[spicybright]

A while back I tried writing an Atari 2600 game and got about half way (got sprites, collisions, level, just no goal)

The console uses a slightly cheaper version, the 6507 I think. Same chip, just smaller address line and no interrupts (!)

Instead you ran a "wait for the cathode ray to reach the right side of the screen" in order to time everything correctly.

Very fascinating stuff, I recommend anyone interested in the above dive in and give it a shot.

All you need is an editor[1] (I found one online!) and the stella manual[2].

There's something nice about having the entire machine spec in one book instead of leaning on stack overflow...

[1] https://8bitworkshop.com/v3.8.0/?platform=vcs&file=examples%...

[2] https://cdn.hackaday.io/files/1646277043401568/stella.pdf

[kgwxd]

2600 has been my obsession for a few years now. I too havent set a goal but I love to follow what other people are doing for it. The community is fantastic. There's a twitch and yt channel called ZeroPage Homebrew that usually streams twice a week. They exclusivley play homebrews and the devs are usually in the chat. They were 2600 only for a long time but recently started including 7800 and 8-bit.

[krallja]

There’s also no way to set the horizontal position of sprites other than waiting for the scan line to reach the position you want and yelling “NOW!!!”