Retro Game Programming Copyright © 2011 by brainycode.com Retro Game Programming How this book got started? ................................................................................................. 4 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5 What is a retro game? ..................................................................................................... 6 What are we trying to do? ............................................................................................... 7 What do you need?.......................................................................................................... 8 What should you know?.................................................................................................. 9 What‘s the plan? ............................................................................................................. 9 Chapter 1: The Early History of Video Games ................................................................. 11 Just Having Fun ............................................................................................................ 12 A germ of an idea ...................................................................................................... 12 The First Pong Game ................................................................................................ 12 Spacewar! .................................................................................................................. 13 First Generation ............................................................................................................ 16 The father of the video game system ........................................................................ 16 The father of the video arcade/video game industry ................................................. 19 Innovative Atari Games or ―Life After Pong‖ .......................................................... 21 Kee Games ................................................................................................................ 23 Innovative Games from other companies. ................................................................ 24 The home version of Pong ........................................................................................ 25 The story behind the game – Breakout ..................................................................... 26 The Fairchild Video Entertainment System/Channel F ............................................ 27 First Game Controversy – Death Race ..................................................................... 28 Night Driver .............................................................................................................. 28 Second Generation ........................................................................................................ 29 The history of the 6502 chip ..................................................................................... 29 The Atari 2600 (VCS) ............................................................................................... 30 Notable Video Arcade and Handheld games 1977-1979 .......................................... 34 Atari takes off! .......................................................................................................... 39 The notable games developed for the Atari 2600 ..................................................... 42 Notable Third party games – Activision and Imagic ................................................ 50 The Rise of the Machines! ........................................................................................ 61 The Great Arcade Golden Age ................................................................................. 68 The most popular video arcade games ...................................................................... 69 Nintendo enters the video game business ................................................................. 75 Atari 2600 - The Infamous and Dreadful Games ...................................................... 75 The video game collapse of 1983 ............................................................................. 77 1 Retro Game Programming Copyright © 2011 by brainycode.com Third Generation – Nintendo hits the reset button........................................................ 78 Best NES Games ....................................................................................................... 79 The Other Generations .................................................................................................. 84 Fourth Generation ..................................................................................................... 84 Fifth Generation ........................................................................................................ 84 Six Generation .............................................................................................................. 84 Seventh Generation ....................................................................................................... 84 Summary ....................................................................................................................... 85 Chapter 2: How we can play retro games today ............................................................... 86 Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator (MAME) ............................................................. 86 Stella ............................................................................................................................. 90 AppleWin ...................................................................................................................... 92 Nestopia ........................................................................................................................ 94 Lab 2.1 – Using MAME to play some classic SHMUPS ............................................. 95 Lab 2.2 – Using STELLA to play Adventure and Pitfall! ............................................ 96 Lab 2.3 – Using AppleWin to play Crisis Mountain .................................................... 97 Lab 2.4 – Using Nestopia to play Metroid .................................................................. 100 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 102 Chapter 3: Computers, Programs, and Programming ..................................................... 103 How we use computers ............................................................................................... 103 The Hardware and Software ....................................................................................... 107 Chapter 4: Learning Assembly Language – Part 1 ......................................................... 110 What is Computer Programming? .............................................................................. 110 Learning how computers represent information ......................................................... 111 Our base-10 system ................................................................................................. 112 Binary World – base-2 ............................................................................................ 113 Hexadecimal World – base-16 ................................................................................ 120 Chapter 5: Learning Assembly Language – Part 2 ......................................................... 129 A Detailed look at a microcomputer ........................................................................... 130 How does a microcomputer works? ............................................................................ 130 Inside the 6502 CPU ................................................................................................... 134 Chapter 6: Learning Assembly Language – Part 3 ......................................................... 134 Setting up the 6502 simulator ..................................................................................... 135 Testing 6502 simulator installation ......................................................................... 136 Setting up DASM ........................................................................................................ 136 Testing DASM installation ..................................................................................... 136 Chapter 7: Learning Assembly Language – Part 4 ......................................................... 136 Chapter 8: The Video Mode and Video Buffer .............................................................. 137 Chapter 9: Game Graphics .............................................................................................. 137 Chapter 10: Player Input, Physics, and AI ...................................................................... 137 Chapter 11: Sound Effects .............................................................................................. 137 Chapter 12: Programming the Atari 2600 ....................................................................... 137 Tools needed to get started ......................................................................................... 137 Lab 12.1 – Testing Atari Programming Setup ............................................................ 138 Programming for a TV ...............................................................................................