avie (01/14/83)
I also have younger brothers, and as a result, I have had the opportunity of trying almost all of the cartridges available for the Atari 2600. Unfortunately, I have yet to find one that does not bore me with over 5 minutes of play. The graphics used are terrible. Are the cartridge makers holding back or is the 2600 brain damaged? A video games nut, Avadis Tevanian, Jr. rochester!avie
mark (01/14/83)
The problem with the graphics on the 2600 is that the horizontal resolution is only 40 pixels, each about 1/2 inch wide. And as if that isn't bad enough, you are restricted in that the right hand 20 pixels are either a copy of the left 20 or their mirror image! As far as I know, the only exceptions to this are the sprites, of which there are 5. (Player 1, Player 2, Missile 1, Missile 2, and the ball. These have a reasonable resolution, but other severe restrictions. They do have a hack for 2 or 3 copies and extra width, which explains why so many things come in threes. The cleverest 2600 games use the sprites for different things on different scan lines - for instance, Frogger uses the same sprite for different logs/trucks/turtles on different rows. With only 4K of ROM and 256 bytes of RAM to work with, you can't expect much. However, I am at a loss to explain how Star Raiders managed to get the stars to move so well across the background.