coach41

Wow last time I was here was sometime last year when I got back into Retro gaming and was playing Champ Game's Galagon on an emulator and had issues. I saw Champ Game's post about their games not being published anymore on FB but only jumped on here today to see that Atari Age has been acquired. That's a bit of a surprise. I did see that the Atari 2600+ was being released so perhaps it isn't as much of a surprise to other folks. I myself am a bit of a historian for many things (family / personal history, and other things I'm involved in). So I do hope Atari Age maintains some of the history. We call it a legacy and Atari has a ton of it. Hopefully this history will be shared with the future generations. Most young kids don't even know what Atari is about. Just like I say to people about Apple Inc. Apple is now known for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac / MacBooks. But I was using the Apple IIe back in 1983 (as well as the Atart 5200). I've seen things come and go and in the case of Atart, come back! So appreciate this revivial while we can. It may not be forever. Also, glad Champ Games seems to have figured out how to self publish their games. I have a history of playing their old PC adaptions back during college. One reason I am a supporter of Champ Game's efforts.

Man - nice to play Galagon on a big TV. I remembered why that's cool. Being an Apple IIe user for all of my childhood, all I ever heard was the Apple II graphics and sound capabilities didn't match the Atari 400 / 800 and Commodore 64 machines. Now there was truth to it. But that still didn't stop developers from making good looking / sounding games. For Atari fans, the Apple II versions of Robotron 2084 and Mario Bros came out pretty well. The C64 version of Robotron didn't look or sound that good from what I saw online. Mario Bros on the 5200 played fine by the graphics were blah for some reason. The Apple II Mario Bros seemed more colorful. And you feel proud to have some decent looking games. So I could understand why people are happy the 2600 (even after ALL these years) can play some of these legendary arcade games that are literally close to arcade like. Cheers to all the people out there making games for these old machines. I bought some new games for my Apple II to support the developers. Now that I have my X2 console, I may delve into the 2600 scene a little bit more too.

I just grabbed a few freely available 2600 ROM's that people worked on. Also played a few 5200 games after figuring how to navigate the 5200 keypad with my generic controller......fun times.

I posted another message in another thread last night, but I'll share again here. I grew up in the 1980's playing arcade games but had an Apple IIe and an Atari 5200. Of course, I knew about the 2600 but never really played many games on it. But I somehow stumbled upon the Kinhank Super X2 Console which I got for the 5200 library (doesn't work great, but its ok) and Space Dungeon. But I realized I could try the 2600 games too so that's why I was test driving Galagon. I would have never expected to enjoy the 2600 Galagon (and Pac Man 8K) as much as I did considering I have various packages on my modern systems. But technology is great and so thanks to John for the help and the Stella team for putting the emulator together. As someone who loves retro, I enjoy looking back a lot.

Ok - the message I got was what I wrote earlier (Twin Joysticks or something). John did do something and got things to work. I'll let him explain later what he thinks may be the issue. Forget if he explained before.

I can check them. But the configuration is no different than the other games on the console. The controllers are just generic PS2 like wireless controllers. Work fine on a few of the standard 2600 games plus the 8K Pac-Man ROM I downloaded. Not sure why Galagon specifically seems to be having problems.

Yes the Twin USB Joystick message is from the console. There was no Quadtari message displayed after the SAVEKEY DETECTED message. The "Select" switch seems to be mapped to the select button on the PS2 lookalike controllers. I tried holding down the switch key when booting the game but no luck. It seems like the only buttons that are working by default is the select / start buttons. I can re-map the functions for those buttons to other buttons and they will work fine. But the functions of game play / firing simply do not work by default or even when I remap them to other buttons. So I am not really sure what the actual issue is. The other 2600 games that are on the console plus the Pac-Man 8K ROM I added all work fine. Galagon is the one exception that the controllers are not working Be curious what you see in the code.

Hi John, Saw your email but posting here in case there's something new we learn. So the Kinhank Super X2 Console comes with two generic PS2 wireless lookalike controllers. The console comes with a wirelss dongle that is plugged into one of the USB ports on the console. One dongle can support both controllers though I only have one that is in use (the other has no battery). When I boot the game up, it notes that (2) "Twin USB Joystick" is configured in port 1 and port 2 and that Savekey is detected. The select and start buttons work but the keypad and the joysticks on the controller work. I've tried to configure the controllers in different ways but no luck. Just to test something else out, I downloaded the Robotwar demo and used on the X2 console. I get the same message that both controllers are detected. The difference? The controllers work in Robotwar and I can play the same. So not sure if there is a difference in how the two games were programmed to detect the controllers? For people's information, the Super X2 Console is like a front end to a bunch of emulators. It has arcade games, 2600 gams, 5200 games, among many other things. I see Stella is installed. The version listed is: 7.0_pre 41150cd205. Is EMULEC (RetroArch) a front end as it's prominently displayed when the console is booted. I did try to find how to configure Stella but not sure how to do it from a UI. So hope this info helps. Would love to see how to get Galagon working on the console. Thanks.

Alright - been years since I logged into my account here. But I've gotten back into some retro stuff due to me purchasing the Kinhank Super X2 Console. The initial reasons for me to get the X2 was to get to the 5200 Library which isn't readily available in any of the Atari Flashback packages (except for the one on the Nintendo Switch). I was also looking to get to Space Dungeon which is on the 5200. But the X2 had the arcade version which is fine for me. I guess I like the rare games to play. LOL But why am I here in the 2600 discussions? Well, it occurred to me that the X2 could play some of the 2600 ROMs. I got the Pac-Man 8K to work but Galagon (possibly due to some coding around Quadtari) doesn't work. So i grabbed Stella to play Galagon on my Mac. Also saved Pac-Man 8K to my Mac. Who would have thought that a 5200 / Apple II user would be playing 2600 home brews on a 2600 emulator? I have to say that Galagon and Pac Man 8K are worth playing even compared to their arcade cousins. But I am. I purchased Galagon to support the developers. I made a donation to the Stella team as a thank you. I didn't play the 2600 growing up but was aware of everything happening with it. Happy to see development still going on and like to support "small businesses". Just wanted to mention this to folks. Keep up the work as there will always be people looking back at the old games and systems out there.

I'm a late comer to this thread. i have a Kinhank Super Console X2 and been trying out the demo ROM's for Champ. Love Galaga and decided to try out the Galagon demo and I couldn't play the game on the console. But I can get it to work on a PC so seems like there is an issue...I noticed someone posted this in 2021: https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch/issues/12467 But I don't know if anything has been done. Would be nice to play Galagon on the console on my TV. But if I have to play it on my computer that's fine.

Came across this thread and thought this might be interesting:

I have written about the Atari 5200 off and on in the past few years. It's not consistent as I usually write about the Apple II first and then anything else later. Tough to write multiple columns.

I would love to be able to read Electronic Games again. I had quite a few issues of the mag but most of them were tossed as I went into college. I'm also looking for old Apple II magazines to read and was talking to folks on Usenet about scanning magazines as well.

Haven't read the article yet, but I currently work in a SF Bay Area startup where not one, but TWO of the people used to work for Atari in their 80's heyday. One of the guys is an older guy (almost 60) who served as a hardware engineer for atari. Plenty of stories from those days. Donald

Late comer to the thread, but I did notice the Target near my workplace had a whole aisle dedicated to the coleco stuff. Very interesting to see this stuff. I don't know how good selling these things are but there were a lot of them still there. It's interesting that Coleco was selling the virtual kickboxing/golf/etc games because it smacks of duplicating what the Nintendo Wii is doing.