A tribute to one of the best games on the Atari 2600 | Hacker News Reader

A tribute to one of the best games on the Atari 2600

plicerin.github.io

19 pointsplicerin11 comments

The cartridge rebuilt from the original ROM, one instruction at a time

if only there were a tag for llmery so that undisclosed use of it couud be a punishable offence

I think that most people who once loved this game moved on from videogames a long time ago. Like almost all games on the Atari, it won't interest the younger generations for more than a few minutes. But I still remember it fondly.

What is the appropriate age to move on from gaming? Asking for a friend.

I'll let you know when I do :)

I think it holds up well enough. These older games that implement their controls well have a "feel" distinct to their respective console that's hard to get anywhere else.

The only reason most people ignore home consoles before the NES is precisely this lack of showcasing of the best.

I feel like NES is pretty much the dividing line of what you can get younger people interested in.

Having introduced my younger siblings, who grew up with much later systems like the PS3 and Nintendo Switch, I would have to agree with this statement. The Atari 2600 is pretty graphically primitive (feel like I read somewherre that it was only designed to display 5 movable objects on the entire screen at once) even though its super impressive what they were able to accomplish with it.

Another thing to remember: the NES sort of cheats in a sense, because the cartridges themselves could include onboard chips like the MMC3/5 [1] that extended the capabilities of the original NES, stretching its lifetime far further.

[1] - https://nicole.express/2022/the-nes-as-an-artifact.html

The Atari cheated too; Pitfall II used a David Crane-designed DPC chip [0], Atari's SARA Superchip on a number of the later carts like Crystal Castles and Jr. Pac-Man, and the Starpath Supercharger's [1] games were undeniably bigger and better looking.

The VCS released in 1978, Pitfall II in 1984 which shows the idea of offloading processing and memory came a looong way in just 4 years between Pitfall II, Nintendo's MMC1 in stuff like Legend of Zelda (1986) and the MMC3 in SMB3 (1988). Crane's DPC wasn't officially patented until 1987, the video game gap between 1984-88 is still mind-boggling.

[0]: https://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/pitfall2/pitfall2....

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starpath_Supercharger

As a kid I found the gameplay for most Atari 2600 games so shallow I could barely stand to play a game more than a few minutes… except for Combat. Man with two players, that was fun.

Haha yep. Our first console was also an Atari 2600 but the rose-tinted glasses had zero effect on me. (THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!).

Combat was great fun though because you could "curve" the bullets!

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