{"id":4129,"date":"2014-11-30T15:27:11","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T20:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/?p=4129"},"modified":"2014-11-30T15:27:11","modified_gmt":"2014-11-30T20:27:11","slug":"a-great-platform-studies-answer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/2014\/11\/a-great-platform-studies-answer\/","title":{"rendered":"A Great Platform Studies Answer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/explainlikeimfive\/comments\/2nu9py\/eli5how_were_graphics_able_to_improve_on_consoles\/cmgy46k\">To how software keeps getting better and graphics get better-looking on the same old consoles.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Note that for the <a href=http:\/\/mitpress.mit.edu\/books\/racing-beam\"\">Atari VCS \/ Atari 2600,<\/a> only answers #3 and #4 apply, since developers didn&#8217;t use &#8220;engines&#8221; or even compilers, instead writing their code in assembly langauge. (Presumably the assemblers didn&#8217;t improve much over the years.) Also, the VCS had no firmware, flashable or otherwise; although refined versions of the hardware were produced over the years, such as the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Atari_2600#Atari_2600_Jr.\">Atari 2600 Jr.,<\/a> such systems were optimized for cheaper manufacturing and didn&#8217;t improve performance.<\/p>\n<p>Still, there are important continuities between the answer to this question for the VCS and for modern-day consoles. And the answer is not obvious, since companies and the press usually emphasize the improvements in hardware that are made between generations of a console.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To how software keeps getting better and graphics get better-looking on the same old consoles. Note that for the Atari VCS \/ Atari 2600, only answers #3 and #4 apply, since developers didn&#8217;t use &#8220;engines&#8221; or even compilers, instead writing their code in assembly langauge. (Presumably the assemblers didn&#8217;t improve much over the years.) Also, &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/2014\/11\/a-great-platform-studies-answer\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;A Great Platform Studies Answer&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[147,99,11,23,10,15],"class_list":["post-4129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-atari-vcs","tag-console","tag-games","tag-hardware","tag-platforms","tag-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4129"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4134,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4129\/revisions\/4134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nickm.com\/post\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}