Arkanoid for 2600

[Gregory DG]

How about creating an Arkanoid clone for the 2600? (Or 5200 for that matter.) I was playing Off The Wall thinking, "Wow, Breakout games came a long way since the original, even on the 2600!"

 

So, how about it?

[CPUWIZ]

This was discussed before and if I remember correctly, it isn't possible.

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16801

[raindog]

Things have kinda changed since then, though. The "interleaved chronocolour" technique would seem kinda ideal for displaying an arbitrary number of different colored bricks per line, though I don't know if I'd want to try to display enemies on the same scanlines at the same time (maybe have the bricks on "a different plane" than the enemies so they're obscured whenever they're on a brick level....)

[Video]

Don't the enemies and stuff come out of the bricks when you break them? I don't remember the game to good, but I had it on something and played it a lot.

 

As for not being able to do different colored bricks, how about doing lines on them instead.

 

A brick worth one point would have one line, one worth two, would have two, and so on.

 

I don't know how many pixels high a brick is, but if they're 7 pixels high, you can have bricks with three different values in one color.

[NE146]

Why do you even need different colored bricks. Heck, the 2600 is all about scaling things down anyway!

[Pitfall Harry]

Why do you even need different colored bricks. Heck, the 2600 is all about scaling things down anyway!

 

That's right. Arkanoid is really just Pong anyway, except that it's rotated 90 degrees and has colors and varying paddles and gameplay and rules and stuff.

 

Ben

[Video]

Wait, were the colors oriented vertically or horizontally? If they were in rows horizontally, then it should be possible to make the machine place all the colors (as long as you don't need any detail) The sprites would just have to be monochrome to reduce processing stress on the system so it can concentrate on the background.

 

Or, a different question, how important is the colors anyways? What are they for? Would making one color change how the game plays?

[Nukey Shay]

The colors signify how many times you need to hit them for them to go away (and gold blocks would always stay). But the big thing is the capsules, I think. Level up, level down, laser, split, grow, and shrink are all possible using the P/M capabilities of the system using one player object for the ship and it's lasers (if you are equipped), the missiles in re-use for the balls, the ball object for the capsules, and the second player object in re-use for the overhead enemies. I dunno how timing would fare with those taken into account, but the playfield color can be updated to give you at least the invincible and one-hit blocks (see the thread on Cribbage). Failing that, the playfield itself could be designed with single, double, or triple line skips to indicate different blocks (see the thread on Lode Runner). Should be conceivable, I think.

 

* awaits a thrashing by programmers

[NE146]

Again, who says you have to change the color for the blocks that require multiple hits? Imagine Breakout except when you hit a brick, it doesn't go away until you hit it a couple of times. Big deal

I guess you'd have to do something w/ the indestructable blocks however...

 

Maybe if you left out the enemies (who are usually useless anyway). It would be far from the first time that a 2600 port excluded some element of the arcade