Steven Hugg has released something nice for Christmas: The book Making Games for the Atari 2600, which is available as a paperback via Amazon.

 

The book targets the absolute beginner and builds up the required knowledge step by step. It is very well written and structured, with plenty of illustrations. Starting with the basics of the 6502, assembly language, the VCS, and TV hardware, you gain more and more insight into coding for the Atari 2600. And because the best way to learn to code is not to read about it but to do it, the author also provided a very lovely WebIDE where you can play around with the source code in your browser and run it immediately in the browser-based emulator called JAVATARI.JS. The WebIDE is available for free at http://8bitworkshop.com.

I'm pleased to see this book and hope it attracts more people to coding for the Atari 2600 by lowering the barriers to getting started even further. And once you have become familiar with coding for the VCS, WUDSN IDE can manage more complex projects with multiple files, including graphics conversions, and leverage Stella and its excellent debugger. So I look forward to seeing your first Atari VCS project come alive!