The Coder / DESIGNER

Developer howard Scott warshaw remembers the 2600

What was your earliest encounter with the 2600?

Well I first came to the 2600 when I started working at Atari. I hadn’t really been getting into videogames that much at that point. when I saw the 2600, and started to see the games, I just thought: ‘This is kinda cool!’ I was a huge fan of television, and I just thought this was a great thing to do with television.

Why do you think that early 2600 titles weren’t more original?

Quite simply, creativity is a tough thing. There’s also a fundamental rule that the first thing anyone does in any new medium is recreate everything that’s been done in past media. prior home games were ridiculously elemental, but arcade games had variety and potential, and so it made sense to recreate those. Also, it was a prior identification thing and became almost the dominant mode of marketing.

How did you feel when you moved on from the 2600?

When Atari fell apart, there wasn’t another place to go to do the 2600. Also, I was kinda burnt out. My experience at Atari was so intense, so remarkable, that I really needed some rest. I knew that was the end of a way of being that was absolutely life changing and so profoundly positive, validating and indulgent – and that was a loss.

How did developing games for the 2600 and other consoles actually compare?

I was still on the 2600 when things died at Atari. At the next gaming company I did, we were doing games on the playstation and ps2. The 2600 was one of the last platforms where you had an individual developer, and that’s one of the biggest differences. But it just got bigger and bigger as the consoles got later and later – so those became collaborative works.

Why was the 2600 commercially viable for so long?

The decade after its release, the mass market had left the 2600, but 2600s were still there. The game prices had dropped substantially, but there was still a market. By the late eighties, there weren’t many systems you could make a game on yourself. for most systems, you needed a team and a tremendous amount of money to make a game. So the economics of the 2600 still worked.