My inner geek got a boost this week when I discovered the best thing to hit the interdweebs so far this year. As Craig Harris originally posted, Halo has been re-imagined for the Atari 2600. The game is pretty simple, but it has all that you’d expect with Master Chief, aliens, a force-field suit, and of course… a big ole’ gun. I love the period graphics and music.
It’s the work of Ed Fries, former vice president of Microsoft’s game publishing division. As he details on AtariAge, Fries created the game to learn the Atari system and for the challenge of cramming something fun into 4KB. Are these Atari 2600 programs to the world of gaming what flash fiction is to the world of literature? It definitely shows that video games have spawned not only classic games, but whole classic paradigms.
Check out Halo 2600.
