Atari 8-Bit Action
At the end of each year, I write a letter surveying the computer history work that I did in the past year. I’ve been doing this annual ritual since 2016, making this my tenth letter. It’s true that I write these for my Patreon backers, but mostly I write them for myself: to take in the view of the...
Atari 8-Bit Action
My fifth 10-line BASIC contest entry is Bouncy, a throw-the-ball-into-the-goal game loosely based on “Cup” by Jonathan Freidin from the 1979 book “More BASIC Computer Games.” I have never actually played Cup, but read the sample game and code in the classic red book many times over as a kid. The...
Atari 8-Bit Action
One of the great features of the Atari computers was the ability to redefine the character set. Normally, the character set — the collection of letters, numbers, punctuation, and special symbols that the computer can display — is pulled from ROM, where it can’t be changed. But the Atari had the...