I’m sorry the Channel F didn’t do better, with its ridiculous framebuffer. They still weren’t sure that video games should be single-player. They had no idea what was possible with that kind of display tech. (Of course, neither did the framebuffered Astrocade, several years later.)
But as a programmer - it’s hard not to love the 2600. It had nothing. The 6502 processor has special access to the first 256 bytes of RAM, and the 2600 included a whopping 128. There’s only two and a half bytes of background. Two and a half! Sprites are similarly ridiculous, with two “players” and two “missiles,” i.e., two actual sprites and a pair of dots. The sprites could be repeated three times, and if you wanted a six-digit score, you had to repeatedly change the graphics mid-scanline. Really - every game “raced the beam.” I’m not sure it’s possible to have a recognizable video game without modifying the screen as it’s being drawn. Gimmicks that would become fancy extra effects on NES and so forth are strictly necessary on 2600.
I’m sorry the Channel F didn’t do better, with its ridiculous framebuffer. They still weren’t sure that video games should be single-player. They had no idea what was possible with that kind of display tech. (Of course, neither did the framebuffered Astrocade, several years later.)
But as a programmer - it’s hard not to love the 2600. It had nothing. The 6502 processor has special access to the first 256 bytes of RAM, and the 2600 included a whopping 128. There’s only two and a half bytes of background. Two and a half! Sprites are similarly ridiculous, with two “players” and two “missiles,” i.e., two actual sprites and a pair of dots. The sprites could be repeated three times, and if you wanted a six-digit score, you had to repeatedly change the graphics mid-scanline. Really - every game “raced the beam.” I’m not sure it’s possible to have a recognizable video game without modifying the screen as it’s being drawn. Gimmicks that would become fancy extra effects on NES and so forth are strictly necessary on 2600.