Water Cooler Games - Atari VCS Valentines

Atari VCS Valentines
February 14, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I'm somewhat obsessed with the Atari VCS (2600), both as a critic and an amateur programmer. Nick Montfort and I are currently writing a book on the VCS, the first in the new Platform Studies series we're series editing at MIT Press.

I'm also teaching a graduate class this term on critiquing and programming the Atari VCS. Today in class, I demonstrated a number of basic playfield drawing techniques with valentines, so I thought I'd share them with our readers here as our official Valentine's Day greetings. They are very simple VCS programs that just draw a single screen, but VCS programs nonetheless. You'll need an Atari emulator like Stella to view them.

VCS Valentine 1 (4K Atari VCS binary ROM)
VCS Valentine 2 (4K Atari VCS binary ROM)
VCS Valentine 3 (4K Atari VCS binary ROM)

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Comment from Skout on February 15, 2007

Are you kidding? You teach a graduate class on critiquing and programming a 30-year old processor? Is this at MIT? Somebody really needs to put the crackpipe down and take up Latin or something even remotely useful.

Comment from Ian Bogost on February 15, 2007

It's at Georgia Tech. The 6502 was a pretty important processor, actually. It was about 1/5 the price of its competitors and was used in a range of computers, from the Ataris to the Apple I and II to the Commodore and even the original NES.

The VCS has many more interesting properties than using the 6502 (really the 6507, a modified 6502). In the class, we're interested in learning how to program the Atari, but also in understanding how the hardware influenced game mechanics and genres, both on the Atari and on later systems.

As for Latin, I took it back in the day, but my Greek is better (was one of my Ph.D. languages). I also recently have worked on an ancient Greek curriculum for kids: http://www.opentexture.com/products/greek/yearone/default.aspx. So, yes, I've got the arcana covered at both ends of the technology spectrum :)

Comment from threv on February 15, 2007

Absolutely incredible, Prof. Bogost. Things like this make recent GT grads like myself unbelievably proud.

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