UPDATE!!

Here's a link to the manual for LOTR:FOTR that I put together based on Bruce's HTML manual. I'm currently working on getting the PDF version of it tweaked correctly so that it won't print so blurrily (blurrfully? blurtastically?).

http://www.atariage.com/manual_thumbs.html?SoftwareLabelID=2023

Well, there's this for Freeway:

http://www.io.com/~nickb/atari/games.html

Now if I could only find the patch I got for that one and never got sewn on my jacket.

You are in the lead story for Atari Age which is pretty neat.

But that box illo is about the best Atari box in the past few decades. Really, that sure would've sold the game at the time. Very impressive.

Code for Freeway is out there?

Curiouser and curiouser...

Also, if you go to atariage.com today (5/6/02), take a look: I'm mentioned on the front page! Whoo-hoo!

I glanced at some of the code for these Atari games but it was gobbledegook to a nonprogrammer. Unfortunate since one of the dissassembled games was my old favorite Freeway. Easy, good sound effects. What I’d do is :

RAMESES: THE CHICKEN

which would “simply” be that the chicken would be there by the highway with the traffic roaring by and every time you tried to make it cross it’d give some lame excuse about why it was frozen in terror.

Combine the two - I am absolutley sure that you have considered making a text-driven version of [b]Joust [/b]at least once in your life.

Here's a [url=http://www.atariage.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=16&t=003403]link[/url] to the site discussion on Atari Age, if you would like to know more.

Making an Atari 2600 game is something that I consider to be extremely cool. While I'm probably too verbose to write effectively within the confines that an Atari 2600 text adventure would demand, making a game like Adam did is definitely appealing. When I attempt to thrash out what kind of game to make, though, I keep swinging back and forth between the "make an original" school of thought and the "convert an arcade classic" one. Ah, well, something to decide upon and/or work on in the future.

One of the Bruces just released a new Atari 2600 game. Here's his message from rec.games.int-fiction in case you missed it:

[quote]
I've released the second version (which would be called 1.1 if I had a
versioning system in place) of the Atari 2600 version of _Fellowship of
the Ring_, first seen in the IntroComp this year, released in its full
glory on April 1, and now updated somewhat.

Changes include: a color scheme more like what I thought the original
was going to be, an improved text engine from Thomas Jentzsch, an
updated manual, and terrific box and cartridge art by Robb Sherwin.

Get it at:

http://www.fsf.net/stella/
[/quote]