Just to prove that the most ancient of game consoles never die, Atari Age has revealed that a new Basic-style programming language has been released... for the Atari 2600!

The front page of the site explains: "After 18 months of development, Fred Quimby has announced the official release of batari Basic! Aside from enhanced stability and flexibility, this release introduces many new features that should help programmers write better games. batari Basic (bB) is a BASIC-like language for creating Atari 2600 games."

What's more: "It is a compiled language and the compiler runs on a computer, but it creates a binary file that can be run on an Atari 2600 emulator or used to make a cartridge that will operate on a real Atari 2600. Versions are available for Windows/MS-DOS, Mac OS X, and Linux. To learn more please visit the new batari Basic website, and you can discuss this new version in our batari Basic Forum."