S 4 LVE: shareable videogame analysis and visualization

We describe a new browser-based tool for analyzing the behavior of computational systems, with worked examples for the Atari 2600. Our tool, S4LVE (System State Sequence Search Language and Visualization Environment), consists of three main parts. First, we define a domain-specific visualization language tailored for understanding low-level memory operations. Second, we leverage a discrete time-series pattern matching language inspired by regular expressions to capture states and memory locations of interest. Third, we integrate these little languages with an intuitive, spreadsheet-based visual interface juxtaposed with a live emulator. This combined system supports both the incremental exploration of complex emergent systems and rapid iteration on new visualizations.