Just finished the final debugging of a 2k game for the Atari 2600
http://www.romhacking.net/homebrew/63/2k Atari 2600 games are a challenge within a challenge. You could compare it to writing a haiku with only three letter words. The original Pac-Man was twice the size and desperately needed more to compare favorably with its arcade counterpart. In short, on a system with extremely limited resources, this is the most limited any commercial game attempted.
Tornado Blast uses a stripped down batari BASIC kernel modified by Atarius Maximus for his own 2k game "Gate Racer". By experimenting with what features were still available I determined a straightforward driving/avoidance game was possible. I used playfield "blocks" as the main obstacles (i.e. debris and road boundaries).
The tornado sprite is actually a trick to save space. It's actually the lower part of the S and T from the title screen graphic. Using the same graphic is an age old technique that can be seen even in more modern games like Goldeneye for the N64. In that game the trigger sight texture is also used in the wooden barrel graphic.
The Atari 2600 hardware provides different sizes, colors and horizontal copies of sprites virtually for free. All this combines for many, many different enemy truck types.
Sound is produced by two similar routines that alter their character by how long they are run. By combining one or two of these and varying the length we get explosions, laser blasts and other sound effects.
As you can tell developing in 2k is more about what clever strategies you can make a game out of. This differs from coming up with a game first and using clever strategies in service of a concept. This is how most developers approached the 2600 in its hayday - figure out a neat trick and wrap a game around it!
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