I think John made some good points. For one, it does
seem like a lot of people have 'jumped on the
bandwagon' so to speak, myself being one of the guilty
parties I suppose. :) But I don't necessarily see a
problem with this, because I don't think most people
(if anyone) is doing it to make money. I
mean...there's really not any money to be made when
you consider maybe only 100 people will buy a given
homebrew game on cartridge if you're lucky.
Writing an Atari 2600 game is still as hard as it ever
was, though. I mean, not only is it all assembly
language, but it also involves lots of tedious timing
and memory considerations. And if you screw up the
whole thing will fall apart. That hasn't changed -
there's just more support now since more people are
familiar with the hardware.
Personally I think this whole 'Atari renaissance' is
kinda amazing, considering that it came from nowhere.
I remember maybe 5-10 years ago, the whole idea of
'vintage computing' was completely nonexistant. I
can't help but think about that scene from 'Back to
the Future 2' where Marty goes to the year 2015 and
sees an original Macintosh in the window of an antique
store. That was really funny in 1989, but now it
seems almost...plausible! :) Anyway, I digress. In
summary, I personally think the whole homebrew scene
and retro-gaming scene is really great for programmers
and Atari fans everywhere, first of all, because it
gives individual people a chance to do something
meaningful again: I mean...making a modern video game
takes dozens of programmers working for years. With
homebrew games, it is both challenging, and yet still
can be done by one person. And for the retro-gamers,
it gives them new games with the same classic feel.
That's what makes it cool, IMHO.
Ben
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