Alright, I’m not asking SDMB to do homework for me, I’m asking for creative input from you all as I have an upcoming project where I and a group of team members will have to program an Atari game. Using an emulator and copious (guffaw) free time, we need to make the game. He hasn’t laid any limitations on what we design, but we have 3 weeks to make the game.
[ul]
[li]Cannot be complex – GTAtari is out of the question[/li][li]Must be new, no obvious remakes – Pong is old news[/li][li]Must be fun to play[/li][/ul]
As in an Atari 2600 emulator? What an odd assignment. I worked at Atari during the last days of the 2600, but I didn’t do much programming for it. Kind of a pain. Do you get lots of assignments to program for 25 year old hardware?
Actually, I don’t see why you can’t do GTA: Atari.
Here’s my idea. Make a one-screen map of a few city blocks, and populate it with dot people and square cars, buildings, a “Pay ‘N’ Spray”, and a little phone booth. The phone booth gives missions: Jack the flashing car and drive it to the flashing building, or shoot the flashing dot-person without getting touched by the red dots. I don’t know what kind of randomization the 2600 is capable of, but when there’s no story to speak of, random missions will work just fine.
When you kill a dot, a blue police dot spawns and chases you. Keep doing it and more chase you until you drive a car into the Pay ‘N’ Spray, which takes away some points off of your score and removes all police from the map. Of course, if the cops catch you, you lose a life.
Well, I hope that helps. I don’t expect any credit, but I do think it’d be a neat idea; especially considering someone’s making a GTA for the NES.
I’d do something totally anachronistic. Say a “licensed” game that couldn’t have existed back then, like Harry Potter, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Legend of Zelda.
Or you could do a music game, like Frequency, Parapa, or Dance Dance revolution, etc. That’s a genre that doesn’t need much in the way of graphics, but didn’t really exist on the Atari, as far as I know.
The system we’re using is called BAtari apparently and the programming needed for it is much easier through the use of tools. The class is all about exploring unusual Computational Mediums. Our last assignment was to code something in an artistic programming language called ‘Chef.’
I like the idea of the GTA but given the restraints of the system I’m not sure if that is feasible or not.
Just wondering if people are aware that Grand Theft Auto is an overhead view 2D game so not difficult to do (cf. Tentacle Monster’s idea). I know that GTA is as often as not used to refer to the 3D (and much more popular) GTA3. Will the NES version be like the original or is it an attempt to be 3D?
As for 2600 games, how about :
Crazy Horse’s Revenge E.T. (with the Reese’s Pieces digitally replaced with guns)
I’m sure I’ve seen TV plug in versions in stores also.
For the OP, 2600 Bridge wasn’t too bad. For a real easy game, how about 2600 Sudoku? You’d need to store some games (I’m sure there isn’t enough ROM space to generate them) and you could use the joystick to cycle through number choices.
A 2600 Star Wars game (like the original arcade game) might be doable also.
[ul]
[li]Must be new, no obvious remakes – Pong is old news[/li]
[/ul]
QUOTE]
Toobad, the Pac-Man they came out with could use some serious reworking.
Actually, there was a contest they ran just as the company was folding, called Swordquest.
There were supposed to be four games, Earthworld, Fireworld, WaterWorld, and Airworld. Only the first three ever came out.
You could program Airworld, and complete the series. Of course, the clues in the game linked with a comic book, and the comic was never written, so you’d have to arrange for that as well. But hey, you’ve got three weeks, right?
I vote for a pretend market game that would be produced today had gaming never advanced – a la Harry Potter or a pretend Doom IV or perhaps and AvP game?
You could do a Hulk game or any movie tie-in that you like and base it on pre-existing code, developing a new look for it.
I don’t know whether to be proud or ashamed that no one’s mentioned a Zero Wing port, yet.
That, or you could do a Mortal Combat port (I’m thinking something that would look like the Froggo “Karate”) with either surprisingly explicit, or intentionally crappy graphics.
And ]Seanbaby has a video game page that includes some of the X-rated ones (!) for the 2600, which may provide some inspiration, at www.seanbaby.com/nes.htm (Just remove the “” to get to the link—it’s not work safe. (Actually, the screenshots for the dirty 2600 games are probably the safest ones—they’re not identifiably human.)
