About Galaxian

Technically minded observers may notice that that this game displays 8 multicolored enemies on the same horizontal line, 35 enemies total, the player and the player's 'missile' all on-screen at the same time without any flickering. That is, on a real 2600, most emulators don't display this game properly. At this time in Atari 2600 development, it was the consensus that any more than 4 moving multicolored sprites was not possible without flicker or 'venetian blinds' type effects. Mark Ackerman figured out away to 'freak out the graphics chip by strobing the registers in exactly the right order at the right times.' So unique was his technique that he was granted a US patent.

In recent times programmers have been able to coax out of the 2600 hardware, 11 sprites per line and 48 total moving objects.