3 ms·

Well you also have 128 bytes of RAM to work with...

• kabdib 11y ago
  You have a little more than this: - In 2600 coding you often don't need a stack, so you can use 'S' as a temp register. Very useful in the display kernel. - The 2600 has a standard parallel port chip. There are configuration registers (e.g., port direction) that can be temporarily hijacked as RAM, when you don't care about input or output (which you generally only sample once a frame). That's a whole 8 more bits of RAM, not to be sneezed at. One of my cow-orkers at Atari decided that he'd try to learn 2600 programming (he was mostly doing Atari Home Computer stuff). Over three or four months I saw him go through what I can only describe as deterioration and utter discouragement. The people who could get even an awful game out of the 2600 were pretty damned good hackers.