Postby scotland171 » October 1st, 2012, 9:14 pm
Interesting topic. Can you 'emulate' pre-microprocessor games? I thought the best you could do was simulate them. If you look back on the literally dozens of machines of the 1st generation, many of those from 1977, I believe, used the same chip - the AY-3-8500, a sort of Pong-on-a-chip. The manufacturer was General Instruments which did tennis, hockey, and handball, plus auto-scoring, and two settings for paddle size, ball angle, and auto-serve. All for $4, according to a Len "Having fun with transistors" Buckwalter book of 1977. I think there was a light gun game on the chip, but often unused. Then multitudes of calculator or other companies built cabinets for that same chip. So all those machines are essentially the same, save different controllers, etc.
Now the Atari Pong though, that is different, with seven different rebound angles on the paddle - something that was also likely on the Atari Pong Arcade game, but some arcade guru will have to testify to that. The Magnavox Odyssey sometimes had multiple dials on them to let the paddle go back and forth as well as up and down, and the other is an 'English' dial. So, those were different from the competition too. In a way, these were console wars too, with it seeming to be Atari versus Coleco and All Comers until the Fairchild came out.
Of course, generation uno is more than Pong. There are other 'ball and paddle' (often nice smooth paddle controllers) games were breakout and pinball. I'm not much for the pinball, but I find breakout fun with the analog control. I also recall a console with I think 3 built in games, one of which you bounced the ball on a paddle and then shot through three stacked lines as a 'basket' for 1-3 points. There were also tank and car racing games pre-cartridge too. Oh, and there were two standard types of light gun games. Those old light guns were startlingly realistic to our modern sensibilities, and were not easy at all.
Another issue is that images are not sprites, I believe. Home consoles had to wait until the Atari 2600 for that, so the ball and especially the paddles for me seem to leave ghost trails on the screen. Its all part of the charm (or dirty contacts, one or the other)
