You guys all know Yar's Revenge.....and the story behing it, right ?
If not: Yar is Ray spelled backwards and that was about Ray Kassar, the much hated CEO of Atari BITD (I think he did a lot of great things for Atari too, things are never black or white)....
The game was supposed to be a Star Castle for the 2600 but the programmer said he couldn't do it.
He ended up with a game that was only very slightly reminiscent of Star Castle...
FFWD to 2013 and now: (quote from
www.AtariAge.com )
Star Castle Arcade is a 32K game that pushes the boundary of what's possible on the Atari 2600. Star Castle is a 1980 vector arcade game produced by Cinematronics. The game involves obliterating a series of defenses orbiting a stationary turret in the center of the screen. Chris Walton and Thomas Jentzch have created a fantastic port of Star Castle for the Atari 2600, one of two versions of Star Castle developed in parallel. This new version contains many improvements over the previously released version of Star Castle.
The object of Star Castle is to destroy an enemy cannon which sits in the center of three concentric, rotating energy shield rings while avoiding or destroying 'mines' - enemies that spawn from the core, pass through the energy rings, and then home in on the player's ship. They can stick back to the shield if the player maneuvers in such a way that a ring is between the ship and the mines. The player-controlled spaceship can rotate, thrust forward, and fire small projectiles. The cannon's shields are composed of twelve sections each, and each section takes two hits to destroy. Once a section is breached, rings beneath it are exposed to fire. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ1afyYkMZA#t=41Amazing work for the 2600....of course they have the luxury of 32K now, which was pretty unthinkable in the early days of the 2600....
