Previously shared a trailer for an upcoming Atari game Akka Arrh. Forgot to link to the Wikipedia entry, but its developer, Jeff Minter, is a hoot. You may also recognize him as the actor whom murderous author Jerome Davies from the Black Mirror film Bandersnatch.
Category: Games
Rare and valuable Atari 2600 games
Amazing the obscurity of some of these titles and the resultant sales prices: https://www.racketboy.com/retro/rarest-and-most-valuable-atari-2600-games
Programming the Atari 2600 VCS
As I wrote previously, I’m considering taking a stab at programming Atari 2600 games for fun and _. May just update helpful links here:
- Atari 2600 Programming for Newbies, plus, the associated book in PDF format
- Creating a game for Atari 2600 in 2022 — side note: your paywall sucks, Medium, especially for the level of content you get these days
- Learn Assembly Language by Making Games for the Atari 2600
- 2600programming
- Programming Games for Atari 2600 by Óscar Toledo G.
Video Games: Vol. 1 No. 2
I LOVE these early video game mags. A nostalgic walk through my childhood…
Twin Galaxies records
One of my 2023 goals is to rank on the Twin Galaxies records boards. I’m likely going to have to do it in what I call the “Tim Ferris way” though – by technicality haha…
Then again, there are a lot of really high scores already, at least for the games I currently own. Maybe I’ll just have to shoot for next-to-last rank for Gopher on the Atari 2600.
Interesting read on the technical aspects…
…of the Galaga no-fire cheat: https://www.computerarcheology.com/Arcade/Galaga/
Pygame tutorials
A series of Pygame tutorials: https://www.pygame.org/wiki/tutorials
Pygame, a game dev framework for Python 3
I mentioned in a previous post that one of my goals for 2023 was to program 12 games to help keep my programming brain limber and my skills sharp. I also mentioned that I suspect most of my dev work for that goal will be in Python 3: that’s what my shop mostly uses, it’s flexible, and it’s what I’m comfortable with.
Luckily, Pygame exists and is great for the types of games that I’ll be working on as part of my goal. And…there are plenty of tutorials out there so I won’t struggle too much.
At the beginning of every year, rather than…
…making formal new year resolutions, I set a list of goals. Most I have no intention of fully completing but they allow me to have something to look forward to and structure my “wants” against my “needs” and actual availability haha…
I try not to limit myself and what goes on the list can range from the must-do to the super-superfluous.
One of my goals for 2023 is to improve my programming skills and, really, just keep them sharp since I’m in a leadership position that doesn’t really allow me to dive into the hands-on, individually contributing, technical aspects of the work we do.
What better way to keep programming skills sharp than to program games? So, 2023 goal #3 is to program 12 games. I’m stating at the outset that my intent is to be language-agnostic though I suspect most, if not all, will be in Python 3. May even take a crack at racing the beam with some Atari 2600 assembly programming.
Without further ado, let me introduce game #0, Pong-23.
I had a helluva fun time working on it over Christmas break. It doesn’t really count towards the 12 game goal since I finished it the penultimate day of 2022, but it helped get my brain limber. Let’s figure out what’s next!
