Re: [stella] POLL

Subject: Re: [stella] POLL
From: Glenn Saunders <krishna@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 03 Mar 1997 10:59:42 -0800
At 07:56 AM 3/3/97 -0600, you wrote:
>If anyone thinks they're going to get rich off of 2600 programming, that 
>won't happen.  But they could very well make $1-500 off of selling 50-100 
>copies (given that they have the resources to burn eproms, etc.).  That's 
>a decent incentive, IMHO.

I see the cartridge market as dead as a doornail.  I had always thought of
the Supercharger CD as a way to make the 2600 an open-system whereby new
games would either be freely distributed as .BINs (or shareware) or
compiled on a non-profit or small-profit CD.  There are enough
Superchargers out there to saturate the remaining userbase likely to
consume new 2600 games, if they don't already own one.

There are only two reasons to still make carts:

Aesthetics
Banked ROM/extra RAM

>There are a few ideas that I think would be possible but have not been 
>done yet.  How about a split screen game, like BallBlazer or maybe 
>2-player Enduro?  Even the 2-player Tetris that was mentioned would be a 
>good idea (I wish Edtris had a 2-player mode!).  Also, the 2600 is in 
>dire need of more 4-player games, using the paddles, of course.  How 
>about a 4-player River Raid?  Or a space race sort of game?  Or a 2-on-2 
>Air-Sea Battle?

There are also lots of early games that could be updated and refined.  I
think Warlords is a perfect example here.  Not only that, but the
limitations on what can be done on the 2600 were usually due to the
hardware.  With the Supercharger environment, especially the multiload
capacity, new game genres that would have required mega banked ROM are now
possible (Lode Runner type games, zillion wave shooters, more RPGs).  Depth
can now increase infinitely with multiloads.

>base, but allow me to work with 64K RAM instead of 128 bytes. =)  I also 
>do not have a convenient method of getting 2600 programs from my PC to a 
>real console.

You don't have a Supercharger?


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