Racing the BeamAtari 2600 Programming from Scratch

78 hands-on lessons taking you from absolute beginner to homebrew game developer

🕹️

Learn by Doing

Every lesson includes buildable assembly code that runs in the Stella emulator. Type it, build it, see it on screen.

💾

Start with number systems and end with complete playable games — Pong, Breakout, Maze Explorer, and your own creation.

⚡

Carefully sequenced curriculum covering CPU, graphics, sound, game logic, kernel design, and advanced techniques.

🔧

Everything you build can run on actual Atari 2600 hardware. Learn to build your own cartridge in Lesson 64.

Part	Topic	Lessons	What You'll Learn
0	Foundations	01–03	Number systems, Stella debugger, 2600 architecture
1	The 6502 CPU	04–11	Registers, arithmetic, branches, stack, bitwise, addressing
2	TV & TIA	12–18	NTSC frame, colors, timing, cycle counting, beam racing
3	Playfield	19–24	PF registers, asymmetric, animation, data-driven, multicolor
4	Sprites	25–34	Players, positioning, movement, missiles, animation, controllers
5	Sound	35–37	Sound effects, music, audio engine design
6	Game Dev	38–47	Collision, scoring, game states, AI, debugging, tools
7	Kernel Mastery	48–55	Kernel types, scrolling, visual effects, design patterns
8	Advanced	56–65	Bankswitching, illegal opcodes, DPC+, compression, cartridge building
9	DSL Path	66–68	batari BASIC analysis, automatable patterns, kernel architecture
10	Capstones	69–72	Pong, Breakout, Maze Explorer, your own game
11	Legendary Techniques 🔮	73–78	Cosmic Ark starfield, skipdraw, pseudo-3D road, procedural worlds, interlaced flicker, Adventure engine (coming soon)