XAYAX - Bang! (ATARI VCS 2600 demo)

ATARI VCS 2600 Demo by XAYAX. 1st place at Revision 2014 easter party (oldschool demo competition).
Code: SvOlli
Music: Skyrunner
Graphics: Deft, Titus, Veto, SvOlli
A 32/30k ROM using F8SC bankswitching (PAL)

[@nrdesign1991]

Imagine going to Atari Headquarters in 1977 to the programmers and show them this stuff

[@104d_3rr0r_vince]

They would burn them as pagans.

[@maciejlegowicz5834]

***** or just jump through the window shouting : "It can't work!!!"

[@zo1dberg]

They'd be like "yeah, well if i had a massive 62kb EPROM to play with, i could probably do the same".

[@yamumishot2001]

Just show a Bit at a time.

[@dschoneberg]

zo1dberg l

[@RetroGamerr1991]

Imagine how people would have reacted to this in 1977. They would shit themselves.

[@deedeedaydee]

Things are a little moist in 2016 I assure you...

[@Clancydaenlightened]

They all ain't dead yet Just call chuck e cheese and ask for Nolan Bushnell Funny how warner communications bent him over so bad he don't have no Atari brand arcade units in chuck e cheese He can also use chuck e cheese as capital to re invest in Atari and buy back some ownership of his brand 😂

[@Clancydaenlightened]

And both companies can profit because they in a line of business that co benefits, Atari makes games, chuck e cheese is effectively an arcade...go figure

[@Clancydaenlightened]

Just like David crane used to own Activision He had nothing to do with call of duty... Back when Activision used to make high quality games could be a spoken sentence And the engineer and development teams got paid a fair percentage based of total net sales income Not a flat rate regardless of actual profit The better your code sold, the more you can earn

[@rodneyws1977]

128 bytes of RAM. I'll never be able to wrap my head around that.

[@sparky4insano]

same

[@bangerbangerbro]

Rodney Smith The CPU can address and read from 4KB in the connected cartridge as well.

[@mvl71]

@@bangerbangerbro four kilobytes? FOUR kilobytes?! four KILOBYTES??!! *_FOUR KILOBYTES???!!!_* I think the only thing that would impress me more is a demo on the Eniac.

[@bangerbangerbro]

@@mvl71 Yes hahaha. I think these demos probably use bankswitching and that as well so it can use more than 4 KB

[@RabiesTheBeagle]

Byte it instead. Im stupids. Sry.

[@frank4284]

There is an absurd amount of fuckery going on in this demo. Well done!

[@Davidevgen]

imagine if programmers knew how to do this back in 1977 :P 1983 crash might have never happened lol

[@justinhiggins2090]

The crash would happen anyway actually. I don't think there would be a way to prevent it.

[@Davidevgen]

@@justinhiggins2090 yeah considering its all blamed on ET. i dont think that what happened. there was too many console doing the same thing and it killed the market.

[@KC9UDX]

Too many people didn't feel they were getting their money's worth. It wasn't ET. It wasn't Pac-Man. It was every game. You could spend hundreds of dollars and end up with one or two really playable games.

[@stevenschiro1838]

@@KC9UDX exactly, and hundreds of dollars in 1983 money, about 3x more expensive in today's dollars

[@gyrofrank]

You would do something similar but within 4 kilobytes of rom space at max in 1977 because bank switching wasn't a thing yet

[@Nikku4211]

Imagine going to in and showing them this demo. I'm sure they will be blown.

[@quequien4577]

lol

[@vreschen939]

The one thing I love the most is the fluidity of the men running in Chapter 7, especially since I know of Intellivision's "Running Man" back in 1978.

[@dbranconnier1977]

This is really amazing for an Atari 2600! I remember being impressed by the intro screen to California Games, back in the day. However, this demo is the most incredible thing I've ever seen on the VCS.

[@MadameSomnambule]

That's damn impressive considering the Atari 2600's limitations. Plus, most sprites changed color by scanline unlike those of an NES where there only seemed to be a color limit instead of a limit in where colors can be.

[@johnrickard8512]

Technically the Atari's video hardware had even more limited colors than the NES. This is of course ignoring the fact that the Atari's video chip doesn't generate frames but lines.

[@nspcrazy1122]

I imagine this as one of those weird commercials that come on Adult Swim at 1 in the morning.

[@kiwibro6454]

I wasnt aware of this consoles color capabilities, this is the most color ive ever seen in an Atari 2600!

[@JankPods0201]

Well, It does have 128 colours to choose from.

[@ssg-eggunner]

The crazy thing is this has more colors than the famicom

[@JankPods0201]

​@@ssg-eggunner Yea, It is ridiculous.

[@Clancydaenlightened]

​​@@JankPods0201too bad y'all code on pal consoles mostly when the ntsc are better Faster, more color, and more cycles per scanline Pal support less colors, runs slower

[@Clancydaenlightened]

You must have been French and had a secam unit😂

[@Patchuchan]

The QR code at the end leads to their website.

[@MarkWhich]

Coming from a machine originally designed to play variations of Pong and Tank.

[@shoopdahoop2221]

Man, I don't think there's ANY 2600 demo that even comes close to this one

[@johntammaro]

my all time favorite demo. out of this world. respect

[@teh_supar_hackr]

I used to use this demoscene to push the limits of various 2600 emulators (such as Stella Wii port, and 2600 emulators made in the early 2000s)

[@RetroMarkyRM]

How on earth was that twisting coca cola part possible?? Absolutely amazeballs!!!

[@naveed80]

Coca-cola part? I'm still stuck on the AMIGA bouncing ball mocking!

[@RetroMarkyRM]

My C64 is currently sulking in the corner! ;)

[@shalroth]

IKR? I just found myself shouting "F**k off, really?" at my laptop when I saw that! I guess as the TIA is only painting every alternate scaline, you've got every other scanline to do the calc for the next one, but IDK... the resolution is too high for it to be playfield graphics...

[@sprybug]

My best guess on that is that it used the Player0 and Player1 sprite combined and shifted it's coordinates and contents on every scanline. There was a lot of black space on both sides, which is what got me to that conclusion.

[@RetroDawn]

My guess is it's using P1/M1/P2/M2/Ball/PF. That gives you a maximum of 19 NTSC-color-clock-width pixels, 20 four-NTSC-color-clock-width pixels per scanline, and 3 colors (I noticed some gray, seemingly for an almost anti-aliasing effect). And that's without multiplexing any of those 6 "objects". Any of the first 5 can of course be stretched horizontally, where there isn't the need for 19 NTSC-color-clock-width pixels. And the players (and their missles) can be duplicated once or twice, at different, fixed offsets from each other, but that would only be useful if there was a repeating pattern on a scanline that matched one of the fixed offsets. The twisting effect is purely done by shifting each scanline horizontally (the image this is visible on any line of the "tube" is static), and then there's the vertical "scroll". Lastly, a table could have been used for the entire "tube", as entire tube is just over 3 screens high, and each screen is likely 96 scanlines (or near that), so it's only ~300 scanlines. It's not actually that hard to design and program, but an impressive effect nonetheless, and a cool idea, to boot! This demo as a whole blew me away!

[@mazda9624]

Man every game console deserves one of these.

[@uriituw]

Chapter 8 was especially impressive.

[@theodorosgiannopoulos6378]

Indeed but Chapter 9 is the icing on the cake! ;)

[@gapenisbruzas]

Looks awesome! Really pushing the Atari to it's limits. Loved the music as well.

[@martijnvanzanen4075]

No 1 noticed that the Atari has more colors to choose from then Windows 10?

[@solarflare9078]

LOL. True though. Fuck Windows 10

[@vappyenjoyer24]

xd

[@mr.knuckleschannel2924]

Solar Flare [Who likes uploading SSBU replays] WHY THE HELL ARE YOU EVERYWHERE

[@KuraIthys]

I see someone hasn't noticed you can choose a custom RGB value yet. ;p

[@camulodunon]

@@mr.knuckleschannel2924 he is a diety. That's why.

[@bloodyhell302]

Now make one for the Odyssey 2.

[@SchardtCinematic]

Lol m.j o way I want ot for the originsl odyssey. I ow that would be a challenge.

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

That machine actually has more hardware graphical blocks. It has 4 sprites and 12 character blocks. The right guy could certainly do amazing demos with it given the time.

[@MuffinHop]

I tried to make a videopac g7000 demo which is the PAL version of odyssey 2. Got some effects done but wasn’t happy with the quality.

[@randalloriginals230]

When I hear this song it reminds me of some sort of giant factory. Like some giant creation is slowly being smacked into shape by hammers and machines, one part at a time, methodicly. Some parts sound like gears grinding, and the such. I enjoy this!

[@KuraIthys]

It's fascinating to look at how a specific team of people created certain solutions out of necessity, then built on them as they realised the weird and interesting consequences of their original weird fixes. Jay miner and his team did some amazing things. But consider how they got there; 1. Atari VCS; Built to a budget when RAM was insanely expensive. Solution? dump any pretense of a framebuffer, and have the CPU update the graphics registers every single line. 2. Atari 400/800 - we need to compete with systems that have proper graphics memory. We could build an entirely new chip just like everyone else, but let's take the VCS's design, upgrade it... Then Add a second chip to take over most of the work that the CPU was doing. As a neat side effect, our graphics modes are defined on a line by line basis, and we have easy ways to sync effects to specific scanlines even when we need the main CPU involved, and we can program an entire sequence of graphics mode changes in advance using a highly simplified list of instructions specific to our graphics chip. 3. Amiga - you know all those crazy graphical effects we could do on our 8 bit atari design? How about we take that a step further and build a chip that can write to a bunch of graphics and sound registers at regular intervals? Now we can do things at scales smaller than a single scanline, and the nature of what we can automate without CPU intervention also became more flexible. One thing leading to another, creating ever more flexible and interesting ways of manipulating a display. As an aside, the SNES design looks suspiciously like someone reverse engineered an Atari 800 and an Amiga then added their own ideas to it and put it all together in a different form. HDMA essentially takes a list of instructions that say to write value X to register Y on scanline Z... Which is very similar to a display list on the Atari, but with flexibility in what you manipulate closer to the Amiga. (Really, it's very similar to the amiga approach except your timing is restricted to whole scanlines, where the Amiga can do things mid-scanline as well...) And all of this... Because Atari didn't want to give their game console enough RAM to do graphics in a more conventional manner...

[@simonscott1121]

Amazing demo, especially the music. Just blown away.

[@carstenmaul7220]

Stunning. You made those 128 Bytes rock.

[@uwegroote7456]

UNBELIEVEABLE! This is so amazing!

[@GeoAnas]

Awesome ! Can't believe my eyes !!

[@hendrikwiebel1647]

great music and visuals! can't stop watching this

[@SprocketWalker]

Really amazing! I love the music. This would have blown my mind back in 83. Nice work!

[@antonnym214]

hard to believe it's on only a 2600. commendable 6502 coding! I especially liked the animated running men.

[@spacefolder]

Wow men! I didn´t think it was even possible. Amazing!

[@CommodoreFan64]

Now that's just awesome!!!

[@CSanykdotCom]

Completely blown away.

[@tonyv5202]

Awesomely cool !

[@kimgkomg]

Imagine if you brought this to atari headquarters back in the day. They'd be like, "Wow, now we CAN make text unreadable!" Jokes aside amazing demo.

[@RETROGAMESeurope]

Bellissimo, vedere programmare in questo modo Atari 2600 !

[@DTM-Books]

Fantastic.

[@brutusmuerto]

I have no words. Respect

[@yerzmyeychiptune]

Excellent work.

[@supravista]

this is so badass

[@JohnnyStarr]

Great work guys. Man, SvOlli gave me the bug again. Gotta finish my demos!

[@eduaulas]

Great! Bravo! Super! Incrível! Amazing! Congratulations!

[@TheLemminkainen]

Mission possible :) amazing demo

[@MaxOakland]

This is fun. and the music is great!

[@zekstra78]

Awesome for Atari 2600!!

[@CTRIX64]

Finally got around to running this on my 2600 (was waiting for a free weekend!). Top effort - totally solid tunes and great routines. Wish I could have been there to see it live!! Hope to see some more in the future :-)

[@notsunnydaysahead]

debuglive can you show me a video

[@notsunnydaysahead]

And the system doesn’t have enough ram to fit a 5th of a vid so I wanna see

[@derelch5902]

awesome

[@doopdee]

3:02 would be impressive on A SNES. It makes perfect sense this got first place.

[@mothcompute]

would it? the snes actually has palette registers and dma and whatnot, and im not sure itd actually have to be very optimized anyway given the pretty high clock speed

[@mothcompute]

(sidenote: i actually listened to one of your songs right before this. they are all very good)

[@doopdee]

@@mothcompute Yeah lol I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that comment. Thanks!

[@RetroMarkyRM]

Fantastic :)

[@Andrew-xl3gr]

Reminds me a bit of those crack intros on some GBA roms.

[@ActionGamerAaron]

Crack graphic apps have some crossover with the demoscene.

[@PhirePhlame]

Andrew - I think the crack intros inspired the demoscene. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't coders start wanting to make those without tying themselves to piracy?

[@Nikku4211]

Well, they are in related scenes.

[@Horzuhammer]

The ones on GBA roms are a homage to the old 8/16-bit cracktros (C64, Amstrad, Amiga, Atari ST, etc.) Always wondered how come they made a comeback with the GBA. That's the only non-computer platform I've seen those on (DS roms had them too I think.)

[@blakegriplingph]

@@PhirePhlame Yeah, the demoscene is an offshoot of the cracktros used by warez groups to brag about their superiority to their peers. While some demo groups have no warez involvement, other warez groups like Fairlight and Razor1911 do participate in demos.

[@triptothebeach]

Impressive!

[@recycledsteel3693]

Really pushing the limits

[@BearorBust]

That is impressive.

[@art.tropical5545]

Unbelievable! :)

[@knoxvillehermitfreemoviesm3625]

very hypnotic

[@matthewherperger362]

Great, I now have to rethink my existence in the universe after watching this.

[@solarflare9078]

Tfw a console that came out 13-14 years prior to the SNES can produce a Mode 7-like effect that looks smoother than most SNES games.

[@vittosphonecollection57289]

Cuz 1 This is a demo not a game 2 This is modern while the SNES games are old

[@StormsparkPegasus]

Look up the SNES demoscene sometime. There is stuff on there that makes you wonder if they briefly snuck in footage from a Playstation.

[@paparansen]

the muzak is sick... awesome

[@heudorferfasnet]

Great!

[@arnetrautmann9783]

All this is, of course, utterly impossible on that hardware. Which is what makes it so great!

[@lonho9259]

Bravo!

[@s4ndwichMakeR]

That Raumpatrouille reference.

[@GrillKick]

Brilliant chiptune!

[@axemanracing6222]

SvOlli muß a) steinalt sein und b) eine verdammt coole Sau. Remarkable coder!!!

[@Delta225]

It's better than any of the atari porn games, that's for sure.

[@dereklouden7415]

Excuse me whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!

[@Retrogamingmaverick]

2:29 When you find a clue in swordquest: earthworld

[@stevelalancette6988]

Wow, it starts with Édith Piaf... Non rien de rien, non je ne regrette rien.

[@Automatik234]

Wow! That was impressive!

[@bangerbangerbro]

i didnt even think a lynx could do that

[@deadchannel4792]

The Lynx could do stuff like scaling though, so this is like a cakewalk to that.

[@bangerbangerbro]

How smooth some of it looks though.

[@Clancydaenlightened]

Im suprised nobody's ever made custom demos using the pitfall II custom dpc chip, add bankswitching with ram, would provide a noticeable difference

[@Clancydaenlightened]

Oh look now someone can one up "Xanax" at the next demo competition to get 1st That one time the auto incorrect actually became kinda funny...

[@jooelywooely]

holy shit

[@borelandfamily]

A QR CODE WITH A 70'S CONSOLE!!!! AND THE MUSIC SOME OF IT BEING IN TUNE!!

[@cursed_cats5710]

the beep at the start is the same tone and pitch of my alarm clock, it gave me a shudder

[@GordonBraicks]

How the hell did they manage to show all those rich colors! Respect

[@blahdelablah]

@Rocket-Powered Suitcase Just FYI, the running man is a reference to the character from the game Impossible Mission, which was probably most known as a C64 game.

[@insertname3293]

This was recommended, expect a surge of viewers.

[@virtuafighter3]

This shows how software is king

[@alexanderwingeskog758]

Does not look like the Atari 2600 I knew in the 1980, a really really cool demo!

[@MaoRatto]

Really good usage of the CPU and GPU of the Atari 2600. Wonder what this would look like on 7800

[@ozzie_goat]

The 2600 doesn't have a GPU. It's that TIA chip straining itself to do all the work.

[@bangerbangerbro]

Quinn The Quartz It would look the exact same.

[@bangerbangerbro]

Vara Mepresia The TIA is the GPU. It does graphics.

[@Horzuhammer]

..and sound, and input.

[@johnrickard8512]

The TIA can barely be described as a GPU. More accurately, the MOS 6507 CPU abusing the crap out of the TIA to crank out far more sound channels and exceptionally superior graphics to what that chip was ever designed to produce. Indeed, programmers of the time figured out that you HAD to abuse the TIA with the CPU in order to get much of anything done with this console.

[@earthacademy]

As someone that used to code Atari 800 games and it’s sound chip back in the 80’s, does anyone know where there was often this stray sprite line or chunk of data going down the screen, often on the left hand side? 🤔

[@mstuomel]

I want a new video recorded with a real 2600!

[@mattsmedley.onehandedgamin9029]

And cartridge 👍

[@StormsparkPegasus]

It's always amazing what people can do with modern development tools and optimization on these old machines. Sadly most of these techniques take every bit of power the machine has so they wouldn't be that useful in actual games.

[@MickeyTheSecond]

1:46 why the f do i love this

[@RaposaCadela]

wow. Wow. WOW. THIS IS EPIC!

[@kolkoki]

I like when it's the comodore 64 boo screen they needed some cpu time apart by adding black like , and when it's the rotating thing there's a black window :D

[@dtr1126]

6:48 What is that thing over here?

[@Kand1nSky]

this demo..! holy shit! :-O

[@stephandusterhoft9131]

Nice Demo , very simple I think . Nice Music !!! Our Hobby Tronic Demo 92 wurde sehr zerstört, leider . Weil unser Programmierer nicht den Original Text mit reinnehmen wollte .

[@matthewrease2376]

Would this work on a flash cart? I'd love to see this on real hardware...

[@deadchannel4792]

Sometimes it sounds like fax machines.

UN.BE.LI.VA.BLE!

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

If only Jay Miner could see this. He'd probably not believe it anyway.

[@simonambient6243]

I have the complete collection of games now on PC platform and all the original sounds work.. I use to programme to my midi keyboards gd stuff

[@WattTheTech]

Bloody hell..... want to know what the some of the old dev from back in the day think of this.

[@archieil]

Is it the real VCS 2600? Is everything in sync with the clock?

[@buserror1]

I was paid a compliment years ago, one I've always cherished. Someone once called me an "ear bleeding genius"...... This is ear bleeding genius.

[@xiaochicash]

6:28 blew my mind

[@theallknowingsause8940]

what is up with chapter 9?!

[@TeamSilvertail]

This is all running on an Atari 2600? Damm.

[@way2muchNFO]

mission possiblE!