Slashdot Mirror

Maybe we'll soon see the ROM on http://www.theoldcomputer.com/ or http://www.atariage.com/

atariage.com is the place you need to go. There are plenty of people all over the country who will go out of their way to your place to dump the chips. There are also prototype version collectors who will be interested in dumping all the rest of your chips as well, in case there's an undiscovered version in your pile of chips.

And bare EPROMs are the easiest to dump. If you have a standard programmer, assuming these are standard EPROMs, which they should be, you can do it yourself. Just don't read the important chip first until you know you've got the procedure right.

In the meantime, keep the chip windows covered and keep the chips away from light. The older they are, the more likely they will be vulnerable to "bit rot", which is the chip erasing itself even with weak light, usually after 15-25 years. Once the process begins, it can take weeks or months for the whole chip to be blank.

Along the same mystery science theater kitch line there was also Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes, an unofficial movie sequel. I'm not sure how many people got it either.

Bah, you think that's good? How about Communist Mutants from Space? What's bizarre is that it was actually a good game! One of the best shmups on the 2600, in fact. I often wonder if the name wasn't an attempt to get kids to do double-takes at the store.

"Lemme see, Atlantis, Chopper Command, Demon Attack, Enduro, Communist Mutants from Space, Moonswe-- wait... what?"

Of course, it probably backfired at the register:

"Mommy, mommy! Can I buy Communist Mutants from Space? Please, please, pleeeeease?"

Yeah, you can already see the look on "mommy"'s face. :-P

* Yeah, the fact that the game also required the Supercharger doesn't help anything.

The game title is "Octopus". (This game features an octopus).
See http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=323

...TFA makes a rather grievous error when it refers to the "Nintendo joypad". The joypad was an early attempt at combining both control methods. e.g. The Atari CX78 was a joypad:

http://www.atariage.com/controller_page.html?SystemID=7800&ControllerID=24

The NES controller was properly referred to as a gamepad. Modern controllers blur the distinction by having both DPad controls as well as thumbstick controls.

I damaged quite a few of those but not through normal use. This was because of the Activision game Decathlon. You had to rapidly go between left and right to run, the faster you did it, the faster your guy ran. Before "turbo" buttons or programable controllers were released. I pulled off the rubber cover over the stick and used a jigsaw (without a blade) to get the left and right motion. My friends dad rigged his joystick to a Kirby vacuum hair cutting attachment. Although the joysticks never broke, it did flatten out the end of the stick and fray the plastic stick after a while.

I see those two big pads and can only think of one thing for it.

Track & Field!

...and I seem to have made it OK in life.

For the longest time we only had Combat, Maze Craze and Space Invaders.

Combat was great, Maze Craze was my favorite (my dad hated it though) and I later found out that "Santa" had been up playing Space Invaders every night for several weeks before Christmas. ;)

From there on I got games at a pretty slow trickle, which gave me the chance to really play the hell out of each game before moving onto another, which was actually really good. I'm sure my reading and troubleshooting skills went up because nobody told me how to play these things, I just got the manual and the game and dove into them.

Of course these weren't the most complex games in the world, but many of them weren't just arcade-twitchers, like Haunted House of which I have a great memory of my mom correcting my pronunciation of the word "urn" (the game has you retrieving three pieces of a "Magic Urn" and escaping) where not knowing any better I had been sounding it out more like "urine". :D

I still love to play video games, and fully intend to introduce my kids (if/when I have them) the same way, and see how they do. There are still many playable 2600 games (and even new ones!) if the graphics and sound don't put you off. (The first thing I hooked up to my new 36" Wega flatscreen when I got it was the 2600...)

...and I seem to have made it OK in life.

For the longest time we only had Combat, Maze Craze and Space Invaders.

Combat was great, Maze Craze was my favorite (my dad hated it though) and I later found out that "Santa" had been up playing Space Invaders every night for several weeks before Christmas. ;)

From there on I got games at a pretty slow trickle, which gave me the chance to really play the hell out of each game before moving onto another, which was actually really good. I'm sure my reading and troubleshooting skills went up because nobody told me how to play these things, I just got the manual and the game and dove into them.

Of course these weren't the most complex games in the world, but many of them weren't just arcade-twitchers, like Haunted House of which I have a great memory of my mom correcting my pronunciation of the word "urn" (the game has you retrieving three pieces of a "Magic Urn" and escaping) where not knowing any better I had been sounding it out more like "urine". :D

I still love to play video games, and fully intend to introduce my kids (if/when I have them) the same way, and see how they do. There are still many playable 2600 games (and even new ones!) if the graphics and sound don't put you off. (The first thing I hooked up to my new 36" Wega flatscreen when I got it was the 2600...)

... the keyboard/pad controller thing for the Atari 2600 BASIC cartridge. While it was a game console, with the BASIC cartridge it became something of a horribly painful to use and program computer. And the controller/keypad thing was the most atrocious thing in history, making all those keyboards on the list seem like outstanding examples of quality keyboards.
http://www.atariage.com/controller_page.html?ControllerID=4&SystemID=2600

I still had a blast playing with it though. Someone gave it to me after getting a computer so I got my fix while waiting for my grandfather(HAM) to get off the Vic. ;)

Is the Bradley Trainer they made from hacking an Atari Battlezone game.

Not a fantastic game of course, but it's old school and a neat hack.

DASM and batariBasic are freely available for coding Atari 2600/VCS games.

The freely available emulator Stella has a really nice integrated debugger that really helps figuring out issues.

And you can even get your 2600/VCS game published! AtariAge has a 58 homebrew games, including my homebrew Medieval Mayhem, an updated version of Warlords.

Coding for the Atari is a challenge - 4K of ROM(though bank switching can be used to exceed that), 128 bytes of RAM(not K, not M, just bytes), no video memory - your program has to generate the screen on the fly, even controlling the TV sync signals. Andrew Davie has a nice series of articles, 2600 Programming For Newbies that can get you started.

DASM and batariBasic are freely available for coding Atari 2600/VCS games.

The freely available emulator Stella has a really nice integrated debugger that really helps figuring out issues.

And you can even get your 2600/VCS game published! AtariAge has a 58 homebrew games, including my homebrew Medieval Mayhem, an updated version of Warlords.

Coding for the Atari is a challenge - 4K of ROM(though bank switching can be used to exceed that), 128 bytes of RAM(not K, not M, just bytes), no video memory - your program has to generate the screen on the fly, even controlling the TV sync signals. Andrew Davie has a nice series of articles, 2600 Programming For Newbies that can get you started.

Gameline for the 2600 allowed downloaded games over phonelines. Don't think it had a matching service, though. (I'm posting because this is an interesting tidbit of history, not to defend spiderbitendeath, whom I agree wasn't reading very carefully.)

Gameline became AOL.

There was also a service for the Intellivision, IIRC.

To be fair, all of these sucked pretty hard, for a variety of obvious reasons. But they did exist. If you really dig in to the pre-Nintendo era, a surprising amount of stuff was tried long before it actually succeeded, like game downloads and rentals, and controllers that at least in button-count rival the controllers of today. (They're just laid out much less usefully.)

All puns aside, Asteroids kept me glued to my Atari for my first-ever all night gaming session. I think that was just before Christmas in 1981. The game was simple and fascinating.

It took until 1995 for another game to keep me glued to a screen in quite the same way. That one was Descent. The innovative use of 3D space and the creepy alien ships jumping you from all angles was terrific. I loved it, but I was jumping at shadows for days after my marathon session.

I played Pong quite a lot when it first came out, too, but it didn't get a death grip on my attention like Asteroids and Descent.

In other words, when was the last time you saw an Atari 5200 game hit the market?

In other words, when was the last time you saw an Atari 5200 game hit the market?

But is anyone else very disturbed by the idea of using a Wiimote to stab/strangle/maim people?

Not more disturbed than giving my kid a "lightgun" to "shoot" other kids.

You see existing technology didn't cause the apocalypse the media, certain lawyers and worried parents promised.

But as you age, you actually become one of said parents raising worried voice against newer technologies, repeating the mistakes of the previous generation once more.

Remember, in the past, Germany outlawed River Raid in fears it may make kids go out and kill people.

I can understand the government's concern here. There is advanced Space Shuttle simulation software available for download on the internet. It even comes with a highly detailed Space Shuttle flight manual.

The most disturbing part is, nefarious organizations are willing to sell this top secret material to the the highest bidder. Just imagine if this were to fall into the hands of the terrorists.

I'm not sure what an Atari 2600 is. Probably some kind of NASA super computer...

I can understand the government's concern here. There is advanced Space Shuttle simulation software available for download on the internet. It even comes with a highly detailed Space Shuttle flight manual.

The most disturbing part is, nefarious organizations are willing to sell this top secret material to the the highest bidder. Just imagine if this were to fall into the hands of the terrorists.

I'm not sure what an Atari 2600 is. Probably some kind of NASA super computer...

It's not like anything has changed.

I never really thought the atari port of pac-man was that bad. Considering the tech they had to work with, it was actually pretty good. Defender was much the same way.

I never really thought the atari port of pac-man was that bad. Considering the tech they had to work with, it was actually pretty good. Defender was much the same way.

I never really thought the atari port of pac-man was that bad. Considering the tech they had to work with, it was actually pretty good. Defender was much the same way.

These sites have a lot of good information on why E.T. was considered bad.

Objectively, the biggest problem with E.T. was its tedious and confusing gameplay.

The graphics weren't bad by the standards of the day, but then again neither were Defender's or Pac Man's (unless you were comparing them to the arcades).

These sites have a lot of good information on why E.T. was considered bad.

Objectively, the biggest problem with E.T. was its tedious and confusing gameplay.

The graphics weren't bad by the standards of the day, but then again neither were Defender's or Pac Man's (unless you were comparing them to the arcades).

These sites have a lot of good information on why E.T. was considered bad.

Objectively, the biggest problem with E.T. was its tedious and confusing gameplay.

The graphics weren't bad by the standards of the day, but then again neither were Defender's or Pac Man's (unless you were comparing them to the arcades).

These sites have a lot of good information on why E.T. was considered bad.

Objectively, the biggest problem with E.T. was its tedious and confusing gameplay.

The graphics weren't bad by the standards of the day, but then again neither were Defender's or Pac Man's (unless you were comparing them to the arcades).

These sites have a lot of good information on why E.T. was considered bad.

Objectively, the biggest problem with E.T. was its tedious and confusing gameplay.

The graphics weren't bad by the standards of the day, but then again neither were Defender's or Pac Man's (unless you were comparing them to the arcades).

Whoa WHOA WHOAAAA! Defender was a great game. I'd go so far as to say it was the best "port" on the 2600,

Pac-Man was pretty horrible in terms of graphics, but it had great gameplay, which is why we remember it with enjoyment. Sure, it's no match for the arcade version. But it's decent.

Your ship may have disappeared when you fired, but the 2600 was an enormously limited system and it's not like you didn't know where you were (At the beginning of the laser beam, natch.)

Whoa WHOA WHOAAAA! Defender was a great game. I'd go so far as to say it was the best "port" on the 2600,

Pac-Man was pretty horrible in terms of graphics, but it had great gameplay, which is why we remember it with enjoyment. Sure, it's no match for the arcade version. But it's decent.

Your ship may have disappeared when you fired, but the 2600 was an enormously limited system and it's not like you didn't know where you were (At the beginning of the laser beam, natch.)

I would go for the Atari Paddles; intuitive controls with just one "fire" button. Even my granma could play games with that.

Just compare the simplicity of that with current joysticks (Like this ;-)).

Bah! "50 little stars?" You're not thinking big enough! We need MORE lights! And what goes better with lights and music? Especially Christmas music?

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic =79587

It was written for a wide variety of consoles, including the Atari 2600!

The majority of "hardcore" gamers tend to be fixed in their ways; be it PC games or traditional consoles, they (not everyone) do not want something new. Why should they have to use the Wii nunchuck instead of the traditional controllers?

For most game programmers, working with rendering is the interesting and fun stuff - the rewards are instantaneous, as you can immediately see the effect of the changes that you have added to the game. And most graphics techniques are documented publicly (research papers, books, course notes...) Management can instantly see that you have made progress - Select a material, and render some polygons. Also, for systems like the PS2, the rendering component of the game usually ends up taking up most of the vector processors.

As AI is considered more of a bolt-on, this means the AI programmer gets constrained by what clock cycles remain between rendering each scene frame and the vertical blank, the data representation of the game and what memory space remains. It always been like this - writing Chess playing games in BASIC was the big challenge back in the late 1970's - Atari came out with a version of Chess that used only 4K of memory. Such strategy games may require a thread running in the background to do MiniMax tree searches. And the AI for each game is unique - rendering a Tennis game will be identical to rendering a Snooker game, but the AI will be completely different. Failing to get the AI working properly could force the development of a title to be cancelled. So the pressure is fairly intense for an AI programmer.

Party Mix , by Starpath, for the Atari 2600 + Starpath Supercharger add-on. Possibly the first party game ever, as well as the first split-screen multiplayer.

Cripes, there are still games being made for the Atari 2600. http://www.atariage.com/store/index.php?main_page= index&cPath=21_85

So many good memories of the David Crane Ghostbusters game from the 80s...

Analogue to Digitial circuits were around in the late 1970's - The Atari console system supported paddle controllers.

I've also heard that on craigslist, scalpers are unjustly flagging reports of PS3s available in stores.

That sounds like Megamania. http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?Softwar eLabelID=297

the nintedo 64 is a console i use to this day.. perfect dark, zelda, are fuggin awesome.. i wish i had a nses and super nintendo.. good memeries. also if you have an atari you can find some games here: http://www.atariage.com/software_search.html?Syste mID=2600 or go find some roms and an emulater like nses

I meant to say there are other alternatives such as indie games for the PC. I'd have to agree with the SF Gate article that the Dreamcast is the best bet for the $ to fun ratio (I'd say the Sega Saturn and N64 tie for second), but I'm more of a fan of the pricier Turbo Grafx CD and Turbo Duo.

As for really retro and cheap gaming, Atari Age has ROMs (including homebrews and prototypes) and emulators for the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, and Lynx. One of my favorites is a prototype for the 5200 Blaster, which is a rail FPS. I love the giggly square explosions.

When I talked to one of their guys at the Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition, he said Atari was pretty cool with all the attention AtariAge brings to their old systems.

I meant to say there are other alternatives such as indie games for the PC. I'd have to agree with the SF Gate article that the Dreamcast is the best bet for the $ to fun ratio (I'd say the Sega Saturn and N64 tie for second), but I'm more of a fan of the pricier Turbo Grafx CD and Turbo Duo.

As for really retro and cheap gaming, Atari Age has ROMs (including homebrews and prototypes) and emulators for the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, and Lynx. One of my favorites is a prototype for the 5200 Blaster, which is a rail FPS. I love the giggly square explosions.

When I talked to one of their guys at the Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition, he said Atari was pretty cool with all the attention AtariAge brings to their old systems.

http://www.atariage.com/magazines/atariage.html

No, it's an Atari 2600 catridge alright.

http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?Softwar eLabelID=569

it is a demonstration of Amazon's lack of infrastructure (or management) in their Amazon Advantage program.