24-Hour Atari 2600 Video Game Design Contest

morcheeba writes "Retro Redux was a 24-hour video game programming contest held last weekend in New York. Nine teams worked through the night to produce new Atari 2600 compatible games. Awards were given for the most innovative game, best visuals, and best sound. The best game overall was "Ninja Garden," and it will be featured in a future version of the Atari® Flashback(TM) Game Console. The New York Times was there with event coverage."

NY Times article?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good thing the linked NY Times article has nothing to do with the submission, I was getting complacent knowing what I was about to read.

Re:NY Times article?

[clamatius]

I think this [nytimes.com] was the link the submitter meant.

Sure glad the NYT did not sponsor it.

[AtariAmarok]

I don't like the idea of old Atari games that require an excruciating registration process just to play them.

Corrected Link

[morcheeba]

Oh, whoa, am I embarrassed! I even double-checked it, too, argh... Here are the corrected links:

No-registration required link [nytimes.com] (thanks to the NY Times link generator [blogspace.com]!)
registration-required link [nytimes.com]

RETRO fun

[Kaamoss]

Some of the best games I have ever played were on my father's anchient atari 5200. Back when games where focus on having challenging gameplay and great replay value. Since when has pac man or galazia or qbert gotten boring? It would seem most games nowadays are more focused on fancy visual effects rather than basic gameplay. It's a shame, but at least we still have the classics. Interesting wiki http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Videoga mes_history [media-culture.org.au] on the history of video games.

Re:RETRO fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, back when games focused on challenging gameplay and great replay value. Anyone up for a round of ET? Anyone? Oh...nm.

Re:RETRO fun

[snorklewacker]

> It would seem most games nowadays are more focused on fancy visual effects rather than basic gameplay

Oh just knock it off with the rose-colored nostalgia crap already. You only remember the games that were good, and not the loads of CRAP that was also released. You were also younger, and the games were more of a novelty, so they left a greater impression. There are perfectly good innovative games out there right now, and some of them don't even look like ass. There just happen to be a lot more of t

Re:RETRO fun

[snorklewacker]

I'm 32 years old. I remember playing "Race" and "Tanks Plus" on my "Sears Tele-Games" -- an atari 2600 with everything relabelled. We called it the Atari though, so I sort of knew what was up. Being six, one doesn't really get the nuances. Friends of my parents had that pong thingie where you actually put the acetate sheets on the screen for the other games, but I never liked the controllers. I remember Space Invaders and Asteroids, and being utterly blown away by Gorf. "It talks!". I think I've esta

In honor of the Atari 2600 ET game

[AtariAmarok]

This contest should be named in honor of that old Atari 2600 ET game, which, from looking at it, must have been designed and completed in two and a half hours.

Re:In honor of the Atari 2600 ET game

[Anonymous Coward]

E.T. was actually given eight weeks, which still is, for one programmer, a pretty short time to design and implement a game that's supposed to sell millions and millions...

Game creation kit?

[chrisbtoo]

The article says that they were given "a brief tutorial in the software they [used]" before starting hacking.

Was this some sort of game creation kit they were using? ISTM that for a machine like the 2600 (or any console, for that matter) you'd need more than a brief intro if you were going to write a decent game in 24 hours.

Re:Game creation kit?

[chrisbtoo]

Ah, it seems they used GameMaker [gamemaker.nl].

Gamemaker.nl required

[morcheeba]

Yeah, this was required. The contest's introduction/sample design document is here (zip w/ MS Word files) [parsons.edu]. It looks like gamemaker isn't 2600-specific, and, in fact, the rules say to use snap-to-grid to approximate the resolution of the 2600. That's kindof disappointing - I'm guessing that the gamemaker can do a whole lot more in terms of control logic than the limited memory of the 2600.

Re:Game creation kit?

[Anonymous Coward]

No offense to them, but that is lame-ass. I thought that this was some sort of hardcore programming competition, not some cranking the wheel of some design-o-tron 3000.

Re:Game creation kit?

[gilmet]

Wow, Gamemaker is a WYSIWYG games editor.

Re:$60 for the atari console?

[Mumpsman]

The problem with the new console for me is that it's closed. "No need to swap caridges!" say the marketoids, like that's a good thing. I've got tons of old catridges sitting next to my TV, and would gladly pay $60 for new Atari hardware to play them on. I've purchased old and refurbished consoles in the past, and always burn them out.

Like the parent post says, if I don't care about having the an authentic Atari 2600 experience, I'll just buy the CD. Catridge switching is part of that experience.

I

Re:$60 for the atari console?

[Urchlay]

I've purchased old and refurbished consoles in the past, and always burn them out.

Burn them out?! How do you manage that?

I've been playing 2600 games for 25+ years and have never burned out a console, not even when I was testing my own poorly-soldered homebrew EPROM carts. You're not deliberately `frying' them are you (flipping the power on & off rapidly, to cause glitches in the game)?

The reason for the lack of a cartridge port on the new console seems to be that it isn't actually 2600-compatible a

Screenshots

[beofli]

ahref=http://news.com.com/Images+An+angry+Atari+pr incess%2C+bull+and+ninjas/2009-1043_3-5656760.html ?tag=st.prev [slashdot.org]http://news.com.com/Images+An+angry+At ari+princess%2C+bull+and+ninjas/2009-1043_3-565676 0.html?tag=st.prev> I always found that these kind of pixel games, because they lack details, set our imagination to work, giving them a lot of 'atmosphere'.

Re:Screenshots, Sorry, now good:

[beofli]

screenshots [com.com]

I always found that these kind of pixel games, because they lack details, set our imagination to work, giving them a lot of 'atmosphere'. -- I rest my case...

Re:Screenshots, Sorry, now good:

[AttillaTheNun]

I assume that link is incorrect. I saw females more than once. Some of them even looked kinda hot.

Need articles before events

[slapout]

I'd be nice of /. to tell us about these events BEFORE they happen, so we could get involved or at least watch.

Not Atari 2600 games

[raindog2]

The Atari Flashback isn't based on any Atari hardware, but "Famiclone" technology (most similar to the NES) like all those "system in a controller" devices. In fact, just looking at the screenshots [com.com] , I can't even find one that it'd be possible to render on the 2600 (having done some coding [kudla.org] on it myself.) They all have either too many pixels or too many colors per scanline, though obviosuly not too many for NES hardware.

For me, this contest might have actually been more challenging than writing a 2600 game in 24 hours, since I know the 2600 but I'm not familiar with coding for the NES nor with the development tools they were using (which was apparently the Windows program "Game Maker" with a limited set of sound effects and limitations on resolution and colors.)

To be fair, though, the game that won ("Ninja Garden") was the closest of all the games to looking like an actual 2600 game.

Re:Not Atari 2600 games

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I was actually one of the people that helped run the event...believe it or not.

I just want to comment to say that figuring out the constraints was the most difficult part to figure out. We determined pretty quickly that the flashback--which the teams were ostensibly designing for--was actually a Nintendo-on-a-chip. In the end, after figuring out that none of these teams could really write assembly that quickly so as to match the 2600's real specs, we settled for using Gamemaker, keeping the size o

Re:Not Atari 2600 games

[Viking Coder]

If you ask me, this contest should be over twenty six hours. As in, 26:00 on the clock.

But maybe that's just me.