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Nerdy + Awesome =
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The Atari 2600 celebrates 30 years of low-rez fun
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As my 35th birthday approaches, an old friend is celebrating 30 years… the Atari 2600! Retro Thing is doing an “Atari Week” feature, with several pieces about the first device that defined “video game” for the majority of us thirty-somethings.
The Atari 2600’s impact upon the gaming world was immense. No less than eight variations were produced over its stunning 14 year lifespan, along with three Sears-branded models and over a dozen clones. The system sold in excess of 40 million units, and AtariAge lists well over 1300 different game titles. This is all the more incredible because the system was envisioned to have only a two or three year lifespan before being replaced by something more sophisticated. That day never came. Even though Atari made repeated attempts to surpass their initial design, the 2600 remained the pinnacle of the company’s console gaming success.
Many fuzzy memories:
- Begging my parents to drop me off at John Arnett’s house to play his 2600 before my piano lessons.
- The hilarity of Basketball’s square ball.
- Being awed by the ability to play Space Invaders without having to drop a quarter at the arcade. (and the syncopated rhythm when there’s only four attackers left)
- Finally getting an Atari of my own for Christmas. Thanks Mom and Dad! Uh, I mean, Santa!
- Staying up all night at John Merritt’s house to beat Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Playing, enjoying, and beating E.T., years before the internet told me I was supposed to hate it.
- Checking out my friends’ latest acquisitions each Saturday at the Cub Scout meeting. Including Journey Escape – Now THAT game was a stinker.
- …and finally giving it up for the Commodore 64 [links to an archive of my C64 site from several years ago]
The Atari 2600 seems so quaint in comparison to what we have today, but it was capable of some truly amazing things given it’s limitations. It had a meager 128 bytes of memory – to put that in perspective, this blog post alone is 20 times that. Your average home computer today with a gigabyte of memory can hold over 8 million times that amount. The ability to create anything with those limitations, let alone some of the classics that were produced for the 2600, is nothing short of incredible.
Teen nearly kills himself trying to fix overheating Xbox 360
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Brevard (NC) – A 14-year-old boy was knocked unconscious and sent to the hospital as a result of trying to cool off his Xbox 360 over the weekend.According to a local news report, the teen’s console would repeatedly shut off every five minutes. His mother told reporters that he thought the problem was likely linked to overheating. He reportedly tried to fix it on his own based on tips he found online.
“When I left to go next door he was playing a game but when I got back he was laying on his back on the floor and unconscious,” said the boy’s mother.
Local media reports suggest that the teenager took the power supply, wrapped it in plastic and tape, and submerged it into a bowl of water while it was still plugged in. This caused an electrical shock and knocked the boy unconscious.
His mother called 911 and paramedics rushed him to Transylvania Community Hospital in Brevard, North Carolina. He spent the night there and was treated for minor burns to his right hand and foot.
TG Daily – Teen nearly kills himself trying to fix overheating Xbox 360
Shocking! Hopefully he’s learned what the majority of the world’s population knows – water and electricity don’t mix. Well, they *do* – just not with particularly pleasant results.
Star Diamond
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Some 20 Christmases ago, my grandparents gave me a program for my Commodore 64 called Adventure Writer. Unlike the rest of the games I owned, this one actually allowed you to create games – specifically, text-based adventure games such as Zork.
For all practical purposes, the genre – known these days among enthusiasts as Interactive Fiction – died in the early 90s. At least in the commercial sense. But my first memory of using an actual computer was playing the original Adventure on the mainframe at the local community college with my dad when I was 7 or 8 years old.
So anyway – back to Adventure Writer. Like most kids interested in computers and videogames, I imagined myself being able to make games for a living when I grew up. With Adventure Writer, I had a way to make my own games without having to know one of the advanced programming languages (you can only do so much with BASIC).
I worked for weeks on my magnum opus, the creatively-named “Star Diamond”. I sent it in to Compute!’s Gazette for possible publication, but a few weeks later, I received a rejection letter – I was one devastated 11 year old. And so died my dreams of being a famous video game designer.
But thanks to the magics of the interweb, Star Diamond shall finally see the light of day! I usually dust off my Commodore 64 around this time every year, and last year I found a copy of the game on one of my ancient floppy disks. So, I’ve repackaged it and made it available for download here [1.8 MB] – it’s Windows-only for the time-being. After playing through it a while and trying to remember how to win the game, I realize how *bad* it actually is 🙂 At any rate, the unwashed masses may now be witness to my game design genius.
Here are some brief directions, for those unfamiliar with text adventures:
The basic idea of the user interface is command and response. The program gives you a command prompt, then you type in some command and press Enter/Return. The computer chews on your input for a bit, then tells you the results and gives you a new prompt.
The most important question now is: “What do I type?”
BASIC COMMANDS
Most of the commands you use will be simple and direct. Typing OPEN THE DESK causes your character to (you guessed it) open the desk. Type GET THE PENCIL, and you will pick it up. The process is simple. When faced with the command prompt, just think “I want to…” or “What happens if I…” and let your mind work from there. INVENTORY (abbreviated I) displays a list of items you are carrying.
EXAMINE (sometimes abbreviated X and/or EXA) gives you a closer look at things. It’s used hundreds of times in the course of a typical game.
LOOK (abbreviated L) by itself gives you a detailed description of your location. I always type L just to be doing something while I’m thinking of what to do next.
This is one of the most versatile commands. You can LOOK AT THE CHEST, LOOK ON THE CHEST, LOOK IN THE CHEST, LOOK UNDER THE CHEST, LOOK BEHIND THE CHEST. All of these could give different, unique responses.
GO is a very important command, even if you may never actually type it. Even though GO NORTH, for example, is a command you need to move around, you can abbreviate it to NORTH or even just N.
GET, TAKE, and PICK UP are synonyms. You’ll find many objects you can pick up and carry around with you. If you can’t pick something up, the game will give you a reason, which you may be able to rectify.
DROP and PUT are how you put objects down. DROP is quick and easy, but it just puts the objects on the ground. PUT can be more specific,though, allowing you to PUT THE BOOK ON THE TABLE, for instance.
WAIT tells the computer you want to do nothing for a turn. In almost all games, no game time actually passes while the computer is waiting for your input. Use WAIT to force time to pass.
So… that’s about it. Have fun!