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The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

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Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#61

Post by spatulan »

kintamanimatt wrote: post #9

> "It's awesome to be credited with single-handedly bringing down a billion-dollar industry with eight kilobytes of code. But the truth is a little more complex." Eight kilobytes?! How do you build anything meaningful, especially a game, with just eight kilobytes?

8KB of ROM, 128 bytes of RAM.

It doesn't even have a screen buffer, just a half a line buffer. You have to count scan lines and keep track of what's being drawn on a cycle by cycle basis, then update the line buffer live to get what you want on screen.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#62

Post by userbinator »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #13
kintamanimatt wrote: post #9

> "It's awesome to be credited with single-handedly bringing down a billion-dollar industry with eight kilobytes of code. But the truth is a little more complex." Eight kilobytes?! How do you build anything meaningful, especially a game, with just eight kilobytes?

Quite a lot, turns out. The demoscene does miracles in 4k. http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=52938

Might be better to show some actual Atari 2600 demos:

http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B0%5D=Atari+VCS

Here's one of the higher-ranked 8k demos:

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=32203 (YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WogMZn87hkk )

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#63

Post by bitJericho »

mrspeaker wrote: post #3

Anyone who is in to Atari 2600 knows that ET is verrrrrry far from the worst game available on that system! And it's so sad making it a great game would have take so few tweaks! http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/

My family and I love et. Once you rtfm, its pretty simple yet engaging. I can think of dozens of games that are worse.

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#64

Post by nickpsecurity »

No, the man who made the worst video game in history was Hideo Kojima with Metal Gear Solid 2. Hardcore fans of prior game(s) felt a combination of let down, shock, and anger at the details. Imagine my surprise when I find out it very well could've been an ingenius plot to screw with the players. As others noted, the games overall plot against the protagonist was what he was doing to the players. Start here on a nice analysis here if you're curious why MGS2 had the effects it did:

http://www.deltaheadtranslation.com/MGS2/DOTM3.htm

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#65

Post by tadfisher »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #64

No, the man who made the worst video game in history was Hideo Kojima with Metal Gear Solid 2. Hardcore fans of prior game(s) felt a combination of let down, shock, and anger at the details. Imagine my surprise when I find out it very well could've been an ingenius plot to screw with the players. As others noted, the games overall plot against the protagonist was what he was doing to the players. Start here on a nice…

MGS2 is quite possibly the best example of a postmodern video game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-2YuPGYabw

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#66

Post by spdustin »

VonGuard wrote: post #42
knieveltech wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I played the hell out of that game when it came out. I mean, who in their right mind would rank "Skiing" or "Combat" higher that this game?

Combat is, frankly, one of the greatest videogames ever made. Easily in the top ten. If you don't understand why, you've missed out on a great deal of history. The Atari 2600 was designed, almost exclusively, to play Combat. It has the ability to animate only 3 sprites: player 1, player 2 and "ball". There are many hacks to get around this, but we're talking about the pre-release period of the Atari Video Computer Sy…

I played combat ... With my mother. The day we got our 2600. It was accessible, simple, and as a child, made me see my mom in a whole new light. I'm 40 now, but feel like a little boy realizing that his mom is fun whenever I see that game come up.

Thanks for the memory :)

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#68

Post by minimaxir »

cjslep wrote: post #5

Here I thought I Wanna Be The Guy was the worst video game.

Of all the memes IWBTG has created, "bad game" is not one of them. (the deliberate difficulty of that game has in fact created a new genre of games, leading to things like Super Meat Boy)

Re: The man who made 'the worst video game in history'

#69

Post by bottled_poe »

VonGuard wrote: post #44
mrspeaker wrote: post #3

Anyone who is in to Atari 2600 knows that ET is verrrrrry far from the worst game available on that system! And it's so sad making it a great game would have take so few tweaks! http://www.neocomputer.org/projects/et/

Howard is a brilliant programmer. In Yar's Revenge, that fuzzy barrier on the left side of the screen is the graphics code from the program literally reading the game's own code as graphical data, thus creating the crazy static pattern of chaotic colors. Talk about a cool and space saving hack! https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/85/A2600_Yars_Re...

I accidentally produced a similar effect while working on my voxel game engine: https://twitter.com/jmhobrien/status/624133887036424193

Basically, just deferenced a pointer to OpenGL memory that I shouldn't have...

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