BASIC Programming: Atari Archive Episode 34
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- BASIC Programming is not a game; rather, this release is a version of the BASIC computer language designed to run on the VCS. Designer Warren Robinett set out to produce something that would help teach people the basics of coding. He succeeded in some respects, but the limitations of the cartridge make this a real product of its time.
Note: This video is meant to be watched at 60 frames per second due to the flickering used to display the text on screen, so ensure you've got your playback set to 720p60fps. It's still not very pretty, unfortunately! This is very much a cartridge designed for a CRT and the graphical techniques here lose a lot of their luster with modern displays.
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I was one of those kids! In December of 1982, I was 11 years old and Basic Programming was on my Christmas list. From the previous Christmas and year, I already had Space Invaders, Adventure, Superman, Maze Craze and Asteroids. Had fun with all those games and was increasingly interested in the Atari 800. My parents had to special order this cartridge through our local retailer. I actually took the time to really learn how to use this cartridge to the fullest and had a notepad where I would write down my "programs" so I could punch them in again to show friends and family. My parents noticed how seriously I took it and the time and diligence I put into making it work. After that they then felt it was worth the investment to get me an Atari 800... which I wrote programs for during the next 2+ years. Without this cartridge, I may have never had the opportunity. While I had more fun with so many other games, this cartridge changed my life and for that I am grateful.
God damn, you have really gone all-out with the last batch of episodes. Outstanding work.
I rmember seeing the Basic Programming cart in the Maplin catalogue in 1982, but I'd already got a Sinclair ZX81, and then a ZX Spectrum.
Hey Atari Archive are you also going to cover Activision games?
Yep - we will be coming up on the first group of those in a few videos!
It's too bad that Atari couldn't have included 2 things on the VCS BASIC cartridge that would have made it MUCH easier and better to use: Additional memory (even 128 or 256 bytes would have made a big difference) and an audio port to be used in conjunction with a cassette recorder to store and load programs. On that note, now that I'm thinking about it, there already exists such a cartridge and it would have been PERFECT for a programming environment on the VCS: The Starpath/Arcadia Supercharger. It already included both a cassette recorder connection (all of its games were loaded from cassette) and 6 kilobytes of additional RAM (where the games would typically load into). This would have made the IDEAL setup for budding programmers! *Any homebrew programmers out there who would like a challenge, to create a BASIC interpreter that runs on the Supercharger and takes advantage of its additional capabilities?*
Great ideas. Someone told me it wasn't set up to save games, but only load them from tape, so how would that work? Funny that its 6KB is greater than the "3583 BYTES FREE" we had with the VIC-20, which also used a cassette to save and load. Of course in order to get people to buy hardware, the software people want needs to already exist. And from what I've seen, the first 4 games from the Supercharger were so-so. Maybe if their Frogger came with the system instead of being one of the last tapes in 1983 then people would have bought it.
@@sandal_thong8631 I try to never underestimate what can be accomplished by a determined programmer with lots of time on their hands! I'll bet they could figure out how to write data to a cassette from the Supercharger. I agree that it's too bad that Frogger didn't come out earlier because it is one of the best arcade conversions ever for that system. The problem with the Supercharger was timing. If it had come out just a bit earlier maybe it would have survived the crash.
@@JustWasted3HoursHere Besides Atari, I think only Activision and Coleco could have survived the crash, but then the latter wasted their money buying the Scrabble company and launching the buggy Adam. Their sales of Cabbage Patch Dolls also failed. But they did win their lawsuit against Garbage Pail Kids cards!
@@sandal_thong8631 I always had heard that the Cabbage Patch Kids was hugely successful and saved the company (at least temporarily). The Adam was an unfortunate misstep though, for sure. My local Toys'RUs store was selling them for less than $100 near the end, but I had already invested in a Commodore 64.
@@JustWasted3HoursHere Coleco made a lot of hand-held games that made money too. Cabbage Patch Kids was successful but didn't last forever. They didn't have Teddy Ruxpin, but launched the imitator ALF doll with a tape cassette that didn't sell.
It was unrealistic or too late for the kid at the end of season 1 of _Stranger Things_ to ask for an Atari in November 1983. He would have asked for either a ColecoVision (saw their ads had rebates then!), or more likely a Commodore 64.
At 6:07, is that young Dianne Feinstein before she became a senator standing next to Ray Kassar?
You would be correct!
@@AtariArchive WOW! Thanks for the reply! :)
There isn't much you can do on this cartridge. You can only program about 2kB on it. A basic version of pong and that is about it. Waste of time really. Don't know why Atari bothered.
Maybe they thought people would want the 400/800 computers next? We had those in computer lab in middle school (bought or donated?). Perhaps the thinking was that if kids saw them in school, they'd want them at home, too. Learning variables was like learning algebra to me, so I had no problem.
@@sandal_thong8631 Maybe my household was the only place the connection worked. My school had Apple computers, but learning to use this cartridge as a kid was what convinced my parents it was worth buying the Atari 800 that I wanted so badly in 1983.
@@chriscorsello In another episode th-cam.com/video/mjuYv0pmNLE/w-d-xo.html he talks about a rare but amazing cart, MagiCard, that allows assembly language programs. However, you have to figure out how to wire a cable with one end plugged into a controller jack and the other split into the mic of a cassette recorder and the headphones jack so you can save and load. (I think my grandfather could have done it for me.) It's too bad they didn't get it together and have this, MagiCard and the Starpath Supercharger turn the Atari into a poor-kid's computer.
How many kids thought they could make a good Atari game and never got the chance? (I had a VIC-20) but it could only do so much.
I recall purchasing this game around 1990... It came in a black and white box for about $4 at Kay Bee Toy Store in the video game bargain bin section... I already owned a Nintendo, but I was exposed to Basic in junior high school on Apple II, and I was excited to have a copy on my Atari. I was sorely disappointed by its limitations.
Another cool video, good stuff.
I was always fascinated by the idea of the cart, glad I didn't invest my allowance, blood from a turnip and all.
Re: keyboards: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompuMate I remember seeing this in game catalogs and thinking the price wasn't bad at all - maybe pricing after the game crash? Never read any reviews.
I was really looking forward to this episode (for some reason) and you didn't disappoint! Great work!
I was thinking of buying this for my new vcs I recently repaired myself but there weren't any good videos on this game, so thanks I guess.
Watching this video after watching the Annex video on the Bally Professional Arcade is definitely interesting. Somehow seeing user programmable things on vintage consoles like this is just so riveting for me.
It's 2023, and Robinett still has not finished his work. Good to know he was working on it though...
LOL... love the "Hello World" opening.
Great as always
Back in the day I was into BASIC (from reading books) but couldn't see why anyone would buy this. No save/load meant you couldn't do anything but maybe learn things you could read in minutes. And, why learn a language with it when you don't have a computer that can use that language for bigger projects? The 128 bytes of RAM meant it was super-hobbled out of the gate. It would have been interesting to see a cartridge with input/outputs for a cassette recorder and several KB of additional RAM - as well as a real keyboard. I guess I'll have to wait until I get to the Spectravideo episode to find out more. :)
As a kid, learning to use this cartridge convinced my parents to buy me a computer. Without it, I would never have been able to convince them to invest in a computer. I might be the only one that got the "money's worth" out if.
When the cartridge is running you're limited to only 64 bytes of memory for your program. The other 64 bytes are used to run the interpreter and the display.
I remember being very excited by this cartridge as a kid, and I was surprised to hear how limited it was. I remember it being quite fun, and I guess my nostalgia tricked my memory into thinking it was fancier!
Thank you for putting this together! I came across your video as I was working on a quasi-technical presentation on what you can and can't do with "BASIC Programming", and I appreciate your research and presentation on the history of this cartridge!
For reference, here is my video with a part 2 in the works: th-cam.com/video/aSvsjvake_0/w-d-xo.html
Very cool!
I loved the video, especially how BASIC on the VCS compares to the contemporary alternatives on the Bally and Magnavox systems.
Just wow learned so much thank u
I had the BASIC cart back in the day, and I also got the Spectavideo COMPUMATE which was just awesome! I did a lot of basic programs on that simple device. Great fun!
The computer boom was about to happen (which is one of the causes of the Video Game Crash of 1983). Like the ad in the catalog, kids wanted to program their own games, but once they got a computer, other than making simple programs they would be disappointed and end up buying computer software or typing in programs from magazines. BASIC was alright, but I needed to learn assembly language (which I never did) and have a memory expansion cartridge (I got a 3K) for my VIC-20 if I really wanted to have things move around at speed like a "real" game. Sadly, the VIC-20 didn't have sprites; kind of a necessity for making video games.
It's too bad the Atari computers didn't have a way for kids to learn code of Atari VCS games and modify them to change sounds, sprites and the like.
I think from watching these videos I figured out why some cartridges had "Special Edition" bannered across the box: they were 4K ROM cartridges instead of 2K. If there was a chip shortage then I could see them saving their chips for games more likely to sell than this one. I think that was part of Nintendo's strategy to prevent overproduction: limit the number of chips a 3rd-party company could get. However, they didn't seem more accommodating to a company that had more than one best-seller.
As a kid in the 1980's I had an Odyssey 2 console and the Computer Intro cartridge. I agree its manual was very thorough in describing how the assembly and hexadecimal languages worked. I even created a small card game where you played against the computer to not go over 21 with your hand.
I played around with Basic Programming on the Stella emulator, and it's indeed a bizarre way to punch in your code. The Venetian blinds way of displaying text hurts my eyes after a while. But that Atari was able to release a BASIC interpreter at all for a teeny-tiny 128 bytes of RAM, with a working multi-window environment, is amazing.
Not a fan of atari. Can't say I've ever even played an atari game. But the existence of the Basic Programming cart always fascinated me. Unfortunately, I couldn't find much information about what the game actually was like. Most reviews were by people who didn't really understand the game. Thank you for this video. It is exactly what I wanted
'Basic Programming' on the 2600 was a complete mystery to me as a kid; used to see the program inside the earlier Atari catalogs but in the later editions, disappeared. Always thought of someone who possessed programming skills were like wizards; they could write a few simple lines of code & interesting things would happen on-screen. In the Microsoft DOS days, knew a couple of sharp guys who could write configuration & executables off the top of their heads & knew almost every keyboard short-cut. When I asked, "How do you know all this?" The reply was simply "Learned this at computer camp."
Awesome overview.
Thanks for covering the tech of the era.
I think it's interesting how Warren Robinett went from programming Adventure and Basic Programming at Atari to making educational games like Rocky's Boots that attempt to teach children basic programming concepts through a user interface that worked just like Adventure
Looking forward to the next video 3-D Tic Tac Toe; Atari Vault has this title in its collection & it's difficult as hell. Even on the lower difficulty the A.I. just crushes me... every time. :(
2:12 What are these glove thingies?
So that was a photo I took at the Long Island Retro Expo last year, and as I recall there was someone in a Master Chief cosplay trying out the PET at the time I snapped it. So those would be their gloves!