almightytodd

Wow, this thread is making me wonder if it would be worth it to go through the hassle of setting up the MESS emulator, chasing down an 800 BIOS, and tracking down a copy of the SR ROM to see for myself. Should I?

Wait a second!? The next Atari Flashback? There's going to be a next Flashback? I thought from this thread, we had established that Atari is down for the count... ...and as far as anyone knows, there won't be any more nostalgic retro-Atari systems coming out. Does anyone here have any factual information to the contrary? Or is this thread simply wishful thinking?

I have one of the Jakks Atari joystick plug-n-plays and a FB2. I regret not getting one of the double-paddle sets when they were available at Toys R Us. It just seems that at the time, the price was around what I paid for my FB2, and I couldn't justify the expense for only 10 or 15 games. The thing is, a lot of the charm of the original VCS was the fact that it was oriented towards a shared experience. Think about it; the original pack-in game for the VCS was Combat, which required two players. The Video Olympics cart has only two games (both variations of "Pong") for single-player only. This is also true of Surround. It seems like most of the console systems since have focused on the solitary player experience; starting with Coleco Vision. Although some of the original NES titles had two-player games, many of those consisted of two players taking turns, which meant a lot of time spent sitting and watching the other player play. Apparently, Nintendo has caught on to the gap in the shared-play experience with the Wii, which allows for more joint play action. Then there's Game Wave, which has potential for the small group experience, but it appears that for many of the games, the separate remotes just act as a "first answer" button in a TV game show type game, more than controllers for on-screen action. SpiceWare's Medieval Mayhem gives the best of both worlds, with up to three AI opponents for a decent 4-player game experience for one to four players. It's a shame that Atari seemed to all but abandon four-player paddle games towards the end of the lifespan of the 2600, and they never offered such games on either the 5200 or 7800. If they'd been able to work out a multiplexed four joystick control scheme for the 7800, and ported Gauntlet or even made a four-player Dark Chambers, they might have had something to set 7800 games apart from NES. The potential for four-player games on the 7800 could have been awesome, without the need to even come up with radically different game ideas: Four-player Combat, four-player Surround (...I seem to recall a coin-op arcade game that did that), four-player Pac Man, four-player Asteroids, four-player Rampage (...that would be COOL!) two-on-two basketball, soccer, hockey... ...come to think of it, the N64 and Game Cube had four-player games like Mario Kart, didn't they? Well, I agree with the general sentiment in this thread, that the classic arcade plug-n-play titles seem to be fading out. That's a shame, because while I can get a lot of the same kind of fun out of emulation on the computer, for multi-player fun, I'm left with the FB2, or one of my classic systems - if I get get it/keep it working.

I'd like to add another vote for Space Invaders. I think the genius of the port, is that rather than try to make it "just like" the arcade version, it's like they said, "How can we take the concept of this game, and adapt it to what the VCS is capable of"? They reduced the number of columns, which was the right thing to do; both because of the limitations of the VCS hardware, but also because of the not-so-obvious change in screen orientation from the arcade portrait format, to the home TV landscape format. Then, they added colors and a ton of cool game variations including simultaneous two-player action - features that went beyond the arcade experience. But I really got excited about the Atari Space Invaders experience when I found Nukey Shay's awesome Space Invaders Deluxe hack. It's so much more than a mere hack! It's an entirely new Space Invaders experience! I find that I actually enjoy playing it using the computer keyboard (which better replicates the arcade machine's buttons) more than using a joystick. I also like the keyboard experience when playing the Franklin Cruz Asteroids hack, although that one is fun on the Atari Flash Back 2 as well. Curiously, Crystal Castles seems to play better with the joystick. I know the arcade version of that game used a trackball, but I never played it enough times to really get to love the track ball, so I don't really miss it. The same goes for Missile Command. I also like the single missile launch site of the VCS version better than the three launch sites in the arcade version. I know that having three sites to keep track of adds to the challenge, but I find the futile task of surviving wave after wave of nuclear missile attacks enough of a challenge as it is... ...knowing that I'll eventually fail, and leave that imaginary video screen world to face total nuclear annihilation. But getting back to Space Invaders... ...yes, that's the arcade port that really got me excited about our family's heavy sixer again... Oh, and I want to agree with Blackjack too about the arcade experience -- yes, there was more to the experience than just the ways that the games differed from what was available at home. It was a social experience, and an opportunity to be wowed, not just by a new game, but by seeing a player who had figured out some new tactic - like the bottom row immunity trick with Space Invaders, or the single-asteroid-and-wait-to-ambush-the-flying-saucer tactic for Asteroids. Oh, and there might be girls there too. Girls -- mmmmmmm.......

Atari 2600 Crystal Castles has several melodies that would lend themselves well to ring tones, including a snippet of the Nutcracker Suite. "Mountain King" contains music from Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King", which would make a decent ring tone. Oh, and by the way - not that I've mentioned it; if anyone here is a Wiki-editor, you might notice that a reference to this game is absent from the "Uses in Popular Culture" section of this Wikipedia entry. Someone should do something about that... I'd also like to put in a thumbs-up for music from SpiceWare's Medieval Mayhem. It totally rocks!

I heard that "Donkey Kong" was a Japanese mis-translation attempt at "Monkey Kong" (...all your base are belong to us...). Can anyone corroborate?

I second that emotion It was a fun little ride, while it lasted...

I find it interesting how this thread devolved from "Oh what a sad state of affairs is the TI-99/4A community" to "Cool! I'm gonna do a video mod!" I used to have one of these computers - it may still lie hidden in a box somewhere... I remember adapting a Pascal bubble-sort routine to TI BASIC after learning about it in one of my early computer science classes - just to see if I could do it. I think I had one, maybe two game cartridges to plug into the thing, but I had no joysticks, so it wasn't a whole lot of fun to play with. I got a copy of the MESS software and set it up to run the startup screen for the TI-99/4A, but I couldn't find any software for it. I would imagine that since Texas Instruments continues to be a viable, on-going enterprise, the application of their copyrights is a bit more strict than what happened with Atari. It was a charming little machine. It's a shame that it seems its potential was never fully realized. I think one problem with it was that to add a floppy drive to it to turn it into a "real" system was more complicated and costly than the initial purchase of the base unit. It seems to me that taking an Atari 800, Apple II or even a Radio Shack CoCo from a base unit to a full system with a floppy drive was a more viable alternative. And Atari and Apple seemed to have a lot more momentum in market share and available software. Then, of course, Commodore hit the home computer scene - first with the VIC20, and then with the C-64. Still, look at how good this "TI Invaders" screen shot looks, compared with similar offerings from other machines at the time. It's a shame that even Bill Cosby couldn't get America to buy this machine...

Hey, don't trouble yourself with regrets about things you did when you were 10. YOU WERE TEN! You're not supposed to be ready to make sound judgments and correctly assess priorities. That's why the law protects you by not allowing you to enter into legal contracts and vote, and have a job and drive a car and consume adult beverages when you're ten. Just be glad we live in an age where it is possible to start over and recapture portions of your childhood. When I was ten, I had a whole set of the original red-line-wheeled Hot Wheels cars that I played with. Did I hold any of them back, and keep them in their original packaging with the understanding that they would one day become valuable collector's items? Of course not. Mattel even went out of their way to TELL me that these were COLLECTIBLE items, but of course, I opened up every one I ever got, and ran them around the orange plastic tracks, and crashed them together, and let the paint get chipped and the wire axles get bent. So ten years ago, I started buying a Hot Wheels car here and there, and this time I kept them in the original packaging. I have maybe a couple hundred of them. Then, I found out that an old friend from high school did something similar, and has a collection of like, 5,000 cars! I don't think I'd ever want to really get that "into" collecting. Just finding room to store all of that stuff would become a major hassle. On the other hand, I know there are people in this community that have entire rooms dedicated to the storage of their Atari related materials, and some have encountered conflicts with their wives over the amount of time and money they put into all things Atari. Just keep things in perspective. And if you're not happy with some of your past memories, start making some new ones now. It's never too late to decide to embark on a new direction in doing things you wish you'd done in years past. The past is in the past! There's nothing you can do about it! The rest of your life starts right now! As wise old Doc Brown said, "You're future hasn't been written yet. It is whatever you decide to make it, so make it a good one"!

I was a little disappointed when I discovered that the game-play had nothing to do with the Journey coin-op arcade game (http://www.journey-tribute.com/journey/resources/arcade/). But for some reason, this was one of the few games my wife liked to play, so it was a way for us to enjoy Atari together. It really fits the definition of what they're now calling a "casual" game - one that you won't spend more than five or ten minutes at a time playing before you go on to something else. I think there was a feeling in the early 80's that video-games were "supposed" to be like that, since the whole concept was based on the arcade machines that were designed to be as efficient as possible in separating you from your pocket full of quarters.

I think this is a game that really needs two players for it to be interesting at all. I've played it with my 17 year old daughter a few times, and it is one of the few classic 2600 games that she'll play with me. I think it's an achievement that a game like this is possible at all on the 2600 hardware.

Hey R.T. - thanks for keeping the love going for E.T. I don't think it will ever be my favorite game, but thanks to your web site, I can enjoy playing it and appreciate it as a decent game. It's a shame that after all of these years, the myth that E.T. is the worst video game ever made still has any life in it at all. As your site points out, if you bother to read the manual and learn what the object of the game is, and how everything works, it's a highly playable, challenging game. Knowing the history of how quickly it was programmed and made ready for production, it is a remarkable accomplishment. I've been a professional programmer since 1993 and I can tell you that today, NOTHING in software goes from concept to ready for production in five weeks - even with a team of architects, programmers, artists, and technical writers working on it.

That is WAY cool, Fretwobbler. You just saved me a TON of work redoing something that you've already done. I will modify my web page and put a link to your page right at the top with acknowledgement of how hard it must have been for you to create that. Thanks,

I'll second the love for Space Jockey. I think the people who hate that one must be playing on the default game variation, which is admittedly terrible. They just need to try the variation with the fast shots, enemies that move up and down, etc. As for Sorcerer, you're on your own on that one. I'll add a third for Space Jockey. I may be biased because I found a cart in a thrift store a couple weeks ago and bought it, but I also think it has some potential to turn it into a hack based on the movie "Independence Day". I also agree with BassGuitari about Star Ship; for the reasons he cites, as well as my nostalgia for when I first played the game as a teen. Of course other versions of "pilot a star ship through space and destroy targets" games followed that were much better implementations, but Star Ship was the first. I like Street Racer as a head-to-head two player game; especially the diverse game variations such as Slalom, Number Cruncher, and Scoop Ball. Perhaps GodzillaJoe was on to something when he started this thread; it really is difficult to find one game that is universally disliked...

I am DYING laughing. I especially like line 170: "BLOW UP INVADER" Just goes to show, to be a really good programmer, you have to really know those function libraries...

Here in Utah, they have a chain of arcades called "Nickelcade". They charge you a few dollars at the door, and then all of the machines take nickels instead of quarters. They also have a few machines that play for free just by pressing the start button. It's a shame they don't seem to have a decent web site. Here's a review: http://www.insiderpages.com/b/3722715938

Hey Greg, That Sabrent box looks like it will do the trick. I would add one more suggestion that you ditch the switch box in favor of an RCA to F-Type adapter like this and then just use regular coax cable for the connection from the 7800 to the Sabrent device.

Wow. Do you write for Retrogaming Times Monthly? You should. A very well done analysis. I agree with everything you've said, except I believe the link between PDP-11 computer-based Space War and Coin-op Pong was provided by Bushnell's Computer Space, so I think that makes it important. Call it a "proof of concept". Video games would have arrived eventually, once microprocessors became available, but by wiring up the first coin-op games using TTL, the masses became exposed to videogame concept well before the first wave of 8 bit home computers showed up. This, I believe, created a symbiotic relationship, where interest in videogaming spurred microcomputer development, and the advances of microcomputer development pushed videogaming forward. Also, the Half-Life framework provided the basis of so many hacks and commercial games, including network games such as Counter-Strike, that it may deserve a mention. I certainly agree that including both Half-Life and Counter-Strike is redundant.

Yeah, you really have to look twice to notice a difference. I am truly LOL. All of the comments in this thread are really good reading. Doesn't it make a lot more sense that the number one "Most Important" game would be one that launched the industry? Or at least saved it when it seemed like it was about to come to an abrupt end like so many other fads of the time? (Roller-disco, Pet Rocks anyone?) I think an argument could even be made in favor of Computer Space, because despite the fact that it was a big flop commercially, it proved to Bushnell that the technology was at least feasible, and provided him with a few hundred dollars to launch Atari.

Is there a ROM file anywhere for this? (...and what are the ethical implications of using a pirated ROM file that is of a pirated hack of another game?)

Supercat - your knowledge of both hardware and software is extraordinary. You truly are a "super cat". If I'm understanding correctly, each of the two controller ports would read one joystick in the "normal" manner, and then a second joystick would be added into each port using a multiplexer circuit. So from a programming perspective, controller port one would read joysticks one and three, and port two would read joysticks two and four. Is that right? Would you use Pin 7 (paddle +5V) to indicate which joystick is being read? This does lead to the chicken-and-egg dilemma, however: With no four-player hardware currently available, there is no reason to develop programming to support it, but with no four-player software there is no reason to create the hardware. Both would have to be developed simultaneously, probably using Stelladapters since there are no emulators that would have keyboard mappings for four joysticks. Maybe this is an issue that there isn't very much interest in. I just have fond memories of four-player coin-op games in the early arcade years, including a four-player tank, four-player surround, and of course there were multiple four-player driving games. Super Football would be really fun with two teams of a quarterback and receiver and a rusher and defensive end. Identifying who is who graphically would be a challenge, but if it could be done, it would really be something. Activision's tennis playing doubles would really be something too. I'm probably just dreaming and going way beyond what the hardware can do - particularly with the 2600. It seems to me that the 7800 should be able to do it though. It's a shame Atari didn't have that in mind when they designed the 7800. It would have been a feature that would make it a real competitor to the NES. I noticed that most of the NES two-player games were really one-player games taking turns anyway. I've always liked multiplayer games that involved "coopetition", as is found in the coin-op Gauntlet. That was one of the things I found really fun when Doom came out. I was working at a company developing software and during our lunch break or after hours, we would play network Doom and run around the levels working together to kill off the bad guys, find the secrets, and advance through the levels. That was such a blast.

I've added some partial maps of Station 3 now. I haven't had a chance to play through the entire level yet. I think it's going to be well into summer for me to be getting anywhere near finishing this game. Here's the link again.

One of the strengths in the original VCS that seems to have been forgotten, until the recent appearance of the Nintendo Wii, is that you could have up to four players playing simultaneously on some games. The one limitation to this, was that this type of play was restricted to paddle-controller based games. The reason had to do with the method of communicating controller information to the I/O chip: two joysticks equal four buttons each, plus one fire button each for a total of 10 signals. Each paddle control communicated on fire button, and a voltage between zero and five. Multiply times four controllers and you get a total of 8 signals. It occurs to me, that a paddle controller is a potentiometer, like this: In a schematic, this is represented as a "tap" moving along a resistor: So I took a look at this page to learn more about voltage-divider circuits, and it got me to thinking - if you could define each of the eight joystick controller positions as a division of five volts (...or falling into eight ranges of voltages), wouldn't it be possible to create four-player games that used joystick controllers? I envision taking the basic concept of a voltage-divider shown here: ...and expanding it to apply to the eight positions of an Atari VCS joystick: I'm imagining two joystick-to-paddle adapters that would each be connected as shown here: Does this look at all feasible to any of you? Would there be additional challenges in the programming that would prevent the creation of four-player games such as "Tank Battle" (with Combat-style graphics) or a four-player version of "Surround"? If it simply couldn't be done on a 2600, could a 7800 handle it? (So far as I know, there were no paddle-controller games for the 7800)

A basic, simple to use laptop computer for under $200? Sounds to me a bit like the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project... ...A related thread I started yesterday in Current Events.

...I've had some experience in the area of guitar-playing...