Space Battle (Atari 2600 version)

Atari-styled Space Duel remake for Windows PC

Note: Originally released in 2018. Atari counterpart to an earlier arcade-styled remake.

Space Duel is an arcade game from Atari based on their earlier successful coin-op game Asteroids. I previously made a remake of it titled Space Battle (itself a semi-sequel of my Game Maker Defender). This is an Atari 2600 version of it, with a few downgrades and some gameplay improvements over my original remake. The objective is to shoot everything around you and make it as far as possible.

Improvements/neutral changes include:

• Slower ship acceleration after how everyone said the original was too fast.
• Space splitting objects do not spawn near the centre of the screen.
• Power-ups are chosen before starting the game, and the player is equipped with it from the start.
• Overall difficulty decrease, especially in the Intermediate difficulty mode, after a friend commented that they found it to be one of my harder games. The Advanced mode is largely unchanged in its difficulty.
• Changes in enemy behaviour during the bonus levels.
• Players are given 5 lives at game start and an extra life is given every 2 bonus levels survived, unlike in the original remake where 10 lives are given at start and 1 extra life is given every 5 rounds regardless of whether the player survives the preceding bonus level.
• Player ship rotation now works differently in the Space Station (tethered ships) mode to keep with the 2600 theme.
• The game over screen is now an endless (until player input) Atari demo screensaver.

Downgrades:

• The next wave immediately sets up after a bonus level ends (and the player ship’s position remains constant). Though you can’t spawn immediately after a wave starts so that is one of the way the game mitigates it (as well as splitting objects not spawning near the centre).
• Graphics are downgraded. There are only 2 types of splitting objects and most graphics turn transparent when they overlap (flicker + phosphor).
• Numerous effects are removed to keep with the 2600 theme.
• Reduction in number of sound effects used.

Please let me know your thoughts. Description (edited from WIP post):

Ever since I played the arcade version of Space Duel I’ve really liked it. Previously I made the first ever Windows remake of the arcade version of the game in its pseudo vector glory.

Now, a version of Space Duel exists on the Atari Flashback 2, and some Asteroids hacks called Space Duel exist. However I was never fully happy with their renditions of the game. So I decided to make this, a “de-remake” of Space Duel, that used the same source as my previous remake. Essentially this is my vision of what a better version of Space Duel on the 2600 could possibly have been like, using the Flashback 2 version as base inspiration.

Now I know this isn’t a ROM for those of you purists out there, but I tried hard to make it seem like an authentic Atari game (I’ve had a few previous attempts of making authentic style Atari games on Windows before), so I hope you guys could give it a watch. I would release this game as a Windows download probably soon. The player’s ship’s speed has been slowed down after how everyone seemed to think that in my original remake, you moved too quickly.

In particular, I’d like to address these points:

• The difficulty switches and select switches all affect the game (these are mentioned in the instructions and also demonstrated in the video): The left difficulty switch affects the overall game difficulty (an easier version of of the Intermediate mode from my original remake), the right difficulty selects between the single/dual ship modes (“Fighter” and “Space Station” according to the official terms in Atari promos and manuals), and the Select switch selects the power-up
• At first it seems like there are many objects on the screen, but this kind of thing was seen possible in SpiceWare’s Space Rocks, a brilliant homebrew for Asteroids/Asteroids Deluxe. Even if there’s still far too many, at least it’s not completely off. Note that overlapping sprites turn transparent, which is an imitation of the flickering technique with the “phosphor” effect. This is also seen in Space Rocks.
• The sounds and overall aesthetics are mostly inspired by the Atari Flashback 2 version of Space Duel, with some influences from elsewhere, including Asteroids and Space Rocks on the 2600, and a tiny bit from the brilliant Atari 7800 Space Duel hack from PacmanPlus.
• Certain effects in the original remake have been removed to keep with the 2600 theme, and I’ve made a few improvements to the game from the original remake.
• The dual ship feature may be explained away by the “sprite cloning” feature that’s possible for the Atari 2600, as seen in games like Combat, where up to 3 objects using the same sprite may move in unison.

A 2-player mode is not currently seen here, partially due to difficulty in implementing it (the other reason being I doubt there would be many opportunities for 2 people to be playing this game coop), but I can see it as a potential feature in an actual cartridge.

I’m not an Atari programming expert so I’d expect some of these wouldn’t actually work so well on actual hardware, but these are my attempts at making an authentic-looking Atari 2600-styled game. I hope you like it, thanks.