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History of “Adventure” for the Atari 2600

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21–25 of 25 posts

Re: History of “Adventure” for the Atari 2600

#21
post #7

This game is quite simple in how it uses the Atari 2600 hardware. Atari Hardware can draw exactly 6 things on a scanline: Playfield, Ball, Sprite 1, Sprite 2, Missile 1, Missile 2. So Adventure made the player be the Ball, the thin walls (seen on two rooms) be the missile, and two of game objects become the two sprites. There is also the torch-light sprite that can take the place of one of the game objects in dark ro…

...in 4KB. Racing the beam - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam

Adventure kept it small mainly by indirection. Each room has a pointer for its graphics, 4 exit locations, and the color/darkness flags. The game doesn't need to do anything special to handle most rooms, so that keeps the code size pretty small. And because it's using pointers to graphics data, room data can even start in the middle of another room's data, so things like a bottom barrier can become a top barrier in the next room to use that data.

The only real time you need to handle things specially is that some room exits are conditional based on whether Game 1 is selected or not.

Because it was so simple to reuse the rooms, there was enough empty space in there for the Easter egg. The "Created by Warren Robinett" sprite alone is a whopping 96 bytes of sprite data.

But you don't need all that much special code to get the Easter egg into the game. You define one additional room that reuses an existing room layout, and add one more sprite to the list of sprites. The sprite is pre-placed in the new room, as defined by the data that initializes all the game objects. The code for the dot mostly uses the existing code for objects, you can pick up and drop objects already, and the dot is no different in that respect. There is a little bit of added code for removing the right side barrier when it's in the correct sprite slot (easy to happen when three objects are in the room), and there's also a little bit of extra code to override the right-side exit for the room.

Re: History of “Adventure” for the Atari 2600

#23
post #20
post #19

“Of all the original games Atari put out for the VCS, Adventure may be the one that most people are familiar with today.” Is it? It’s certainly up there. But I would think Pitfall would be the best known today in terms of gameplay. That aside, I really enjoyed the article.

Pitfall was from Activision, not Atari

Thank you, that’s what I was missing. I didn’t read the sentence carefully enough and thought it was about all games for the Atari, not from Atari.

Re: History of “Adventure” for the Atari 2600

#24
post #19

“Of all the original games Atari put out for the VCS, Adventure may be the one that most people are familiar with today.” Is it? It’s certainly up there. But I would think Pitfall would be the best known today in terms of gameplay. That aside, I really enjoyed the article.

I think more people are familiar with Pac-Man for the 2600 (because it was terrible, not the fault of the programmer but Atari management trying to rush it out the door) and ET for the 2600 (landfill story, on Atari management that tried to rush it, again) than Adventure.

Among 2600 games that weren't terrible though, I'd say its probably up there.

Re: History of “Adventure” for the Atari 2600

#25
post #19

“Of all the original games Atari put out for the VCS, Adventure may be the one that most people are familiar with today.” Is it? It’s certainly up there. But I would think Pitfall would be the best known today in terms of gameplay. That aside, I really enjoyed the article.

I think more people are familiar with Pac-Man for the 2600 (because it was terrible, not the fault of the programmer but Atari management trying to rush it out the door) and ET for the 2600 (landfill story, on Atari management that tried to rush it, again) than Adventure. Among 2600 games that weren't terrible though, I'd say its probably up there.

I debated ET. I think it’s better known than Pac-Man due to the New Mexico landfill story.

But I suspect they’re not familiar with the game at all, just the story. If they know about Pac-Man it’s likely the same.

I decided to go with Pitfall because I think it’s well known but people have likely seen at least a screen or two being played, jumping on gators or over logs.

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