I don't think any of us imagined the possibility for homebrews after our favorite systems died more or less by the mid-80s.
I can confirm that for my person, but nobody ever accused me of extreme farsight! ;-)
Back then I thought that my Atari 8-bit would suffice forever and I tinkered with the platform for seven years (I had a 400, a 130XE and a single floppy drive). Then came the Amiga and I was salivating like crazy ("El Gato" animation demo, anyone?) until I had one. Turned out I became more of a user with it and I changed platform after two years (the PC was becoming an even better games machine - at least for me ;-).
With the 16 bit platforms, however, a trend emerged: CPU, RAM and storage expansions made faster and more powerful machines possible!
There aren't too many CPU upgrades for the C64 or the Atari 8-bit platform but later machines lived for a good part on expansion and migration to "better" machines.
Console companies exploited that wish for the next big step, too: Think about the "16/32/64/128" bit machines in their advertising!
Consequence: The platform life span got shorter and shorter! Today it's less than two years for the PC and about four years for consoles until either games run badly or not at all.
Quote:
What's fascinating are the three systems that happen to lead the way in terms of quality and quantity of homebrews: Atari 2600, Vectrex and ColecoVision.
There may be some reasons for that:
- All of these systems use a well known and popular CPU which was in enough other systems to have attracted lots of assembly programmers in the past. Often there's no need to learn a new language - and if one chooses to he has everything at his fingertips.
- Some systems consist of off the shelf parts with official data sheets and documents, others have very well documented custom chips.
- For all systems exist cross-compilers and emulators - in other words: A development tool chain. You don't have to burn a single EPROM to test or distribute your software.
As for the machines:
2600: Because it's so damn different ("riding the beam") and limited (128 bytes of RAM). It's, simply said, a challenge to create something good on it. Which makes those real wonders like Pitfall and Solaris all the more exciting, IMHO.
Vectrex: I don't know too many vector based game machines, do you? ;-)
It's also an all-in-one machine: All machines are identical and fully equipped - the experience is always the same. The 6809 is a very popular CPU, too, but I think this is not of a major factor. Those vectors are.
ColecoVision: The first "best" console after the success of the 2600 was the Intellivision, but it was quite expensive and in some areas it is IMHO not better - or at least not by much. The Coleco is drastically better in nearly all regards (except color count) and has no real flaw. For many it not only promised but delivered "real arcade conversions" for the first time. From todays standpoint the machine does not look very spectacular but back then it was! I suspect that many retro programmers are doing it for nostalgia and not of special interest in it's (few) technical pecularities.
Quote:
Nevertheless, I think every pre-crash (and many post crash) systems have had a decent number of homebrews, save for (top of my head) the RCA Studio II, Coleco Telstar Arcade, Microvision and Adventurevision, which are all in the "fat chance" category.
Some of those systems are quite rare - contrary to the three systems above. In consequence less people have first-hand experience and system information is less readily available - sometimes quite scarce.
The CPUs may not the biggest problem (cross-compilers exist for nearly every CPU architecture, after all) but experienced programmers interested in games programming may not come in high quantities...
The more important question is: Is the tool chain complete? Is there an emulator, preferably with an integrated debugger, available?
No emulator means that you have to run and debug on the real -rare- platform. How many people interested in programming them actually have real hardware?
Homebrewing for them isn't impossible but it's not as comfy as with the more popular platforms and IMHO won't ever attract a "large followship".
I don't think any of us imagined the possibility for homebrews after our favorite systems died more or less by the mid-80s.
I can confirm that for my person, but nobody ever accused me of extreme farsight! ;-)
Back then I thought that my Atari 8-bit would suffice forever and I tinkered with the platform for seven years (I had a 400, a 130XE and a single floppy drive). Then came the Amiga and I was salivating like crazy ("El Gato" animation demo, anyone?) until I had one. Turned out I became more of a user with it and I changed platform after two years (the PC was becoming an even better games machine - at least for me ;-).
With the 16 bit platforms, however, a trend emerged: CPU, RAM and storage expansions made faster and more powerful machines possible!
There aren't too many CPU upgrades for the C64 or the Atari 8-bit platform but later machines lived for a good part on expansion and migration to "better" machines.
Console companies exploited that wish for the next big step, too: Think about the "16/32/64/128" bit machines in their advertising!
Consequence: The platform life span got shorter and shorter! Today it's less than two years for the PC and about four years for consoles until either games run badly or not at all.
What's fascinating are the three systems that happen to lead the way in terms of quality and quantity of homebrews: Atari 2600, Vectrex and ColecoVision.
There may be some reasons for that:
- All of these systems use a well known and popular CPU which was in enough other systems to have attracted lots of assembly programmers in the past. Often there's no need to learn a new language - and if one chooses to he has everything at his fingertips.
- Some systems consist of off the shelf parts with official data sheets and documents, others have very well documented custom chips.
- For all systems exist cross-compilers and emulators - in other words: A development tool chain. You don't have to burn a single EPROM to test or distribute your software.
As for the machines:
2600: Because it's so damn different ("riding the beam") and limited (128 bytes of RAM). It's, simply said, a challenge to create something good on it. Which makes those real wonders like Pitfall and Solaris all the more exciting, IMHO.
Vectrex: I don't know too many vector based game machines, do you? ;-)
It's also an all-in-one machine: All machines are identical and fully equipped - the experience is always the same. The 6809 is a very popular CPU, too, but I think this is not of a major factor. Those vectors are.
ColecoVision: The first "best" console after the success of the 2600 was the Intellivision, but it was quite expensive and in some areas it is IMHO not better - or at least not by much. The Coleco is drastically better in nearly all regards (except color count) and has no real flaw. For many it not only promised but delivered "real arcade conversions" for the first time. From todays standpoint the machine does not look very spectacular but back then it was! I suspect that many retro programmers are doing it for nostalgia and not of special interest in it's (few) technical pecularities.
Nevertheless, I think every pre-crash (and many post crash) systems have had a decent number of homebrews, save for (top of my head) the RCA Studio II, Coleco Telstar Arcade, Microvision and Adventurevision, which are all in the "fat chance" category.
Some of those systems are quite rare - contrary to the three systems above. In consequence less people have first-hand experience and system information is less readily available - sometimes quite scarce.
The CPUs may not the biggest problem (cross-compilers exist for nearly every CPU architecture, after all) but experienced programmers interested in games programming may not come in high quantities...
The more important question is: Is the tool chain complete? Is there an emulator, preferably with an integrated debugger, available?
No emulator means that you have to run and debug on the real -rare- platform. How many people interested in programming them actually have real hardware?
Homebrewing for them isn't impossible but it's not as comfy as with the more popular platforms and IMHO won't ever attract a "large followship".
New developments occur all the time, though:
http://home.comcast.net/~eichler2/microvision/MicroSimProject.htm
take care,
Calibrator
take care,
Calibrator