Jump to content

Atari 2600

From Meta, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki

Meta-Wiki

Welcome to Meta-Wiki, the global community site for the Wikimedia Foundation's projects and related projects, from coordination and documentation to planning and analysis.

Other meta-focused wikis such as Wikimedia Outreach are specialized projects that have their roots in Meta-Wiki. Related discussions also take place on Wikimedia mailing lists (particularly wikimedia-l, with its low-traffic equivalent WikimediaAnnounce), IRC channels on Libera, individual wikis of Wikimedia affiliates, and other places.

Current events


April 2026

January 1 – May 30: Discussions about the Wikimedia Foundation's annual plan for 2026–2027.
April 11: Wikimedia Café meetup at 14:00 UTC (Saturday in most time zones), focusing on the the 2026–2027 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan. Featured guests: Kelsi Stine-Rowe (senior manager, Movement Communications), and Sam Walton (senior product manager, Moderator Tools).
April 30: 40th DCW Conversation Hour, Youth Engagement in Wikimedia, featuring Ndahiro Derrick Alter, the Founder of Wikimedia Rwanda, on 30 April, 12:30 PM UTC.

May 2026

May 1 – May 3: Wikimedia Hackathon 2026 in Milan, Italy
May 4: All editions of Wikinews will close and become permanently read-only on 2026-05-04. See the announcement here.
May 15 – May 17: ESEAP Conference 2026 in Kaohsiung, Taiwan

July 2026

July 21 – July 25: Wikimania 2026 in Paris, France
Community and communication
Wikimedia Foundation, Meta-Wiki, and its sister projects
The Wikimedia Foundation is the overarching non-profit foundation that owns the Wikimedia servers along with the domain names, logos and trademarks of all Wikimedia projects and MediaWiki. Meta-Wiki is the coordination wiki for the various Wikimedia wikis.
This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience.

Atari 2600

Insights on Atari legacy

The Atari 2600's development under codename Stella marked a shift from dedicated Pong consoles to programmable systems, enabling arcade ports and fostering a software ecosystem that defined second-generation gaming.

Space Invaders' 1980 port exemplified killer apps, nearly doubling install base and proving licensed arcade conversions could sustain hardware through innovative programming on limited specs.

"Space Invaders port saved early sales slump."

Strengths

  • Pioneered swappable cartridges
  • Sold 30 million units
  • Long 15-year lifespan
  • Huge game library

Considerations

  • Limited 128 bytes RAM
  • No framebuffer graphics
  • Poor Pac-Man port
  • Rushed E.T. failure

Key Terms

Bank switching
Technique to expand cartridge ROM beyond 4 KB limit by swapping memory banks into the CPU's addressable space, first used in Asteroids.
Television Interface Adaptor (TIA)
Custom chip handling graphics sprites, playfield, audio, and RF TV output without a framebuffer for Atari 2600.
Racing the beam
Programming method syncing code to CRT scanline timing, running logic during invisible overscan periods.
ROM cartridge
Swappable read-only memory storage for games, popularized by Atari 2600 after Fairchild Channel F.