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Hello again everyone, and welcome to another edition of Pure Imagination! This week?s edition is another title for the Atari 2600. I use the phrase ?title? as opposed to ?game?, because even going as far back as 1979, there for some reason was a desire to have video game consoles do things that video game consoles weren?t supposed do, such as rotate your tires, bake a cake, or do your taxes. While ?BASIC Programming? might not do any of those said tasks, it won?t exactly let you program in BASIC either, so no win, no loss. This is a unique title in the 2600 library, so on this edition of Pure Imagination, I will be discussing the box artwork, as well as the actual history and functionality of the cartridge.

In the mid to late 1970s, the microcomputer was starting to take off. With systems like the Apple II, TRS-80 and the TI 99 series of computers, it was a brand new and exciting time period with all kinds of technology finally being available to the general consumer for the first time, at an affordable price. At around the same time period, the home video game console market was also booming. Even though systems had been available for a few years already, it was the introduction of the Atari 2600 in 1977 that the business finally took off. So, with the two technologies being very similar, it made sense to at least attempt to combine the two technologies together. However, in most of the attempts, it was very much a failure.

In 1979, Atari had two interesting cartridges made, in which Atari had no initial intension of creating either. One of them was the game ?Video Chess?. This game was created because, as the story goes, a man from Florida supposedly sued Atari because the box for the Atari 2600 had a picture of a chess piece, and demanded a chess game be created. (At the time, it was assumed that the game of chess couldn?t be done on the system due to system limitations, but it was proven otherwise.) The other cartridge that was made was ?BASIC Programming?. Supposedly, this cartridge was made for a similar reason. Apparently, Atari was getting many complaints because, don?t forget: The Atari 2600 was originally called ?The Atari Video Computer System? in the beginning of it?s lifespan. Some of the public was stating that the name of the system was false, since computers are programmable, and the Atari 2600 wasn?t. Thus, ?BASIC Programming? was created to fill this void.

Let?s take a look at the boxart for this title. Needless to say, it looks very futuristic, as many Atari games of the era appear. You see what looks to be an astronaunt sans helmet, at some type of command center, that in a way, sort of reminds me of Homer Simpson?s desk at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, sans purple donut stains. One thing that I think is interesting is that the shirt the guy is wearing in the picture actually has a BASIC command in picture form, if you think about it too deeply. The colored arrows in a complete circle could represent the ?GOTO? command, possibly from the infamous ?Hello World? program that went into a continuous loop until stopped by the user. For some reason, I also cannot get past the neckline and the cuffs on the sleeves. They look so ?futuristic? that they look ?metalic?. They look quite uncomfortable, and you?d think that as time passes, that clothes would get more comfortable. (Just look at what people wear today when compared to 1979 and I think you?ll agree!)

Being a former radio DJ, for some reason, I just cannot get past the part of the circular dials and needles. For some reason, it looks like he could also be at some kind of radio station, controlling the sounds of disco in an intergalactic world. I could just see it now. ?This is WVCS, all funk, all the time!? Another thing that I think is interesting, is that my particular copy of the box shows that it is a ?special edition? version of the title. What makes it so dang special? Well, the fact that it says ?special edition? of course! No, nothing else. A few titles of that time frame (Video Chess and Backgammon, for a fact), had the same banner in the lower right corner. But, there was absolutely nothing different about the game titles, inside or outside, with the exception of the banner. At one point, it was assumed that the titles with the banner may have been the first copies of the titles with picture labels, however that has since been confirmed as incorrect. So, what exactly was the point? Sales gimmick? More than likely.

So, what is the content on the actual cartridge like? Let?s just put it this way. You could change the box art to an actual computer with an actual BASIC program on the screen, and it wouldn?t be any far off than the picture that is shown by default.?Like I said, if you expect to learn BASIC on this game, you?re quite mistaken. First off, the title uses the Atari Keyboard Controllers. For those that never saw them, they were a set of controllers with 12 keys on them. They would link together, to form a keyboard of 24 keys. Since there are 26 letters and 10 digits in the American alphabet, obviously, there is already an issue. The cartridge came with overlays that went over the keys with the various BASIC commands (or lack thereof) on them, as well as all of the letters and numbers. It?s on this overlay that we learn what that mysterious circle of arrows was on the box art. Its equivilent to a key such as ?Alt? or ?Function? and it changes which command you use when you press the button on the controller.

Another problem with the cartridge is something obvious: The lack of a lot of memory space. The RAM size of the Atari 2600 was only 128 bytes. (Yes, 128 bytes. Not gigabytes, nor megabytes, not even kilobytes.) So needless to say, you couldn?t expect much from it. A simple ?Pong? style game, sans sound, could have been created with this cartridge. In fact, the program listing was included in the manual. (Can you believe the program was only 6 lines long?) As well as a simple clock. But the question is, would it have been worth it to the average person?

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To most, probably not. The title was never a large success, however it saved Atari from the lawsuit that I talked about earlier. BASIC was the first programming that I personally ever learned. I got my first computer (an Apple ][+ system)?in 1990, long after the system was considered obsolete. (By that time, the IIGS in the Apple II line was the ultimate.) I couldn't just go to a store and buy software for the system at that point. So, what did I do? I tapped into the program listings, learned what each command did, and started writing my own software. I remember the first time I used commands like "IF...THEN", "INPUT" and "GOSUB". Any true computer user of the 70s and 80s knows what those commands do for a program. Needless to say, you didn't get nearly as many commands with the Atari 2600 "BASIC Programming". But if nothing else, you have to give the programmer credit: It was an interesting experiment for lack of a better term. At least Atari didn't go full blast with the keyboard controllers, and make a full keyboard like what was made for the Intellivision. At least the keyboard controllers were also compatible with "Star Raiders" and the childrens games that use the Kid's Controllers. So, you got SOMETHING out of this, right?

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