I Tried To Crack "River Raid" Game In The Stella Emulator!

About this video

What if you could make the airplane in River Raid invincible, flying forever, through every ship, bridge, and wall? In this video I crack the classic Atari 2600 game River Raid using the Stella emulator, and along the way you’ll learn how this legendary console actually works under the hood. No prior assembly knowledge needed, I explain everything step by step. This is reverse engineering for beginners, using a nostalgic 80s game as our playground. 🛩️ 🧠 What you’ll learn in this video: How the Atari 2600 works — the 6507 CPU (a simplified 6502), the TIA graphics/sound chip, and the RIOT chip How the Atari displays games using just 6 hardware sprites (P0, P1, missiles, ball, playfield) How collisions are detected in hardware, not software — the TIA collision registers and CXPPMM How to use the Stella debugger: Debug Colors, conditional breakpoints, trap writes, and stepping frame by frame Reading 6507 assembly and understanding BIT, BPL, DEC, and the all-powerful NOP (EA) How to patch a game: removing collisions and giving the plane infinite fuel by editing the binary