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there were a lot of crappy 2600 games because Atari had no way to control who published 2600 games, unlike NES and other consoles that followed.

The 2600 isn't as limiting as you might think. Modern homebrewers are pulling off amazing feats, including NES style games.

there were a lot of crappy 2600 games because Atari had no way to control who published 2600 games, unlike NES and other consoles that followed.

The 2600 isn't as limiting as you might think. Modern homebrewers are pulling off amazing feats, including NES style games.

Say what you want about the Atari 2600 version of Pac-man -- while okay, just wasn't pac-man. (Not because of the limitations of the system, see this homebrew 4k Pac-man done right.

E.T., on the other hand is an excellent game. It's a complex and involved adventure that is challenging without being frustrating and extraordinarily well developed. The controls are very responsive, collision detection is pixel-perfect, and the NPC sprites are bright and colorful. As an added bonus, the game is loaded with secrets to find.

If there is any flaw in the game at all, I haven't found it. The only change I would make would be to OR CXP0FB and CXPPMM against 0x40 a scanline before completing drawing E.T. so that you could walk "in front" of the wells and baddies. (I'd bet this one change would have turned the so-called "worst game ever" into a "top 10 best")

A few links for the uninformed:
http://www.randomterrain.com/atari-2600-memories-et.html
http://2600connection.atari.org/et.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsF7q_hA6Z8
Best quote from the above link: "If you can't get out of the wells, you suck at video games"

Since you likely lost the manual more than 25 ago, check out this "How to beat home video games" tutorial:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-pzdPLfy9Y

(Then again, I am somewhat of a defender (no pun intended) of Pac Man on the 2600, due to the hardware limitations.)

You really shouldn't be. It was thrown together and slapdash. The 2600 was capable of a better Pac-Man and several homebrewers have proved it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOHGz5f5Hmg

That one is the original 4k codebase of A2600 Pac-Man expanded to 8k. The maze is the same but the colors, sounds, and animations are improved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-TdtJ2_ggY

This one is Ms. Pac-Man hacked into Pac-Man. Ms. Pac-Man itself was proof Pac-Man could have been better.
http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=1022

No video for this one. This was a 2600 Pac-Man done from scratch in 99 and is very hard to find.
Incidentally, the youtube videos are unkind in that they don't capture flickering sprites well. The objects don't disappear like that in actual play.I took it for granted Defender had to suck on the 2600 until I saw Defender II (Stargate):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKac14skeSA

I'm not saying it wasn't a very limited console; it was. But with more ram and rom in the carts and talented developers it was capable of more than commonly supposed.

I'm wondering what they can do if given some extra bytes."

If they use bankswitching, maybe they can pull off Asteroids

Some of the 2600 games does show actual screen shot at the back of the box. http://www.atariage.com/box_page.html?SystemID=2600&SoftwareID=993&BoxStyleID=10&ItemTypeID=BOX

There are too many 2600s in existence for the console itself to be worth anything in our lifetimes. And new hardware is still being produced. Although, if you have any funny looking T-shaped cartridges, you might be in luck.

If I were you, I'd take it out and play it. Now is a great time to enjoy 2600 gaming, as there's a flash cart that will play every 2600 game (even supercharger!) for the price of 1 or 2 carts back in the day.

Sorry to break it to you, but classic gaming *was* 8-directional on-or-off with clicks. Actually that's pretty exactly what I'm looking for.

As for Joust and Gyruss, I have no idea what you're talking about, we played both just fine with our standard Atari controllers.

Of course the best joystick was the Competition Pro (apart from The Arcade, obviously), but the remake has shitty switches and even manages to have so much latency that it's impossible to use.

A product I recently heard of (haven't tested myself, bought the speedlink competition pros); basically an adapter for atari compatible joysticks http://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=267. So just dust of the good old grenade joystick from the attic, bring it down to the basement where you live and let the games begin.

p.s. The competition pro clones are alright for the occasional SWOS-match, a bit clunky compared to the working order original but that may pass with time.

I dare you to show me any kind of electronic record from more than 30 years ago.

There's a bunch of them right here.

The Atari Jaguar, obviously. Anyone is legally free to develop for it.

You're not missing much. This is a poor clone of the game. It LOOKS good but plays horrible (compared to the arcade original). The ghosts are stupid (run in circles instead of after you), the maze has tunnels that don't match up creating dead ends, and the ghosts stay blue forever. I didn't think it possible but it appears somebody programmed a worse game than Atari Pac-Man (which looks crap but is fun to play):

Atari 2600 (1977) - http://reparent.blog.uvm.edu/images/Atari%20Pacman.gif

"Marketing pressed Programmer Tod Frye to produce the game on a very strict timetable. Atari engineering would demand Frye complete the game in the standard 4K ROM, despite his repeated requests that 8K of ROM be allocated. Confined by time and available memory, Frye proposed the unthinkable. He approached Atari CEO Ray Kassar, and suggested a royalty agreement. Frye threatened to quit Atari and join Activision, leaving Pac-Man unfinished and Atari without its benchmark title." Also Frye said he hated Pac-Man and thought it was a dumb game.

Later variants were better:

Ms. PacMan - http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=320
Jr. PacMan - http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=254
PacMan Arcade http://www.atariage.com/2600/hacks/screenshots/s_MrPacMan_Hack_1.png

You're not missing much. This is a poor clone of the game. It LOOKS good but plays horrible (compared to the arcade original). The ghosts are stupid (run in circles instead of after you), the maze has tunnels that don't match up creating dead ends, and the ghosts stay blue forever. I didn't think it possible but it appears somebody programmed a worse game than Atari Pac-Man (which looks crap but is fun to play):

Atari 2600 (1977) - http://reparent.blog.uvm.edu/images/Atari%20Pacman.gif

"Marketing pressed Programmer Tod Frye to produce the game on a very strict timetable. Atari engineering would demand Frye complete the game in the standard 4K ROM, despite his repeated requests that 8K of ROM be allocated. Confined by time and available memory, Frye proposed the unthinkable. He approached Atari CEO Ray Kassar, and suggested a royalty agreement. Frye threatened to quit Atari and join Activision, leaving Pac-Man unfinished and Atari without its benchmark title." Also Frye said he hated Pac-Man and thought it was a dumb game.

Later variants were better:

Ms. PacMan - http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=320
Jr. PacMan - http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=254
PacMan Arcade http://www.atariage.com/2600/hacks/screenshots/s_MrPacMan_Hack_1.png

You're not missing much. This is a poor clone of the game. It LOOKS good but plays horrible (compared to the arcade original). The ghosts are stupid (run in circles instead of after you), the maze has tunnels that don't match up creating dead ends, and the ghosts stay blue forever. I didn't think it possible but it appears somebody programmed a worse game than Atari Pac-Man (which looks crap but is fun to play):

Atari 2600 (1977) - http://reparent.blog.uvm.edu/images/Atari%20Pacman.gif

"Marketing pressed Programmer Tod Frye to produce the game on a very strict timetable. Atari engineering would demand Frye complete the game in the standard 4K ROM, despite his repeated requests that 8K of ROM be allocated. Confined by time and available memory, Frye proposed the unthinkable. He approached Atari CEO Ray Kassar, and suggested a royalty agreement. Frye threatened to quit Atari and join Activision, leaving Pac-Man unfinished and Atari without its benchmark title." Also Frye said he hated Pac-Man and thought it was a dumb game.

Later variants were better:

Ms. PacMan - http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=320
Jr. PacMan - http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=254
PacMan Arcade http://www.atariage.com/2600/hacks/screenshots/s_MrPacMan_Hack_1.png

You think that's bad, you should check out some of the collections at AtariAge. People who have a dozen spare 800XLs "just in case". I've got to say this shit is impressive. This too.

You think that's bad, you should check out some of the collections at AtariAge. People who have a dozen spare 800XLs "just in case". I've got to say this shit is impressive. This too.

You think that's bad, you should check out some of the collections at AtariAge. People who have a dozen spare 800XLs "just in case". I've got to say this shit is impressive. This too.

Yep, very easy. The Supercharger can even be modified to accept normal Atari 2600 games. Though at this point, it's much more convenient to just buy a Harmony cart.

The study is interesting enough, but they need to work on their visuals. The game's graphics barely compete with Stellar Fortress for the Atari 2600...

Well Atari had the JagLiNk http://www.atariage.com/controller_page.html?SystemID=JAGUAR&ControllerID=22 for the Jaguar that connect two Jaguars to play head to head. The story didn't say when the patent was originally given but the JagLink has been around since 1994?.

Hmm, I could see that, though the Atari VCS (aka Atari 2600) was a pretty popular platform. There's fan forums and such devoted to it. It seemed cool to me that someone finally wrote a good book on it, since it was pretty influential.

One of my personal interests in this era of gaming, which doesn't have a direct analog today, is the arcade->console adaptation route, and the technical, artistic, and gameplay challenges involved. I guess I've always known that such adaptations were common, but until recently I didn't really understand just how deeply such adaptations/ports were affected by the differences between special-purpose arcade hardware and generic and generally underpowered console hardware, and what sorts of heroic efforts porters went to to try to get something even vaguely like the cabinet to run on a home machine (sometimes in vain). That's probably the single thing I found most interesting about a recent book on the Atari VCS that opened my eyes on that. I'd read all sorts of stuff previously about the VCS (aka 2600) hardware, and different stuff about its cultural, business, and social role, but pulling the two together by looking at how the tech affects the culture and vice versa is really fascinating to me. I think ports are a particularly good lens to look at that through, because they focus sharply on how the tech affected what the designer could or couldn't do; the aforementioned book's examples of the disastrous Pac-Man port, on the one hand, and the unfaithful but interesting/successful adaptation of Star Castle into Yars' Revenge , on the other, are particularly thought-provoking.

So I really like that aspect of this article, tracing how Robotron was and wasn't successfully adapted to home machines, and which parts specifically of the arcade version survived the translation and were still compelling in the home version. Although we don't have nearly the same hardware limitations on home machines these days, I think we're in a way still struggling with similar issues about "what worked in the arcade, and how can we adapt it?"--- e.g. the discussion in this article of custom controllers to make the home version more authentic reminds me of our current era's custom controllers (Rock Band's peripherals being the best-selling). And, more broadly, we're trying to figure out whether platforms matter, and if so, how. The Wii has a compelling "what's different" angle for its platform, but is that a one-time, peripheral-only thing? Do the Xbox 360, PC, and PS3 have interesting differences going for them? Do physical arcade cabinets still matter?

More generally, I think it's one way of getting at a sort of design science that's still lacking for games, and I like how this article tries to break that down. Obviously much of game design is not really "science", but other design fields still do carefully analyze existing works, try to identify which elements specifically mattered, etc.; you might be doing something that's artistic/subjective in a lot of respects, but that doesn't mean you have to do it blind. I mean, if I want to learn architecture, there are a lot of books I can buy. I can buy a book specifically on the Bauhaus style, or some sub-style of it, or one particular architect's style. But, despite their huge role in popular culture, I can't buy a book about the design style of, say, Microprose 4X games, analyzing what elements they had in common or didn't, their relationship to other games of the era, how technical aspects influenced the design and vice versa, etc., etc. As a player, I can probably tell you some stuff off the top of my head, and I think there really is a book to be written there--- or an in-depth article on the internet if you can't interest a publisher--- but nobody's written it.

So I guess that's a long-winded way of saying: yes, more of this!

What you could or couldn't do on the platform was more or less defined but what you could or couldn't get its bizarre hardware to do. (There's an excellent recent book [amazon.com] that traces just how big an influence the Atari's odd hardware had on its game design, among other things.)

Then you will probably enjoy reading through some of the Atari 2600 programming tutorials. The hardware is so primitive, and some games go way beyond what anyone at the time thought would even be possible, it is simply amazing to learn about.

One most excellent one (My personal favorite), by Andrew Davie:
http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=33233
I would suggest skipping chapter 1 if you know of assembly. Either knowing enough to follow, or know about it and don't care, either way the fun starts in chapter 2 with a history of the TV, how TV CRTs function, and how the Atari and its software is so tied into the low level TV drawing functions. Chapter 3 is where the programming and hardware details begin.

The Atari 2600 had a 3d game called "Tunnel Runner". Think Wolfenstein with no nazis, guns, dogs, furnature or artwork... There was a ghost-thingie, though http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=2339

Apparently Curt Vendel and Atarimuseum.com deserve the real credit for this release.

it is not "code speak for pirates". Here's 61 homebrewed games in cartridge form for play on your Atari VCS/2600. My game Medieval Mayhem, an updated take on Warlords, is one of them. My other homebrew, Stay Frosty, was part of the 2007 Holiday Cart, Stella's Stocking.

it is not "code speak for pirates". Here's 61 homebrewed games in cartridge form for play on your Atari VCS/2600. My game Medieval Mayhem, an updated take on Warlords, is one of them. My other homebrew, Stay Frosty, was part of the 2007 Holiday Cart, Stella's Stocking.

I remember earning patches when you got over a certain high score and sent in a picture. I got the Laserblast one, which was pretty easy once you figured out the right pattern given the poor AI.

sorry to double post just wanted to throw a link in here related to my above post.

http://www.atariage.com/2600/archives/activision_patches.html

No, I'm arguing that just because something was popular and still has some fans doesn't automaticly mean that it'll make money today.

And P.S. chief, my younger siblings cut their teeth on Combat catridges, so save the "oh you just aren't old enough to appreciate it" crap. I've been around long enough to see this story more than once, especially in the video game arena.

Can you make money on a revival product for a old favorite? Hell yes. Is it a sure thing? Fuck no. And stop pretending it is simply because you want it to be.

Fans != sure money.

Jumping into a project "just because they fans demand it" is stupid thing to do. Start a project when you have something to put into it, not just to milk it for the last dregs of money you can. And a fan mod isn't "something to put into it".

Wolfenstein for the Atari 2600 kicks the Apple IIe version's butt.

http://www.atariage.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=824

From the AtariAge Homebrew forum I see Ballblazer, K.O. Cruiser, KITE!, Jack and the Beanstalk and others in progress.

The AtariAge Store currently has 61 homebrews available for purchase in cartridge form so you can play them on a real console.

From the AtariAge Homebrew forum I see Ballblazer, K.O. Cruiser, KITE!, Jack and the Beanstalk and others in progress.

The AtariAge Store currently has 61 homebrews available for purchase in cartridge form so you can play them on a real console.

From the AtariAge Homebrew forum I see Ballblazer, K.O. Cruiser, KITE!, Jack and the Beanstalk and others in progress.

The AtariAge Store currently has 61 homebrews available for purchase in cartridge form so you can play them on a real console.

From the AtariAge Homebrew forum I see Ballblazer, K.O. Cruiser, KITE!, Jack and the Beanstalk and others in progress.

The AtariAge Store currently has 61 homebrews available for purchase in cartridge form so you can play them on a real console.

From the AtariAge Homebrew forum I see Ballblazer, K.O. Cruiser, KITE!, Jack and the Beanstalk and others in progress.

The AtariAge Store currently has 61 homebrews available for purchase in cartridge form so you can play them on a real console.

From the AtariAge Homebrew forum I see Ballblazer, K.O. Cruiser, KITE!, Jack and the Beanstalk and others in progress.

The AtariAge Store currently has 61 homebrews available for purchase in cartridge form so you can play them on a real console.

Are you kidding? The NES controller was HEAVEN compared to atrocities like the Atari 5200 , Intellivision, or Colecovision controllers. It was even a big step up from the classic Atari 2600 joystick.

I still play all these systems fairly regularly, and the NES controller is extremely well suited to the games it was designed for. A little curve on the corners would have been nice, but otherwise that pad kicks ass. Playing Megaman with a PSX controller just doesn't feel right.

Wire up a USB connector and write a driver to support it under Mac OSX, Linux and Windows.

It can be done. The Touch Tablet shows up as a pair of paddle controllers. The following device will therefore cause it to show up as two joystick axes:

http://www.atariage.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=267

AtariAge is a good start.

http://www.atariage.com/

You can also find stuff for other systems at their hubs. lemon64.com would be one such hub for the C64.

The fun thing is that older systems really do have some excellent capabilities. Here we are up to 30 years later, seeing new ways of doing things still happening. And since there are significant limitations, there is a lot of room for the simple game art to show. Last year, there were at least 10 commercial quality titles release for the old Atari 2600. All can be played in emulation.

The Atari 8 bitters saw many titles, and this being one excellent one: http://yoomp.atari.pl/

Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNxICcU3bPo

Go find an emulator, and load up some great retro stuff!

I find the progression of graphics tricks, new game play mechanics, controllers and such just as entertaining as I do the progression of serious graphics engines and such on the modern systems.

The difference is, I can literally e-mail the authors of YOOMP! and congratulate them, buy a cart (if they produce one, some don't!), and ask, "how the hell?" and get some kind of an answer!

This year is was weak, but I also enjoy the mini-game compo. Google 2008 mini-game compo for the links to the site. There are vote packs where emulators games and instructions are stored for voting. This is an online version of writing cool games for one another in high-school. I participated in one of these for the 2600, got 11th place and had a blast! Mine was OOZE! and I think it was 2006.

For me, it's Atari stuff more than anything else, because it's what I like as a kid, so it carries over for me. New people show up all the time though. I see them run emulators, then get real gear, then some of them author, the rest just play and sometimes buy. A good author can make a coupla grand with a well realized production, and quality packaging. It's enough to make it fun and rewarding.

You can find scenes for Dreamcast, NES, ColecoVision and others.

Have fun! I do.

Per a list of online emulators (written in Java as applets) at http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=129627, there has already been online x86 emulation done for a while: x86 PC Online Emulator: http://www-jpc.physics.ox.ac.uk/ (try for example: type "c:", then "cd mario", then "mario") PC/XT emulator: http://www.xs4all.nl/~rjoris/retro/ "With Java applets already dead and buried" - umm... I think you are either thinking Java 1.1 or you are exaggerating a bit. While applet development went down quite a bit, there are still an abundance of Java applets around the web and a number of them still being developed. I think that applets will be around and continue to be developed for as long is it is supported in-browser.

A lot of us are still very enthusiastic about classic games. For example: see AtariAge, DigitPress RetroGaming Roundtable, ClassicGaming, etc. There is a community out there alive and well with fans of every type of classic gaming console, old computer, and classic game. And don't forget to do a Google Blog Search for your favorite classic console (atari 2600) or old computer (Apple II) (get the feed...). Classic gamers are buying news products like the Classic USB Joystick Controller (Atari 2600-style) and in the past few years there were a flood of products like the Atari Flashback 2, C64 TV Games, a bunch of Jakks TV games, etc. The classic gaming market will always be around, but I think it will change and update as we get older where newer "old" systems get a chance for the spotlight.

The most amazing cartridge was Atari 800 Basic

I believe mikael intends to refer to Atari 2600 BASIC. It was limited to 9 characters per line and that only worked because it flickered like mad. Crazy, crazy idea. The 2600 simply didn't have enough hardware to generate a text display, even if we assume that cartridges could use superchips for an extra 128 bytes of memory. 2 sprites per scanline just isn't much to work with.

The Atari 800 was a much more sophisticated piece of hardware with support for many more sprites, tillable backgrounds, and a full text display. (Most programmers don't think about it these days, but there is no real-world difference between rendering text and rendering background tiles in a game. That's why backgrounds showed up in video games. Because they needed text displays!)

You want the Atari Video Keypad. You should be able to find it on ebay pretty easily. I have a local game shop that trades in every system they can get hold of, so I was able to buy mine there for around $4.

30 years later they still have people making brand new original games for the Atari 2600 like this one or that one!

30 years later they still have people making brand new original games for the Atari 2600 like this one or that one!

Exactly. WiiFit is not a new or innovative idea. It is an idea that was executed better than any previous version. In fact, if I was the suspicious type, I could call WiiFit a total ripoff. The XBox had Yourself!Fitness. Only the most hard core of fanboys are going to be able to claim that WiiFit isn't the same kind of game as Yourself!Fitness. And the WiiFit controller is just a supped up version of the Amiga JoyBoard. It was well reported that the JoyBoard had a meditation game, which is not far off from Yoga, and the skiing game IS Mogul Maniac. Puzzle games are just not something new. I haven't tried we music, so I cannot comment on it, but it seems clear that there these cames are not innovative. They are just very well implemented.

I've modified my Atari with S-Video and Stereo and it generates a crystal clear picture on my old C= 1084S. The other key thing is Medieval Mayhem is a paddle game and paddle emulation leaves much to be desired. Something like the Stelladaptor helps, but I only have one of those which limits me to 2 players and Medieval Mayhem really shines when played with 4 players.

You can order up a cartridge from AtariAge for play on a real Atari. They have a number of other homebrews as well.

You can order up a cartridge from AtariAge for play on a real Atari. They have a number of other homebrews as well.