Open-source browser port of Pitfall from the Atari 2600 | Hacker News Reader

Open-source browser port of Pitfall from the Atari 2600

meatfighter.com

92 pointsOuterVale31 comments

Such an incredible game.

I’m amazed what the Atari 2600 was capable of with 2 player sprites, 2 missile sprites, a ball sprite, 128 bytes of memory, no buffer, and a 1.19 MHz CPU.

Because of what talented developers (like David Crane) could deliver, the console had an incredible 15 year lifespan (longer than the NES).

According to Wikipedia the NES had a lifespan of 20 years.

Possibly a difference in definition of lifespan, I suspect the 2600 one is using “first game released to last new game released”, whilst the NES / Famicom is “hardware available for purchase”, as Nintendo Japan didn’t officially discontinue the AV Famicom until circa 2003, even though the last new game was released around 1994.

I got an Atari Gamestation Pro for Christmas and it just amazes me how well a lot of those old 2600 games hold up. My kids have had a blast playing Pong, Warlords, Bowling, and Outlaws with me.

https://myarcade.com/products/atari-gamestation-pro

This is looks amazing! Thanks for sharing.

I remember playing this on the spare B&W TV with no color. My father bought a new color TV and we got the old one for the Atari 2600 and it was like baller status.

I had an Atari computer, and for years it was hooked up to a black-&-white TV. I got a job in a computer store and bought the legendary Commodore 1702 (which I still have).

It was like looking at candy. I remember some games in particular (especially from Synapse) looking just brilliant.

"Looking at candy" is such a good description of Synapse games on the 1702. I had Zaxxon, Necromancer, and Blue Max. Many Access Software titles were beautiful too (Beach Head, Raid Over Moscow,etc). Fun times!

Yeah, Necromancer! I blanked on the name, but that was the one I was thinking of.

But the all-time winner in my book for artistic cleverness AND playability was Alley Cat.

I grew up with an Atari 2600 that was connected to a small color TV. Eventually, that same TV was used with the NES, but it wasn't until the NES that I learned that TV had a serious flaw. The bezel on the TV actually covered up part of the image so that I was unable to see the edges of some games. I learned this playing Metal Gear and was just utterly stuck. I wound up buying a magazine with hints for the game, and started comparing the screen grabs in the 'zine to what I could see. It wasn't until quite some time later that I asked someone and they told me about overscan/underscan. I took the TV to some repair place, and they opened it up and adjusted it (there was no switch to enable underscan).

The things kids today will never have to endure /s

Ha, I too had the pleasure of playing Metal Gear on an old CRT that had a similar bezel that covered the sides of the screen. I too had the pleasure of going crazy trying to figure out what to do. Good times.

did you continue playing after realizing this? I realized that if I punched at the edges, the sound was different if there was a door. Then it was just a matter of finding which card would open the door.

It was my cousins' game so we were playing it at his house to start with. Eventually he came over to spend the night at my house and I had a different TV that we could see the edges of the screen.

Enjoyed this GDC presentation about the developement and working with the original hardware

https://youtu.be/MBT1OK6VAIU

Nice. I appreciate that it's a loving recreation and not an emulator.

Mobile controls!!!!!!

It’s actually playable on my iPhone. Gotta love that!

Edit: I still suck at it just as much as I did back on the old 2600, but it’s still fun.

I played Pitall 2 on the C64 and will never forget the background music as long as I live.

The original Pitfall did not have a continuously scrolly playfield. When you got to the far left or right, a new screen was displayed along with every element on that screen (like barrels).

The creator of this version probably chose to have the barrels fade in to accommodate this.

Did you intend to reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42791024 ?

How is the original source available? Wouldn’t Activision still hold the copyright ?

Distella is a disassembler specifically for the Atari 2600. Since its creation, it has been modified to disassemble Atari 7800 code as well. It creates source code that is usually recompilable without any human intervention. It examines the code and performs some basic tracing routines which allow it to accurately distinguish data from code.

https://github.com/johnkharvey/distella

Most of the popular games in the 2600's library have been disassembled and reverse engineered over the years.[1] As for Activision, they pretty much don't really care about a bunch of hobbyists tearing apart their 40+ year old piece of software.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230404054728/http://www.bjars....

I notice that the rolling barrels/logs sometimes fade out in what looks like alpha blending. Was that really possible on an Atari 2600??

Yeah, I don't think I remember any fading on the 2600. Certainly the logs in pitfall didn't fade in.

Color options on the 2600 are pretty slim, and even if you had enough browns to make it fade in, it'd be difficult to have two logs on the same line in different colors, and IIRC, multiple logs on screen definitely happened.

On the Genesis, several games did a transparency effect by alternating output between the sprite and the background, but the 2600 horizontal 'pixel' width is much too wide for that to be effective. And you definitely can't have two different logs on the same line where Harry can be.

Atari had "screens" that you would move between. There was no scrolling capability. I assume this is the effect of the logs existing on one screen but not on another.

This is really well done. Took me back to the good old coleco days. The controls on mobile are well done.

Port it to SDL2.

This was my favorite game.

So, are you a go left or go right type of player?

Edit: Ugh, I had a weird quirk where the sound of getting hit by a log would not stop sounding. Even tried hitting another log hoping it would reset, but nope. Cmd-R was the only solve

If you stand on a stationary log and jump, it gets stuck in that state.

Thanks for reporting this bug. I'll patch this when I get a chance.

Until I patch this, if it happens again, run over a stationary log to unglitch it.

The bug is fixed. Though you'll need to refresh the app to get the latest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com