{"id":3361,"date":"2013-06-28T20:00:09","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T00:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/?p=3361"},"modified":"2013-06-28T15:34:56","modified_gmt":"2013-06-28T19:34:56","slug":"the-making-of-pitfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/?p=3361","title":{"rendered":"The Making of Pitfall"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For many Generation X&#8217;ers like myself, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atari_2600 target=\"_blank\"\">Atari 2600<\/a> brings back memories of many fun hours spent playing video games. We didn&#8217;t know it back then, but the 2600 was little more than a CPU, a crude video subsystem, and a sound chip bundled into a console. Atari 2600 cartridges contained a ROM chip, which had to more or less create the entire game from scratch. All the magic was done with really clever assembly-code (or even machine code) programming. It&#8217;s all described in a fascinating book called <em>Racing The Beam<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe src=\"http:\/\/rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/cm?lt1=_blank&#038;bc1=000000&#038;IS2=1&#038;bg1=E5E3E3&#038;fc1=000000&#038;lc1=0000FF&#038;t=intellectua06-20&#038;o=1&#038;p=8&#038;l=as4&#038;m=amazon&#038;f=ifr&#038;ref=ss_til&#038;asins=026201257X\" style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" scrolling=\"no\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>I recently came across a neat video on YouTube where David Crane (the creator of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=MhXMYw1lXY0\" target=\"_blank\">Pitfall<\/a> and the even more impressive <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hQRedX3pezg\" target=\"_blank\">Pitfall II<\/a>) gave a talk on how the amazing effects in these games were accomplished.<\/p>\n<p>The Atari 2600 was, initially, really only designed to play two games: Pong and Combat. Its hardware was built around two &#8220;player&#8221; sprites and three &#8220;missile&#8221; or &#8220;ball&#8221; sprites. Not only that, but the display was built one line at a time. The game code in the cartridge had to keep track of which line it was on and then display the line when the right time came.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>It had to do all this in real time, before the beam swept across the screen again!<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>How did Crane and other developers convince this system to produce complex games such as Pitfall? By employing every trick in the book, and writing more than a few new ones into the margins for good measure. (Why did the background graphics in some games look weird? That was actual <em>machine code<\/em> being displayed, due to a lack of space to store bitmaps!)<\/p>\n<p>Crane&#8217;s talk (including a Q&amp;A session) is just over an hour long &#8212; but this is time well spent for anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of making computer games. These guys made magic out of almost nothing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/MBT1OK6VAIU?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The story behind the making of Activision&#8217;s Pitfall on the Atari 2600 is fascinating. Here is true programming genius! <a href=\"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/?p=3361\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[263,216,210,215],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assembly","category-coding","category-digital","category-nostalgia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3361"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3384,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3361\/revisions\/3384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paleotechnologist.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}