Ok, this sounds like one of the coolest competitions EVER. This brings back so many memories of designing games on paper when I was like 12 or something…

“You guys having fun?” asked Carol T. Chung, 23, with the faintest smirk. The combatants didn’t answer, but they didn’t have to. All around them, other groups of young programmers with team names like Flashsmack, G Bunch and Pixel Pirates were racing a deadline to see which team could create the most fun.

It was all part of Retro Redux, a competition last weekend at the Parsons School of Design in Greenwich Village that gave nine teams of aspiring designers a mere 24 hours to create complete games based on the Atari 2600, the classic 1978 console that helped spawn iconic titles like “Asteroids,” “Centipede” and “Pong.” In today’s nostalgia-drenched media culture, it should come as no surprise that Atari has recently revived the 2600 as part of a game system called, aptly enough, the Atari Flashback, which is pitched at 30-somethings hungry for a taste of their childhood.”

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