Culture

Culture

by Mike Masnick




Getting Kids To Program Old School Video Games

from the where's-the-dragon-that-eats-a-block? dept

It seems that every recent story about Atari has been about their attempts (in their modern form -- quite different from the original Atari) to make a killing on the nostalgia market, offering up classic games from years back to today's adults -- either on computers or (increasingly) on mobile phones. However, it appears that many feel the basic concepts of old Atari videogames are still valuable for game designers to learn -- resulting in a competition to design new games for the Atari 2600. Of course, there's one twist: the games needed to be created in 24 hours. While the story is amusing to read, what it really does is remind people that, despite all the amazing graphics found in today's game, a game is still about gameplay at its core -- which many of today's game designers seem to forget. Update: News.com has some pictures of the games that were developed in all their pixelated glory.

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  1. Apr 6th, 2005 @ 9:04am

    Game systems

    I personally still own an Atari 2600 with about 20 games, and an NES with about 20 games. Why? I grew up with them. They are a part of my life. Heck, I'm even going to put a DOS partition on my PC and load up all my old DOS games when I reformat my PC.

    I think it would be very cool if they released new games for the 2600 as well as other old systems. I remember the owner of a memorabilia store telling my wife and I that the NES have actually been selling fast and that he was planning on stocking up on SEGAs and SNES soon.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  2. Apr 6th, 2005 @ 12:03pm

    Re: Game systems

    by achacha

    You don't need a DOS partition, Stella emulator works just fine on current windows platforms.

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

  3. Apr 6th, 2005 @ 4:07pm

    Re: Game systems

    by A1 Sega Lova

    Well, for one thing there are new games being made for the Dreamcast. If you don't remember the final flame-out for SEGA, don't worry few knew about it when it was around ;-)

    Anyhoo, for those of us with a lovin' for some mid-school gaming, you can check out the lik-sang.com link to the two or three new DC games out there (homebrew stylee!)

    http://www.lik-sang.com/list.php?nav=over&category=136&

    (reply to this comment) (link to this comment)

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