Atari 2600 - 40 years - The Bear and Badger

[Deleted User]

poprock wrote:

Did anyone ever get the Art of Atari book that came out in the last couple of years? http://www.artofatari.com Looks ace.

I used to love all the artwork, when the graphics were awful and the juxtaposition between art and onscreen graphics was outrageous, positively dishonest yet simultaneously cool as fuck. Perhaps not as dishonest as saying there was a 112 games in one cartridge but it was all great when applied with the imagination of a small boy.

[Deleted User]

Box art galore.

Facewon

Dig dug. Great fucking game.

davyK

In retro circles Dig Dig on 2600 is widely considered among the finest arcade ports ever made taking into consideration the humble platform.

Many arcade ports on 2600 only shared a passing resemblance to the original arcade game but the alchemy of Atari's developers was such that once you started playing any shortcomings usually fell away and the games had that intangible quality - you just kept playing. They recreated the feeling you got when playing the original. Controls were always responsive and the difficulty curve was expertly plotted. The ludicrous claim on the packaging of how many games were on the cart was really only indicating the depth of the selectable options which, especially in earlier games, very cleverly and subtlety extended the gameplay value of the original idea. The console's diff switch A and B settings usually introduced further options on top of that.

In the vast majority of cases where there are game variations, the default game no. 1 was usually not the best option on the cartridge. Yars' Revenge is a case in point. Game 1 is excellent - but there are options on the cart that add in hazards and further depth that make the game even better. Exploring an Atari game without the manual isn't recommended.

JonB

We didn't have manuals when I played it. I remember sitting next to the console flicking the little switch to cycle through the game modes on a cartridge. Space Invaders would have about 20 modes that looked identical, followed by 20 modes where the shields/bases moved, and so on. Picking one at random and playing spot the difference was a game in itself.

davyK

Did you know if you held down select and reset it cycled through the option numbers faster?

Was a handy wee feature that - saved wear and tear on the game select toggle. Asteroids had 66 variations. The one my bro and I played a lot was variation 39 - 2 players - faster asteroids - 1up at 20K - hyperspace. Burned into my brain that is.

A lot of manuals laid all the options out in a game matrix - they were pleasing to the eye (well, mine at any rate).

Here's the game matrix for Space War - which was basically Combat set in space with 2 asteroids ships battling. Was a nice game too - forgot about that one.

Game variations 8-17 were a more gentle game which gave you a target you had to dock with by matching its speed and direction against a time limit. This was another one my father liked to play as it was a more thoughtful game that didn't rely on fast reactions.

Skondo

Can someone tell me what the big issue was with Pac-Man? I know it looked nothing like the arcade version, but as I had never seen the arcade version, I thought it was great. Were there some fundamental problems with it?

poprock

I think Pac-Man was only roughly coded as a proof of concept. The programmer submitted it to Atari in the hopes they would commission a proper port of it for the 2600, but instead they released it as-is. Massively pissed off the coder, but he was on the proper royalty payment schedule so did very well out of it in the end. Later games like Ms Pac-Man were properly put together and far superior.

Skondo

I see. I have a 7800 in the loft and I have Ms Pacman for that. It's good fun, but I can't remember the last time I played it. Worst thing about the 7800 is the awful joystick/gamepad.

retroking1981

Skondo wrote:

Can someone tell me what the big issue was with Pac-Man? I know it looked nothing like the arcade version, but as I had never seen the arcade version, I thought it was great. Were there some fundamental problems with it?

Same, I loved it.

davyK

If 2600 Pacman had been released as an original game and the arcade game didn't exist it would have been considered a pretty good game. It did flicker like buggery though. The sound and colour scheme were awful. A lot of people complained that the maze layout and colour scheme wasn't accurate. I wasn't a huge fan of the arcade game so I didn't really care about that.

There was a policy restricting the use of black backgrounds at Atari - colour was promoted which was one of the 2600's strengths - it does have a very pleasing pallette. But it resulted in some pretty garish looking games on occasion.

davyK

Skondo wrote:

I see. I have a 7800 in the loft and I have Ms Pacman for that. It's good fun, but I can't remember the last time I played it. Worst thing about the 7800 is the awful joystick/gamepad.

The 7800 has 2 versions of the controller. I have the NES style controllers which work fine. The other version has a joystick with buttons on the side that is notoriously unpopular. 7800 plays all 2600 games which is a big bonus but the best thing about the model I have is that is has Asteroids built into the console. It's a damn good port of the game too with some nice 2 player co-op and versus modes.

nick_md

I used to use a MD pad on my 2600.

davyK

Ghetto video of me demonstrating the gentle art of manipulating the 1000pt extra bucket rule to score 10,000 pts in Kaboom while minimising time spent playing at the game's top speed. My camera does not get on with my CRT at all here - there's no wavy lines or an other interference visible in reality.

Skondo

davyK wrote:

Skondo wrote:

I see. I have a 7800 in the loft and I have Ms Pacman for that. It's good fun, but I can't remember the last time I played it. Worst thing about the 7800 is the awful joystick/gamepad.

The 7800 has 2 versions of the controller. I have the NES style controllers which work fine. The other version has a joystick with buttons on the side that is notoriously unpopular. 7800 plays all 2600 games which is a big bonus but the best thing about the model I have is that is has Asteroids built into the console. It's a damn good port of the game too with some nice 2 player co-op and versus modes.

That is the version I have.

Mal0wner

It's half term this week and I'm at home with my 7 year old son today. Thanks to this thread I've got my 2600 Jr out of the loft and he is having a gaming history lesson. I was never allowed an Atari as a kid but played loads on a friend's one. I got mine in a car boot sale quite a few years back with no power supply or controllers so I have to use a ZX Spectrum PSU and Kempston joysticks. So far we've played Centipede, Superman (couldn't remember what to do in that), Yars' Revenge, Space Invaders, Ms Pac Man, Air Sea Battle, Combat, Phoenix and Adventure. Combat went down well with my son especially the dog fights.He wasn't so impressed by my killer bullet steering skills with the tanks. Adventure is still my favourite, I might have to go in search of the Easter egg later.

Diluted Dante

Speccy PSU works, good to know.

cockbeard

Back then everything had a round power socket so those switchable voltage power supplies with a bunch of different sized plugs would fit almost everything

Olimite

One of my faves. Would love to know how this would play now..

Mal0wner

I've got circus but I think it might need the paddle controllers which I don't have. All of the games look pretty rough on my modern TV. There's a small CRT in the loft which I could get down but the Atari has been abandoned now and we're back on the WiiU.

Olimite

Yeah it did need paddles.

davyK

Circus Atari is a great old twitch game. I didn't play it back in the day as it struck me as a Breakout clone but I picked up the cart a few years ago and it's different enough to be interesting. It can become lightning fast and is a pretty stiff challenge.

It's a pity Atari didn't at least try to make the balloons a little less square though.

Notice how the different numbers at the top of the screen are slightly out of line? They are drawing different digits every other scan line as they couldn't code it to draw all 6 digits per line - so they had to draw half of them on each scanline. Think that trick was called the window blind technique. It was used to draw the board on Video Chess too.

Later games feature score displays that support more digits without using that technique. Activision developed it too but no-one seemed to be able to code a score display that was more than 6 digits long so scores rolled at 999999.

Some Activision games such as Kaboom, Megamania etc actually stopped at 999999 - some displayed six exclaimation marks !!!!!!

A 2600 needs paddles and a CRT.

davyK

Diluted Dante wrote:

Speccy PSU works, good to know.

Any 9V power adaptor with the right connector will do. Haven't had an official Atari one for years. You can get one of those adaptors that has adjustable output and different connector heads for pretty cheap now.

davyK

I can just about remember these old ads featuring Morecambe and Wise

Wariospeedwagon

Great memories of the system! Dad bought it for us after our Commodore 64 bit the dust. This must have been in the late 80's so it was a newer, sleeker model than the original. It seemed really modern compared to our C64 with its cassette drive. We only ever owned a few compilation tapes with like 50 knock off games on them too, so there was a pretty fair difference in the quality of games on it for us as well.

Remember Dad getting obsessed with a flight sim called Radar Lock. It was pretty advanced for an Atari game, in fact you needed 2 joysticks plugged in to play it properly. It was strange to see him getting so into it as he was (and still is) more of an outdoorsman and had no truck with computers, games or any of that sort of thing.

One Saturday night he was having a decent session on it. It was getting late and I was sleepy, and getting sick of seeing him die on level 3 or whatever. I went to bed while he stayed up plugging away.

I woke up a couple of hours later to the sound of the cartridge being pulled out of the machine (it made a really loud, sustained beep when you pulled out a cart without turning it off first), then a stomping/smashing noise and a procession of swear words. I came back out to the lounge room and Dad was standing over the smashed up Radar Lock cartridge. He was still fuming mad but I think embarrassment overcame him pretty quickly, lol. He didn't play much of anything after that.

davyK wrote:

@Facewon... HERO was one of he greats. Pretty tough after the first few levels - technically very strong too. Wouldn't take much of a brush up to be a nice mobile game nowadays.

Reckon it was my favourite! Sprang to mind immediately, at least. Pretty complex for a game of its time with the variety of enemies, different routes through the levels, management of explosives etc

davyK

Some great stories here. "Dad play" seems to be a repeating theme too.

I suppose our Dad's were our age then or maybe younger so it shouldn't be all that surprising; especially considering video games were very much a new thing then.

Family play. The Wii brought that back for short time.

retroking1981

My Dad loved Combat, not quite as much as Gunslinger on the Oddeysey2/Phillips Video pack G7000 though, which we borrowed off my cousin.

It was borrowing that that led my parents into picking up the Atari for me.

davyK

retroking1981 wrote:

My Dad loved Combat, not quite as much as Gunslinger on the Oddeysey2/Phillips Video pack G7000 though, which we borrowed off my cousin. It was borrowing that that led my parents into picking up the Atari for me.

The 2600 had Outlaw which was probably a similar game. I remember an old arcade game called Boot HIll that was a 1 on 1 gunfight. It even drew little graves on the hillside that was a painted scene behind a piece of glass onto which the monitor was reflected. I rememebr seeing one of them and it had a 2nd screen on the top so a crowd could watch.

Didn't play Outlaw back in the day on the 2600 - I didn't like the look of it as the characters seemed too big but it was a very popular game it seems.

There's a nice homebrew 2600 game called Gunfight which is an update of that. Even has a dodgy rendering of a Johnny Cash song. You need two hits to score a kill; the first hit knocks your hat off.

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