Atari Code Reborn

It seems artist Ben Fry has managed to turn Atari 2600 code into art.

Like any other game console, Atari 2600 cartridges contained executable code also commingled with data. This lists the code as columns of assembly language. Most of it is math or conditional statements (if x is true, go to y), so each time there’s “go to” a curve is drawn from that point to its destination.

When a byte of data (as opposed to code) is found in the cartridge, it is shown as an orange row: a solid block for a “1” or a dot for a “0”. The row is eight elements long, representing a whole byte. This usually means that the images can be seen in their entirety when a series of bytes are shown as rows. The images were often stored upside-down as a programming method.

The original version of these images are a series of 13×19″ prints where you can actually read the individual bits of text. I modified a version of distella to produce disassembled text output in the format that I wanted, and then used Processing to write a second program that creates the image of the output.

Awesome. Simply awesome.

 

Thanks to the guys at Kotaku for pointing out this gem.

[distellamap]

Virtual Console Monday

It’s Monday and that means that Nintendo has released a new batch of games for the Virtual Console service on the Wii. The last two Mondays have been great with Nintendo releasing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Mario World respectively. Today’s releases fail to disappoint with Nintendo releasing the following titles:

• Donkey Kong Country (SNES 800 Points)
• The Legend of Kage (NES 500 Points)
• New Adventure Island (TG16 600 Points)
• Streets of Rage (Genesis 800 Points)

[NoA]