What does ASP mean in GAMING

ASP stands for Atari Software Pirates. It was a group of people and organizations that created and distributed modified Atari game software.

ASP began in the early days of video game culture in the 1980s. They would often release game modifications which ranged from small graphical changes to significant alterations to gameplay mechanics.

The games were typically distributed through external memory cartridges called ‘burned' EPROMs, floppy disks or cassettes.

In addition to piracy, members also held competitions amongst themselves for creating arcade-style games. These competitions usually involved porting or programming an existing title without looking at any source code, leading to considerable technological innovation during this period.

Today, many successful developers point back to their roots with ASP as influential on their own creations; the original Commodore 64 title Elite was inspired by a pirate adaptation of Star Raiders released by ASP. This led to development practices such as sharing and collaborating on code which are still commonplace today within independent development circles.