Programming language: assembly for the 6502 microprocessor. In practice, the microprocessor was a 6507 (a cheaper version of the 6502, just for the console).
Screen resolution: 160 x 192 pixels. You can't use all those pixels at the same time. Only 2 sprites 8 pixels wide, 2 missiles 1 pixel wide each, and a 1 pixel wide "ball". That, and a low (even lower) resolution background is all you have to make a game.
128 bytes of RAM (just 128, not 128 Kb nor 128 Mb...). To make matters worse, RAM space is shared between user variables and the stack. The variables use the beginning of the RAM, and the stack the end, and care must be taken that they do not overlap. Yes, you have to take the stack into account when doing calculations, subroutine calls, etc.
No video memory. You need to draw every pixel, line by line, frame by frame, according to the TV electron beam position.
4 kb of ROM space for the game program.
Super challenging programming skills are required, making smart use of every CPU cycle in the right moment.
Clone repository on Windows. Execute compile.bat, it will regenerate plane.bin file, wich is the ROM of the game. This can be burned in a real eeprom cartridge or used with an emulator.
Execute run.bat to launch the game on Stella emulator.
DASM Assembler and Stella emulator are included in the repository.
