I am amazed how the utterly sparse technical specs of the Atari 2600 could amass such a library. Especially for a machine designed to play _only_ Pong-like games.
Unless you were there when it was new, it's hard to appreciate just how damn magical the 2600 was. Popping in a new, unknown game, and watching the blocky graphics pop up, not really knowing what to do (since we never had the manuals), was an experience like no other. The hours I spent on Adventure, Yar's Revenge and Robot Tank.
What's magical is that someone could in theory code an entire game for the 2600 in around half a year. It takes 3 to go from in shape to Greek God physique, just for comparison.
@@TheSeedyProject It's quite fun once you read the instructions. There are scans of the manual here: www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-et-the-extra-terrestrial_7300.html
I think for the most part they were easy to figure out what to do, since they were as simple as they were. Notable exceptions for me were Raiders of the Lost Ark, Basic Programming, and Swordquest.
The 2600 original was my first console in 77. UPS truck pulled up and I was excited as heck to get that thing inside and try it out. Like you said, unless you were there at the beginning and not spoiled on higher end graphics and game play now, you could not appreciate the magic. I still have a 5600 system and 17 cartridges but the controls are junked. They never were very good to start with.
Considering the huge limitations of the 2600, the Pitfall games really were an incredible achievement. The programmers were basically wizards in those days.
The console's architecture was designed to be as flexible as possible to make up for the weak hardware. Stronger consoles aren't designed for that level of flexibility. The NES, for example, was many times more powerful than the 2600 (the 2600 didn't even have a full kilobyte of RAM) but doesn't support the type of sorcery the 2600 did quite a few times.
Space Invaders was amazing because it was all done in software. The arcade version was all hardware, nothing could be changed in game without physically changing the hardware. The 2600 requires some serious creativity and understanding of its limitations to make a good game.
Most people aren't aware the first Pitfall can also be beaten if the player collects all 32 treasures before time runs out. Learning which tunnels to take and when to know Left or Right is imperative to finishing Pitfall
Arguably programmers are and always have been wizards of a kind, making computers do things the average person can only dream about. ---The genius of the 8-bit era appears to have been largely about effectively transforming obvious limitations into useful features.
@@jnharton Programming now is easier since they tend to use high level languages, such as C++ to make games. The OS provides a good part of the functionality. There are libraries such as OpenGL, Direct3D, Vulkan to deal with the 3D graphics. There is DirectSound, OpenAL, FMod, Bass to deal with the sound card. There is less need to worry about RAM and VRAM. I don’t know if they write anything with assembly language now. Back then, they had to write in assembly language. You can’t use RGB 24 bit for colors. They use color indexing and the color table probably contained 16 colors. There was a bunch of limitations like how many colors a sprite could have. The Atari 2600 had no VRAM and had 128 Byte of RAM to store the program state. For the sound, I am guessing there is some instruction for the CPU to send some bytes to the sound chip.
The reliance on the programmer to manually control everything, including the drawing of the screen, made the system a challenge to program, but it also made it extremely flexible and allowed it to remain competitive far beyond its original scope. I have to admit that I never considered Superman or Adventure - though fun - as being games that pushed the envelope, but for the time I guess they did. Pitfall utilized some very clever code to squeeze way more screens into the space than would seem possible. David Crane is a genius. There's a lecture on RU-vid somewhere where he explains how he did it (it was a polynomial counter that could be reversed to give it the previous output, which he then used to describe and draw the screen). He was able to store an entire screen, in a sense, in only ONE BYTE...
I really struggled in this video wondering just how much detail to go into, I could easily have talked about Pitfall for the full 20 minutes! I read and watched a lot about Pitfall, David Crane certainly is a genius!
@@Sharopolis It's those limitations that bring out the best in programmers. In fact, because of those limitations there is a concentrated effort to make _game play_ as good as possible to make up for it. I can honestly say that many of those old games from the "Hey Day" of gaming - in the early to mid eighties - are still, to this day, the most fun I've had with video games. New game systems are literally millions of times more powerful, but are the games millions of times better in terms of game play? I would say, no.
@@JustWasted3HoursHere God of War is a beautiful game with kind of crappy gameplay and some really bad camera problems. No amount of beauty makes up for getting stuck looking zoomed in at the boss's foot and getting slaughtered. Trash.
Pitfall II pushed the envelope even further, though I'll admit that I was embarrased, when I met David Crane, that I thought the "DPC" chip stood for something like "digital processing something or other" rather than "David Patrick Crane".
Programmers were a different breed of person back then. The less resources a computer platform had, the more intelligent a programmer had to be. I remember having to learn the actual chip architecture and instruction set in order to code games back then.
@@chrisray9653 And that still runs in a fraction of the time it did "back in the day" and it's multilingual, works for people that need accessibility extensions, can't be exploited to take over the whole system just by looking at it..
Well... Limitations still exist nowadays. For example, porting the Source Engine to the PS3 in 2011, for the release of Portal 2, was an absolute nightmare, and required to master its weird CPU architecture. Or GTA V, running smoothly on the already aging Xbox 360. There is also the Nintendo Switch, and its amazing games running butter-smoothly on a purposely underpowerd (yet amazing) hardware, with game like TLoZ: BotW, a lot of indie games and some amazing ports that could have been done only thanks to a good knowledge of the hardware. A lot of today's developers are as talented as yesterday's developer. And remember, *if used correctly,* libraries can save years of development without really affecting the performance. (and let's not forget the huge quantities of low-quality game that flooded the market before copy-protection)
@@donpalmera the point is: real programmers create all of what you've mentioned, unlike the bulk of modern age coders, who are way more like users than developers. That's what people mean when they talk about stuff from "back in the day"; they don't necessarily try to come up with a point where software should go back to the roots of ancient products.
This was a great video. I was an avid 2600 owner and player back in the 80’s and this explains very well how limitations were overcome without large amounts of dry technical material. I’m a heavy technical user but this video was very enjoyable to watch. Well done.
The faux wood trim on my 2600 always matched the faux wood paneling on the walls of my parent's basement. Is there anyone in my age group who didn't have the faux wood paneling in their basement? If you didn't, you at very least knew someone who did! Classic stuff, and a great video! Keep up the great work!
6:42 Wonder if those "kids" are still alive? They'd be like 50 now. I remember when my father bought the Atari 2600 back in 198x. Tutankhamun was the first game I beat.
Man, I was 6 when the NES launched in 85 and it's like I am approaching mid 40s now. Now, if you actually remember this system "at launch", then you are vast majority approaching mid 50s*--if not older. *If you were not a 4 or 5 year old. But, it would be pointless to buy a chjIb that young something that expensive that they could quickly break. Also, I'd assume that it'd need to be extra special to draw a chjIb that young's attention(like a cartoon, which the NES was). So, I assume that almost all launch Atari users would be approaching mid-50s or older!
@@pattrell5257 Good guess. I'm 47. My first system I bought with my own money is a Sega Genesis. I was wanting a SNES but it was too much money, and the Genesis included Sonic the Hedgehog. So I get a system and game with some money to spare. Years later, I got a Super NES. I've been a gamer from day one.
@@BLKBRDSR71 I wasn't talking about you, unless you owned an Atari 2600 from launch. I turn 43 this month, if the ALMIGHTY be willing. I was 6 at NES launch and might never forget it...
Absolutely love Pitfall II. One of my first games as a kid. C64 version though. Seems quaint about 35 years later, but I clearly remember being blown away by how big the game world was.
My first game on the 2600. A masterpiece. How the music would change when you picked up the items, it became more cheerful, and conversely when you died and we "teleported" back. I guess the sequence with the balloons was what blew me away completely. That was magical. I couldn't believe all the the world, and you see the end right from the start to taunt you. The 5200 has a extra adventure at the end, and a door opens, it's a much tougher game by another programmer but it's great, those freakin' ants.
Overall you picked great titles to showcase the 2600 at its finest. I’d just add a few points: 1. The 2600 version of Space Invaders also had an awesome 2-player simultaneous co-op mode that is simply unrivaled even on most later consoles. 2. Enduro was a race car driving game ahead of its time, emulating various road conditions such as day, night, fog, and ice. 3. Some of the paddle games supported 4-player simultaneous play, such as Warlords, long before the Nintendo 64 would standardize 4-player local play. Some of these games still stand the test of time today, being very enjoyable despite the limitations of the console.
Enduro was like totally awesome, changing day & night...way better than Night Driver, LOL! WarLords was so much fun if you could get at least another player or 2 to play with, but you could also kill bots! Way ahead of it's time!
One of my favorite ways to play Warlords was suicide mode, inspired by the CPUs! Instead of trying to be the first to get 5 points, try to have the lowest score when someone hits 5. It is trickier than it sounds to be the untied victor at zero against 3 CPUs that often destroy themselves.
OMG, Enduro was SO GOOD. Indeed, so good that a teenager I met was trying to trade me multiple games for it. When I declined, my apartment was broken into just a few days later, and (along with a few other items) that particular cartridge was stolen out of my Atari library. I'd have paid a pretty penny to have ever found that kid....
This video taught me a lot. I love how you explain the tricks used. I was also unaware of just HOW limited the VCS was in its pong console like design.
Adventure! How me and my brother hated that damn bat, we dreamed of ways to kill it. Eventually I figured out that once you were done with one of the castles, you could lure the bat inside and then lock him in for the rest of the game. If you weren't careful you could lock the key inside the castle and never get back in. And does anyone else remember the easter egg hidden in one of the side chambers? You used the bridge to pass through the wall and you could see the game designer's name in a hidden chamber.
The easter egg is the biggest reason Adventure is my favorite game for the 2600. I must've spent a hundred hours just replaying the game and counting the easter egg screen as a requirement of completion. It's a wonderful piece of trivia.
The first time I ever had an Atari VCS was some time back in 1989...at the time I lived in Cockermouth, Cumbria. Needless to say, the only place I could get the slimmed down version (* never knew that modified version came out in 1986 - thanks for that information) was in Carlisle. I do recall when I was growing up though that there was a shop on the high street in Cockermouth that did sell some Atari VCS cartridges, and I was always fascinated by the artwork on the cartridges themselves - indeed, I did get hold recently of that book about Atari Art. Back in the day, you used your imagination. As far as the hardware that the Atari VCS had...I'd like to do some digging into that...I'm a lso a massive fan of the Atari 8 bit computers, and loved the hardware (I did play around with it, writing machine code programs involving VBIs and DLIs) - I remember Jeff Minter writing an article in whichever magazine of those years - he was saying that Atari computers were ideal for lazy programmers. Certes, it was very easy to do hardware scrolling with these machines. You needed geniuses like Tony Crowther to deal with it on the c64 though. This is an awesome channel, and I thank you.
Okay, where is Galaxian? That game had the same formation as the arcade, full color sprites, and the diving attack enemies use with a bonus if you kill the escort ships before the "boss" ship.
The 2600jr was a huge success in Eastern Germany after the wall collapsed because it was offered cheaply in mail order catalogues alongside cheap games released under the own brands of the catalogues. These were mostly bootlegs and ROM hacks of older games with a quirky German title. However I fondly remember Solaris. I never had it but often borrowed it from a friend at school. I play it from time to time up until today, it has aged well.
I have a cartridge, played it a bunch like 20 years ago...man i miss being able to find gems like that for $3.00 from Goodwill, LOL! It is a really good game, hard to keep the enemy from destroying all your star bases in each different zone/map though. Blowing up 3d looking planets makes it worthwhile.
Here is my list for games that pushed limits for atari 2600. Enduro, Pole Position, River Raid, Pitfall, California Games, Double Dragon, Hero, Popeye, Dig Dug, Defender, Donkey Kong. Battlezone
Originally, I was let down by 'Battlezone' for the 2600, thinking "it looks nothing like the arcade". As time went by, and the more I played, I began to TRULY appreciate the game in full color (which it did SPLENDIDLY), and to this day, I'm really impressed how GREAT this port was to the venerable Atari. Well done.
One game I'd definitely add to the list (as boring as it may sound), Video Chess. Sure, doesn't look like much, but developing a functional Chess AI that works with 128 bytes of RAM (many of which are needed to display graphics too) And of course, being able to display 8 chess pieces on a row is also something, that needs some clever tricks. No matter how "unexciting" it might look nowadays.
I would agree that Video Chess pushed the limits of the "standard" machine like little others. Bank switching was in fact designed for it but eventually they managed to stay in the 4k standard ROM!
Starflight was like the awesomest game though...the Sega Genesis port of it was pretty good too, and released by EA a few years later (1993 I think). Wish a modern version of that would come around-and not suck.
What I like about these expositions is the technical breakdown of what makes the game work it's like having a copy of chasing the bean for every game he's talking about. Very nice
Ultima games were still based on the map pixels, not on object, so GREDITOR was born. With a listing that stretched around the house, a friend of mine and I wrote a sophisticated graphics editor that could allow you to edit any part of the game as a picture. Thus, you could blank out the fire walls, and set up bridges, as you wished. It was fast, and did what things like Mac's Fullpaint would do almost a decade later. It ran on an 800.
I got the redesigned 2600 as a Christmas present in either 1987 or 1988...I can't remember which. One cartridge I got with it was "Solaris." It was damned impressive for the Atari 2600. Unfortunately, I also got "E.T." and "Journey Escape."
Thanks! I'm glad you liked the history part, I really wanted to get that across, the 2600 is so fascinating as it was such a pioneer in the gaming world.
The up'y down'y game? I have never heard it called that before...I like it as it has an almost improvisation to it. I have only ever known this type of game to be called a platformer. The reason for this is likely when I started gaming...which was essentially in 85' with the Nes and 86' for the Master System.
Pitfall 2 blew me away when I was a kid. It had so much more to it than any of the other games out at that time.( for atari, anyway ) It was the first time I actually felt like I was exploring a video game world, it was absolutely gigantic compared to the other games I had played up until that point. I guess I got some exploration out of my first few games of Adventure, but it wasn't very long before that map was permanently etched into my mind.
With the sun in the middle which makes gravity and also screen looping or edge bouncing(so many different game variations on those older games) yeah...too bad i couldn't coax my lil' bro to play me tho
Really nice list and I hoped to see Solaris on this. Was not disappointed. :D I also would say that California Games, Tunnel Runner and Escape from the Mind Master are games that pushed the limits of the Atari 2600, but I guess the latter would be cheating as you need the Starpath Supercharger add-on cartridge.
I had Solaris and always liked it but never pushed far in it. It took me eventually playing it on an emulator and saving states along the way, with the help of a map for me to finally complete it. Even with those advantages it was still a challenge!
Back in the day (get off of my lawn!), we didn't call it the VCS or 2600. We just called it Atari, just like almost a decade later people said Nintendo instead of NES. There were a lot of "screen exploring" games that used the Adventure style. Superman, Pitfall, Haunted House, Raiders of the Lost Ark, H.E.R.O., and yes E.T. were all using the same idea. And no, E.T. did not cause the video game crash of 1983. But your examples only scratch the surface of how games were developed to "push the limits". A glaring example is Yar's Revenge, perhaps the greatest game on the console. Everyone knows about Activision's Pitfall and River Raid but few mention StarMaster, a fantastic title which was like a lite version of Phaser Patrol. Phaser Patrol? Yes! The initial packed in release with the Arcadia/Starpath Supercharger that added a whopping 6k additional RAM for the Atari. And it worked brilliantly! Yes, the games were released on cassette tapes and you needed a tape player.....but just about every "cool kid" had a Sony Walkman or knockoff. The huge Supercharger cartridge went into the Atari slot, plug the unit into the headphone jack on your tape player, push play, and voila! Instant minds blown of what was capable on the Atari at the time. I only had Phaser Patrol and Dragonstomper but what a great early gaming experience! Think of it this way....the Supercharger was the father of the Nintendo FX chip, pushing the limits of machine and man! Sorry, I had to get a Red Barchetta reference in there somehow.
@@animatsuri : I'd still like to play that game! Anything "3D" at the time was extremely cool. I loved Wizardry on the Apple II and perhaps one of my favorite games of all time is AD&D Treasure of Tarmin (later named Minotaur) on the Intellivision.
@@wojciechmuras553 : Yes, those are better examples than the SuperFX....but we get the point. It's a really great add-on that is very rare these days. But cassettes are a horrible medium for data!
I remember when I parents bought a 2600 and Defender, in Minot North Dakota (we are from Canada). And my big brother played it and played it. We still have that atari.
Over here in Sweden, the Atari 8-bits were put in the lot with the x-in-1 games you mention, and called curiously, *hockey games* (although they had ping-pong and tennis and we loved those sports as well). Considering cartridges to replace some hardwired circuitry perhaps wrongly so, and perhaps rightly so at least for most game titles. Maybe if the best games (which basically means Activision titles) had made it here early, it would have been a great hit? Pitfall II, H.E.R.O., and River Raid did make it here on mainly the C64 along with many newer enticing game ideas, although I remember the first two fondly from the Apple II - but not many had access to such early US computers here I think, or at least not in the home. I think those 3 game ideas have held up well, though flip-screen insta-kill and memorization of maps (or on-paper mapping of them) began to feel very old by 1985-6. I think Atari 8-bit had the right vision though, and they did make proper 8-bit computers, and even more, they went on to Atari Games on arcade, which was an absolute powerhouse, dominating the market with with so much innovative hardware and most of all, novel and fun, addictive game ideas that are absolute classics and gems.
I'm 49 yrs. old and I had the SEAR'S version TELE GASMES and it was the same thing as the ATARI . I owned E.T. the game and a bunch of others Q-bert , Phoenix .…
Loved how over time the programmers figure out work arounds and ways of doing things the original makers never dreamt of. Made programmers push more and more to create some outstanding for the time graphics
Pitfall was incredible, also River Raid. The latter was so incredibly polished; the scrolling, the inertia of your plane when banking, the colours and sprites - all topped off with perfect gameplay that's still so much fun today, I loved Defender, but on a technical level Stargate impresses me very much also; to manage a playable Defender II that resembles the arcade, that's very cool.
Back then I had a vectrex (an excellent console in its own right) and my cousins had a vcs. I really was jealous. Color graphics, amazing games such as Toutankhamon ... I spent much more time at their place than playing with my vectrex lol.
I had developed a 4KB tech demo for a Zelda clone on the Atari 2600, back in 2016, to see how far I could push the hardware. The game used an interlaced display, so I could create more detailed screens, while still having some color.
Very impressive video again, love the technical info. Space Invaders: I saw an interview where it was described how the Atari gang were astounded at what the programmer had managed to do (Rick Maurer). An epic conversion!
In adventure, you can soft-lock any game by putting items too deep into walls.... In space invadors, if you held 'reset' while turning the power on, and then released 'reset', you got double shot. I don't know 'why', but it was an amazing way to 'win'. I flipped the score and couldn't die, so I eventually let the game kill me. I mean I was 8 at the time and got bored after flipping the score, but no one was around to witness it.
So, being of 'that' age I have been around forever. Played in the local arcade also spent some money at the local, got a few PET's available by the hour club, obviously on a Saturday. I guess around 1979 I demanded a pong machine which I remember playing solo!! For me, the 2600 with Invaders, Tank Battle and Missile Command was purchased at the local Comet/Rumbelows. This lasted until I started work in late 1982, when I signed up in Boots for a Spectrum, to play Sabre Wulf. Sold that for a C64, then Amiga 500+, a 1200 followed by a PlayStation 1. The rest is history.
I got a six-switcher as a kid back in 1979. It was the culmination of 3 years of birthday money, odd jobs and grandma kicking in the last $20 and, d@mn, was it worth it!.
I've been wanting to do a video about this for years...Solaris is definitely one of the ones on my list, and I own it too! One of my favs, granted by the time it came out the 8 bit generation had taken over.
I was playing mine up until around 1986, but back in the 70s and early 80s, you'd not really play a game for hours on end, it was just a bit of a distraction. I actually had far more "adventure" when I read fighting fantasy books. It wasn't until 1990 when I had both a 286 PC and an Atari ST that I got completely hooked on games.
I had an xe130 as a kid. We had a box full of disks...most were cracked games. Boulderdash, pharoahs curse, jumpman jr...I've been a game addict ever since.
With Atari titles like Asteroids and Space Invaders, the hit on the graphics and sound was worth it for the ability to play so many variations of the game. The same with Missile Command. When you got bored of certain settings, you could just play a different variation... like invisible invaders etc.
I fondly remember Pitfall 1 & 2, that I played endlessly with my mother and my sister. We actually drew maps for both to be able to get all treasures. The 20 minute time limit on 1 was brutal, and the only way to beat 2 with a perfect score was to NEVER get hit by an enemy, as that would transport you back to the latest save point, while substracting points from your score along the way. I'll never forget the night my mom beat the game with a perfect score after weeks and weeks of trying.
Effectively each player/missile in the 2600 were a single register that had to be updated on a line by line basis in order to display even a single “sprite.” If you wrote a pattern to a Player or Missile and didn’t update it it would stretch the entire length of the screen. Effectively while it only had two players, two missiles and a ball object each of these stretched the entire height of the screen. This is very similar to how it works on the Atari 8bit home computer series. The Home computers just added a DMA controller to push data out instead of having the CPU do it line by line.
@@markstahl1464 Hold down Reset when you turn the Atari on, with Space Invaders in, and you can have double shots on the screen. Of course, you start instantly, so better be quick on the mark there.
Jungle Hunt had parallax scrolling, Octopus had animated playfield as the humongous octopus Boss! Hide and go Seek had amazing smoke effect made out of player sprite. There was a mountain game that had "hi res" graphics and there was also a game I forget the name where a player was not controlled but walked from left to right and you had to shoot stuff. That game also had "high res" graphics! which were faked using the missiles and ball to smooth out the jaggies! Honestly, I loved the blocky graphics... they looked like animated colored LEGO to me hahaha, like them til this day and the 2600 128 color palette!
@@Sharopolis I think you mentioned it in the video. My mom used to watch it on our black and white TV. The only thing I remember from it was the theme song, which was also pretty bad.
