Cannonball (Atari, prototype)

Arcade Video game published 48 years ago:

Cannonball (c) 1976 Atari.

- TECHNICAL -

Main CPU : M6800 (@ 756 Khz)

Players: 1
Buttons: 2

- TRIVIA -

Cannonball was Owen Rubin's first game at Atari. It is not known for sure if this game was ever produced, as there is no documentation or flyers of the game that have surfaced. Owen Rubin seems to think that maybe it WAS produced; however, he is unsure.

Owen wrote Cannonball while sitting in his small office at a Model 33 teletype connected to a Motorola MicBug 6800 processor, both of which were connected to simple videogame hardware. He hand-assembled the entire program--it was only 2K, but still took several months--including self-test, saving the code on punched paper tape. When his boss reviewed the game and asked for code listings, Owen said, 'What listings?' It turns out that Owen didn't know about the two computer operators, who took the listings that the designers/programmers wrote up, typed them into the PDP-1 computers, ran them to make sure they were error-free, then return a paper tape to the designer.

- STAFF -

Designed & Programmed by: Owen Rubin

- PORTS -

* CONSOLES: