Atari 2600 devlog part 1 - Why Atari 2600?

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Atari 2600 is my own little personal autism. I wouldn't even consider myself a game developer (tho it was one of my passing interests, mainly making my own game engines in C and then making my games on top of those).

There are many resources about Atari 2600, and I do not want to dwell on it too much, so I am just going to describe how the console works real quick.

• Microprocessor: 6507 (basically 6502)
• Video RAM: no
• RAM: 128 bytes!
• Audio: two channels!
• Propietary TIA (Television Interface Adapter) chip!
• Code space: 4Kb (technically more with bank-switching!)
• Five "game objects":
  • Player 0
  • Player 1
  • Missile 0
  • Missile 1
  • Ball

The most important thing is lack of Video RAM, how the HELL (heck) are we supposed to put anything to the screen without Video memory? How can we tell the console to put a red pixel at x=20 and y=30? The short answer is: we can't*

*WE CAN!!

But it requires precise timings using CPU clock cycles (at least the horizontal positioning), which requires us to write our game code exclusively in 6502 assembly!

This devlog should *not* be treated as a tutorial, altho I'll try to explain some concepts along the way there are many many many things I am not sure of, so don't take me at my word :3

Atari 2600 sounds like an extremely limiting console, so why choose something like that instead of way easier to program NES or Gamebody? I have no idea, to be honest. I am a dog that likes to challenge itself, and this seems like something perfect for me!

In the next post/blog/entrance/writing/bark we shall discuss my idea for the game and talk about some of the characters and how I intend to solve some of the limitation of Atari 2600!