Could bit-mapped bullet-hell maniac shmup be done on 2600?

[BrianC]

Could a processing chip in the cartridge (Super FX chip) be used for the 2600?

Some games have special chips for extra RAM. Atari made a RAM chip called the Super Chip. Some of the M Network games also use a special chip. Developers also tricked the 2600 into allowing carts larger than 4k by using bank switching. There's also an accessory called the Starpath Supercharger that added extra RAM and allowed for more complex games. This accessory used cassette tapes so the games could be multi-loaded. The games still have to be programmed within the limitations of the system, though.

One interesting thing about the Starpath Supercharger is that the developers for it later became part of Epyx and helped work on notable games like Impossible Mission.

[ubersaurus]

I don't see why it couldn't. The background would have to be pretty much nonexistent, and slowdown is entirely a possibility...but the thing can run a full speed version of Robotron, which has plenty of shit moving around at the same time. So this couldn't be too much worse with more RAM and a decent cart size.

do you mean Robotron for the 2600?
becuse that does not exist and would flicker like hell if it did

There is always a more clever way to code things, right?

Not necessarily. Given the constraints of the 2600 hardware, you can pretty quickly run up against theoretical limits. At that point, the cleverness is in designing the entire game, not just the code, around those limits.

there have been some accomplishments
Play Thrust+ by Thomas Jentzsch. When too many objects get on the same horizontal line the game has a neat way of minimizing the flicker.

I think there is a modern Space Invaders that manages to get all the monsters on the screen without any flicker.

I'm referring to the 7800.

Thrust is nifty, and Space Invaders had it's own inventive solution...but neither would really work for indepedently moving bullets.