2. Recreating childhood: Tribute to Atari 2600

As a kid I loved to play with my Atari. The never ending games, almost unbreakable joystick, blowing as hard as possible into the cassette to dedust it and not being able to even pause the game, had something magical. Yes. The good old days…

After the Atari, I had the rest of them too; Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega, etc.. but it wasn’t the same. So I promised myself, when possible, try to replicate my favorite game: River Raid. And I did.

My tribute to a great old new-media is the my creation of RiverRaid using Processing. It is a good start. Although it is not exactly the same as in the original game, it is pretty close to it in the sense of controlling the game, the obstacles/enemies, the shooting and the plane itself. The plane, enemies and obstacles are drawn and are the exact size and shape as the in the original game. I still need to work on adding extra levels, fuels and the surroundings.

The finishing touch would be printing the actual iconic Atari joystick (CX40) and playing it with the original joystick.

The game itself can be downloaded here (you do need Processing to be able to play with it). It is created for as well right- as lefthanded. You could play it with your keyboard or any controller compatible with pc and of course the Makey Makey (which I used, for lack of a better controller).

Here below some screenshots of my game: