Racing the Beam : the Atari Video Computer System - Index of

Another graphical detail can be seen in the area where the liana
attaches to the jungle canopy. There is a thin horizontal section of the
screen at the bottom of the leaves where branches, liana, and leaves all
need to be drawn on the same lines. The TIA offers only one register to
set the color for both the playfi eld and the ball, so those two elements
always render in the same color when drawn on the same scan line. For
this reason, the top of the liana (drawn with the ball graphic) takes the
green color of the leaves (drawn with playfi eld graphics). However, far
from detracting from the credibility of the vine, the green-topped liana
gives the impression of new growth at the jungle canopy. It doesn’t seem
to be an artifact of graphical sloppiness.
Activision’s peer critique improved player experience, but it also
could impose a considerable burden on programmers. By the time Crane
had been persuaded to add additional lives to Pitfall!, the game was otherwise
ready for release. He had already gone far beyond the 4K ROM
limit, and back within it, many times, and had by his estimation spent
“hundreds of hours” making the code smaller:
[116]
Now I had to add a display to show your number of lives remaining,
and I had to bring in a new character when a new life was used. The
latter was easy. Pitfall Harry already knew how to fall, and how to stop
when he hit the ground. So I dropped him from behind the tree cover
down to the path. For the “Lives” indicator I added vertical tally marks
to the timer display. That probably only cost 24 bytes, and with another
20 hours of “scrunching” the code I could fi t that in. 22
Creativity and Control
Two years after Activision’s gang of four broke off from Atari, fi ve other
Atari programmers followed suit. Rob Fulop, Mark Bradley, Bill Grubb,
Denis Koble, and Bob Smith teamed up with Jim Goldberger and Brian
Dougherty from Mattel to found Imagic in 1981. By 1980, the programmers
who were to found Imagic couldn’t have been able to ignore Activision’s
early successes, which included Dragster, Boxing, Fishing Derby, and
Checkers. Like Activision, Imagic established its own unique aesthetics,
both in its games and its packaging. In addition to successful VCS titles
like Atlantis and Cosmic Ark, Imagic started making its games for both
the Atari VCS and the Intellivision, further distancing the concept of
the third-party developer from any particular platform-making company.
As the third-party marketplace grew, the studios made attempts not only