID chip's inexplicable ability to generate digital sound, and a certain Japanese computer being hacked to enable a higher tier of color reproduction than was intended.
The famicom/NES was only made to play a perfect game of donkey Kong. They made super Mario to be the ultimate cart based game, and then popped out super Mario 3. Clever programming tricks always bring out better games the longer a system is out.
@@demonpugo Nonsense. The Famicom had very capable scrolling hardware built-in, and this wasn't tapped until quite a decent chunk of time after the console's release, because devs in 1983 were still, understandably, very much in the "single screen" frame of mind. Besides which, the audio side of the Famicom is thoroughly different (almost inarguably, considerably more capable, but *different* ) from what Donkey Kong presents, though this is understandable if you know the particulars of said arcade hardware.
@@demonpugo to be fair, NES carts were usually upgraded with special extra chips for the more complicated games
Atari was just barely hanging on in the late 1980's but the games was cheaper & chances are you done had a whole slew of cartridges from the the earlier days of Atari.
I don't think the sid chip being capable of digital sound was an accident
I remember being amazed at Pitfall even being possible. These would have blown my face off.
But have you seen Pitfall II for the 2600? It's shockingly complex compared to the original!
Pitfall was written by former Atari programmers who later started Activision, and who knew exactly how to pull off some amazing tricks to make games look visually appealing on the 2600.
it’s still amazing!
Making 3D on a system that can barely do 2D would be a challenge
I was one of those kids who got a 2600 in 1987. I still remember it was $70aud and we got it with dodgem. Later we had half the games you listed here. I didn't appreciate them back then as a 9 year old I just thought they were fun! Thanks for the video.
As a testament to how good California Games was, even after I got an NES my friends and I would still pull out the 2600 to play it. Such a great game for its time.
The choice to use a slightly crippled version of the 6502, the 6507 which had fewer address lines and was a few bucks cheaper because of that, was, as one of the original hardware engineers for the 2600/VCS/Stella put it, a "failure of imagination". And the 128 bytes (yes, BYTES) of RAM was actually twice as much as what the company originally wanted: 64 bytes! Remember, at this time the cost of RAM was extremely high and they were cutting everything they possibly could to keep the price of this system as low as possible. This is why so much of the display responsibility is put on the programmer instead of being taken care of via hardware. But this avenue actually meant that there were no "built in" limitations, or at least that they were not set in stone.
A few years later the lack of RAM, or rather the still enormous price of it, also crippled Atari's home computer line that were years of ahead of everything else and should have been able to replace the VCS.
@@Breakfast_of_Champions Yeah, RAM was insanely expensive at that time. The engineers had to fight to even get that 128 bytes. The bean counters wanted to only do 64! The Atari 8 bit line was awesome, except for sound production. Pretty lame in comparison to the C64's SID chip, though that came a few years later in '82.
@@JustWasted3HoursHere I was listening to an interview with David Crane and he said that while you could consider these things "limiting" it left the system to be much more flexible than it's largest competitor the Intellivision. While the IV was "superior" hardware, the VCS in the right programmer's hands could be molded into something far beyond its design parameters. The IV had hard walls surrounding it's capabilities.
@@Austin-gj7zjExactly right. It's reliance on the programmer to do everything is what made it so great . The Intellivision's greatest flaw, in my opinion, was its controllers. YUCK!
Really appreciate your brief but deep technical breakdown of features!
Thanks!
Yes! This video is a great companion to the Retro Game Mechanics Explained video about the 2600. It goes into way more detail about how the hardware works via deconstructing the title screen of ET, and that context makes all the rest of these games all the more impressive. (They had to count cycles!!!)
In the late 80s, my brother, my sister, and I were still playing with our Atari 2600 because Dad refused to get us an NES. I was a bit surprised when we went to KayBee Toys and found that they were still making new ganes for it.. California Games was one of the games we got.
Never motivate to apply the "5 finger discount" to get more and/or better games?
LOL, We couldn't have done that even if we wanted to. They were locked up in a cage behind a counter where the sales person was.
This is not a machine I ever developed for, but I love learning about these advanced tricks. I particularly liked your use of the simulator and turning features off to get to the bottom of some of the visual compositions. Well done!
Even at 9 or 10 years old, I remember being impressed by how much more advanced Kung Fu Master was vs. other games on the Atari.
I can think about that “sara” chip for hours, it’s astonishing how it expands the capabilities of the atari 2600.
I swear I keep on seeing you everywhere
I thought Solaris was the most technically impressive Atari 2600 game, until I saw F-14 Tomcat.
Kung Fu was one of the first games I bought for my NES and I had no idea it had a 2600 counterpart. that truly is impressive!
I never really thought much about the 2600 specifically when it came to development. I was born in 1985, started gaming in 1990 with the NES, and got my first home computer in 1993 with an MS-DOS 386sx machine. I started development in the late 90s using C and went on to do quite a few years of Java development. I understood that the 2600 was obviously older, so less memory, processing power, etc but nothing specific. I did play quite a few of the games in the library on original hardware and emulation over the years.
Recently, I decided to get back into coding and chose the 2600 and NES as target platforms and the project is a fan game related to Asheron's Call (specifically, the Aun Tumerok). The NES game will be a semi-open world top-down adventure game with RPG elements, taking place both in the home world of the Aun Tumerok and the Marescent Plateau and will include me (Aun Egg) and my wife (Aun Meg) as default playable characters with two player, shared screen co-op as well. A challenge, but doable. 2600 version? I'll have to cut a lot of content, scale down the graphics, and be more cognizant of resource usage, but Dark Chambers is on the 2600 so can't be TOO difficult.. right? How hopelessly naive my initial thinking was... (I knew there was more to it than that, but the gap in my initial understanding of the system and reality was still quite large.)
The fact anything other than Combat and Pong was created for the 2600 is a feat in it's own right and even after developing a basic understanding of the platform and 6502 asm fundamentals, and being able to recognize many of the tricks being pulled, it still seems like magic that these games work on the 2600. I've accepted the challenge of creating a 2600 game, and it'll be a fun while often infuriating endeavor. Even if the best I can do is a multi-level breakbricker with some Tumerok imagery thrown in, I'd probably be just as proud of that as I would be with a finished NES adventure RPG. Not to downplay NES development, which has it's own unique issues and limitations, but the 2600 is definitely a quite different system.
I'd definitely recommend anyone involved in coding for game development to look at the 2600 to at least understand how far technology (both the target hardware and development tools) has progressed, including how much is handled by software and hardware for a developer nowadays in comparison to back then.
Star Raiders really blew me away with what it was doing on that hardware
Atari: Enjoy our joystick controlled driving games. Me: Didn't you ship the 2600 with a paddle controller?
A very small minority of the 2600 games used the paddle controllers, and I think they stopped selling the unit with them in later years. All the paddle controller games as I recall were breakout type games. I think Kaboom! used them as well.
@@fuzzywzhe and Night Driver as well as Demons to Diamonds
Copy and pasted from AtariAge:
Atari/Sears
Backgammon
Blackjack (3-players simultaneous)
Breakout/Breakaway IV (4-players)
Canyon Bomber (4-players)
Casino/Poker Plus (4-players simultaneous)
Circus Atari/Circus
Demons to Diamonds
Night Driver
Steeplechase (Sears-only) (4-players simultaneous)
Street Racer/Speedway II (4-players simultaneous)
Super Breakout
Video Olympics/Pong Sports (4-players simultaneous)
Warlords (4-players simultaneous)
Activision
Kaboom!
Apollo
Guardian
Data Age
Bugs
Encounter at L-5
Warplock
Imagic
Solar Storm
M-Network
Astroblast (can use joystick, but paddle works better IMO)
Parker Brothers
G.I. Joe: Cobra Strick (3-players simultaneous, uses 1-joystick)
Star Wars: Jedi Arena
SEGA
Tac-Scan
Spectravideo
Bumper Bash
Starpath/Arcadia
Fireball #3 (4-players)
Party Mix #10 (4-players simultaneous)
US Games
Eggomania (4-players)
Picnic
Piece O' Cake
Don't forget Tac/scan by Sega. The horizontal shooter from 1983 also uses the paddle controllers.
There was also a separate driving controller which was basically just a paddle with only one controller per plug rather than pairs that shared a plug. The only game I know of to use it is Indy 500.
Dark chambers makes me think of haunted house in some ways. It kind of looks like they took the original haunted house code and used it to build upon to make dark chambers. Pretty cool game.
You have great content man , I don’t understand why you only have 40k subs, you’re about to blow up!
Midnight Magic, the pinball game that briefly appears at 0:45, may now be my single favorite Atari 2600 game. It's surprisingly good as a pinball sim--has the feel of, maybe, the late electromechanicals or early solid-states that Gottlieb was putting out at the end of the 70s.
It was probably intended as a port of the personal-computer game David's Midnight Magic (which was itself an unlicensed knockoff of the real pinball Black Knight), but they clearly couldn't manage the asymmetrical layout of David's Midnight Magic on the 2600, so they had to come up with a completely different one, which to my mind plays better. At this point, the only 2600 pinball game most people had seen was the popular Video Pinball cartridge, which had an eccentric charm to it but was not very much like real pinball. But Midnight Magic was much closer, even though it had no nudge/tilt feature.
Midnight Magic was, I think, developed around 1984 and mothballed for a couple of years when Atari went bankrupt and was sold to Tramiel, then got pulled out and released in 1986 when Atari was trying to compete in the console market again.
I thought the original Pinball on Atari was pretty damn impressive for the time as well
Nope, Midnight Magic was part of Michael Katz drive to licence popular home computer games for release on the 2600 and 7800 when he took over as President of Atari Corp. in 1986.
Midnight Magic was a great game! My best friend and I both had a copy and it got a lot of play at our respective houses in the late 80's.
I love this series! It really helps me appreciate how far we've come when I'm playing modern games.
They look so bad.
@@GreenAppelPie alot better then the garbage coming out now adays tho
@@GreenAppelPie as a dude who's looking at both my atari, AND my rasp pi emulator... I gotta disagree.
If we had games like these when I was a (little) kid, I'd have been blown away, and I might have actually gone into game development like I've always wanted to.
Kung Fu in particular looks pretty dang good, mate. Like... on par with the NES version, which was one of my favorites (although I never owned it) back in the day.
I'll never lose my fondness for the music of moon patrol, or the just sheer magnitude of pitfall!; (never grammatically correctly typed a semicolon after an exclam) but if games like these were around on the earlier generations of Atari games, there wouldn't have _BEEN_ a games crash.
Yeah, it's garbage compared to the 4k splendor of things like Tsushima.... but this thing has roughly the same power as a calculator.
Having a TI-99 prior to this (something I'm sure you've never heard of), the atari was a downgrade in some aspects... notably graphically (if you can believe that).
If the graphics AND the games were this good and this fast and compelling to play, my life might have turbiled out differently.
These are as revolutionary as things like Black on the PS2 (a game that looked better than _ANY_ launch title on the PS3/360), and if we had them a few years earlier it would've blown minds.
Remember, this is the era of pac man.
I personally find modern games far too complicated and nowhere near as fun as playing the brilliant but simple addictive 8bit games that were the thing when I was a kid. I did think nothing was as cute as a Speccy, but this Atari is tempting me. The idea of keeping the console and just upgrade the game cartridge was brilliant forward thinking.
@@penfold7800 Ataris are, and likely will remain incredibly cheap.
Most retro stores can't give away the games for like $1 each, and a CIB conaole goes for like $100. A working console in good condition is worth something like $45, if you just want the sticks and usually a few games.
I mean, you can't beat the asking price, if you want the original hardware.
Instant subscribe. Thank you, this is the content I've been looking for. Spot on, not adjacent, as I often have to settle for on TH-cam when it comes to my interests. Keep up the good work and yes, I still buy Atari 2600 games. New ones and old. I even make music with the TIA chip. That's the 2600 for you. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking. It's a plucky little system. This is so timely because I'm learning 6502 assembly to make these games.
Link to your music from Atari chip
@@rustymixer2886 all my 2600 stuff is up on IG and apparently TH-cam doesn't like me posting IG links, but I think I can post this one TH-cam vid I have of me doing music for the Atari 800. Hope it doesn't get removed! This was done with Raster Music Tracker. Brilliant program that exports tunes as executable XEX files for the Atari 800:
th-cam.com/video/2klUVHRWtyk/w-d-xo.html
games that wouldn't have even been imaginable when the system first came out... one of the perks of it having a shockingly long lifespan i guess
The Atari was out for a couple years before it even got popular. Released in 1977, it struggled and was cheapened (made more cheaply) before the 1980 release of Space Invaders, which is when it took off. So even though it was out for a while, not a whole lot happened until the SI release.
The earliest 2600s have a different and MUCH better joystick. From the outside it looks exactly the same and has the same part number, but the early ones had an elaborate suspension inside and feel a lot better. As I got older I needed the early ones because of how much better in your hands they feel to avoid cramping.
@@tarstarkusz can confirm.
Early sticks are like... first of all still fully functional, but they feel completely different.
The "newer" (lol) ones were mushy.
And oddly it was the limitation of requiring the programmer to handle all the graphics (no real video handler to speak of) that made this possible.
Pitfall II came out in 1984. That was one of the most technically impressive games ever made on the 2600 although everybody has seen it, and is sick of it being mentioned.
@@fuzzywzhe Pitfall II also had the display processor chip, which was essentially a second atari. That's as close to the exact opposite of pushing the limits of the system as you can get, while still technically releasing on the same system.
I for some reason really like calling the 2600 the “pine top pixelator”
Another interesting look into a games history missed by most.
@Noah Tabraham Sharopolis rocks!
it isn't missed, just nobody actually cares
Given the way the management of Atari handled everything else I'm glad the 2600 lived on as long as it did!
I'm also thankful that I was bought one of these (second hand in 1986 for £13 complete with Yars' Revenge!) and got to know the system well. Some of my best memories as a kid are fused with this wonderful little machine!
You are the first person, besides me (in an Article I wrote about Dragon Stomper) that i have seen mention that the Epyx Lynx guys also worked on the Super Charger (and also the Amiga of course)
Yeah no one seems to pick up on that connection, it was only something I stumbled across reading about the Super Charger and Epyx in general.
I mentioned it in Retro Gamer magazine when I wrote the article on "The Games" series and its evolution from the unreleased Super Charger game Sweat.
@@TheLairdsLair That's right! I need to find that issue.
I'd love to have longer, standalone videos that explore all the tricks in the way you did here for F-14 Tomcat and Radar Lock!
That's a good idea! Something to think about...
Dandy, I don't think that name helped it's "First!" status cause, Gauntlet is just a plain cooler title, Dark Chambers is decidedly more cool too ijs. Yeah that cart is MASSIVE...for the 2600.
Well Nolan said "Make a game like that Zelda one.", and Steve said "Okay.", and that's how Secret Quest came to be, Bushnell is a genius. ^_^
Nice highlight on the KFM "scrolling" method, beat me to it. ;) That game is actually well suited to the 2600, one to three enemy mobs for the 2600's sprite copy function limit.
Yeah it's pretty tough at 40 PF pixels wide, been trying some faux 80 through Missile and Ball bit use but it's tricky. True with the text too bitd but since then people have pushed past the 48 pixel limit when they can, larger carts are much cheaper now.
Radar Lock looks really nice, don't think I've seen that one but now I want it. ;) Lol yeah you know a 1977 console still kicking around up to and a little past 1990 is kind of crazy when you think about it.
Idk Fatal Run looks pretty fancy for a 2600 game, oh 32K, a biggie. Cost constraints that eventually turned into plain old cheapness on Atari's part once memory prices dropped. Funny enough they still argue about ROM size on the forums in 2020 where 2K or 32K is f*ck all in cost now. 9_9
Not bad RR, the characters are recognizable unlike Taz and it even approximates stuff you would see in the cartoons too. You could mention Double Dragon but I wish you wouldn't lol.
California Games, always looked nice on every platform it was ported to it would seem. Ah hadn't checked but I figured that was how the footbag guy sprite was done.
Well it may not look much like Ghostbusters 2 but it's a neat little game that uses the hardware well. Personally much like the original 2600 game by David Crane I think it's amazing it works on such hardware at all while just being a lame game on other more capable platforms that saw ports.
Time bandit came out before gauntlet... but after Dandy
Your technical analysis is always impressive in these videos. I wouldn't mind a part 2 with games like Double Dragon and Commando. Always amazes me that they got those games on such a primitive system. Although I guess they had extra RAM and bank switching so that makes a big difference.
Check out Halo and Pac-Man 4k for what the base hardware can do.
Considering what the 2600 was I’m surprised at how good some of these look. It kind of makes me want to get a 2600.
I'd long since abandoned the 2600,when i saw Tomcat being reviewed in The Games Machine and was amazed how far the hardware has been pushed.
We had an atari in my house as early as 82. An coleco and intellivision as well at times. They were all sold in 87 to purchase a nes with a few good games, memorably zelda 1 and metroid.
I love this series. You’re doing gaming content with a unique twist compared to everyone else
Thanks!
Just wanted to say I've recently subscribed and I'm currently working my way through all your videos, they are really good and I'm enjoying it greatly and also learning a few things along the way. Thank you!
Thanks for watching! Glad you're enjoying them.
What a brilliant video, I love the explanation of the horizontal scrolling, that's fascinating!
I'm watching this video in a tiny overlay on the corner of my phone. I can still see the pixels. 😂
It was 160x192 pixels.
Great video! I have an 7800 in the loft that might need resurrecting at some point....couple of games there that are almost as good as a 7800 title.
Thanks!
...at some point?
Get up there, mate!
That Ghostbusters game looks like it could be the inspiration of the Battetoads descention levels.
I don't think many people knew that game existed haha
Nice overview! Suggestion for future 2600 videos: Make your video 60p, so that all of the 2600's frames can be seen. (Most 2600 games run at the full framerate)
Great video mate. What an awesome system this was
I loved radar lock and secret quest as a 7800 kid. It made me consider picking up more 2600 titles because those were so good.
man your videos NEVER disappoint. no one is doing this like you. so friggin interesting!
Thank you so much for your encouragement, more to come!
Man: The Degenatron gaming system plays three exciting games, including Defender of the Faith, where you save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square.
Kids: COOL!
Man: Monkey's Paradise, where you swing from green dot to green dot with your red square monkey.
Kids: THAT'S RAD!
Man: And Penetrator, where you smash the green dots deep inside the mysterious red square!
Kid: WOW!
As someone who got an Atari in 1978, I had no idea they were still producing games in the late 80’s. I remember picking up some games around 83 - 85 & thinking they were improved. (Donkey Kong Jr , Star Wars, & Star Raiders). Then the NES came out & I never gave the Atari another thought. Great great memories though.
Great vid! I never had a 2600 growing up but it's fascinating to me how much programmers managed to do with such an old system. Any chance of another video covering the homebrew/demoscene after its official retail death? There are still demos being made for it *today!*
Yes, I want to do something about homebrew and the other crazy stuff people have done with the 2600 soon.
@@Sharopolis please, man.
I'm not massively into the homebrew scene, but I'd LOVE to see what people have done.
This machine is still pulling tricks out of it's hat in 2020. This machine never should and never will die.
Jungle hunt for the 2600 had both horizontal scrolling and parallax scrolling
This is flat-out this is the best video over VCS/2600 games I have ever seen.
The fact that the Atari 2600 stuck around for 16 years is amazing. That would never happen today
The Xbox 360 has a chance, as far as game releases, but the consoles themselves can't even live for 16 _months._
@@CustomsByOrangeH it’s been a while since the 360 got even an indie game tbh
That California Games looks incredible, didn't realise it could show so many vivid colours. My Speccy or C64 could never have done that.
I had no idea that they made games after 1981. Great video. ostalgia box "Checked" New subscriber. Happy Holidays. Great video/narration! Peace!
I did the gfx for the amiga/ST versions of Ghostbusters 2, I didn't even know there was a version for the 2600, that seems mad...
In the original the statue of liberty was the whole thing, not just an ice cream cone + drumstick...
Some of these games are genius. Some are just terrible. What a time.
The main strength the Atari VCS had was speed.
These changes to what the beam could do in a short period of time, gave it some flexibility in some ways.
It's also surprising how large a color pallet this system had, more colors then the Sega Master system and NES.
I’ll admit Atari strategy in the late 80s way kind of solid. They release games for both Atari 2600 and 7800. The consoles and games would be cheat. But what I find weird is that 7800 games were unremarkable with a few exception late in the systems life. However, the Atari 2600 games were the exact opposite. They probably had to push that to compete with the NES. But Atari could have just simple just let the price of the system be the selling point. I just find it weird that the 2600 had more interesting games then the 7800. Also I’m aware that some of these games do have 7800 versions
Had they released it 2 years earlier instead of shelving it, the gaming landscape may have looked alot different.
@@REPVILE Can you imagine almost arcade-perfect ports of classics like Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig Dug and Pole Position in 1983-1984?
@@REPVILE do you mean the 7800 or those 2600 games?
@@jakeconer The 7800
Definitely check out the demoscene if you think these are impressive. KK/DMA know how to make some amazing things happen on our 6507 powered friend.
The playfield, while only 40 pixels wide, can also be stretched and shrunk as well as shifted horizontally, which allows some pretty neat effects!
The sound system of the little Atari is part of the TIA, and was 2 channels. It was made to be stereo and even includes two separate outputs on the chip and early cases had space for two speakers inside. It was routed to the modulator pretty late in design.
It's a set of 5 bit frequency dividers based on the internal video generation signals! That means either channel can be playing one of 31 notes at a time. None of them are in tune.
Wow I had no idea you could scale and shift the playfield! Which prods do that?
I can tell you from experience that the PAL 2600s don't have stereo outputs on the TIA sadly, the two audio outs are combined internally and some obscure video thing replaces it on the pin. I really want to get an NTSC 2600 sometime though, just for the full experience!
I was very impressed on how Kung Fu came out on that system
I played Kung Fu Master.. It was pretty impressive now that I think about it. It was probably the last hurrah before /i went through a bit of a Dark Age when it came to my video game Journey
I don't get why you haven't more subscribers. Your content is excellent.
Wow, that Kung Fu looks amazing! Great video thank you!
I can't stop playing the intro waffle. It's so cute & bubbly. 😁
The appearance of Kung Fu Master is similar to A Clockwork Orange.
I didn't notice that, but now you come to mention it I can see what you mean.
oh yes, the video game man is wearing a Derby hat.
well that was a waste of storage space, you used a full few kilobytes there!
The 2600 is not a matter of where, but when.
That's a good way of putting it!
Very interesting. Great graphics wow! Thanks 😊
Thanks for watching!
Atari initially wanted to replace the 2600 here in the UK with the 5200, then canned that idea, annouced the 7800, showcased it, then Bob Gleadow convinced them to go with the XE GS instead.
Atari then later release the 7800
So they have the 2600,the XE GS and the 7800 on the market, all competing for the same, limited UK 8-bit cartridge based console market at the same time.
Only Atari would compete with it's own platforms..
Dan Kitchen, author of Kung Fu Master and F-14 Tomcat, is the son of Garry Kitchen, who wrote many classic games for the 2600 including Keytone Kapers, Pressure Cooker and Garry Kitchen's GameMaker. A lot of programming talent in that family!
The secret to the 2600's longevity was its extremely sparse hardware capability that put a lot of the responsibility on the software to directly control the limited hardware. This limitation meant that the hardware itself was not necessarily the limiting factor as the games above demonstrate. Considering how tedious and nerve racking it is to program for* I tip my hat to anyone who can create even the simplest of games for the system.
* There are a number of videos on TH-cam that demonstrate what is required to program for this system and you will see what I mean...
Going through all of these right now.
So far dark chambers is my favorite, and a 2600 game I actually like.
I have no idea how to get past the first level of secret quest, but kung fu was interesting
Aaaahhh!!! I'm supposed to be working right now and I can't do it...must watch...new video...resistance is futile. Productivity failing...work shutting down...;)
to access your inventory in Secret Quest you flip thah color/BW switch on the console
Atari SuperMan was why ahead of its time. most people have no idea how to play it. It's my favorite game on the Atari 2600. I bought the Atari when it first came out like for $200. I bought the Atari 1974 pong when it first came out on the stand alone game with battery's & the sound came out of the speaker on the pong system. Atari Superman goes 21 screens to the left or right & has up & down scroll too. it was WAY ahead of its time. it was even one of the first games on the Atari 2600 system. today is 3-22-22
Atari kept making and selling 2600 variants into the early 90s because they were always profitable. They needed only a couple really cheap, and reliable, chips. Atari also had tons of inventory to use up, and Tramiel new he needed to squeeze profit from what they had. Even in the late 80s, I was using a Sears VCS on the B&W TV in my room, and if it was an Activision game, it was always fun.
Fantastic video!
All amazing games made with true programming wizardry. This is why the 2600 still lives on - the challenge of programming it
Atari kept milking the 2600 because of the simple fact that after being on the market for over a decade, and almost _de facto_ the only thing anyone owned for the majority of that time, there were just so many of them out there that you could assume an audience of millions for any game you bothered to release. This cannot be said for any of the 2600's competitors, nor Atari's own alternatives. The only way things might have changed is if they'd managed to get the 7800 out on time, rather than several years too late (ffs). Then Atari could have gradually transitioned the platform landscape. The NES still would have eventually taken over, since it was almost as much ahead of its time as the VCS itself was, but I think the 2600 would have retired earlier, with the 7800 haphazardly filling the blank.
I'd love to see some of the old programming legends dust off their skills and make a comeback. Sadly I missed out on David Crane's last game - postage and taxes to the UK just a bit too expensive these days. Awesome stuff though
Awesome! I didn't think people outside of The U.S. knew so much about the old Atari.
Nice video. I feel like Solaris needed to be here though
The creative programming tricks are the secret to the 2600's longevity, especially in the homebrew community. The primitive workings of its Television Interface Adaptor (TIA) and lack of a frame buffer inadvertently gave the 2600 a lot of flexibility for coders to create these impressive later games that the console supposedly wasn't designed to handle. The homebrew games being designed today with just a little bit more memory are just amazing.
I didn't know they had Kung Fu Master for the 2600 (I had already moved on to the NES by that point)... that's impressive. I loved that game in the arcade as a kid.
Id love to see zombie years vids for all the home micros as well as post death vids showcasing games that cameout after a system was canceled. So many good post death games espically for the home micros. Thanks again for these videos and all the hard work and long hours that go into them.
There was a Gunbee F-99 port for the Amiga in 1999 th-cam.com/video/xbIPH8rmMBE/w-d-xo.html
It’s amazing what the 2600 could do with some helper chips in the cartridge. I feel like this and the NES really benefited from helper chips, I mean without helper chips most consoles would be dead in a few years.
Kung Fu master on 2600 and 7800 we're good games, had both versions as a child, they were great!
I have tomcat for the 7800, and it used all the switches on the machine itself. I’d get too excited and flip the switch on the Atari itself and then mess up the cartridge and ruin my progress. Also landing the plane was not possible in the night missions.
Once again, I'm compelled to advocate for Pac-Man Jr and Defender II. Lot of scrolling in both, horizontal in Defender II. Lots of moving components with little to no flicker. Absolutely what the original Defender SHOULD have been. You really should check it out.
Great topic, great video!
Thank you!
excellent tech breakdown and commentary and use of emulation debugging to illustrate your points
Too many video game videos, retro or not, have little thoughtful analysis of WHY a game looks or plays good
In Cali games surfing you could do tricks on your board by doing button combos at the right time, I remember forward forward action would make you "hang ten" and step to the front of your board, that's the only one I remember thou
Loved this trip down memory lane ❤
Great video!
Kids born in the early 2000s will never understand the nostalgic noises that these things make. Even the screen savers on Windows 3.1
When you talk about Horizontal Scrolling being difficult, it makes me wonder about Empire Strikes Back...
Intellvison was rereleased in 1984 as intv
System lll
I have the Atari 2600 VCS and I still play it to this day. Most of the games that I own are ones that were released from 1977 through 1984, but I have a small number of post 1984 games from both Atari and Activision. My newest games are primarily homebrew games and a few more advanced hacks than what used to be available in the mid to late 1990s. I prefer to play my Atari 2600 VCS over either my Atari 5200 Super System and/or my Atari 7800 Pro System. Because the more advanced the graphics become the more difficult the game play is too.
The last officially released Atari 2600 game was _Acid Drop_ if I'm not mistaken, a clone of _Columns_ with some slightly different features.
The thing about this system is that games like Solaris just about pushed the 2600 what anyone might have imagined it could go.
By the time we're looking at Ghostbusters II, the 2600 had been pushed far beyond where anyone wanted to see it go.
Okay, Tec-Toy had some absolute home-grown shovelware for Sega consoles, I'll admit that. But they also produced some games that punch way above their weight class and quite playable and even fun, even if the same game could be done better on more powerful hardware. Very few of these zombie era 2600 games could be called "fun".
When talking about old game systems that outlived their relevance, it's important to remember that a lot of consumers bought those obsolete consoles to replace their consoles that had stopped working. Atari had a HUGE library of existing games for the 2600 floating around in shoeboxes, in attics and closets, with no console to play them on. Offering a cheap (about the price of a single NES game at the time) new console for an old game collection (just like Nintendo did with the NES and SNES) isn't a bad marketing strategy.
Regarding Ghostbusters II - Salu was German subsidiary of Mediagenic, the company that owned the Activision brand, which is why the famous logo still appears on the box.
Thanks for clearing this up, I've read conflicting things about Salu and there's very very little info about them online as I'm sure you're aware!
I'm still waiting on that Atari homebrew video. This guy Sprybug (aka Chris Spry) managed to do Mario with separate running and fireballs and Sonic with actual physics, including a different slower and lower gravity set for the underwater segments.
Solaris is definitely a hardware pusher, surprised you didn't cover it. Great video overall .
That's in my last 2600 video
th-cam.com/video/zM0IsWdIc_g/w-d-xo.html
It is amazing though!
@@Sharopolis Oh i'm sorry man, i'll have to go and watch it. The game is fast and amazing with so much going on and graphics detail, not to mention the scope of the map too.
Homebrew video? Yes, have some!
Is that a small nod to Lewis in Ghostbusters?!
@@skylined5534 yes, my roommate and his dad said it to each other all the time
@@lutello3012
Haha that's brilliant, I love things like that!
Merry Christmas dude 🎅🎄