Atari 2600 Cloud Gaming Experience | 'Nearly-Complete' Gaming Experience on Server Hosting Everything Including Video Rendering

Urian B., Tech Times 30 July 2021, 04:07 am

Ever imagined the Atari 2600 used for Cloud gaming? While the Google Stadia might actually be the latest in the whole realm of cloud gaming, there are reportedly still a lot of other ways in order to try out new styles of gameplay. This is especially true for those that want to go wild and retro.

Atari 2600 Project for Kubernetes

According to Hackaday, there is a project they gave as an example that took the Atari 2600 into the cloud in order to provide an almost complete gaming experience! How complete? Well, let's just say that it was fully hosted in a server which even included the video rendering itself!

Michael Kohn reportedly created this particular project mostly as a way in order to get more familiar with Kubernetes. For those that don't know what Kubernetes is, it is a piece of open-source software which can be used to help automate and deploy container-based applications.

Raspberry Pi 4s Used in Project

As seen from Mike Kohn, the setup ran on two different Raspberry Pi 4s which can easily be accessed through pointing a browser at its correct IP address on his network. This can also be done by connecting to them through the VNC. There have also been other cases of Raspberry Pi emulators for retro gaming as well.

From there, the emulator runs a specific game that is known as Space Revenge which was chosen mainly for its memory requirements as well as its lack of other encumbrance of copyrights. Also, there are a number of reported limitations in the emulator that he was using that does not really implement all of the different Atari controls.

Cloud Retro Gaming Experience

The sound also was not available through the use of the remote desktop setup. However, the whole project still remains pretty impressive nonetheless. Michael had also glossed over that particular part. Of course, Raspberry Pi isn't just used for gaming, there are also a lot of other Raspberry Pi coding projects that can be done with the small computer.

The Atari emulator, however, was written by him as quickly as he could in order for him to focus more on the Kubernetes setup. This is impressive in its own right and Michael also goes beyond this in order to show exactly how he was able to set up the whole cloud-based system on his own GitHub page as well.

He also reportedly thought that there's potential for a system just like that to run an NES setup as well. The article by Hackaday noted that for those that are looking for something that might be a little more modern, however, it is still potentially possible to set up a whole cloud-based gaming system through the use of the Nintendo Switch as well.