The cake is a yellow square.

September 11, 2008 5:48 PM

Portal, Atari 2600 style.

More on "demakes." Consider Goldeneye 2D, or perhaps a bunch of Gameboy demakes! Or Pac-Man as text adventure? (Previously.) Or Silent Hill reborn as "Soundless Mountain"?

posted by jbickers (16 comments total)

pac-man as a text adventure is the new pinnacle of dada gaming.

I am now inspired to re-write ET on the Atari 2600 as a text adventure.

> W

You fall in a hole.

> U

You go up a bit.

> U

You go up a bit.

> U

You go up a bit.
posted by GuyZero at 5:55 PM on September 11, 2008 [9 favorites]

Great post.

Thanks jbickers!
posted by defenestration at 5:56 PM on September 11, 2008

First of all, a 2D version of Portal already exists. And second of all, the thing that makes Portal great is not the puzzles (though they are very good) but the story. Which both 2D versions lack.
posted by DU at 6:07 PM on September 11, 2008

In my zeal to promote Portal, I inadvertently posted a comment that was more negative about their attempt than I wanted to. This is great. Just not as awesome as Portal.
posted by DU at 6:23 PM on September 11, 2008

DU, it's for the Atari 2600. Not looks like it could be for it, is for it. It requires a real system (and a EPROM cart) or an emulator to play.

The skill needed to make 2600 games is almost completely different from any other kind of programming. The system was designed to play Pong and not much else. That's what makes this particular mutation of Portal awesome.
posted by JHarris at 7:02 PM on September 11, 2008

> The skill needed to make 2600 games is almost completely different from any other kind of programming.

And the author isn't old enough to drink. Awesome, indeed.

(JHarris is right: The 2600 had no framebuffer, so you had to draw each scanline individually. This meant your game logic had to run in the vertical blanking interval. Crazy.)
posted by sdodd at 9:25 PM on September 11, 2008

> forward
Ow! You walked into a wall.

> look
You are in a corner facing a wall. You may go backward or right and there are glowing dots in every direction. There is a glowing dot hovering near you.

> eat
You have eaten the glowing dot!

> forward
Crunch! You walked into a wall.

> left
Ouch! You walked into a wall.

> right
You have moved.

> look
You are in a long corridor. You may go forward or backward and there is a glowing dot forward. There is a glowing dot hovering near you.

> eat
You have eaten another glowing dot!
posted by krinklyfig at 9:32 PM on September 11, 2008

There's some neat stuff in that demakes competition:
S.T.A.C.K.E.R., a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. themed tetris clone.

Someone else is doing a limbo of the lost demake.

Fillauth, an even-more-pixellated-than-the-original fallout demake.

House Globe, 2D Homeworld demake.
posted by juv3nal at 9:57 PM on September 11, 2008

How could you forget this years WoW April Fools Joke: "The Molten Core" for the 2600
posted by symbioid at 9:59 PM on September 11, 2008

Wow, Atari advertisements sure were WTF:

Berzerk
Yars' Revenge
Pac-Man
Pitfall!
Pole Position
[non-super] Mario Bros.
Dig Dug: The Musical
Super Breakout
Centipede
Programming the Atari really was different.
Ice Hockey
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 10:40 PM on September 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Soundless Mountain II looks rad. Surprised I hadn't seen it before.

And it's nice to know the guys making these retro-games are chugging down Krystal and scoring mad pussy every night.
posted by bardic at 2:48 AM on September 12, 2008

I might be the only one here, but... what is Portal?
posted by salmacis at 3:24 AM on September 12, 2008

This is pretty awesome. Seems to be written in Batari Basic, which is (would you believe) a basic compiler for the atari 2600. No, seriously. Turns it a lot closer into a "real" computer to program for.... i said closer, which is sort of like climbing a mountain to be slightly closer to pluto*

* or whatever rock you prefer
posted by jaymzjulian at 4:37 AM on September 12, 2008

The Pac-Man text adventure is interesting but I dove right in without reading the help first (who reads the instructions to games anymore?) only to discover that certain conventions of text gaming don't seem to apply. Usually directions are given N/S/E/W rather than forward/back/left/right, aren't they? And I tried "take dot" and "pick up dot" and it just sat there baffled at me. Usually if text adventures want to force a certain convention for grammar they'd still recognize the other verbs, but tell you to use another one.

> take dot
You might want to EAT it.

> eat
Eat what?

> the dot
You have eaten another glowing dot!
posted by lou at 5:28 AM on September 12, 2008

Don't miss Large-Scale Vehicular Stealing.
posted by Eideteker at 5:51 AM on September 12, 2008

Wait, wha? No framebuffer? Buh... whu... where... holy shit.
posted by GuyZero at 10:11 AM on September 12, 2008