almightytodd

Just a quick note to voice my appreciation to Curt for everything he does. The world is a better place because Curt Vendel is in it.

Exactly. As soon as the phrase, "Everyone is going to..." entered the dialog, he immediately lost all credibility.

I don't know if you've actually looked at the specs on the "Commodore 64" remake or not but it's a modern pc in the old C64 box. On the Apple Inc front, I use Macs, I've got a Mac Mini and a MacBook Air. My wife has a MacBook. I'm not part of he cult of Macintosh and I think Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field needs to be destroyed. Jobs hated the Apple II and he did his best to drop it like a hot potato as soon as his precious Mac was in production, even though the II was bringing in the bulk of the money for years after the Mac debuted. I like the Mac better than Winblows, but I've also got an Apple //e, //c and a GS that I enjoy playing original Apple II games on and using several other Apple II programs on. For someone looking to get into the retro Apple Computer scene I'd suggest the Apple II line, but I'm admittedly biased. Dean Yes, I'm aware of what the revised Commodore 64 is. I'm pretty curious about how they'll integrate the classic c-64 emulation in with the custom Linux operating system though. I think it's a cool idea and it gets back to the idea of "playing" with your home computer. Retro Apple II is interesting to me as well, but it is still hampered by the same issue of enforced copyright protection that Mac emulation is. I'm just saying that I think there may be more people like me, who if we'd had the current-economy equivalent of $6,000 back in the 80's when the Macs came out, we might have wanted to "play" with that technology. I don't want to go to eBay and buy the old technology used, because then there's the issue of reliability. But it's the software and the evolution of the various GUI paradigms that I'm interested in exploring. As you've noted with Steve Jobs - he has a history of wanting to leave the "Insanely Great" ideas of the past in the past, and keep moving forward to the next new thing.

You got that part right, at least. ...ouch

It's interesting to me that this topic has come up, as I've been thinking about Macintosh and Apple Computer a lot recently. I watched a documentary called, on Netflix streaming a few weeks ago. There was all of this grandiose discussion of how Macintosh had "changed the world" blah, blah, blah... ...they always seem to leave out the part where a 1987 512K RAM "Fat Mac" was almost 3,000 DOLLARS in 1987 (...or like $6,000 of today's dollars) and way beyond the reach of "normal" humans with bills to pay. That would help explain why even at it's peak, Macintosh never achieved anything beyond 10% of microcomputer market share. That really brings home Atari's marketing slogan of, "Power without the Price" when they introduced the first sub-thousand-dollar-priced 1Mbyte RAM Atari ST computer; powered by the same Motorola 68000 CPU that was found in the Macintosh. I'm curious if Apple were to market a modern-day equivalent of the first generation Macintosh - a "Mac Flashback" or "Mac-inToy", if you will -- how inexpensively could such a machine be built? They could replace the B & W CRT screen with a 512×342 pixel back-lit B & W LCD screen, give it a 4-Gig flash memory, and sell archived classic Macintosh software as $1 downloads from iTunes the way they do for their iPhone and iPod apps. They could emulate the M68000 on an FPGA or ARM, or create a system-on-a-chip (MOAC anyone?). Of course, even if they could produce them in their Chinese factories for 20 bucks-apiece in volume, in the fine tradition of Apple marketing they'd have to price them at least at $200... ...hey, it's Apple - it HAS to cost more! But would members of the cult-of-Apple want to have anything to do with such a device? It seems to me that much of the appeal of Apple has always been to the gadget early-adopters; the people who want to be on the cutting edge of new technology... ...The "I have it and you don't because you aren't as sophisticated and successful as I am" people. I don't know if people of that mindset have any sense for nostalgia. I wonder if I would have as much nostalgia for Atari if it had crushed Apple, and was now the most successful technology company in the world? And would I hold as much contempt and animosity towards Apple and its devoted customers who seem to feel that there is some sort of pride to be had in contributing to a company's stock value, based on a strategy of wide profit margins? Hey! I buy seriously over-priced shit! I'm basically superior to all you LOSERS who seek out the greatest value for your hard-earned dollars... But I digress... ...it's all wishful thinking anyway. Apple is making buckets of money doing what they're doing and they don't need any advice from some middle-aged computer geek who used to think it was cool to type BASIC language programs into a TRS-80 at Radio Shack... ...what's taking so long for those Commodore 64 remakes to start showing up?

I've saved this for all these years. Now I'm thinking it would be fun to create a folder for my Stella installation that includes every ROM mentioned in the catalog. If I think about how much money it would have cost to buy all of these games back in 1980, and then adjust for inflation, it's like I'm a millionaire! Very cool...

I love the look of the packaging. I think the price is very reasonable considering the features and the integration with Stella 3.4.

Combat and Air-Sea Battle are in stereo. Some other games are mentioned in the "what 2600 games are in stereo?" thread. I believe stereo sound is one of the options on most versions of the Stella emulator, so you could try out games mentioned in the list above in emulation first, to better inform your decision on whether or not doing a hardware mod would be worth it...

...So first I noticed that this was a thread started by Foxy Cleopatra. And I thought to myself, "Oh, I haven't noticed any new posts from Foxy for some time now...", so I thought I'd check it out. But it turned out to be a bumped thread from 2003. Anyway, this week I've had Pac Man Fever. I've been playing the various Nukey Shay 2600 hacks, the many variations of 7800 Pac Man Collection, and the very cool JRok DOS Pac Man and Ms Pac Man ports.

I would echo the comments made by Godzilla Joe and ROM Hunter that the true appreciation of the 2600 is based on the context of the era of its introduction. Before it was called the "2600", it was known as the "Video Computer System" or "VCS". That is important, because for many households world-wide, this represented the first time when a general-purpose CPU (...the MOS 6507; a variant of the 6502 that powered the NES) could be owned in a consumer electronics entertainment device. Just eight years earlier, Disney's motion picture, "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" opened with a scene where the dean of a small college is arguing with one of his professors that a computer was a luxury that the college simply could not afford. In 1969, computers were something that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and were used in the space program to work out the mathematics of navigating a space ship to the Moon. Not only did the VCS bring the arcade video-game experience into the home, in certain ways it surpassed it. Most coin-op games of that era were still in black-and-white. And the use of a microprocessors in coin-op games did not become common until the late 1970's, beginning with the Intel 8080-based "Space Invaders" (...also a black-and-white graphics machine). It was the beginning of a new era where computers became a part of our daily lives. The fact that the VCS displayed graphics and sound on a home color TV, and that it was programmable; by virtue of plugging ROM circuits into the cartridge slot, gave the machine an unprecedented and unmatched life-span. And the fact that new games continue to be created by home-brewers to this day is a testament to the genius of its design. It is impossible to really gain an appreciation of the VCS by comparing it to the Nintendo - that would be like comparing a Ford Model T to a 1967 Mustang; both have an important place in the history of automotive design, but the Model T was ground-breaking in that it represented a new way of assembling automobiles to make them affordable to the masses. In a similar manner to how the Mustang created a new classification of performance automobile, the NES revitalized the home video-game console industry at a time when some thought that it was just a fad that had run its course. And remember, the 2600 continued to be available throughout the life-span of the NES and into the first few years of the Super NES. For those of us who lived through this period of history I think there's a kind of innate understanding that we have that may be difficult to communicate the generations who came after.

Yep, if arcade games had gone to HD quality graphics(1920x1080) in the 90s, and ultra-HD(3840x2160) now, there's a good chance they'd still be around. The other problem was lack of variety. In the 80s you had a multitude of game types to play - just look at the differences between Rally X, Centipede, Marble Madness, Galaga, Pac Man, Burger Time, Qix, etc. Last time I went into an arcade I saw nothing but fighting games and racing games and promptly walked back out. The graphics are getting more realistic all the time... ...just look at example...

If you don't like it, then change it. Nukey was already nice enough to re-post the instructions that were already included in the accompanying text file about all the colors. It's as simple as reading the darn readme and hex editing where it says to edit, or opening the game in Hackomatic 3 and going to the addresses listed in the readme to make the changes. Either way is simple enough that you could easily do it with a little bit of effort and a tiny bit of initiative. Nukey works VERY hard and is VERY helpful to all of us in the community. His patience with your demands are evidence of that. There appears to be a lack of appreciation here. Let me re-iterate: you have all the necessary information to make some minor color edits yourself. I suggest you give it a try by following the instructions provided, THEN if you need further help, we can assist you. ...or for the ultimate Nukey Shay Pac man experience, try playing "Hack 'Em" - Nukey's brilliant hack of the 2600 game, "Pesco". As it says in the description, "This is what Pac-man should have been on the VCS".

Per Ted Dabney - "We were not doing a clone of Spacewar. We didn't have a computer with a million bits of memory. We just wanted to shoot down a flying saucer with a spaceship. " Marty and Curt know the details, so we should all pay attention when they chime in. I've seen discussions of Space War and Computer Space come up many times, and I fear that a significant aspect is sometimes missed. The invention of "video games" really happened before it should have - before the technology was really ready. The genius of what Ted, Al, and Nolan were doing, was the answer to the question, "How can we create an experience similar to what we've seen happening at college computer science departments on computer systems costing tens of thousands of dollars, using digital and analog circuits with a low enough cost that we can put them in bars and pinball arcades"? The Atari Video Computer System was significant because unlike previous Atari "Pong" units, it had a true microprocessor in it. Even after the release of the Atari VCS in 1977, most arcade machines continued to be designed using TTL circuits. When Space War made its way onto a 2600 cartridge, it was a nod to the history of interactive computer gaming; a demonstration of the rate of the advance of technology where in the span of less than two decades, computers had come out of corporations and college computer science departments, and into people's homes.

Here are the promised pictures:

A1 86 5370798 (...no port) and A3 8C 5202035 ...pictures to follow... I think this begs the question, "Which is more rare? 7800's in general? or Heavy Sixers"?

I'm glad I did a search and found this thread. I was going to ask the same question. I stumbled upon it while looking up info on the XFCE Linux desktop manager. Links: http://www.openpandora.org/ pre-order-is-back Wikipedia

Todd, I must ask, what was your perception of it then? Was it mind blowing? It was like a transition from the pre-computer age to the world of the future. The fact that a family could own a device that coupled a microprocessor with a video interface that could display graphical representations of tanks and airplanes on our television set; and that we could interact with those images - it was extraordinary. The period between 1975 and 1980 was really a magical one in terms of the advance of technology. I don't think I was able to fully appreciate the amount of money my parents were laying out for us to explore this new technology. $200 in 1977 was the equivalent of $742 in 2010 dollars. If that was the going price for a current XBox 360 or Playstation 3, everyone would complain and no one would buy it. But at the time, it was a chance to purchase a piece of the future - to jump ahead in time...

17, 1977 - Target Fun at the store display at Sears. A few weeks later, our Atari Heavy Sixer catalog order arrived for us to wrap and put under the Christmas tree. Of course, the pack-in game was Combat back then...

Those are both based on earlier arcade games too. Surround is equivalent to Blockade and Dominoes... ...Surround is also similar to this black and white four-player classic from 1977 - one of my MAME favorites now. Intellivision did a port of this as well called "Snafu"...

As I read through this topic, the aspect that seems to be missing from the discussion is the costs of these various systems. Converted to today's dollars, a 1977 heavy sixer would be over $600. An original Apple II would be over 3,000 of today's dollars - even more if you added a floppy drive and a composite monitor. Remember, people were buying new cars for $4,000, a lot of homes were in the $50,000 price range and if you were earning $30,000 a year you were doing quite well. So when Atari introduced the 400 and 800 computers, which did pretty much everything the Apple II did for for a few hundred dollars less - plus Atari could run software from inexpensive cartridges with better performance than floppy disk, it was an excellent value - by comparison. But you're still talking about the equivalent of over $1,000 for a home gadget that nobody actually needed. IBM introduced the PC in the early 80's with all of the components to make a "system" priced separately; including the memory and video card. The result was, if you bought a $1,200 IBM PC, by the time you had a working device that you could boot up, and stick a floppy disk into the drive with some software that would actually do anything, you'd probably have spent well over $3,000. When Commodore upped the ante of the 6502 CPU-based machine competition with the C-64, it started a price-war for sub-$500 home computers. Apple decided keep their machines expensive, while almost giving them away to schools, and introducing even more expensive 32-bit machines like the Lisa and Mac. Radio Shack was still marketing their Z80 based machines towards hobbyists, education, and small business while dipping their toe in the water of TV-game/computing with the Co-Co. Texas Instruments had a reasonably priced 16-bit cartridge-based system that you could also hook up to your TV, but turning it into a floppy-drive based system quickly pushed the price up into the quad-digits. So when Atari made the move to the 5200 - essentially a keyboard-less Atari 800, and sold it at a price of only a few hundred dollars, it wasn't a bad move. They just didn't count on so many people sticking with their trusty 2600's and the stiff competition from Coleco. The choice in joystick design for the 5200 was a reaction (over-reaction?) to the threat from Intellivision, which seemed poised to try to edge into America's public school systems. When Nintendo entered the fray, they benefitted from the appearance of home video rental stores, which started to also rent Nintendo game cartridges. Atari 2600 game cartridges were so numerous and so cheap at this point, they weren't worth the rental store shelf space. There weren't enough 5200, 7800, Bally Arcade, and ColecoVision systems out there to make it worth putting those games on the rental store shelves either, so Nintendo wins. Sega was able to hang-in for awhile, probably based on the strength of their name recognition for their arcade machines. With so many inexpensive gaming options available to us now, via emulation, smart-phone casual games, DOS abandonware, online flash-games, and even plug-and-play, it's easy to forget that in those early years it was usually "either-or" decisions for where our entertainment dollars were spent.

Doom on the PC at the time when it first came out... ...especially if played in the middle of the night in the dark. There was also a nice hack of Half Life called, "They Hunger" - monsters in a mental institution... ...pretty creepy.

I played with the demo for this awhile back. I just purchased the download today. . Game-control is rather interesting; you hold the Wii remote lengthwise in front of you, and then rotate it with the top-side moving away or toward you to cause the "pong-paddle" on the screen to move up and down. It's futuristic and retro at the same time...

Windermere here (Orlando area...)

I'm so happy to see this tradition carry on. I'll be looking for the Knight Rider bump again this time next year...