Case study

Berzerk: a commented Atari 2600 disassembly

Berzerk for the Atari 2600 (Atari, 1982) is reconstructed as a labeled, commented 6502 assembly listing that assembles to the exact original ROM image, with a switch for the NTSC or PAL build. The notes cover the game's sprite-drawing technique, PAL frame-delay values set at 1.2 times the NTSC ones, unused diagonal robot-fire values left in the ROM, unused RAM and the roughly 12-second launch of Evil Otto.

Targets: Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-09

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Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Assembling requires vcs.h version 105 or greater and macro.h.
Limits: The author notes that some flags and RAM overlays may be misidentified.
License: No licence stated on the project page.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{berzerk-atari-2600-disassembly-case,
  title = {{Berzerk: a commented Atari 2600 disassembly}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://www.qotile.net/minidig/disassembly/berzerk.asm}},
  url = {https://www.qotile.net/minidig/disassembly/berzerk.asm},
  urldate = {2026-11-09},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/berzerk-atari-2600-disassembly-case/}}
}

Plain text

Berzerk: a commented Atari 2600 disassembly. https://www.qotile.net/minidig/disassembly/berzerk.asm (accessed 2026-11-09). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/berzerk-atari-2600-disassembly-case/

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About this entry

The description was reviewed against primary sources.

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Primary sources

https://web.archive.org/web/20260501205549/https://www.qotile.net/minidig/disassembly/berzerk.asm