Retro Game Programming Retro Game Programming How this book got started? ................................................................................................. 3 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 4 What is a retro game? ..................................................................................................... 4 What are we trying to do? ............................................................................................... 5 What do you need?.......................................................................................................... 6 What should you know?.................................................................................................. 7 What’s the plan? ............................................................................................................. 7 Chapter 1: The Early History of Video Games ................................................................... 9 Just Having Fun ............................................................................................................ 10 A germ of an idea ...................................................................................................... 10 The First Pong Game ................................................................................................ 10 Spacewar! .................................................................................................................. 11 First Generation ............................................................................................................ 14 The father of the video game system ........................................................................ 14 The father of the video arcade/video game industry ................................................. 17 Innovative Atari Games or “Life After Pong” .......................................................... 19 Kee Games ................................................................................................................ 20 Innovative Games from other companies. ................................................................ 21 The home version of Pong ........................................................................................ 23 The story behind the game – Breakout ..................................................................... 24 The Fairchild Video Entertainment System/Channel F ............................................ 25 First Game Controversy – Death Race ..................................................................... 25 Night Driver .............................................................................................................. 26 Second Generation ........................................................................................................ 27 The history of the 6502 chip ..................................................................................... 27 The Atari 2600 (VCS) ............................................................................................... 28 Notable Video Arcade and Handheld games 1977-1979 .......................................... 32 Atari takes off! .......................................................................................................... 37 The notable games developed for the Atari 2600 ..................................................... 40 Notable Third party games – Activision and Imagic ................................................ 48 The Rise of the Machines! ........................................................................................ 59 The Great Arcade Golden Age ................................................................................. 66 The most popular video arcade games ...................................................................... 66 Nintendo enters the video game business ................................................................. 72 The Infamous and Dreadful Games .......................................................................... 73 The video game collapse of 1983 ............................................................................. 75 Copyright © 2009 by Lorraine Figueroa Retro Game Programming Third Generation – Nintendo hits the reset button........................................................ 76 Best NES Games ....................................................................................................... 77 The Other Generations .................................................................................................. 81 Fourth Generation ..................................................................................................... 81 Fifth Generation ........................................................................................................ 82 Six Generation .............................................................................................................. 82 Seventh Generation ....................................................................................................... 82 Summary ....................................................................................................................... 82 Chapter 2: How we can play retro games today ............................................................... 83 Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) ............................................................. 83 Stella ............................................................................................................................. 87 AppleWin ...................................................................................................................... 89 Nestopia ........................................................................................................................ 91 Lab 2.1 – Using MAME to play some classic SHMUPS ............................................. 92 Lab 2.2 – Using STELLA to play Adventure and Pitfall! ............................................ 93 Lab 2.3 – Using AppleWin to play Crisis Mountain .................................................... 94 Lab 2.4 – Using Nestopia to play Metroid .................................................................... 97 Summary ....................................................................................................................... 99 Chapter 2: Computers, Programs, and Programming ..................................................... 100 How we use computers ............................................................................................... 100 The Hardware and Software ....................................................................................... 104 Chapter 3: Learning Assembly Language ....................................................................... 107 What is Computer Programming? .............................................................................. 107 Learning how computers represent information ......................................................... 108 Our base-10 system ................................................................................................. 109 Binary World – base-2 ............................................................................................ 110 Hexadecimal World – base-16 ................................................................................ 117 A Detailed look at a microcomputer ........................................................................... 120 How does a microcomputer works? ............................................................................ 120 Chapter 4: The Video Mode and Video Buffer .............................................................. 121 Chapter 5: Game Graphics .............................................................................................. 121 Chapter 6: Player Input, Physics, and AI ........................................................................ 121 Chapter 7: Sound Effects ................................................................................................ 121 Chapter 8: Programming the Atari 2600 ......................................................................... 121 Chapter 9: Creating the game Pong on Atari 2600 ......................................................... 121 Chapter 10: User Assignment: Atari Tank...................................................................... 121 Chapter 11: Programming the Apple IIe ......................................................................... 122 Chapter 12: Creating the game Crisis Mountain on the Apple IIe ................................. 122 Chapter 13: User Assignment: Apple Robot Wars ......................................................... 122 Chapter 14: Programming the NES ................................................................................ 122 Chapter 15: Creating the game Abadox on the NES ...................................................... 122 Chapter 16: User Assignment: NES Sam’s World ......................................................... 122 Chapter 17: Building retro games on Xbox 360 ............................................................. 122 Copyright © 2009 by Lorraine Figueroa Retro Game Programming How this book got started? This idea for this book began after I purchased a book with a similar title, “Retro Game Programming, Unleashed for the Masses,” by Earl J. Carey. I wanted to like this book given how touching