Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
#2The actual source code is on the Internet Archive
https://archive.org/details/asteroids-src
Re: Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
#3A very difficult game. I’ve never been able to complete more than 3 screens.
Re: Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
#4A very difficult game. I’ve never been able to complete more than 3 screens.
I recommend staying in the middle
Re: Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
#5A very difficult game. I’ve never been able to complete more than 3 screens.
I spent way too much time with Ateroids when it first came out. It’s not so hard once you get into the right rhythm.
Re: Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
#6Seeing 6502 assembly language made me feel a bit nostalgic - sixteen year-old me spent quite a lot of time coding in it for a year or so, first on my Vic 20 then on an Acorn Electron. I was surprised to find that I can still almost read it and, browsing an instruction set reference just now, I'm impressed all over again by its succinctness.
Wiki has a few notes on the game hardware and implementation at [1]. The Quadrascan graphics processor, which presumably ran the code in 'asteroids_vector_rom.asm', doesn't seem to be well described on the net (as far as I can tell) but there's a hardware service manual for the colour version at [2]. It seems to me from reading it that the vector processor was tightly integrated with the CRT tube, and the manual has lots of scary/exciting warnings about high voltages and potential tube implosion.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroids_(video_game)#Hardwar...
[2] https://www.manualslib.com/manual/689160/Atari-Quadrascan-92...
Re: Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
#7A very difficult game. I’ve never been able to complete more than 3 screens.
No two ways about it, you've got to learn to drive the ship. Trying to hold the center is nigh impossible. Also, the cannon has a short cool-down after 5 rapid shots, so you need to get that 1-2-3-4-5-pause cadence baked into muscle memory.
That said, I never managed to last very long on that cabinet.
Re: Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
#8Seeing 6502 assembly language made me feel a bit nostalgic - sixteen year-old me spent quite a lot of time coding in it for a year or so, first on my Vic 20 then on an Acorn Electron. I was surprised to find that I can still almost read it and, browsing an instruction set reference just now, I'm impressed all over again by its succinctness. Wiki has a few notes on the game hardware and implementation at [1]. The Quad…
> sixteen year-old me spent quite a lot of time coding in it for a year or so
I always assumed this was what I would be doing for a living when I grew up - I was honestly a little disappointed that high-level languages had progressed so far by the time I joined the workforce.
Re: Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
#9Seeing 6502 assembly language made me feel a bit nostalgic - sixteen year-old me spent quite a lot of time coding in it for a year or so, first on my Vic 20 then on an Acorn Electron. I was surprised to find that I can still almost read it and, browsing an instruction set reference just now, I'm impressed all over again by its succinctness. Wiki has a few notes on the game hardware and implementation at [1]. The Quad…
Tons of additional information here from an Atari staff engineer who worked on some of the XY games. [1] [2]
Re: Disassembly of the Asteroids arcade game firmware
#10A very difficult game. I’ve never been able to complete more than 3 screens.
To have the authentic learning experience, take a dollar bill out of your wallet and light it on fire every time you start a new game.
(inflation adjusted)