On my birthday in 2006, my mom gave me an Atari Flashback 2 Classic Game Console, a miniature version of the classic Atari 2600 video game console with 40 built-in period games (plus 2 more via a secret game key) and two replica joysticks. She knew that I always loved Atari games, and in the midst of the retrogaming craze of the mid 2000's she bought one at the Wal-Mart she worked at. And maybe my already owning the Flashback 1 was a hint. :)
I love that Flashback 2; right now it sits on top of my analog TV, the joystick parked on top of the digital converter box. Most of the classic Atari games are on the console--Asteroids, Centipede, Missile Command, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Lunar Lander and the Activision icon Pitfall.
Unlike the first Atari Flashback, which was built on a recreated Nintendo NES game chip, the Flashback 2 was a faithful recreation of the 2600's internal hardware, all the way down to the tiny memory chip. And it continues to amaze me that even with its blocky, flickering graphics, the original 2600 was on the market for just a little over 14 years, from the end of the Pong era into the beginning of the Sega Genesis and Nintendo's Super NES.
Released in the fall of 1977, the Atari Video Computer System was one of the first cartridge-based gaming consoles. It was originally called a "Video Computer System" to gain a marketing one-up from the Fairchild Video Entertainment System, another cartridge-based game console at the time. It was later rebranded the Atari 2600 after its manufacturing model number, CX-2600. Its processor, nicknamed "Stella" by the Atari development team, was a modified 8-bit Motorola 6502 processor running at 1.6 MHz. Its game controllers initially consisted of two joysticks and four paddles, but later grew to a pair of keypads, a "driving controller" (a full-360 paddle without stops), a light gun, wireless remote joysticks, a trackball and even a third-party attachable keyboard with added RAM which turned the gaming console into a simple home computer. The latter add-on, called a CompuMate, allowed users to create simple programs in the BASIC language, compose songs with a built-in synthesizer and save them all on a cassette for reloading later.
Because memory chips were expensive to make back in the 70's, the 2600 only had 128 bytes of onboard RAM. That's right, 128 single bytes, far less memory than it takes to make this sentence. The modified Motorola processor could only accept a maximum of 4K of instructions burned onto a cartridge's ROM chip. It had no frame buffer, no video memory, no preset graphics sprites, and could only display a maximum of two single-colored player sprites, two ball sprites in the same color as their corresponding players, and a missile sprite. Any more sprites would cause the screen to flicker. It was already obsolete the moment it first rolled off the assembly line because better, more powerful game consoles and home computers were in development, including Atari's own PC line.
But oh, what great games were made for that pea-brained processor. The 2600's first breakout hit was the home port of the arcade game Space Invaders in 1980. Millions of consoles were sold just so that people could play Invaders at home, and in color--the arcade Invaders was black-and-white. Due to pressure from competing and technically superior consoles, particularly Mattel's Intellivision, Atari and third-party publishers began pushing the 2600 to the limit of its technical capabilities and beyond: a technique called "bank-switching" allowed additional 4K and 16K ROM chips to be built into a cartridge and the extra game code to be called upon like a wireless router. Clever coding tricks like multiplexing graphics with one sprite, redrawing sprites in midscreen and exploting the lack of a preprogrammed character set made the Atari 2600 ultimately play complex games its creators never intended it for, and it was fun.
But despite its long run, the 2600 had its share of flops and misses, some of them remembered to this day. The infamous home port of Pac-Man, rushed to market for the 1981 Christmas season and reportedly only a demo version of a much better game in development, simply stunk, and many disgruntled Atari fans fled to the competing Intellivision, ColecoVision and Odyssey 2. Atari redeemed itself with a much better port of Ms. Pac-Man, but the damage to the 2600's reputation had already been done. Nevertheless, the 2600 stayed on toy store shelves well into the 1990's, helped with an official relaunch in 1986 as a budget gaming system. And even long after it was officially retired by Atari in 1992, individuals continue to make new games and apps for the old faithful 2600, called "homebrews" because of their small independent creation process.
Via emulation on modern Windows PC's and my Flashback 2, I continue to enjoy those old 80's games and the new homebrews. And as I have already said, I continue to be amazed at how programmers used the 2600's simplicity to their advantage. Because it is so ancient and primitive, the 2600 is considered one of the toughest computers to program for. You have to write code for every single scan line for the console's analog TV screen output. Ironically, its simplicity equals flexibility. Creative backdoor routines that exploit the hardware's quirks make possible complex games made for a console designed really for no more than Pong-like titles, and successfully creating a killer app for the 2600 like Ms. Pac-Man, Defender II or Solaris is considered worthy of a Purple Heart. I've tried creating simple 2600 programs using a free developer kit called Batari Basic; it's not easy at all and I have a lot of respect for those who have gone before me. :)
But aside from its limitations, the 2600 had a lot of really cool games despite the blocky graphics. They are as addictive and entertaining as they ever were back in the 80's, and continue to be available for playing on emulators for cell phones, modern gaming consoles and of course the real 2600 itself.
So much more could be said, but these and more are the reasons I (still) love the good ol' Atari 2600, even 32 years after its launch and nearly 18 after its official well-earned retirement. And like a retiree who gets bored as hell staying home and eventually returns to some kind work (usually volunteer), the 2600 continues to enjoy a long, robust second life with new games from a new generation of programmers (usually volunteer too).
So, "have you played Atari today?" I have. :)
This is my Christmas greeting card for 2009, which I drew in pencil, scanned into my computer and colored with GimPhoto (a variation of the freeware graphics program GIMP).
