Television Interface Adaptor
![Atari 2600](/Images/godic/202502/15/Atari-2600-Wood-4Sw-Set3816.jpg")
![On the Atari 2600, multicolor sprites – such as the duck in the 2010 homebrew game Duck Attack! – are possible, but only one color per horizontal scanline per sprite is typically available.](/Images/godic/202502/15/DuckAttackBrownDuck3816.png")
The Television Interface Adaptor (TIA) is the custom computer chip that is the heart of the Atari 2600 game console, generating the screen display, sound effects, and reading input controllers. Its design was widely affected by an attempt to reduce the amount of RAM needed to operate the display. The resulting design is notoriously difficult to program, an ongoing challenge for developers.