Code Mystics Inc.

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For the first entry into our Graveyard series, we'll start with the earliest of our prototypes never to see the light of day...

It's no secret that we've long been fans of classic '80s gaming. Our crew got started in the industry as the creators of Digital Eclipse's Emulation Technology, and even before that our founder, Jeff Vavasour, had created an Atari 2600 emulator for MS-DOS back in 1993. When we first formed Code Mystics, one of our primary focuses was the Nintendo DS. So it seemed a natural choice to marry these two interests and create an Atari 2600 emulator for the Nintendo DS.

We chose the Activision games for our prototype, and all 45 games that appeared in Activision Hits Remixed developed by Digital Eclipse in 2006 were replicated in this package. The games were completely playable, though there was no user interface so you used the shoulder buttons to step through the list of ROMs.

Getting an Atari 2600 emulator running on the Nintendo DS at full speed was quite the technological accomplishment. Even though the Nintendo DS is way more powerful than the Atari 2600, an emulator works by interpreting the original game code on the fly, machine instruction by machine instruction, and replicating what the original machine would do. This requires a lot of processing overhead to translate the Atari 2600 hardware's "alien" way of doing things as compared to the way the Nintendo DS worked. Our hope was to have a technical demo to show off our prowess, and also get Activision excited about the prospect of bringing this fan favourite to the DS.

When the prototype was ready, we approached Activision, but were unable to get them interested in publishing the collection (proposed for both DS and Wii, with a series of extra features planned). Nonetheless, we took it with us to Game Connection 2010 in San Francisco, where it was part of our portfolio we used to show our skills to potential clients there. One meeting we had at Game Connection was with Atari, and as luck should have it, this is exactly the sort of thing they were looking for to fill their 2010 release calendar. So, the Activision ROMs were swapped out for Atari ROMs, and the games we had previously done for Atari in a web browser were refitted, expanded upon and polished for the Nintendo DS, and Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 and Volume 2 were born!

To make for an even happier ending, Code Mystics was eventually able to work with Activision to bring these very same Activision Anthology games to iOS and Android in 2012!

As for the DS, we're immensely pleased with how the two Atari Greatest Hits volumes turned out, though it sure would've been nice to put an Activision Anthology DS box on the shelf of honour next to those two...