What Can Be Made In 16K? Atari 5200 16K ROM Games

Posted on November 23, 2010 by 8bit_admin

Here is some 16K inspirations for you.  The following are videos of some Atari 5200 games made in 16K or less.  The ROMs for these games fit on a 16K cart.  the games used the plethora of hardware features available for the Atari 8-bit line of computers (hardware sprites, 4-voice audio, display lists, etc.)  They are akin to the types of features you would find in a Flash, Silverlight, etc. player.   This should give you some idea of what the game programmers from the 80′s were able to squeeze into 16K while using the resources of the platform available to them.

Gyruss

Q-Bert

Centipede

Buck Rogers

Space Dungeon


Frogger

Pole Position

Gorf

Battlezone

Congo Bongo

Real Sports Tennis

K-Razy Shoot Out


Star Wars Arcade

ET Phone Home

This is not the 2600 game, it is the little-known version released for the 8-bit Atari computers.  It’s fairly elaborate adventure game that gets little notice, but was pretty good for the time.

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  • http://www.8bitrocket.com 8bitjeff

    Nice collection, Steve.

  • Pingback: What Can Be Made In 16K? Atari 5200 16K ROM Games | 8bitrocket | Games Direct

  • http://twitter.com/alexandersshen alexandersshen

    Sweet. I’ll see what I can do. Since my “skills” are mainly fudging my way through the IDE, we’ll see what happens.

    • http://www.8bitrocket.com 8bitjeff

      Just fudge through the IDE, but import really tiny bitmaps, or build simple vectors in the IDE.

    • http://www.8bitrocket.com 8bitjeff

      Just fudge through the IDE, but import really tiny bitmaps, or build simple vectors in the IDE.

  • Anonymous

    things were a bit more granular back in the day though. They physically had access to every single byte of data, unlike a typical actionscripter. The things they did with the resources they had were incredible.

    • http://www.8bitrocket.com 8bitjeff

      You are right. Those Atari 2600 programmers were literally geniuses. How they even got that thing to do make any kind of game is amazing. That’s why I hate it when people who know nothing about development complain about “crappy” 2600 games. They have absolutely no idea it too a literal rocket scientist to make Combat and ET.

    • Anonymous

      You should take a look at the games we did for the 4K contest 2 years ago. People did some amazing stuff in 4K. There are much better examples than these, but mine was 4K breakout style game with sound and multiple levels:

      http://www.8bitrocket.com/2009/02/01/neon-bricks-4k-2009/

      Jeff’s was basically Blaster Mines from our book: http://www.8bitrocket.com/2010/02/15/blaster-mines/

      • http://www.8bitrocket.com 8bitjeff

        Here is the 4K version: http://www.8bitrocket.com/2009/03/01/mine-x-4k/
        The only additions in this are the Mochi ad and the title screen. The game with no sound and keyboard rather than mouse control was just under 4K

        • Anonymous

          That’s impressive for 4k! I’m working on a berzerk type game I’ll submit. Really looking forward to seeing everyone’s stuff.

      • http://www.directorygold.com egdcltd

        In Blaster Mines, and I assume Neon Bricks, the art was drawn by Actionscript. What’s the easiest way of going about plotting out the lines to do this (especially if you don’t have Fireworks) and could you make graphics that resembles old-style pixel graphics like this? For an old example, the graphics from Space Invaders.

        I assume this type of art typically takes less size up than vector or bitmap graphics.

        • Anonymous

          OK, yeah, that’s right. For Neon Bricks, I uses a single square vector movieclip that I resized for everything. However, that’s the same process those guys used on the 5200. They did not load in many bitmaps. Most of the time the images were drawn in code. This is why I find this process fascinating. You have to think like programmers from the 80′s to make it work.

          • http://www.directorygold.com egdcltd

            Could you take a 1×1 pixel square, either drawn with Actionscript or an imported bitmap, and assemble a more complex, say 16×16 pixel, sprite using multiple instances of the small square?

          • http://www.8bitrocket.com 8bitjeff

            You can draw single pixels in a couple ways. One is to use the shape.graphics object with the moveTo(), lineTo() commands. Another is to create a bitmapData object and color the pixels with setPixel32. You would want to do both in loops using an array of data rather than using individual draw or setPixel32 commands to save code space.

  • Anonymous

    Awwww, man! Space Dungeon! I totally have to make that now!

    Dunno if it’ll be 16KB or not, but I have to do it. I wonder how big my tablecloth dungeonizer is…

    • Anonymous

      here’s how this thought process worked out:

      Yeah! space dungeon! I should use one of my dungeonizers instead of big empty space. I could make it a brawler instead of a shooter. OH WAIT, I ALREADY DID THAT!!!!! AAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHHH

      (it was called Fortress of Fantasm and it was an abyssmal failure; I might do it again in 16kb anyways)