[HN Gopher] History of "Adventure" for the Atari 2600
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       History of "Adventure" for the Atari 2600
        
       Author : coldpie
       Score  : 83 points
       Date   : 2025-05-05 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.atariarchive.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.atariarchive.org)
        
       | staplung wrote:
       | Robot Chicken "advertisement" for Adventure.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNK44eqvP38
       | 
       | And of course, the "someone get this freakin duck away from me!"
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOQDtZg0sCo
        
       | zzzeek wrote:
       | I found the easter egg in Adventure on my own, however, this was
       | using the method of turning the 2600 power switch on and off
       | really fast which caused the game to boot into a semi broken mode
       | where one of those thin vertical black lines would be moved over,
       | such that you could go under it. that's how I got into the room.
       | I thought if I kept experimenting like this I'd find the source
       | code for the game, but that didn't happen. learned about the dot
       | some years later.
        
         | Dwedit wrote:
         | When you bring the dot into the screen with the wall, the wall
         | turns light gray to match the background color. Yet the wall is
         | still there, and still drawn on top of the background and
         | player.
         | 
         | Someone might be misled into thinking that the color change has
         | some effect on how the collision detection works, thinking that
         | because the background and wall are the same color, the
         | collision detection must not work anymore. But this is not the
         | case, the game logic is actually checking that the dot is
         | changing the wall color in order to disable collision for the
         | wall.
        
         | 31337Logic wrote:
         | Yo!!!!!
         | 
         | I thought I was the only one that knew/did this! I also did
         | this on my Pitfall 2 (awesome soundtrack, btw) and watch Harry
         | fall through the otherwise solid ground, landing directly
         | beside the gold monkey (or whatever it was) to instantly win
         | the game!! Good times. ;^)
        
       | _JamesA_ wrote:
       | Play Atari 2600 Adventure online.
       | 
       | https://atarionline.org/atari-2600/adventure
        
         | Dwedit wrote:
         | I once ported the game into Flash, using a disassembly of the
         | game as reference. I had it on my website, but it got DMCA-ed
         | off for _trademark reasons_.
        
       | Dwedit wrote:
       | This game is quite simple in how it uses the Atari 2600 hardware.
       | Atari Hardware can draw exactly 6 things on a scanline:
       | Playfield, Ball, Sprite 1, Sprite 2, Missile 1, Missile 2. So
       | Adventure made the player be the Ball, the thin walls (seen on
       | two rooms) be the missile, and two of game objects become the two
       | sprites. There is also the torch-light sprite that can take the
       | place of one of the game objects in dark rooms, drawn behind the
       | background.
       | 
       | The game makes no attempt at all to re-use a sprite slot for
       | another sprite appearing further down the screen. It's just two
       | sprites, then no more.
       | 
       | The game also uses the hardware's pixel-level collision detection
       | to check for collisions rather than bounding boxes, so when the
       | sprites are flickering, they cannot collide with the player. But
       | collision detection is not the only way that objects can
       | interact, there's also the Bat and Magnet, or the dragons having
       | objects to guard/run away from. The bridge also makes the game
       | ignore player collisions for a particular bounding box inside the
       | bridge.
        
         | canucker2016 wrote:
         | ...in 4KB.
         | 
         | Racing the beam - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam
        
       | rolph wrote:
       | if you played adventure:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35571077
        
       | socalgal2 wrote:
       | There's a kinda remake/update/reimagined version of "Adventure"
       | for iOS called Pixa
       | 
       | https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pixa/id826977016
       | 
       | I'm old, I played the original "Adventure" for the Atari 2600 to
       | death when I was a kid and am a huge fan . And, personally I
       | really liked Pixa. I thought they did a good job of translating
       | it to something interesting with mobile controls and I "cleared
       | it". I suspect maybe only oldies like me seeing it through the
       | less of nostalgia would get into it.
       | 
       | I don't remember how long it took to clear, a few hours at least
       | because it has multiple maps.
        
       | mrguyorama wrote:
       | For more good details about Atari 2600 development, check out
       | this GDC postmorterm talk of Pitfall
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBT1OK6VAIU
        
       | chaoskitty wrote:
       | It's absolutely amazing to compare Adventure on the Atari 2600
       | with a fancy, ray traced game today. What's even more amazing is
       | that both have the ability to capture our attention for hours. It
       | just goes to show how significant of a role imagination plays in
       | games.
        
         | glimshe wrote:
         | Although the 2600 version leaves a LOT more to the
         | imagination...
        
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       (page generated 2025-05-05 23:00 UTC)