cessnaace's Blog - Feeding My Atari

RSS Bot · March 23, 2019

It's not easy keeping my Atari 7800 ProSystem well fed with 2600 and 7800 games that it has never experienced before while staying on a budget. I received 3 emails from Atari Age today confirming that three of my orders have shipped, leaving 2 still being processed. So what did I do? Placed another order of course. Plus which, I buy games on eBay. I'm not as mobile as I once was, so I do most of my game shopping online.

Here's some of what's coming:

Atari Age (Homebrews/Hacks)
Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest (7800; POKEY)
Berzerk: Voice Enhanced (2600)
Draconian (2600)
Elevators Amiss (2600)

Flappy (2600)
Galactopus (2600)
Meteor Shower (7800; Red label variant. I already own the Blue label variant)
Rainbow Invaders (2600)

Atari Age (Custom Reproductions)
Demolition Herby (2600)
Gas Hog (2600)
River Patrol (2600)

Packrat Video Games (Homebrews)
Astronomer (2600)
Explosive Diarrhea (2600)

eBay (Games from back-in-the-day)
Deadly Duck (2600)
Planet Patrol / Wall Defender (2600; 2-in-1; PAL)
Thunderground w/Manual (2600)

I only order Custom Reproductions of games that I can't otherwise afford. Sure, they play through emulation. But I'd rather play on actual Atari hardware. I especially like Demolition Herby, which is a take on Amidar/Spiderdroid but with some vehicular combat added for extra spice, and River Patrol, an extremely rare port of the arcade original for the 2600. It even has music throughout. I only recently started playing Gas Hog thru emulation. An interesting game.

You probably noticed that I bought a PAL 2-in-1 on eBay (from a seller in Germany) - Planet Patrol / Wall Defender. I already own the NTSC release of Planet Patrol, however Wall Defender is another matter. Not only do I not own it on cartridge, but it will not run properly on my emulator - EMU7800 (version 2.2). I downloaded the latest version of Stella for Windows 10 (64-bit), but I have a problem. It seems to have many games already pre-loaded (such as Wall Defender), but when I select a game it only runs an attract mode for that game. I can't start an actual game. Maybe someone here can help me with this.

-Mark