Retro Minigame Competition Revealed

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to the 2003 Minigame Competition, a homebrew game contest "open to games for 'classic' 8-bit computers from the '80s", and featuring two categories, for games where the "...maximum size of the executable... is 1024 or 4096 bytes." Voting is currently open, although new games are still being submitted, and notable highlights include SCSIcide ("You are a disk drive read head, and your mission is to read the color-coded bits of data as they scream past you on 10 separate data tracks"), and JoustPong 1K for the Atari 2600 ("JoustPong is an old school Pong Deathmatch... but with a flap button!")

Not just curiosities, they're real products.

[Kris_J]

Many of the games submitted for the competition are available for download or, better yet, for sale. Most of the Atari 2600 titles can be bought as a real cartridge at the AtariAge Store [atariage.com]. Of the submitted entries I own a hold-in-your-hand copy of Skeleton+ and Qb.

Re:Not just curiosities, they're real products.

[MagerValp]

We were hoping for a few more original entries, but the rules do state that you're allowed to submit previous work... But with games being submitted every day, it looks like we might even beat last year's 63 entries [cling.gu.se].

For those of us with less talent

[73bgt]

The comp.sys.sinclair crap game competition is here [8bitorbust.info]

More information about the 2600 entries

[TheAlchemist]

I believe this is the first year that 2600 games have been allowed in the competition, and since most 2600 games are 4K, this is why you see many 2600 homebrew authors submitting their games. The following list contains more information about each of the entries, including some that have not yet appeared on the Minigame Competition page:

Climber 5 [atariage.com]
Jammed [atariage.com]
JoustPong [alienbill.com]
Gunfight [atariage.com]
Qb [atariage.com]
SCSIcide [atariage.com]
Skeleton+ [atariage.com]
Space Treat Deluxe [atariage.com]
Warring Worms [atariage.com]

Additionally, many authors have released the source code to their games, which is invaluable if you're trying to learn how to program the 2600. Some examples relevant to the competition: Gunfight [atariage.com], Qb [atari2600.org], SCSIcide [pixelspast.com], and Space Treat Deluxe [atariage.com].

And finally, some other links people may find useful:

Atari 2600 Emulators [atariage.com]
List of Released 2600 Homebrews [atariage.com]
Games in Development [atariage.com]

Enjoy!

Re:More information about the 2600 entries

[MagerValp]

I believe this is the first year that 2600 games have been allowed in the competition

No, they've been allowed every year.

Re:More information about the 2600 entries

[zapavic]

Previous years, the categories were 0.5, 1 and 2K which all seem too tight for Atari 2600 games (we had a few limited NES games last year, but maybe it doesn't require as much space).

Re:More information about the 2600 entries

[kisrael]

Dang...this is one of the quietest slashdot posts I've ever seen...

ah well!

Woot, thatsa my game

[kisrael]

I'm the author of JoustPong, still a work in progress...I found out that an early playable alpha was only 60 bytes over the 1K limit, so I stripped it to 1 player only and sent it in.

Most of the other atari games are previous 4K works, and generally more impressive than the 1K version of my ongoing effort.

Rip Off

[Gudlyf]

That entry for "Gunfight" is a right-out ripoff of the old Atari game "Gunslinger" [atariguide.com]. What kind of original idea is that?

Re:Rip Off

[TheAlchemist]

Many games are based on others, there is nothing new here. Manuel Polik's Gunfight [atariage.com] is derived from the 1975 Midway arcade game [klov.com] of the same name. Atari also produced a similar arcade game, called Outlaw [klov.com], which they later ported [atariage.com] to the 2600. The Sears title Gunslinger [atariage.com] is simply Outlaw rebadged.

Gunfight is much improved over Atari's Outlaw for the 2600. You can see this by downloading the binary for each game (from the links provided above) and trying the two games in your favorite 2600 emulator. Other ga