Dark Mage, programmed by Greg Troutman long after the console lost commercial support, manages to fit a Zork-style conversational adventure into a 2600 cartridge, with the joystick as the only interaction method: the four directions for moving and the button for confirming. The story puts the player in the shoes of a royal jester expelled by King Roland after a drunken incident, who has to recover the Kingdom's Black Rose, stolen by the sorcerer Neonore. It's a standout piece of the Atari 2600 homebrew scene: it shows just how far today's programmers keep pushing the technical limits of hardware over 40 years old, taking it into genres — like the text adventure — that the console barely explored during its commercial life.
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