HI RON!
March 22, 2017 3:48 PM   Subscribe

Retired Microsoftie and video game nerd Ed Fries [previously] tells the tale of how he and former Atari engineers Ron Milner and Michael Albaugh chased down a forgotten Easter Egg in Atari arcade game Starship 1, programmed by Ron and released in 1977, making it a contender for the title of the oldest known video game Easter Egg.
posted by Pope Guilty (10 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love stories about ancient, pre-Space Invaders arcade games. Good find!
posted by JHarris at 4:25 PM on March 22, 2017


Actually buying the physical game console is some dedication. Pretty cool story.
posted by GuyZero at 4:34 PM on March 22, 2017 [1 favorite]


Pretty nerdy cool. Obviously you'd have to be in on the egg, though, as there is no indication that I saw on the screen that you've been gifted ten games.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:51 PM on March 22, 2017


That is a hell of a good story. I love that he actually went through the trouble of physically triggering it on authentic hardware.
posted by Nelson at 5:15 PM on March 22, 2017


6502. I remember the day I "got" indexed-indirect addressing. The sun shone bright those days.
posted by parki at 5:21 PM on March 22, 2017 [5 favorites]


Not to be confused with indirect-indexed addressing! I remember my similar flash of insight. What kills me is I programmed 6502 assembly for like 4 years around the tender age of 12, but I never understood what a stack frame was. All my code had these crazy allocations for variables so nothing would clobber anything else.
posted by Nelson at 5:49 PM on March 22, 2017 [6 favorites]


Wow totally cool.
posted by chasles at 7:16 PM on March 22, 2017


Neat. Really wish I had the cash to splash on such esoteric projects.
posted by Samizdata at 11:23 PM on March 22, 2017


I wish I'd known this way back when so I could have got my ten free games on SS1 at Seven Springs.

Seven Springs was also the first place I knew of that had Space Invaders. It turned into such a big deal they had to move it out of the arcade and up to the lobby.
posted by lagomorphius at 7:06 AM on March 23, 2017 [1 favorite]


I went to high school with Ed Fries. We made a comic together called The Adventures of Stick Man.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 8:11 AM on March 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


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