Chiphead - an Atari 2600 demo by KK/Altair^DMA

[@madmax2069]

wow, finally music from a 2600 that sounds great, plus the graphics are top notch considering the platform it's on.

[@the_jcbone]

Standard comment: just imagine travelling back in time and showing this to the Atari Devs the night before release. *MIND*BLOWN*

[@KKAltair]

I already imagined that several times. :)

[@Whelkman]

Yeah but you need to realize the next step: another 40-some years of knowledge and technological influence starting from that point. Then you send the second iteration back. Eventually you get Skynet instead of chiptunes if you do this enough times.

[@EvilStevilTheKenevilPEN15]

Believe me, they had absolutely ZERO intention of running anything more computationally demanding than Pong on the 2600. They used a reduced package form of the 6502 processor, which was theoretically cheaper to use and in practice severely constrained the amount of ROM the processor could access. Anything larger than 4 KiB on Atari had to be bank-switched, and the console itself only 128 bytes of RAM. For reference, most text online these days is done through something called Unicode, which uses 16 bits per character, and at that rate of bit consumption per character, you could not even fit this entire sentence in the Atari's memory. Then of course, there were the sprites: You had a player sprite or two, and 2 ONE PIXEL "ball" and/or "missile" sprites. This would allow you to fairly easily implement a pong clone, but not much else. To display the aliens in space invaders, you had to move the few sprites you had to work with just as fast as the television itself was drawing them. Thus, programming the thing was described as "racing the beam", and one of the definitive books on the subject has that exact title.

[@jakubhusak1624]

@@parzivalwolfram7084 You seemed to have confused Unicode with UTF-8, Universal Transformation Format-8.

[@Chloroxite]

You'd probably see them confused when they see "facebook" referenced.

[@Mr.Atari2600]

These Atari 2600 Demo's need's to be more popular.

[@teh_supar_hackr]

I wish they would make more of these 2600 demoscenes!

[@Mrshoujo]

Unnecessary Apostrophes.

[@madmax2069]

Indeed

[@scalliano]

I've seen Sonic running on the SNES, I've seen F-Zero running on the Mega Drive, but I NEVER thought I'd hear the 2600 do decent music.

[@KKAltair]

Some people urge me to port my Doom clone to Mega Drive, so maybe expect that one, too. ;)

[@AtariAlive]

Look at the sonic Atari demo

[@doopdee]

(Assuming that you’re talking about Zippy the Porcupine) that demo doesn’t actually make the best use of the Atari 2600’s sound capabilities, though of course there are memory constraints so complex music would be pretty hard to fit into 64Kb.

[@AgileSnowWeasel]

That is some serious abuse of the Atari 2600 bullet sprites! Very nice.

[@KKAltair]

I tried to abuse everything as much as I can. :)

[@Ford.Prefect]

Maybe one of the most beautiful Atari tributes and, given the specs of of the 2600, an incredible feat of hardware level programming

[@djaccount5458]

Great production

[@romaneberle]

VERY good :-) that's probably the best Atari 2600 soundtrack ever

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

That old Atari hardware/coding black magic. Never gets old.

[@KKAltair]

The strange thing is, 2600 is so much easier to trick than the later platforms. With no ANTIC or DMA of any kind, cycles are easy to count and predict. 76 per line, always, each one always falling in the exact same raster spot. Beautiful platform. :)

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

@@KKAltair I wonder if Jay Miner had any idea?

[@KKAltair]

@@GORF_EMPIRE He had pretty good idea. The whole platform is based on the scanline timing to such extent, that you can't position a player without counting cpu cycles.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

@@KKAltair Still the best gaming console ever!

[@KKAltair]

@@GORF_EMPIRE Well... realistically speaking, only on the nostalgia scale. But still a very beautiful chipset design.

[@Akira625]

It's a 2600 rave!

[@RamonddeVrede]

Amazing! What an achievement! All programmers in the world has to see this demo and see the size of the file... then check again their own code :)

[@GordonBraicks]

Never saw a Atari 2600 demo, impressive for this machine! Nice coding and use of sound.

[@BalancedSpirit79]

One of the best I've seen.

[@axemanracing6222]

incredible, isn't it coming back from 1978

[@danboid]

Great stuff! This is the first music I've heard played on a 2600. I didn't know it could do such a thing. Please write a Uzebox demo next!

[@bswierko]

It's mind blowing that such a demo runs on 128 bytes of RAM. 1. Play pitfall on 2600 2. Watch Ziphead 58 MB demo 3. Run chiphead on 2600 4. Mind blow :)

[@suadcokljat1045]

Amazing. Music is great

[@MarcShake]

Okay - while it would be super impressive to see this on a C64, this is just magic.

[@KKAltair]

Considering I can't even open the border on C64, it was probably easier for me to do on 2600. :)

[@kimgkomg]

@@KKAltair the border is integral to the experience. To remove it would be a crime punishable by banishment and/or death

[@KKAltair]

@@kimgkomg You would just single-handedly kill off 70% of the C64 scene now. :)

[@kimgkomg]

@@KKAltair found the apple user

[@Voidward]

What an adorable Atari cover of ziphead.

[@AugustRenders]

I've seen a cool recreation of Donkey Kong for the 2600, but this is next level!

[@OrderoftheWarlocks]

Meet me at the atari rave. I'll be in the red pixel room

[@irridesu]

Is it too late to go?

[@OrderoftheWarlocks]

@@irridesu never

[@OficialDreamsInteractiveMedia]

1:10 the dancing man 1:18 the dancing men

[@HyLsT16]

Excellent ! :) :)

[@axemanracing6222]

fucking incredible, perfect tribute.

[@roserabbit3333]

what a video toaster vibe, haha! awesome

[@rafotat5798]

Holy shit . 🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩🤩

[@lastcamsil]

çok iyi tebrikler

[@pcandremf8282]

Incrivel

[@Amigowiec]

VCS of the Art ;)

[@RichardCyberPunk]

Cool demo.

[@Miesiu]

Fantastic !!!

[@sergiofls7623]

*while me searching cuphead related comments*

[@deadsi]

Magnefique 😘👌

[@NEWLuigi64]

me at 2:30am : Huh, they made a Atari version of Cuphead...? _Neat_

[@KKAltair]

Atari version of the Ziphead demo, actually. :)

[@coenraadloubser5768]

Now to run this on a breadboard 6502 ala Ben Eater

[@KKAltair]

That would be quite easy. All a 2600 requires is 3 chips, cart slot and a bunch of basic supporting elements. But that would require me to butcher one of my 2600's, because TIAs aren't easy to come by, and I prefer to keep them cased and proper. :)

[@retrohaxblog]

As usual ... AWESOME ;)

[@D6team]

hardkor! :)

[@japhreal]

This is just Atari 2600 up the limits

[@crossy44]

For a second I thought this was s fangame of Cuphead for the 2600

[@borelandfamily]

How do you get a wobble bass in atari 2600?

[@KKAltair]

Beyond simple bleeps, the Atari 2600 has some cool raw bit sounds, which can be made even more interesting by changing volume register every frame (50 times a second). Something close to tremolo effect, but with the shape edited by hand and quite uneven.

[@allenhuffman]

Such greatness. I didn’t even realize demos were a thing on the VCS.

[@KKAltair]

They are a very real thing, and some are really amazing. :)

[@allenhuffman]

@@KKAltair What amazes me about this one (beyond the shadow dancers and lasers) is how great the music is ... while having aspects of it that clearly sound like the VCS. I’m stunned at how good the music is.

[@KKAltair]

@@allenhuffman Custom VST plugin for composition and custom player with quite a few tricks can go a long way. :)

[@mikiex]

Very "State of the Art"

[@rafotat5798]

Niesamowite jak na taka gowniana konsole mozna zrobic cos tak zajebistego

[@Unoriginal_Fox]

HUH?!?!

[@vvolas]

Trippy shit

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

Is this running on a stock 2600?

[@KKAltair]

Yes. It uses 32k bankswitching on the cart, but that technique was already popular back in the days so it's still considered pure retro.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

@@KKAltair Yeah Rom size arguments are lame since that's been around since days ago. Processor on the cart sure, I can see that being an issue but if it's just the stock VCS the machine can switch bank on it's own. Great stuff btw. Keep it coming!

[@KKAltair]

@@GORF_EMPIRE Actually, the original machine can't switch banks and extra on-cart circuits had to detect it in various hacky ways.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

@@KKAltair But what I mean is no extra CPU or additonal processing per-see was necessary. Some on ROM chip logic to allow for it but nothing to actually add any computing power to the VCS.

[@monetize_this8330]

@@KKAltair Pitfall II was the first cart to implement bank switching.

[@salonsospain]

856

[@TheLemminkainen]

State of The Art in 1978 XD

[@salonsospain]

855

[@salonsospain]

348

[@keithbk]

So what you're saying here is you CAN do Skyrim on an Atari 2600!!!!

[@tux1468]

Sounds almost microtonal...

[@KKAltair]

No. The TIA chip just can't play in tune correctly. :)

[@MrMarianoamigo]

Mega! Frasun Pany! Oryginal :) kzbin.info/www/bejne/j5DPnmOZj7Sem6M

[@manuell3505]

Ugh. The guy uses Facebook...

[@plisehon]

WTF IT IS NOT EVEN A GAME

[@KKAltair]

It never supposed to be. :)

[@Delta225]

Demos are essentially tech demos for these consoles, pushing them to their absolute limit in both graphics and sound.

[@johnrickard8512]

@@Delta225 In the case of the Atari 2600, it is often pushed beyond its limits with these demos.

[@salonsospain]

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