I’ve learned few weeks ago about the Retrochallenge that happens every winter and summer, which is , according to its website, a loosely disorganized gathering of RetroComputing enthusiasts who collectively do stuff with old computers for a month. The challenge will be held from July 1st to 31st.
Excited about it, and with tons of interesting stuff to do but very little will power, I decided to enter this year as a way to motivate myself to do something new retro-wise.
I know this is a Commodore 64 blog, but I am a big fan of all 8-bit machines I can put my hands on, so for this challenge I’ve decided to do something with my latest acquisition: an Atari 600XL! To keep the Commodore lovers under control, I’m calling this challenge the Blasphemy Edition, since I am going to use a less sacred machine. Don’t worry Atari lovers, I’m saying that only to please the Commodore lovers. Don’t worry Commodore lovers, I’m saying that only to please the Atari lovers. Don’t worry….(repeat until you get tired).
Here is my challenge proposal:
– Create a game in BASIC that uses graphics and the player/missile resources. The game will be simple but it has to use those techniques – theme is still TBD (it will be defined before July 1st)
– All the work will be done in the actual Atari 600xl with a cassette tape as storage device. I won’t be using any modern resource like emulators, SD2PC devices, etc.
– I will be blogging the experience in at least a weekly update here under the title “Retrochallenge 2014 – Blasphemy Edition”
– The final result will be made available for download at my new website as soon as I can send the program to my PC (I don’t have the means to do it right now)
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Retrochallenge 2014 website: http://www.wickensonline.co.uk/retrochallenge-2012sc/
Method for transferring to the PC – list the program one screenful at a time, take a picture, OCR it :)
Haha, you’re genius! I haven’t thought about that but is perfect! A little bit of work but cheap and I have everything I need to do it. Great call! Thanks.