There are some great arcade ports here I would have loved to see released back in the day. Zookeeper was a favorite arcade game. The sound are just crazy like a Williams game. The secret to super high scores is not to keep the animals penned in, but to complete jumps over several at a time.
Boulder dash. The physics make a lot of sense. If you have two round uneven boulders stacked on top of each other abs you remove earth that hold them together it would normally mean that one boulder would fall off the other :)
Boulder Dash - This applies to all versions: The boulders have rounded bottoms, and the diamonds have pointed bottoms. Dirt is soft, so boulders and diamonds are stable when sitting on dirt. You're also able to balance a boulder or diamond on your head (provided it doesn't fall on it). However if a boulder or diamond is sitting on top of another boulder, diamond, or wall, there is nothing supporting it on the side, and there's space for it to fall down, it will "roll" off and fall. So if a boulder is sitting on the edge of a wall, and you remove the dirt next to it, it will roll off the edge. However if it's sitting in the middle of a wall, you can remove the dirt from both sides and it won't move, because there's no place for it to roll off. If one boulder is sitting on top of another boulder, it will roll off, but if it's sitting on the middle boulder of a line of three, it will stay there. You can outrun falling boulders by going down, but you'll also need to move left or right to get out of their way. Also note that if there is free space on the other side of a boulder, you can push it by walking against it. Additionally, if you hold down the button and move the joystick, the game will act as if you moved in that direction without you actually moving. This means that you can dig the dirt next to you without moving into that space, or push a boulder without following it, or collect a diamond while standing next to it. The flashing things moving around are fireflies. They will kill you if they touch you. Fireflies always follow edges clockwise. They won't chase you, but will kill you if they move next to you. Later you will encounter butterflies with flapping wings. Butterflies behave like fireflies, except that they follow edges counter-clockwise. Both can be killed by dropping a boulder on them, or by them coming into contact with an amoeba. Amoebas make a weird noise and need to be contained with boulders (you can also use your character to help contain them) before they reach maximum size. If you contain them, they turn into diamonds. If they aren't contained and reach maximum size, they turn into boulders. When you hear a snap sound and the screen flashes, you've collected enough diamonds to go through the exit, which will be open. If all the empty space on the screen suddenly fills with sparkles, it means you earned an extra life. There are a couple other gameplay mechanics you'll need to solve the levels, but as it's a bit of a puzzle game, I'll leave those for you to discover.
nice! after like several decades of not understanding how the boulders worked and why i kept getting killed, i had to finally look it up earlier this year lol. now i know.
You are totally right about the scanlines. As you can only have 2 color per line with a bit of scanline color switching you can have the visual impression of up to 4 colors
Hey there! Actually the scanlines and screen cuts is mostly to increase performance, since the limited Atari 2600 hardware has no video RAM and therefore graphics must be rendered on the fly, freezing CPU operations meanwhile. There enters the balance between screen size and performance. Scanlines reduce system's rendering time by half, but as the frame rate stays the same the timing in even frames is accurately used to squeeze a couple of instructions. That's all what "racing the beam" is all about, as in old CRT screens you were sort of racing the CRT beam through each scanline as it was rendering each frame of the game.
I always love seeing Atari 2600 homebrews and what people can do with such old hardware. 😊 I grew up with the VCS (as it was known back then) and if a lot of the homebrews I've seen had been released back then in the early to mid 80s it would've blown people's minds!
That wouldve been amazing and I think some actually did have certain chips in them back then. Games like Solaris used them if I'm not mistaken. I think all they did though was just give it a little more ram but either way, you can definitely tell that 2600 games that came out during the 80s and early 90s were way better looking than when it first came out in 1977. But the fact that system lasted that long is an amazing fact within itself! The 2600 came out when my father was 17 but ended it's run when I was around 9 or 10! That is unbelievable! 😊
@@blackenedheart9592Solaris doesn't have a helper chip just ingenious use of sprites to create "high res" graphics. Pitfall II is one of the very few 2600 games that had one.
Ummmmm have you seen any modern Intellivision homebrews? The Intellivision pumps out Sega Master System quality games now. The 2600 is not even in the same galaxy as the Intellivision.
@@nickynj454 Check out the Intellivision version of Super Mario Bros - it's near NES/arcade perfect - now compare that to the SMB homebrew for the 2600 called Princess Rescue. Still a great game and attempt but nothing like the Intellivision version.
24:00 When I was very, very young, I saw Scramble in the arcade for the first time. This is one of those memories I kept from like 6 years old. Some dude was playing it, and had _exactly_ the same problem with the part where you travel through the maze-like level. This gave me quite a flashback. Of course the solution is that you move forward as far as you can, so that when you have the opportunity, you move _diagonally down and backwards_ so the ship is effectively in freefall and you don't die to the scrolling. The dude in the arcade all those years ago couldn't figure it out either.
In Mappy, in the trampoline to get to the balloons, you need to break through the trampoline in some cases to drop to the section below instead going over to the left to drop down then go back to the right. You can speed up the process by slamming yourself against the wall to short circuit your rise and let you drop back to the trampoline sooner.
Hey thanks for trying out Temple of the False Gods. If you let it sit on the titlescreen a few seconds it plays some action clips. Also if you hold the fire button a couple seconds it will pull up the inventory. You can go in the door on the left side of the temple you make your way to the top go in your inventory use the oil in the top room to "purify" then equip the sword to kill the abomination open the chest end of demo.
Excellent video and thanks for taking the time to play all 15 of the Champ Games! :) A couple pointers and answers to your questions: 1) Yes, Avalanche supports paddles 2) Yes, Scramble and Super Cobra Arcade both support Sega Genesis pads 3) FYI Qyx also supports 2 button Sega Genesis pads for fast/slow draw 4) Elevator Agent supports 2 button Sega Genesis pads for jump/shoot 5) RobotWar supports 2 joysticks; most likely if you're playing with Stella it detected a QuadTari and a SaveKey. A QuadTari is a device that allows you to plug two joysticks into 1 port, so to fire with the second joystick you would need to configure Joystick 3 in Stella. Or, you could override the controllers and set the left controller and right controller to "Joystick" 6) In RobotWar, for single joystick control you *can* hold down the button and it will fire continuously in the last direction, allowing you to move in another direction. You can also flip the left difficulty switch to 'A' to activate auto-fire which will fire continuously in the last direction; tap the button and move to change the firing direction (hold the button to stop firing). 7) In RobotWar, we were forced to use the low resolution playfield for the grunts because the 2600 only supports 2 sprites on the same line without flicker. Atari tried to make Robotron back in the early 80's and it was described as a 'flickering mess' because of this. :) Having the grunts as playfield made sense because they move in steps so it doesn't affect gameplay. 8) The wide spacing in Galagon is because of the 8 pixel spacing that is used for multiple copies of 2600 sprites. A hardware trick allows you to make up to 8 copies of the same sprite in the same line with no flicker but the restriction is that they have 8 pixels between them. Hope that helps, and thanks again!
@@GregsGameRoom Thanks for the kind words. :) Oh, I forgot to mention that both Wizard of Wor Arcade and Gorf Arcade take advantage of the AtariVox device to play speech during the game (60+ phrases in WoW and 45+ in Gorf )
15:40 Mappy Bonus stage: you save some time by jumping to the right so Mappy does short jumps. This way you break through the trampoline instead of going the route you did. Saves a few seconds!
1942's "music" is practically what it was in the arcades. Elevator Action clone, Galaga, GORF, Zookeeper clones here are GREAT. I wonder if programmers at the time would have been able to make these if they hadn't had such CRUNCH deadlines from their bosses?
@@johnnywc23 thanks for the confirmation. I have Galagon, Wizard of Wor and Gorf on order.. when they come in I seriously think it's going to be a hookey day from work :). Great work you and your team does.
@@Boswd You're welcome! I hope that order comes in soon, thanks for the support! I may need to take a day off from work too so I can take a break from making games and spend some time playing them. :)
Thanks for watching! Here are some other interesting videos: 43 *MORE* Atari 2600 Homebrews! th-cam.com/video/RfqowGNqG5A/w-d-xo.html 10 Things You Don't Know About Atari: th-cam.com/video/IPP-OBCxWMU/w-d-xo.html 5 Minute History: The Atari 2600 th-cam.com/video/H8vaXOKJxKQ/w-d-xo.html
Not so much for Atari 2600. Most (if not all) of the times l have seen it used to create the illusion of more than one color per line. For say other 8 bit platforms for sure it was a way to use that time for other stuff than writing to the screen
Space taxi for Commodore 64 will always say like hey taxi pad one please or up please hey taxi pad 9 please with voice and the taxi w music like SHORT AND SWEET or at the beach
Hi there! I did consider finishing the Atari 1983 prototype of Elevator Action but that proved to be too difficult so I wrote Elevator Agent from scratch. :)
This is honestly a great training tool to get into game design. Modern tools make it less imposing, and it forces you to focus on making the most of your resources and maximizing the experience.
Juno First is another fantastic home-brew port of the Arcade … with very impressive graphics. I don’t think Juno First was ever ported to any / many systems back in the day which is strange 🤷 and a good reason to check out the 2600 version 👍🏼
It is hard to believe that these are games for the 2600, which only had 160 bytes of RAM. A few 2600 games had extra RAM or other chips to give better graphics or sound. I suspect that the emulators can handle the extra hardware.
So many great games, my favorite of course being the rubyQ. ❤ I'll tell you what else I love... putting an end to the myth that the Atari2600 has limitations which kept certain titles from ever being produced or in this case, perfected. The amount of impressive homebrews in the last few years speaks volumes to just what the Atari system is truly capable of. Not to shabby at all for a console that runs like a tank and refuses to die!
No kidding! I mean, now that the 2600 is on equal footing with the NES in terms of MMC-style chips, let's compare! SMB for the NES is only 40K after all and I bet a very close approximation can be done for the 2600 (more accurate than Princess Rescue I mean!)
I got a 2600 back in 1980 and had a bit of a love'hate relationship with it. On the one hand, it was great having a console. On the other hand, the graphics kind of sucked compared to the real arcade stuff. I must say, though, some of these games look FANTASTIC and are pretty damn close to the the arcade originals: Gorf, Galagon, Elevator Agent, Qix, RobotWar, RubyQ, Scramble, Super Cobra and Wizard of War are all stand outs. Thanks!
Champ games makes some of the best homebrews. Same with spiceware. I ordered robotwar 2684 and ladybug arcade. Should be here next week. Eventually want to order lode runner. Draconian is my favorite
10:35 Spread-out formation: It's basically a miracle that the VCS allowed that many horizontal sprites. The VCS can only display 5 sprites, and it's even more limited than what I just said, but keep that point in mind. The VCS has the ability to double- or triple-up two of those sprites-a gimmick the designers threw in so that "Super Pong" (Video Olympics) could have fancy paddles made up of two or three bars. That's being abused here: Tripling-up both of those sprites (for a total of 6), and then using two more sprites for a total of 8 in a single horizontal line. The problem is that the tripling-up trick gives you no control over the _spacing._ And unfortunately, the spacing is a little wide for an application like a Galaga enemy formation.
Are games like Galxon and Gorf using some crazy amount of RAM or some other elements that would make it impossible to actually make a cart out of these? Seems hard to believe how MUCH better come of these are than production 2600 games.
In Boulder Dash, boulders always fall off of boulders if there is a space to the left or right. They don't fall off of dirt. Rockford (you) can also stand to the left or right of a boulder and prevent it from falling. And yeah those flashing things are the bad guys. And I believe the "Venetian blind" effect is both for color-mixing, and also to give the CPU a break on every other scanline so that there's more time for the game logic to run. And yeah, all these games look amazing for a 2600.
my favorites are 1-pitfall 2 and a tie between smurfs (rescue in G´s castle) and Bob is going home. All platformers, because they´re my favorite genre! I also enjoy Superman.
Both Scramble and Super Cobra are amazing ports that I've been playing for a while. Would have been mind blowing having these back in the 80's. Played a lot of Ladybug too, which is really good. Need to check out the updated one. Eager to play Elevator Agent, Gorf Arcade, Qyx, Mappy, Robotwar 2684 and Zoo Keeper. Really, every game in the vid looks fun.
I am literally blown away how incredible some of these games look. When you consider that this machine came out in 1977 and it's very big brother was the Atari 400 and 800 - this thing had amazing potential. It has 128KB of RAM folks! The contemporaneous problem was the ROMs, they cost money and Atari management was too cheap to give programmers the space the needed to store their games. Anyway, great line up of games I have never seen or heard about. The home-brew scene is much more interesting than I thought.
whats amazing of pacman in space is that it has an actual intro / slash / cutscene! and yes he escapes the mothership and start to falldown towards earth (hence the fire) and no, ghosts wont catch fire, they are ghosts :p
Some suggestions for your next 2600 Homebrew video: Juno First, Donkey Kong VCS, K.O. Cruiser, Pac-Man 4K For the first two in particular, it's difficult to believe a 2600 can pull them off.
Where is the background music playing at the start of the video from? I'm certain it's from the Spy VS Spy PS2 game but I can't seem to find it online.
Ive always been curious if some of these homebrews could technically have been created and run on an actual Atari in the late 70s early 80s? Or are they using technology that didnt exist or is it simply just programming techniques?
"I'm not sure why that is, probably some limitation or something." Surely not! Thanks for the video. I owned one of these when I was young, it's pretty cool what some of these devs have done.
Boulder Dash: the reason boulders fall sideways is because they are round! In the 2600 version this might be visualy unclear but it makes perfect sence in the other versions 😃
i am 53 now and also grew up with the vcs. i just want to say: the quality of the champ-games is a b s o l u t e l y incredible. john champeau = vcs-programmer-god. nuff said.
The craziest thing about the Atari 2600 is that the best games on the Intellivision were the D&D games Treasure of Tarmin and Cloudy Mountains both of which had very simple graphics and the Treasure of Tarmin was actually ported to the Atari 2600 by Synth Corp but never released as Mattel left the console industry before they had a chance to release it even though it was finished and ready for release. 40 years and no one has ported these games to the Atari 2600 and released them?
They'll keep coming out of the door if you explode it. Gotta first beat all of the enemies on the map to get into the next level on that Bomberman port Boom!
Cool to see Forest Moon Attack and you called it. It is inspired by Return of the Jedi and its name is a play on the knock off Zellers cartridges (Atlantis was Ocean City Defender). Still a work in progress I tried to make multiple screens of gameplay. The first being a kind of side scrolling level where I tried to learn to make a kind of acceleration effect. The second type of screen involves shooting a kind of two legged walker. A third screen would be protecting some furry forest friends against an onslaught of troopers, and the last screen is you gotta bust into the enemy base by bringing the bomb to the door then running back down behind that line and detonating it. I haven’t figured out what happens next but was thinking of having a kind of part where you go inside the base and fight a big boss before it cycles back over again. There is also a kind of scene if you lose all your health in the speeder scene you end up on foot and have to collect boxes while avoiding the enemy. If you die there then you lose a life for sure.
That is usually my goal. I only finished one game so far. This one was an experiment in making not only scrolling but making multiple screens that will loop over and get harder. Usually when I hit a block I take a break and move onto something else to try and learn. Working on this game helped me finish up Lineman and set the foundation for a newer project I was working on - Beyond Parsec
I have one known “bug” I need to fix and in the final screen where you have to blow up the base, I was debating whether to add one more screen where you enter the base and fight a final boss or if blowing up the base should be enough. If I do make another screen I kind of want to make a different gameplay element, like how I have scrolling and various shooting stages.
These games seem to use color blendings and interlaced resolutions very extensively, so the video recording does not really do them justice, I'm afraid.
How can someone be so confused with Boulderdash? It is simple. Rocks will roll off other rocks because they are round. Actually makes perfect physics sense. Not to mention, this VERY popular early computer game would be ridiculously fucking easy if you only had to worry about rocks falling straight down. Having to worry about them rolling off the other rocks is pretty much 90% of the challenge.
I'm curious, did you use some sort of thing in the video capture or editing process to merge adjacent frames together? Some of the visual effects don't seem possible otherwise.
I used the Stella emulator to get clean video and turned on phosphor at 50% so it looks as it would on a TV. The rest was the programmer's skill and whatever memory mapper they used.
how they got galiga on 2600 is a miricle it looks like the arcade its amazinf imagine if that came out in 1982 or 1983 along with the 8kb version of packman the 2609 would have has games realease to 1992
Although I'm not an expert, I have a guess on why they use the interlace pattern. The graphics chip in the Atari 2600 is a nightmare to program. Unless you only use it's most basic features you have to spend almost every displayed line organizing what you want to draw where. The only time you can use the CPU for actual logic computation is when the monitor displays its upper and lower frame. Which is not a lot of time. If you simply don't display every second line you have a ton of extra CPU time available.
@@patsfan4life I meant the TIA chip. Okay, technically it is also responsible for sound and is connected to the controllers, but I meant its graphics capabilities.
If I understood correctly you don't like using the joystick diagonally in rubyQ. But there's a per-player option to use joystick in the straight direction, just selectable with difficulty switches.
Have Wizard of Wor Arcade on cart. with the Atarivox it has the voices from the arcade and saves the high score. Add the Quadtari and you have two player action with the voice from the vox. The aftermarket hardware is just as amazing as some of these homebrews!
My ruined childhood would've been fixed if these games had come out back then. I was just stuck being jealous of the Nintendo people while pretending Mario Bros. was sort of maybe like Super Mario Bros.
I just finished my game for a class. Let me know if you want to check it out. It’s really kinda bad but think it would be fun if you are making another video.
There are some great arcade ports here I would have loved to see released back in the day. Zookeeper was a favorite arcade game. The sound are just crazy like a Williams game. The secret to super high scores is not to keep the animals penned in, but to complete jumps over several at a time.
Hi. The developer of OOZY THE GOO here. To defeat the knight at 17:57 you first have to find the mana orb that allow you to shoot mana balls.
Makes sense!
Boulder dash. The physics make a lot of sense. If you have two round uneven boulders stacked on top of each other abs you remove earth that hold them together it would normally mean that one boulder would fall off the other :)
It's impressive that some of these games look close to NES games. It shows the 2600 is capable of more than people assume.
Boulder Dash - This applies to all versions: The boulders have rounded bottoms, and the diamonds have pointed bottoms. Dirt is soft, so boulders and diamonds are stable when sitting on dirt. You're also able to balance a boulder or diamond on your head (provided it doesn't fall on it). However if a boulder or diamond is sitting on top of another boulder, diamond, or wall, there is nothing supporting it on the side, and there's space for it to fall down, it will "roll" off and fall. So if a boulder is sitting on the edge of a wall, and you remove the dirt next to it, it will roll off the edge. However if it's sitting in the middle of a wall, you can remove the dirt from both sides and it won't move, because there's no place for it to roll off. If one boulder is sitting on top of another boulder, it will roll off, but if it's sitting on the middle boulder of a line of three, it will stay there. You can outrun falling boulders by going down, but you'll also need to move left or right to get out of their way.
Also note that if there is free space on the other side of a boulder, you can push it by walking against it. Additionally, if you hold down the button and move the joystick, the game will act as if you moved in that direction without you actually moving. This means that you can dig the dirt next to you without moving into that space, or push a boulder without following it, or collect a diamond while standing next to it.
The flashing things moving around are fireflies. They will kill you if they touch you. Fireflies always follow edges clockwise. They won't chase you, but will kill you if they move next to you. Later you will encounter butterflies with flapping wings. Butterflies behave like fireflies, except that they follow edges counter-clockwise. Both can be killed by dropping a boulder on them, or by them coming into contact with an amoeba.
Amoebas make a weird noise and need to be contained with boulders (you can also use your character to help contain them) before they reach maximum size. If you contain them, they turn into diamonds. If they aren't contained and reach maximum size, they turn into boulders.
When you hear a snap sound and the screen flashes, you've collected enough diamonds to go through the exit, which will be open. If all the empty space on the screen suddenly fills with sparkles, it means you earned an extra life.
There are a couple other gameplay mechanics you'll need to solve the levels, but as it's a bit of a puzzle game, I'll leave those for you to discover.
nice! after like several decades of not understanding how the boulders worked and why i kept getting killed, i had to finally look it up earlier this year lol. now i know.
@@jinchoung Better late than never. :)
Correct, that's how we roll...
Elevator Action was the most Amazing Homebrew they did...is Exacly like the Arcade and the NES version,i played a lot of it during the 80s and on Mame
You are totally right about the scanlines. As you can only have 2 color per line with a bit of scanline color switching you can have the visual impression of up to 4 colors
Hey there! Actually the scanlines and screen cuts is mostly to increase performance, since the limited Atari 2600 hardware has no video RAM and therefore graphics must be rendered on the fly, freezing CPU operations meanwhile.
There enters the balance between screen size and performance. Scanlines reduce system's rendering time by half, but as the frame rate stays the same the timing in even frames is accurately used to squeeze a couple of instructions. That's all what "racing the beam" is all about, as in old CRT screens you were sort of racing the CRT beam through each scanline as it was rendering each frame of the game.
Actually a nice summary of what racing the beam means
I always love seeing Atari 2600 homebrews and what people can do with such old hardware. 😊 I grew up with the VCS (as it was known back then) and if a lot of the homebrews I've seen had been released back then in the early to mid 80s it would've blown people's minds!
Games today are akin to NES games. Imagine if the 2600 had helper chips back then!
That wouldve been amazing and I think some actually did have certain chips in them back then. Games like Solaris used them if I'm not mistaken. I think all they did though was just give it a little more ram but either way, you can definitely tell that 2600 games that came out during the 80s and early 90s were way better looking than when it first came out in 1977. But the fact that system lasted that long is an amazing fact within itself! The 2600 came out when my father was 17 but ended it's run when I was around 9 or 10! That is unbelievable! 😊
@@blackenedheart9592Solaris doesn't have a helper chip just ingenious use of sprites to create "high res" graphics. Pitfall II is one of the very few 2600 games that had one.
The homebrew community has really added a great dimension to retro gaming.
I know right? Gaming on the 2600 is better than ever!
Has it?
@@alkohallick2901 Yes.
If these Homebrews for the 2600 existed back in 1980, Intellivision never would have stood a chance.
Ummmmm have you seen any modern Intellivision homebrews? The Intellivision pumps out Sega Master System quality games now. The 2600 is not even in the same galaxy as the Intellivision.
Thing is... these homebrews were given much more time to develop and tinker than most actual 2600 games had back in the day
@@nickynj454 Check out the Intellivision version of Super Mario Bros - it's near NES/arcade perfect - now compare that to the SMB homebrew for the 2600 called Princess Rescue. Still a great game and attempt but nothing like the Intellivision version.
@@TheVideoGuyfromOhioand modern dev tools so there’s no comparison
24:00 When I was very, very young, I saw Scramble in the arcade for the first time. This is one of those memories I kept from like 6 years old. Some dude was playing it, and had _exactly_ the same problem with the part where you travel through the maze-like level. This gave me quite a flashback. Of course the solution is that you move forward as far as you can, so that when you have the opportunity, you move _diagonally down and backwards_ so the ship is effectively in freefall and you don't die to the scrolling. The dude in the arcade all those years ago couldn't figure it out either.
The quality on display here is what we wished for back then. Almost makes me feel younger!
In Mappy, in the trampoline to get to the balloons, you need to break through the trampoline in some cases to drop to the section below instead going over to the left to drop down then go back to the right. You can speed up the process by slamming yourself against the wall to short circuit your rise and let you drop back to the trampoline sooner.
Space Taxi! Loved that on the Commodore 64. What a great looking adaptation.
A true c64 classic
Champ Games have masterfully done the impossible many times with their creations for the 2600.
It amazes me, given what I know if the extremely limited hardware, just what is possible.
Hey thanks for trying out Temple of the False Gods. If you let it sit on the titlescreen a few seconds it plays some action clips. Also if you hold the fire button a couple seconds it will pull up the inventory. You can go in the door on the left side of the temple you make your way to the top go in your inventory use the oil in the top room to "purify" then equip the sword to kill the abomination open the chest end of demo.
Excellent video and thanks for taking the time to play all 15 of the Champ Games! :) A couple pointers and answers to your questions:
1) Yes, Avalanche supports paddles
2) Yes, Scramble and Super Cobra Arcade both support Sega Genesis pads
3) FYI Qyx also supports 2 button Sega Genesis pads for fast/slow draw
4) Elevator Agent supports 2 button Sega Genesis pads for jump/shoot
5) RobotWar supports 2 joysticks; most likely if you're playing with Stella it detected a QuadTari and a SaveKey. A QuadTari is a device that allows you to plug two joysticks into 1 port, so to fire with the second joystick you would need to configure Joystick 3 in Stella. Or, you could override the controllers and set the left controller and right controller to "Joystick"
6) In RobotWar, for single joystick control you *can* hold down the button and it will fire continuously in the last direction, allowing you to move in another direction. You can also flip the left difficulty switch to 'A' to activate auto-fire which will fire continuously in the last direction; tap the button and move to change the firing direction (hold the button to stop firing).
7) In RobotWar, we were forced to use the low resolution playfield for the grunts because the 2600 only supports 2 sprites on the same line without flicker. Atari tried to make Robotron back in the early 80's and it was described as a 'flickering mess' because of this. :) Having the grunts as playfield made sense because they move in steps so it doesn't affect gameplay.
8) The wide spacing in Galagon is because of the 8 pixel spacing that is used for multiple copies of 2600 sprites. A hardware trick allows you to make up to 8 copies of the same sprite in the same line with no flicker but the restriction is that they have 8 pixels between them.
Hope that helps, and thanks again!
Thanks for the clarification John. Your games are awesome!
@@GregsGameRoom Thanks for the kind words. :) Oh, I forgot to mention that both Wizard of Wor Arcade and Gorf Arcade take advantage of the AtariVox device to play speech during the game (60+ phrases in WoW and 45+ in Gorf )
15:40 Mappy Bonus stage: you save some time by jumping to the right so Mappy does short jumps. This way you break through the trampoline instead of going the route you did. Saves a few seconds!
1942's "music" is practically what it was in the arcades. Elevator Action clone, Galaga, GORF, Zookeeper clones here are GREAT. I wonder if programmers at the time would have been able to make these if they hadn't had such CRUNCH deadlines from their bosses?
On Galagon. I do believe the B difficulty switch enables rapid fire.... I have mine on order from Atari Age so i can't confirm
You are correct! Difficulty A disables auto-fire; on difficulty B you can just hold down the button for continuous shooting.
@@johnnywc23 thanks for the confirmation. I have Galagon, Wizard of Wor and Gorf on order.. when they come in I seriously think it's going to be a hookey day from work :). Great work you and your team does.
@@Boswd You're welcome! I hope that order comes in soon, thanks for the support! I may need to take a day off from work too so I can take a break from making games and spend some time playing them. :)
Thanks for watching! Here are some other interesting videos:
43 *MORE* Atari 2600 Homebrews! th-cam.com/video/RfqowGNqG5A/w-d-xo.html
10 Things You Don't Know About Atari: th-cam.com/video/IPP-OBCxWMU/w-d-xo.html
5 Minute History: The Atari 2600 th-cam.com/video/H8vaXOKJxKQ/w-d-xo.html
No Has Link Free Downloaded
Scan lines are often used to decrease CPU usage as it does not have to use that time to write to the screen.
Not so much for Atari 2600. Most (if not all) of the times l have seen it used to create the illusion of more than one color per line.
For say other 8 bit platforms for sure it was a way to use that time for other stuff than writing to the screen
Space taxi for Commodore 64 will always say like hey taxi pad one please or up please hey taxi pad 9 please with voice and the taxi w music like SHORT AND SWEET or at the beach
It's not scanlines it's a technique to draw fewer lines and maximize the Atari's graphical power
Elevator Action was in prototype and abandoned. It was looking promising in my opinion. I wonder if what was eventually made was its completion.
Hi there! I did consider finishing the Atari 1983 prototype of Elevator Action but that proved to be too difficult so I wrote Elevator Agent from scratch. :)
@@johnnywc23 Well it turned out quite well. I'll tell you though, I would never want to go back to the bad old days and work on these systems.
This is honestly a great training tool to get into game design. Modern tools make it less imposing, and it forces you to focus on making the most of your resources and maximizing the experience.
OMG that Galaga....it's just unreal...how did they pull that off???
maybe more ram. Games of the past only had 4 to 8kb at the most! these can go up to 32 or even 64kb
@@AloanMoreira1absolutely that is it . 16k was essentially the max back in the day, but these games can go as high as they want
Juno First is another fantastic home-brew port of the Arcade … with very impressive graphics. I don’t think Juno First was ever ported to any / many systems back in the day which is strange 🤷 and a good reason to check out the 2600 version 👍🏼
Yeah I forgot about a bunch of good ones. That just means I’ll have to do another video!
It is hard to believe that these are games for the 2600, which only had 160 bytes of RAM.
A few 2600 games had extra RAM or other chips to give better graphics or sound. I suspect that the emulators can handle the extra hardware.
For sure, as the console did
So many great games, my favorite of course being the rubyQ. ❤ I'll tell you what else I love... putting an end to the myth that the Atari2600 has limitations which kept certain titles from ever being produced or in this case, perfected. The amount of impressive homebrews in the last few years speaks volumes to just what the Atari system is truly capable of. Not to shabby at all for a console that runs like a tank and refuses to die!
No kidding! I mean, now that the 2600 is on equal footing with the NES in terms of MMC-style chips, let's compare! SMB for the NES is only 40K after all and I bet a very close approximation can be done for the 2600 (more accurate than Princess Rescue I mean!)
Thanks for appreciating my game!
I got a 2600 back in 1980 and had a bit of a love'hate relationship with it. On the one hand, it was great having a console. On the other hand, the graphics kind of sucked compared to the real arcade stuff. I must say, though, some of these games look FANTASTIC and are pretty damn close to the the arcade originals: Gorf, Galagon, Elevator Agent, Qix, RobotWar, RubyQ, Scramble, Super Cobra and Wizard of War are all stand outs. Thanks!
Damn... most of those homebrew looks really impressive !
Space Taxi was based on the C64 version which actually talked to you...
An absolute classic
Champ games makes some of the best homebrews. Same with spiceware. I ordered robotwar 2684 and ladybug arcade. Should be here next week. Eventually want to order lode runner. Draconian is my favorite
Aw, shoot! Forgot about Draconian! That's one of my faves!
10:35 Spread-out formation: It's basically a miracle that the VCS allowed that many horizontal sprites. The VCS can only display 5 sprites, and it's even more limited than what I just said, but keep that point in mind. The VCS has the ability to double- or triple-up two of those sprites-a gimmick the designers threw in so that "Super Pong" (Video Olympics) could have fancy paddles made up of two or three bars. That's being abused here: Tripling-up both of those sprites (for a total of 6), and then using two more sprites for a total of 8 in a single horizontal line. The problem is that the tripling-up trick gives you no control over the _spacing._ And unfortunately, the spacing is a little wide for an application like a Galaga enemy formation.
Are games like Galxon and Gorf using some crazy amount of RAM or some other elements that would make it impossible to actually make a cart out of these? Seems hard to believe how MUCH better come of these are than production 2600 games.
Galagon is32k and available as a cart. I assume it has a ‘sound rom’ built in too (like Pitfall II
In Boulder Dash, boulders always fall off of boulders if there is a space to the left or right. They don't fall off of dirt. Rockford (you) can also stand to the left or right of a boulder and prevent it from falling. And yeah those flashing things are the bad guys. And I believe the "Venetian blind" effect is both for color-mixing, and also to give the CPU a break on every other scanline so that there's more time for the game logic to run. And yeah, all these games look amazing for a 2600.
my favorites are 1-pitfall 2 and a tie between smurfs (rescue in G´s castle) and Bob is going home. All platformers, because they´re my favorite genre! I also enjoy Superman.
Zookeeper looks so good I had to pick up a physical copy for my 7800+ - looking forward to playing it when the system gets out of pre-order
My flavor of boulder dash was on the 800xl. I always thought of the Boulder's like marbles. We had tournaments playing it.
Boulderdash great game on Atari 800 and only game to ever make me rage quit. Physics are screwed I agree with maker of the video. Still a great game.
Both Scramble and Super Cobra are amazing ports that I've been playing for a while. Would have been mind blowing having these back in the 80's. Played a lot of Ladybug too, which is really good. Need to check out the updated one. Eager to play Elevator Agent, Gorf Arcade, Qyx, Mappy, Robotwar 2684 and Zoo Keeper. Really, every game in the vid looks fun.
You’ve given me a shopping list for the harmony cartridge :-)
I am literally blown away how incredible some of these games look. When you consider that this machine came out in 1977 and it's very big brother was the Atari 400 and 800 - this thing had amazing potential. It has 128KB of RAM folks! The contemporaneous problem was the ROMs, they cost money and Atari management was too cheap to give programmers the space the needed to store their games. Anyway, great line up of games I have never seen or heard about. The home-brew scene is much more interesting than I thought.
128 bytes of RAM. 128kb would have been a fortune back then.
@@user-yr1uq1qe6y yes of course, I meant 128bytes of RAM. Thank you for correcting me.
Galagon is really impressive!! But also Mappy and Ladybird are wonderful, as many other really good ones! Retro community keep strong!!
1942 is mapped for two buttons for use with the Sega Genesis controller hence the picture on the title screen.
whats amazing of pacman in space is that it has an actual intro / slash / cutscene!
and yes he escapes the mothership and start to falldown towards earth (hence the fire) and no, ghosts wont catch fire, they are ghosts :p
Some suggestions for your next 2600 Homebrew video: Juno First, Donkey Kong VCS, K.O. Cruiser, Pac-Man 4K
For the first two in particular, it's difficult to believe a 2600 can pull them off.
So interesting how homebrew games are looking compared to retail. They actually look better for the most part.
Thanks for your video.
Are they any links to get the roms ?
1943 was a Surprise for Me,when i was a kid dreamt about have sorta of arcade games on my vcs
Where is the background music playing at the start of the video from? I'm certain it's from the Spy VS Spy PS2 game but I can't seem to find it online.
The Jazz music? It’s from the TH-cam library.
Ive always been curious if some of these homebrews could technically have been created and run on an actual Atari in the late 70s early 80s? Or are they using technology that didnt exist or is it simply just programming techniques?
Pretty sure they’re using extra hardware.
@@GregsGameRoomyes but it’s hardware that’s ’built into the cart’ so to speak
"I'm not sure why that is, probably some limitation or something." Surely not! Thanks for the video. I owned one of these when I was young, it's pretty cool what some of these devs have done.
Corf arcade among other cool hardware pushing games are just mind blowing while mappy reminds me of burger time.
Imagine if that Elevator Action or Galaga had been developed back in the day!
and Mappy which is too impressive for the 2600!
Impossible sir
Boulder Dash: the reason boulders fall sideways is because they are round! In the 2600 version this might be visualy unclear but it makes perfect sence in the other versions 😃
Nice stuff!
Can't get enough of 2600 stuff!
I died laughing when the Nosehair game had Moonlight Sonata as its game over theme.
That game called "Trash" looks impressive. The character looks like an NES sprite.
i am 53 now and also grew up with the vcs. i just want to say: the quality of the champ-games is a b s o l u t e l y incredible. john champeau = vcs-programmer-god. nuff said.
Great video. Tried Avalanche and loving it.
Elevator Action is blowing my mind
GORF and Wizard of War look amazing
Amazing Games for the Atari 2600. Thank you .
The craziest thing about the Atari 2600 is that the best games on the Intellivision were the D&D games Treasure of Tarmin and Cloudy Mountains both of which had very simple graphics and the Treasure of Tarmin was actually ported to the Atari 2600 by Synth Corp but never released as Mattel left the console industry before they had a chance to release it even though it was finished and ready for release.
40 years and no one has ported these games to the Atari 2600 and released them?
Really not Atari 2600 style, maybe the home pcs tho
こんにちは。
Elevator Action,Mappy,Turboは素晴らしいです。これらにはAssistChipは入っていましたか？
the blocker looked like a "road closed sign" not a bench? lol
They'll keep coming out of the door if you explode it. Gotta first beat all of the enemies on the map to get into the next level on that Bomberman port Boom!
Cool to see Forest Moon Attack and you called it. It is inspired by Return of the Jedi and its name is a play on the knock off Zellers cartridges (Atlantis was Ocean City Defender).
Still a work in progress I tried to make multiple screens of gameplay. The first being a kind of side scrolling level where I tried to learn to make a kind of acceleration effect. The second type of screen involves shooting a kind of two legged walker. A third screen would be protecting some furry forest friends against an onslaught of troopers, and the last screen is you gotta bust into the enemy base by bringing the bomb to the door then running back down behind that line and detonating it. I haven’t figured out what happens next but was thinking of having a kind of part where you go inside the base and fight a big boss before it cycles back over again.
There is also a kind of scene if you lose all your health in the speeder scene you end up on foot and have to collect boxes while avoiding the enemy. If you die there then you lose a life for sure.
Love how the trees scroll by. Well done!
I will be watching and waiting for this one... Hopeful you will be putting it on a physical cartridge?
That is usually my goal. I only finished one game so far. This one was an experiment in making not only scrolling but making multiple screens that will loop over and get harder. Usually when I hit a block I take a break and move onto something else to try and learn. Working on this game helped me finish up Lineman and set the foundation for a newer project I was working on - Beyond Parsec
I have one known “bug” I need to fix and in the final screen where you have to blow up the base, I was debating whether to add one more screen where you enter the base and fight a final boss or if blowing up the base should be enough. If I do make another screen I kind of want to make a different gameplay element, like how I have scrolling and various shooting stages.
Kinda interesting. You made me remember some games that made my brain cramp.
Elevator Action and Galaga in Atari 2600 with those graphics? Is that true?
These games seem to use color blendings and interlaced resolutions very extensively, so the video recording does not really do them justice, I'm afraid.
Great video, only game missing here is Space Rocks (Asteroids). Thanks for sharing!
I’ll do more homebrews in the future.
How can someone be so confused with Boulderdash? It is simple. Rocks will roll off other rocks because they are round. Actually makes perfect physics sense. Not to mention, this VERY popular early computer game would be ridiculously fucking easy if you only had to worry about rocks falling straight down. Having to worry about them rolling off the other rocks is pretty much 90% of the challenge.
This was fun to watch!
I'm curious, did you use some sort of thing in the video capture or editing process to merge adjacent frames together? Some of the visual effects don't seem possible otherwise.
I used the Stella emulator to get clean video and turned on phosphor at 50% so it looks as it would on a TV. The rest was the programmer's skill and whatever memory mapper they used.
boulders are round and they made it so they fall on the side. Not sure what's hard to understand from that.
Ever put two round boulders on top of each other? Well...the upper one will fall sideways 🧐
He’s really reaching for good things to say. “I like how there’s moving pixels and noises”
how they got galiga on 2600 is a miricle it looks like the arcade its amazinf imagine if that came out in 1982 or 1983 along with the 8kb version of packman the 2609 would have has games realease to 1992
At 9:48 why do all Atari 2600 and 7800 have the score and the the details on tbe top not down the side as the arcade.
Elevator action sounds and looks close to arcade
Boulder Dash - They aren't square boulders. They are round boulders. What happens if you put a bowling ball on top of a bowling ball? ;p
Although I'm not an expert, I have a guess on why they use the interlace pattern.
The graphics chip in the Atari 2600 is a nightmare to program. Unless you only use it's most basic features you have to spend almost every displayed line organizing what you want to draw where. The only time you can use the CPU for actual logic computation is when the monitor displays its upper and lower frame. Which is not a lot of time.
If you simply don't display every second line you have a ton of extra CPU time available.
There’s no GPU in the 2600
@@patsfan4life I meant the TIA chip.
Okay, technically it is also responsible for sound and is connected to the controllers, but I meant its graphics capabilities.
If I understood correctly you don't like using the joystick diagonally in rubyQ.
But there's a per-player option to use joystick in the straight direction, just selectable with difficulty switches.
the raptor thing is a drone
30:50 How is this possible on the 2600?
Totally agree with you ref Boulderdash, the "physics" always felt unintuitive, even counter-intuitive to me, but I guess we are in the minority =/
Good stuff!
Incredible.
You neglected to mention that these are all just limited demo versions, and that the ROM files will NEVER be available to play in an emulator.
Have Wizard of Wor Arcade on cart. with the Atarivox it has the voices from the arcade and saves the high score. Add the Quadtari and you have two player action with the voice from the vox. The aftermarket hardware is just as amazing as some of these homebrews!
Right? I need to check those out too.
The bloopers have to fall sideways, otherwise it is not Boulderdash :)
My ruined childhood would've been fixed if these games had come out back then. I was just stuck being jealous of the Nintendo people while pretending Mario Bros. was sort of maybe like Super Mario Bros.
I just finished my game for a class. Let me know if you want to check it out. It’s really kinda bad but think it would be fun if you are making another video.
You should record Atari 2600 videos in 60 or 50 fps, else some sprites disappear.