Project Abstract

Consoles are becoming ever more powerful and games ever larger and ambitious, but the humble beginnings of console gaming were far more limiting. In 1977, Atari released the Atari 2600 with only 128 bytes of RAM and 4K ROM. Its fundamental hardware design was specifically meant to interface with CRT-TVs using its TIA chip to recreate hit arcade games at the time, like Pong and Tank. Despite its limitations though, talented developers have created some of the most influential games of all time on the system, with more still making new games for the console to this day. Being an exercise in low level programming, utilising 6502 assembly, this project creates a piece of software that interacts directly with the hardware itself with minimal abstraction, building upon existing work to create a new game for the console. Inspired by ‘Halo 2600’ by Ed Fries, ‘Power Wash Simulator 2600’ is an 8-bit recreation of the popular modern video game, ‘Power Wash Simulator’ by FuturLab and Square Enix for the Atari 2600. Players are able to blast away dirt, play with their friends and express their creativity all in the space of a 2KB ROM, whilst maintaining that sense of fun! Development for such a limited system highlights the interaction between software and hardware that is abstracted in higher level languages, inspiring creative solutions to navigate challenges that exist only at this level. Reaching wider, an understanding of this interaction could help improve the efficiency of modern software applications, especially games, to make better use of the hardware capabilities, or in systems where memory and other resources are far more expensive, possibly in handheld systems.

Keywords: Atari 2600, Low Level Languages, Game Development

 Conference Details

Session: A

Location: Sir Stanley Clarke Auditorium at 11:00 13:00

Markers: Benjamin Mora, Fernando Maestre Avila

Course: MEng Computing 4yr FULL TIME

Future Plans: I’m continuing studies