pocketmego

Amen to that BROTHER!!! More and more addictive games keep coming to my mind to add to the list. The sheer quantity of good games on the 2600 truly does outweigh the bad and that is something a lot of systems can't boast even today. -Ray

Thanks to everyone for the kind words. -Ray

This is very true, but at the same time you could count on almost everyone owning Pitfall, River Raid, and Adventure as well. Plus, there are many arcade games that I never knew existed before I came here like Defender 2, Pooyan, and both Mr. Do games. I never did have Donkey Kong back in the day, nor do I remember knowing anyone who had it. If anyone did, they didn't play it much. The other 6 games mentioned (through Adventure), my brother or I did own. Regarding the last four titles, AFAIK there was no Defender 2 in the arcades -- it was called Stargate (and released as such for the 2600 before they gave it a name change). I had seen Stargate, and played Pooyan and Mr. Do! in arcades (not very well, I admit). I'm not sure whether I ever saw Mr. Do!'s Castle there, though a vague feeling makes me want to say that I did. I should correct myself, I meant to say "I never knew they existed as 2600 games". I knew they existed as Arcade games and I certainly recall Stargate. -Ray

That's OK, get this BS quote... "The VCS port had some downgrading like watered down graphics,"(Space Invaders) Watered Down Graphics? Is he on drugs? If anything Space Invaders had better graphics than the Arcade version, with actual color and some of the creatures had individual moving parts. The graphics aren't at all what makes the Space Invaders on the 2600 and inaccurate port. And where are Gorf and Galaxian anyway? This man is a fool. -Ray

I'd love to see the article if you could dig it up, but I can't help but feel that it would have been flawed. I can't think of any reason why the Atari 800 wouldn't be a fair bit quicker than the C64; the CPUs are almost the same and the former is clocked a lot faster. Unless there are some horrendous memory contention issues that I'm not aware of, it's an open and shut case. In any case, if you want a realistic benchmark, just try playing Mercenary on both machines. Even the Spectrum ought to come out faster than the C64; A 3.5:1 ratio in CPU speeds ought to be more than enough to compensate for the efficiencies of the 6502; I know for a fact that the Spectrum has 32K of uncontended memory, so the only possible explanation would be a naive translation of code without any re-optimization and that would work both ways. Again, you can play almost any 3D game on both machines and the Spectrum version will have a visible edge in speed. By the way, the Spectrum's CPU power might not be that great overall, but since the screen only used 6.75K of RAM, where most of its competitors had to address around 16K, that gave it a huge advantage in games where the hardware implementation couldn't do most of the work. It also gave programmers good reason to break out of the sprite/scrolling trap and develop more innovative graphics engines. Anyway, the BBC was definitely the fastest machine of the era with a 2 MHz 6502 CPU and no memory contention. It was just too expensive to compete against the other machines in the marketplace and the attempt to produce a cheaper model ended up with the flawed and incompatible Electron. You can't knock the games for it though; Elite is almost synonymous with 8 bit gaming in the UK. Edit: I think I've found the article and, althoug the CPUs do get a mention, its just benchmarking the BASIC implementations on the machines: http://www.gondolin.org.uk/hchof/reviews/yc-atari800xl.html Is that the one? Absolutely no question. When you play those Isometric games the Spectrum is famouse for, it wins in speed hands down. But, it doesn't win for loading speed, the C64 loads much faster. Also, in other types of games the C64 has comparable if not superior speed. Defender on both systems will show that the Speccy was jerky and had slow down in the midst of gameplay more than once, the C64 didn't. -Ray

I love this quote... "Officers have been surprised to find that the kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, a communications technician, appeared to have relied exclusively on a Commodore 64." He relied on it. Like it was his PC of choice. LOL I'm thinking that if they researched his vast librararies of files they would fine themselves with hours and hours of great gaming experiences. Bastard gives the rest of us a bad name. -Ray

Thank you for making me feel way less geeky. I thought I was bad remembering the bionic woman but MAN! Did you google that or did you actually remember it all on your own?? I do remember the fembots and sasquatch now that you mention them. Lots of clips here from all the episdodes you guys mentioned and then some... http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type...p;search=Search It was watching these that made me think of this thread to begin with. -Ray

To me GORF for the 2600 is like Pizza... When I'm in the mood for it, there is not much better. A cool game, that I think captures just enough of the arcade gaes feel to work and is generally colorful and fun to play over and over. However, I've always beena bit confused about the loss of the Galaxian levels in the home versions of this game. Surely when the original game was created Namco knew that the possibility of home versions was logical. If they were going to license the Galaxians for use in GORF in the first place why would they not allow the use of them in any version o the game produced? Secondly, has anyone here amongst all our talented game hackers and homebrewers considered the idea of porting over levels from the 2600 Galaxian into Gorf to make a complete game? Is it even possible to do that? Just some thoughts and questions. -Ray

There is NO WAY in the hottest region sof hell that Megamania is higher on that list than Demon Attack. Demon Attack should be #1, with Spider Fighter at #2, and Space Invaders at #3. This guy has no idea what he's talking about. -Ray

How odd. I wonder why they decided not to make an orginal game more based on the movie? Because I really despise the Flash Gordon 2600 game. Can you imagine one based on the duel scene from the movie with the moving platform and spikes. -Ray

This is very true, but at the same time you could count on almost everyone owning Pitfall, River Raid, and Adventure as well. Plus, there are many arcade games that I never knew existed before I came here like Defender 2, Pooyan, and both Mr. Do games. -Ray

I am really surprised we never saw a Six Million Dollar Man for the 2600. The show was pretty big at the time, or are my dates off? Did Atari come out too late for the Bionic craze? -Ray

Yes, it would be stupid of me not to mention Hunchy and A-VCS-TEC Challenge as current addictions, and trying to find the secret level in Wolfenstein. -Ray

I remember when I was a kid (keep in mind I was maybe 6 or 7), the first game I absolutely HAD to have for my Atari was Donkey Kong jr. I remember having games and enjoying them prior to DKjr, but never did I actively want a game until that one. I think it was that live action commercial with that weird Mario... -Ray

I would imagine so. I think the reason the cartoon was called The Fonz was to trademark the name, just in case. I would also imagine that they tradmarked as many iterations of the name as possible. Calling the game Jump the Shark is actually illegal as well as jumping the Shark is the title of a book of which the phrase originated. I'd definately check on those trademarks, its hard to tell after almost 30 years what is trademarked and what isn't. -Ray

This was a great post, thanks for the thurough and very enlightening run-down of various machines of the era. Good Job! -Ray

I really like this one... and this one is my absolute favorite Atari Commercial EVER... -Ray

Solaris. I will pick that thing up on impulse and thought playing it without really even thinking about it. I love that game. -Ray

Mash is an odd-ball game. it is part chopper rescue style military game and part Operation (the board game). It is not a bad game by any means, though I often wonder how well it sold at the time. I remember a lot of my friends actually had this, but it wss not a game we played often. I never owned, because it simply didn't appeal to me. -Ray

Rob Liefeld's Atari Force....*SHIVER* -Ray

Oh and we can't forget Mario Bros. One of the few bits of Mario Media where Luigi is the lead character... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaTLyCaPwoE...ted&search= Car 54...er...I mean....Mario Where are yooooooouuuuuu? -Ray

HOLY CRAP!!! Proof poditive that Atari's Marketing division was enjoying some HARD DRUGS when the money was flowing during those boom years. -Ray

I now this question has been answered probably about 60 BILLION times, but I am new to this and I could use the advice. You favorite 7800 game is? And why? Thanks -Ray

Well Im not getting the copy of Beef Drop untill I or some one fine away to rename it to Burger Time. Yeah don't let the name stop you. It's a great game Beef Drop and Go Fish! are the two games I've been playing non-stop since the day I got them Well worth picking up So what Homebrews are currently avaible for the 7800 all said and done? -Ray

To me the whole point of buying modern Atari 2600 Homebrews is to recapture the nostalgia of being able to buy new Atari games back when the system was still in production. It is a special feeling and one that makes modern homebrews special in a way that is hard to explain. Well, Simon has managed to double that grand sense of nostalgia. Not just with a new Homebrew, but one that is based on a game I played a lot in my developing years. The game was Aztec Challenge and it was a pretty regular fixture on my Commodore 64 computer. So a game that combines my 2 great childhood loves of Commodore and Atari is one that I had to have and I am THRILLED that I made this purchase. This is a fine game with graphics that are incredibly detailed, bright, and impressive. It looks good even by current graphical standards. In terms of gameplay, its been improved considerably from its source material. Aztec Challenge was a HARD game with NO learning curve. However in taking the first two stages of the original game and allowing for a increas in difficulty per stage the Gauntlet and wall stages of the original game become endeering and addicitng to play. I want to work just a little harder to make it to each new level. I can't leave out the Pyramid designs either, which offer a visual treat that makes you want to complete each level so you can take a few moments and admire the beauty of the design. My favorite being the "Atari" Pyramid. Great stuff and a fantastic game that is well worth time in anyone's collection. -Ray