i'm studying how the Atari 2600 hardware actually works, figuring it might give me a better grasp on how to accomplish what i want to do. i knew a little about it but the more i look into it, the more it's fucking nuts it ran anything besides Pong
128 bytes of RAM, a cartridge interface that can only address 4K of ROM at a time, and no frame buffer for the graphics. doesn't know what a "pixel" is. everything has to be manually drawn scanline by scanline. all code has to be cycle counted precisely in time with the electron beam of the CRT displaying it. all game logic has to be run during the horizontal/vertical blanking & the overscan periods when the beam isn't on. you wanna change something mid-scanline? you've got 22 machine cycles; don't fuck up
you're only allowed 2 8-bit player objects, 2 1-bit "missile" objects, and a similar "ball" object. every 2600 game you've ever played has those 5 objects and not 1 more. all on top of a single color background and a playfield (think walls and things) that can either be repeated or mirrored
HOW