Zoo Keeper on the Atari 2600 - SIMPLY AMAZING! - Champ Games Homebrew
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- Опубліковано 14 лип 2024
- You are Zeke - zoo keeper extraordinaire! What started out as a routine day at the zoo has turned into complete havoc, as Marcel the mischievous monkey has unlocked all of the cages and set the animals free!
In this video, we talk not just about the original Zoo Keeper arcade game, but more importantly the phenomenal job that Champ Games has done with their uber-faithful port of the game to the original Atari 2600!
It is your job to contain the escaped animals and capture them with your net to send them back to their cages while avoiding getting trampled with some well-timed jumped.
If that isn't enough to worry about, Marcel has also captured your girlfriend Zelda and tied her to a tree! Make your way up the moving platforms, dodging the coconuts being hurled your way and be the hero!
Do you have the skills to complete all 99 levels and earn a spot in the renowned list of "Best Keepers"?
Racing the Beam » amz.run/6atV (affiliate)
Zoo Keeper » champ.games/zoo-keeper
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0:00 Atari Homebrew
0:37 Zoo Keeper Arcade
3:11 Packaging
5:06 Comparison to Arcade
7:02 Little Details - Ігри
Thanks so much for such a detailed and enthusiastic review, I'm glad you enjoyed the game! FYI although the game does indeed run on a stock 2600 and is limited by the TIA (Atari graphics and sound chip), we do take full advantage of the current technology that includes more ROM, more RAM and a coprocessor in the cartridge to get this port as close to the arcade as possible. Although there were games in the 80's that used extra ROM, RAM, and even a coprocessor in the cart (Pitfall 2), a game like this would have not been possible back in the day. Luckily for us it is possible today! :D Thanks again!
Nevertheless, that's the best looking Atari VCS arcade game I've ever seen. Zoo Keeper on the 2600?!?!?! That is the TIT'S!
@@johnnywc23 I will definitely check out the other games you mentioned. Thanks for all the great games and the work /efforts you put into into your creations. Champ Games truly is a cut above! 👍 👍
@@chrisnizer5702 👍👍
John, what you've been doing on the 2600 are the best games ever made for the 2600. You are the man!! Champ Kong for the 2600 would be cool ;)
@@markstrickland438 Thanks Mark! I have considered trying to port the Champ mode levels of Champ Kong to the 2600 since Nintendo wouldn't be too keen if I ported the arcade levels. Maybe some day! :D
ChampGames has also developed "RobotWar:2684," a port of Robotron 2084, which is another impressive achievement for the Atari 2600 console. It's hard to believe that such a feat is possible, but Champ Games consistently demonstrates how far the 2600 can be pushed. This game is truly remarkable and a testament to their technical prowess.
Zoo Keeper is one of those arcade games you forgot about..until your reminded of it. This is an impressive 2600 port and it's very nice to see these somewhat obscure oldies see the light of day.
Excellent and a very accurate, fast, flawless version. It just shows what the 2600 is capable of.
It is indeed very capable, but getting it to do what you want, the way you want, can take a very long time. This is the massive advantage that homebrews have nowadays: They can take as much time as they want to finely tune their code to get the most out of their games,* not to mention that the game code itself can be much larger than back in the day because chips are so much cheaper. The 2600 hardware design puts almost all of the burden on the programmer to do just about everything, including controlling the drawing of sprites. But, interestingly, it's this low-level control that has made the system so flexible and has allowed programmers to do some amazing things with it.
* Games made back in the old days were on very tight release schedules, to be ready for specific days, like for the holidays etc. Sometimes playability had to be sacrificed so the game could be finished in time (for example, "E.T." for the 2600, which Howard Scott Warshaw only had *FIVE WEEKS* to design, program and debug!)
Have you seen the homebrew versions of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Mappy for example?
- Pac-Man 8K: ua-cam.com/video/LuGSGhTM1ZM/v-deo.html (Compare this to the "official" version of Atari 2600 Pac-Man: ua-cam.com/video/nCPpgt0s70U/v-deo.html I imagine that if Tod Frye had had 6 more months to work on it he could have done a much better job!)
- Donkey Kong: ua-cam.com/video/_Y6vhLDN3dI/v-deo.html
- Mappy: ua-cam.com/video/J0uxnSXAoek/v-deo.html
Except it uses a coprocessor and lots of RAM, not the original 128 bytes and 6507 CPU.
The Atari 2600 employees back in the day did their best considering that most of them were high or drunk and not given much time to develope the games they made. Pac-Man on the 2600 is bad but not that bad only given like 6 weeks to do it. lol. This Zoo Keeper homebrew looks very cool though. Cheers from Australia. 🍺😺
Cheers! 🍻
Seriously. Not to mention the fact that a lot of Atari 2600 games were designed by a development team of ONE person. I'm sure a lot of the games would have looked and sounded better had they benefitted from having a full team of developers.
Champ Games has been doing faithful arcade conversions since the mid-90s when they did mainly PC games. Now they're really pushing the limits of old-school hardware to get that kind of high fidelity replication of the arcade experience.
I am a fan of John Champeau and Champ Games for their fantastic Atari 2600 game cartridges that are the best ports of classic 1980s arcade video games. I bought a few Windows PC video games from Champ Games in the late 1990s / early 2000s because I had their shareware versions of some of my favorite 1980s arcade video games. Because I have an Atari 2600 I love to play both original Atari and Activision published game cartridges from the 1980s, yet I now am buying these fantastic new homebrew video games for the Atari 2600 too. Thank you very much John Champeau and Champ Games as well as AtariAge.
Big time fan of Champ Games and Atariage. Homebrews are keeping the system relevant from our childhood. Robotron 2084 from champ is excellent to.
Mappy and Elevator Agent are jaw dropping (close to unbelievable) on the 2600!
Very well done port! They should make a Flashback unit that has only Homebrews... that would rock!
Champ games did some pc clones of arcade games back in the day that were pretty amazing. Glad to see they are still around!
I bought Donkey Kong and Space Invaders from them, way back when. They were made so I could use my old Commodore 64 joystick too.
I was honoured to get an early review build last year, this game is truly truly incredible. Have you played Champ Games version of Turbo? That for me is the greatest achievement on the 2600 EVER.
Not yet, but it's on my to-do list. 😀
This conversion is absolutely unbelievable. It has to be seen to be believed. The homebrew port of mappy is equally impressive.
I love Mappy, and multiple viewers have mentioned it. It's now on my wishlist!
My two favorite homebrewers are Champ Games, and SpiceWare. Every title from these two are brilliant.
How does SpiceWare distribute? I can only find like informational info online. Do they have a storefront or distro site?
@@GenXGrownUp Something really weird is going on. My response keeps getting blipped. No idea why. Let's see if this very reply does too.
@@GenXGrownUp Ha! Must be some key word I'm not supposed to be using. Let's try "AtariAge"
@@GenXGrownUp AtariAge homebrew store. Check out Draconian (Bosconian), Frantic (Berserk/Frenzy), Medieval Mayhem (Warlords), and Space Rocks (Asteroids/Asteroids Deluxe).
Ah HA!
One of my all time favorite arcade games from my childhood. It's so fun and DIFFERENT from what was out there. It's the perfect quarter-muncher because it's easy to start playing, but it's manic. Most players can clear a few boards so you actually get to see some variety before you go. But if you get better at it, you can see more of the oddities, the bonus stages, the increased mayhem.
Wish this weren't as obscure as it is. Wish it had sequels. I always think about how far Mario (Jump-Man) evolved over the years, and what if games like Zoo Keeper and Joust had evolved in similar ways.
Wow, I had no idea this port existed!? I used to play this rare arcade game at the liquor store, that i frequented after school almost every day (they had Front Line and even Dragon's Lair and many other greats that I enjoyed on my walk home!). I'll be on the lookout for this amazing port!
Champ Games is the MFing man! I got Zoo Keeper the second it was available for pre-order and waited a year for it. Worth every penny. Robotron is another (different name I believe) one that's absolutely amazing to see on the 2600.
That’s impressive for a 2600!! Even the artwork on the box is impressive. Fantastic job.
I re-bought my first home computer (TI-99/4A) in the 23rd century purely for the nostalgia. I collected all my favourite software, then set out to own all the software originally produced for the system back in the day (The Y2K bug was very real, as anything requiring a date demonstrated).
Like you I was slow to consider homebrew, until one day on AtariAge I saw a screen capture of the title screen for David Crane's Pitfall on my 4A, from a guy called Retroclouds. Although the controls take a while to get used to, this is a faithful port of a game that had never been released for the 4A right down to the Activision logo.
Since then 90% of my collecting is buying cartridges that are brand new...in greater numbers, variety & quality than was available 40 years ago. I now own games ported from the 2600 (Piitfall, Turmoil), Intellivision (Bounce 'n Pounce), C64/Atari 8-bits (Flying Shark), Nintendo (Super Mario Bros) & ZX Spectrum (too many to list), none of which were ever ported in my system's heyday. Homebrew even gave me games that were developed but never brought to market from companies like Parker Bros, and AtariSoft.
And that doesn't even count the new original games (a Japanese company, "Innufuto" released 11 original games for most 8-bit systems, in one massive release a few months ago (that's 11 games for each system, not 11 games total), and AtariAge forums features announcements on new and upcoming titles every week. For 40 year old machines, from Atari to ZX.
Nostalgia remains the driving force of retro-gear hobby, but the homebrew scene puts it all in a 21st century context, breathing new life into old tech by filling in unfair gaps in our gaming choices. I missed buying the limited 4A release of Pitfall on cartridge (I did grabbed the .bin file), but I have made sure I get myself on every pre-order list so that I never again miss a physical copy of any new hardware or software.
If you want to see next level packaging though, check out Harmless Lion's "Dragon's Lair" (the only fully-licensed(!) port that uses FMV's created from the original Arcade laserdisk !!!) or Quixotic Software's Ultima-esque Realms of Antiquity: The Shattered Crown. Both have collector level packaging from posters and manuals to fabric world-maps. In fact check out those games to see what is possible on 40 year old hardware when powered by modern perspectives on retro-gaming and a keen understanding of the hardware (a benefit unknown to sweatshop coders of the 80's).
Still no ZooKeeper, but 'not-now' only means 'not yet'. (Personally, I"m hoping for ports of Caverns of Mars and Captain Beeble)
I purchased the roms of many of Champ games titles and cannot believe what they created for the 2600.
Although I didn't know of the original arcade version of Zoo Keeper, showing it side by side with the Atari 2600 is quite impressive in its replication of the coloring, fonts, characters, and the pacing of the gameplay.
And, if I didn't actually know it ahead of time, I would've thought that it was for the Atari 800xl, which I had experienced similar aspects through in other titles.
Also, I may not be alone in saying that I haven't been all that motivated by homebrew games for the 2600 before, and that could be in part for never having seen certain productions, but this one has me feeling enthusiastic about it as an expanded area for discovery.
Thanks as always for the great video presentation!
Oh, man that's great to see! Yes there are a lot of really fantastic homebrew games on 2600 & Champ Games is one of the best makers of these.
Couldn't agree more!
Wow, this looks awesome. Amazing job. Thanks for the video!
Glad you like it!
I never played this game in the arcade, and I barely even remember it, but looking at your side-by-side comparison, that is an amazing 2600 port! And it looks like a fun game!
Fantastic port.. I wasn't aware of the original arcade, seeing them side by side is pretty amazing. Well coded !
It's a great game, wonderful conversion but, Champ games always does it right. Great all around.
Your enthusiasm is always refreshing.
Champ's been around a while, cranking out some really good Atari 2600 games. A few get an assist from an Android processor in the cartridge- I think Galaga needed that- but they're of uniformly excellent quality.
Um? WTF is an 'Android processor'?
As a fellow Gen-X grown up, this is absolutely amazing to behold. I loved this game at my local arcade. It was literally at the far back corner and it drew me in because the attract theme reminded me of a pizza restaurant. The homebrew community certainly does amazing things nowadays. It's the best time IMO to be a retro gamer.
Champ games certainly hit this one out of the ball park.
Definitely a contender for best 2600 homebrew ever. I'm still giving that trophy to Mappy, but it's rare to have the stars align so well between an arcade game and the VCS's limitations. Only Elevator Action seems more miraculous in that respect. I will say that Zoo Keeper shares a quality with Galaga that I would have thought would keep it well out of the VCS's scope. That being of course the sheer number of on-screen moving objects. Obviously I know about the various tricks being used to make it work, but it has to be mentioned, because if I were in the homebrew scene myself, that factor would have been the #1 item dictating what game I'd think about porting, and yet Zoo Keeper and Galagon are two of the best VCS homebrews ever.
galagon... draconian.... so many amazing homebrew ports. and then things like panky the panda.... its really amazing.
The arcade version of this was one of my favorite go to games as a kid in the 80s. Was mesmerizing. I would have died if I could have had it on the 2600!
This was one game id never seen in arcades ever in my life, i dont think. I would buy this one for sure as ive not ever had a chance to play it.
Holy Crap!
That is CLEAN! what a killer job!
KUDOS! to the Artist!
Amazing presentation. Thank you for making a video about this.
Glad you liked it!
That’s a beautiful and amazing port for 2600. It really pushes the envelope! Too bad I can’t put that cartridge in my flashback! Haha
I only came across Zoo Keeper in one place when it was new but it stuck with me as being a blast. Of course with both emulation and the PS2 Taito comp I've played the hell out of it since. This is a great port. I can't wait to try it out.
Champ Games does amazing 2600 games , I think they are the best in the business right now for the 2600, Thanks for the video Jon
Couldn't agree more! Thanks for watching. 😁
I finally (FINALLY) received my 7/23 order from Atariage. I noticed that none of the Champ games work in the 2600+. I hope we get another firmware update later that fixes this. The 7800 homebrews do work though. I might have to dredge my real Atari out to play these Champ games. Thank you for reviewing this. It looks incredible.
WOW, that is insane. Definitely grabbing the rom to put on my Harmony cart. I see a few more on their website i'll grab as well.
recommend playing Mappy and Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600
Edit: the homebrew version of course
I loved zoo keeper because the mechanics were interesting and the sound FX hilarious.
It's wild how the greatest Atari 2600 videogames ever made have been the indie/homebrew titles to emerge over the past decade. I never could have imagined such a thing 40 years ago.
Also, I'd like to state for the record that Zookeeper is the best depiction of parenthood ever put onto a TV screen. This is exactly what it's like to raise a toddler.
Herding cats in your household, eh? 😉
@@GenXGrownUp Yes, it feels exactly like that, hah. And picking up toys before you step on them and bust up your foot, cleaning up the floors, washing the dishes, cooking food that won't be eaten, changing diapers, taking out the trash, walking the dog, trying to keep your child from crashing head-first into the couch, haha. Where's my net?
I LOVE zookeeper. great video thanks!
Me too! Thanks for watching, Darth.
Cool port. IIRC, only one arcade I went to had a Zookeeper cab. It was my main arcade Malibu Gran Prix in Sharonville OH down the road from Princeton High School. That game had the zaniest sound effects.
I need to get on this ASAP! Thanks
Wow. The work done is top notch. The dev has to deal with such a low res system and yet pulled it off nicely! 👍
Agreed!
Never heard of this title until your great view. Just played it on the Console X wow it sure is a lot of fun!
If I've introduced one person to Zoo Keeper who had previously missed it, then I've done a good job! 😀
I love zoo keeper, was at the skating rink I went to, every Saturday
That's a darn good looking port.
I’ve never played Zoo Keeper despite hearing about it over the years, now I want to! Impressive port indeed and one of the most colorful Atari 2600 titles I’ve ever seen as 2600 games often have pretty drab colors. Fun fact, just read that the original Zoo Keeper was done by Taito’s American branch and programmed by John Morgan, Mark Blazczyk and Rex Battenberg.
Awesome video Jon and thanks for bringing this fantastic arcade port to my attention. This game is right up my street for sure :-)
Any time!
@@GenXGrownUpf you like champ games check out their Galaga clone and the ladybug game, both for the Atari 2600.
@@marccaselle8108 Galagon is amazing. You may have noticed I used it in b-roll for some recent videos. I'll look into Ladybug - thanks!
@@GenXGrownUp your welcome Jon. Great job on the videos. Keep them coming.
Zookeeper was the first game to unseat Robotron as the greatest greed game of all time. It is absolutely fantastic it's getting some love that it deserves.
Super risk/reward mechanic! I hoped this video would bring my fellow Zoo Keeper fans out of the woodwork! 😀
Thanks for sharing! And thanks to all of the homebrewers who have kept the 2600 alive throughout the years! 🕹️👍🏼
You bet!
Since you’ve been gone is the music intro. Rainbow forever!!!
Very impressive for the old 2600!
If only I still had my Atari 2600, I would definitely track down Zoo Keeper.
Tower of rubble is an insanely addicting homebrew.
That's an amazing 2600 port.
that is super impressive....your right!! love the box the art... and manual...tposter!!....spectacular!!
Right?!
@@GenXGrownUp 👍
Great coverage
Thanks for watching, JL! 😀
Wow never been an Atari fan but this looks hella cool. Thanks 😊
Sure. Thanks for watching!
The million+ point jumps were already great. I don't know how I did, but looking at Twin Galaxies records now, I would have been pretty damn close to the top of the list way back when. I used to be able to get multiple million point jumps in the same game.
This is definitely something mind blowing,who had ever tout that the atari 2600 was such capable by doing stuff like this,i definitely want to download this game trough a pay service so i could run it on the harmony cart😁
Link to Champ's store is in the description. Show this dev some love! 😀
Hello there 😺!
I'm your new retrospective channel subscriber from Vantaa, Finland 🇫🇮.
I meow as a big fan of the old movies,
TV shows, comic books, and the rock & metal music 🎵🎶 - mostly of the 1960', 1970's and 1980's 😺👍.
I also play the original hardwares of the
Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 😺👍.
And most of all, i hobby and practice for drawing my own furry comic arts 🖋️🖊️✏️🖍️.
And your channel is definitely retrospectively awesome 😺👍🕹️.
Thank you 😺👍🕹️.
Welcome, Ari. I'm happy to have you watching! 😀
My hat off to the developers: everything looks great, down to the gorgeous instruction manual. And many thanks to you for this awesome video!
My pleasure!
Atari 2600’s new tag line “Consider the limitations.”
As someone who has been working on a 2-player simultaneous & co-op version of 'Tetris' (*cough, QuadraSlide*)
The level of game programming for this Zoo Keeper "port" to the Atari 2600 is UTTERLY F'ING GOD-LIKE INSANE!
😳
(I'm even having a migraine just thinking about how good the damn flashing SCORE is...)
😔
You make me feel soo old jon i played zoo keeper in the arcade wow.
I'm right there with ya, Nicholas!
Great hat. I have the Thatherton fuels tshirt. Great vid.
Thhhh-atherton! 😉
Champ Games is still around?? I remember their excellent (comparatively speaking) ports of Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and others for MS-DOS back in the day. And now porting classic games to a technologically inferior system like the 2600 with such incredible results- incredible.
The are some remarkable 2600 homebrew redemption/remakes out there: Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Galaga, Berzerk (w/voice), Frogger and Space Invaders, to name a few. Would be fun to see you go through them.
Heard. 😀
That’s incredible!!! I hope they can do the same with other Taito games like Jungle Hunt & Elevator Action!!!
Elevator Action is already in development. 😀
And this reminds me when I had Atari 2600 and I would always ask for the game cartridges my birthday 🥳 or Christmas 🎄 every year back in the 80’s when I was a kid lol 😂
Very cool!
great! a high quality oft forgotten game
Those homebrew games are amazing. Here in Brazil they made a HERO 2 game, exapanding over the original's game kernel code, with lots of new stuff, I just had to own the original cart. While I do not play Atari a lot on the original consoles - no shame in admiting emulation helps quite a lot to play those old games - I still love to have the whole box.
BTW this game sells and ships to US, and is a must have, IMHO.
Nice game, nice aquisition.
Link to Hero 2? Cartridge or Rom only?
You guys in Brazil are the masters of the Sega Genesis. Guys like Master Linkuei and Mauro Xavier are tearing it up with their arcade ports and enhancements... they're doing for the Mega Drive/Genesis what Champ is doing for the Atari 2600.
I cannot believe what I am seeing. Did they put a 7800 in that cart?
Wow, truly amazing
Stunning.
AMAZING CHANNEL !
Thanks for visiting!
Imagine this back in the day
That’s amazing
Wished i kept all my cartridge boxes. I have a couple of them but not the real vintage ones of Atari and TeleGames that have that great early watercolor looking art.
I did keep all my guidebooks.
So, Robin Williams named his daughter after a somewhat obscure Taito arcade game, then. Huh... Never knew he were _that_ hardcore!
Haha! I know you're kidding, but you did make me snort laugh. 😁
Wow, that's an Atari 2600 game. Holy smokes!
Since I'm just a computer programmer, and I have no background in hardware engineering, I'm not entirely familiar with how the hardware works, but I get the impression that the on-board electronics of the 2600 were limited, but a lot of capability is built into the cartridge. I suppose that any cartridge simply wires additional hardware on to the built-in PCB, just like connecting "peripherals" to a computer. So, cartridges have more than just ROM with game code on them. I always loved to play Zookeeper, as they had it at an arcade near my high school. Also, it was featured on a game show called Starcade.
I'm similarly not a hardware engineer, and I've heard tell of additional bits in cartridges, so I'm then puzzled when I'm able to purchase the ROM image and it plays the same. Witchcraft! 😉
@@GenXGrownUp an emulator has the luxury of working with all the modern computer stuff that has to be added on to a cartridge, so as long as the emulator is equipped to recognize all the calls in the code to the special hardware, the game will work in the emulator.
@@jeopardy60611 It's my plan to sit down with the author of these great ports and better understand how it's accomplished.
And onto my Atari Flashback gold this ROM goes. AND a cartridge for my 2600!
Do bank switching games work on there? I was happy to get Champs demo's working on my 7800 Concerto cart just recently...
I think it will have trouble. My cart wouldn't play on RetroN 77, but perfectly on my OG VCS.
@@GenXGrownUp There is a way to have the RetroN 77 run a newer version of Stella. I don't have one but maybe that only works with games stored on it (if that's possible).
@@braddahl2098 You are correct Brad; by updating the firmware on the RetroN 77, you can play Zoo Keeper but only from the SD card. The reason is because the cartridge port on the R77 is really a limited feature ROM dumper that is unable to read the entire contents of the cart (this is true for many games, including games made back in the day). Hope that helps!
In the 21st century, solid state memory is more compact than it was 40 years ago, so you can probably pack a lot more electronics in the space of the cartridge, so the RAM, ROM, and coprocessor on the cartridge can be more powerful than what would have been built for an Atari 2600 back in the day.
For sure. And even if it could've been done, it would've been cost-prohibitive!
Wow thats amazing! I'd love for someone to attempt a 2600 port of Joust 2 survival of the fittest
If they were able to take on Ms Pacman, though a well done game, i believe it would be phenomenal.
This looks and plays great for 2600. Almost looks like an early NES game.
I also bought this. Love it! I think they are making use of a co-processer inside of the cartridge as well as way more memory.
Galagon, a remake of Galaga, is also a jaw-dropping replication of the arcade game. It is superior in quality to the 7800 version.
I don't think there's any additional processing, since the dump is playable in straight emulation.
@@GenXGrownUp - Did some digging. Zookeeper cartridge uses the Melody board. The Melody board uses a 70Mhz ARM chip coprocessor. The Melody board is fully supported by the Stella emulator, so that's why it works.
GenX needs its on version of homebrew retro coffee.
I'm not familiar with that, Ninja. Tell me more?
@GenXGrownUp come out with your own line of retro game themed coffees to make coin. Put the brew in homebrew. This is just a bad wordplay business idea.
You arern't ever going to convince me some of these new ports to the 2600 aren't involving sorcery.
Wait until you see the demo scene. 🤩
Over the last couple years, I’ve pretty much stopped collecting retro games and began focusing on the homebrew community. They are consistently putting out products that are as good as or better than anything the industry produced in the 80s and 90s. I just started asking myself, do I want to spend 60 bucks on some game I’m never gonna play because it sucks just to complete a collection on my shelf? Or would I rather support a current developer who is creating brand new content, things I’d never played before, or ports that blow away previous entries, or that never made it to the console to begin with? The answer became clear to me very quickly and now I’m playing new games for my old systems and having a blast.
they didn't had the much more sophisticated development software back in the days. They were doing everything in assembly. And were high on drugs, so there's that as well.
I can make it to the mid 20s but 99 levels is my goal. I've scored about 65 million in a game so far. It's on UA-cam
Thanks a lot for another cool video!
My only question is, if the 2600 hardware was capable of this back in the day, why weren't most games made with this love, and I mean graphic and audio wise? I see Coleco games and they are gorgeous, I wish Atari had that level of commitment back in the day.
Main thing was Atari's greed, resulting in too short dev times and low cartridge ram, Rom size to save costs.
Look at imagic and Activision titles, plus some parker brother carts and m network. All far better than average Atari branded carts.
Plus, besides having 32k in the zookeeper cart, they use an ARM chip to manage and speed up the more advanced memory bank switching used in the cart. Tech Either not available in the 80s and or way to expensive to put in a mass production cart then
Programming techniques to make it happen just hadn't yet been devised. We needed a couple decades of inquisitive hobbyists to crack the code!
These games use rom carts fifty times the size and use modern techniques not known back then.
Development tools are so much better now; a programmer can try something within seconds of having the idea whereas back in the day it was a huge chore to try out any changes to their code and to debug it. This particular homebrew has some extra hardware oomph but there are quite a few homebrews from AtariAge that use the same hardware as the past but look great anyway due to these tools, plus time and know-how and t.l.c.
6:04 Donkey Kong was done by a single individual who had personally reverse-engineered the VCS. As far as I know, he was the first person to do this. Activision and Imagic were around but they both had the benefit of engineers who had migrated from Atari. There's a nice anecdote about how he called up somebody at Activision to talk about how he'd reverse-engineered the VCS and ported Donkey Kong and the guy basically didn't believe him until he came and saw for himself. Anyway, you can attribute the dodgy port to basically two things: It being the very first effort of its kind, and the decision to use as little ROM as possible. And maybe also no real attention to detail (for example, there was no reason for the music to be so OFF).
I've also heard stories of Coleco accepting sub-par DK ports for competitors' platforms to futher improve the perceived quality of their flagship/launch title game. They had to rights to all home console versions, and used that to their advantage in the marketplace.
@@GenXGrownUp Oh yeah, I think I even heard that rumor somewhat contemporaneously. But if I'm gonna be brutally frank about it, bad Atari ports were the default reality. It almost seemed like a cultural thing. We have all the hindsight we need to prove they could have done better-at the very least for simple things like more accurate music / sound effects which would have cost them nothing extra. But I think I could count every reasonably faithful VCS port with a single hand. Missile Command (after the programmer got destroyed for making Space Invaders look so damn different, even though it was a technical marvel for the time), Berzerk, Joust, Stargate, Crystal Castles... That's about al I'd be willing to vouch for, as far as being about as good as they could manage, within the scope of the available ROM and then-understanding of the hardware.
you might have done a tour already in one of your videos, but can you point me to that or do one where you show me what board games are on your shelf please? and other toys ?
Counting up how many AtariAge homebrews I have now, it occurs to me that I didn't even have that many original Atari games back in the day. It's just an embarrassment of riches, and I've actually been a bit picky and only bought some of their releases. I especially love Space Rocks and Mappy and Spies in the Night.