Porting a 30 year-old vector arcade game to an obsolete 33 year-old home game platform: "Star Castle 2600". In 1981 a young Howard Scott Warshaw, left his first programming job at HP for a more interesting job at Atari. His first assignment was to create an Atari 2600 conversion of the vector coin op game Star Castle... After evaluating the arcade game and the console hardware he came to the conclusion "that a decent version couldn’t be done". Thirty-one years later, former Atari employee D. Scott Williamson has finally ported Star Castle to the 2600. (via MAKE)
posted by 40 Watt on Apr 26, 2012 - 58 comments

What would Microsoft's Halo have looked like if it had been written years ago for the Atari 2600? "Ed Fries, former vice president of Microsoft’s Game Publishing Division, programmed an old-school version of the beloved game that features blocky graphics, deliberately basic sound effects, and simplified movements. And yet it's still recognizable as 'Halo.'" You can play it online here. [more inside]
posted by Daddy-O on Aug 5, 2010 - 27 comments

Panic, makers of fine Macintosh software, commissions an illustrator to work with the concept "What if we were around in 1982, and our apps were early Atari 2600 games?" Awesomeness ensues.
posted by porn in the woods on Dec 9, 2009 - 59 comments

Adventure II (a sequel to Adventure, here's a playable version of the original)
posted by bardic on May 11, 2007 - 23 comments

Nerds travel to the infamous Atari 2600 E.T. video game landfill, dig up hundreds of carts, play them and make a music video of it. (Quicktime video.)
posted by loquacious on Jul 28, 2006 - 37 comments

And you thought the 2600 was dead... no way, baby. It's alive and kicking and oh-so-groovy. (Warning: link leads to big ass movie. Slow connections beware.)
posted by RakDaddy on Sep 26, 2000 - 9 comments