NovaXpress

Robot Tank is like a kidde version of Battlezone. Bullets that cease to exist if you can't see them? Arbitrary damage penalties? No variety of enemies? I don't care that it offers fog effects(grey screen instead of black? how awesome), Robot Tank pales in comparison to 2600 Battlezone.

Battlezone. Oh shit, wrong comparative topic!

Hmm, you just described Defender. Change that to "side-to-side" and you've got Galaxian, Megamania, Space Invaders, etc

Turmoil is pretty much regarded as a great game by everyone, not obscure at all. Every 2600 i know loves it.

Encounter at L-5, one of my Top Ten All Time for the 2600.

Remember that the Mythicon games sold for $9.99 brand new, so they were supposed to be "bargain" titles. And I still like Sorcerer.

If Megamania didn't stop at 999.999 I would still be playing the game I started in 1982.

The best "urban legend" expample is the nonexistent censorship of Missile Command. The game mags of the day always promoted the practice as rebel programmers secretly defying the company's orders.

Damn, they don't show the "mystery ufo" from Alien Invasion. Isn't it odd that the more advanced systems almost never used eggs? Does 5200 Space Invaders contain the Rob Fulop egg from the pc version? The presence of Imagic HQ in Truckin' is called an egg, but I don't think it qualifies.

Thanks for the screenshot! I've never seen pics of any of the three Channel F easter eggs before.

On the worst 10 list, Sorcerer should be replaced with Skeet Shoot.

Here's the first one I'd like to challenge: the myth that Atari was opposed to easter eggs. Adventure: there still hasn't been any confirmation about the person who discovered it. The first known revelation of this egg was in Electronic Games #2, which would have happened early-to-mid 1981. How did they get the information? And how interesting did Atari find it when an old game became talked-about again and remained a hot seller? If Atari didn't leak the info, one of their programmers did. The egg was then revealed in the first issue of Atari Age. Do we still believe that Atari was opposed to the practice? Missile Command: despite rumors that Atari had it removed, every cart found contains the egg. Yars' Revenge: now Atari had the idea. They talked about the egg in Atari Age #3 Raiders Of The Lost Ark: the most common screenshot showed an egg! Defender : solution pretty much totally revealed in Atari Age #7 Easter eggs became a selling point. It's certain that Robinette's was unexpected but the result apparently pleased Atari.

You'll fit in here just fine.

You're already being an obnoxious turd, the point is that if you're going to be obnoxious then you'd better know what you're talking about. Oh, you want to get snippy about Bushnell owning Chuck E Cheese? Maybe you should have done ten seconds of research to figure out what most of us already knew: he was done with that company even before the Crash. Don't blame other people for correcting your mistakes. And don't be so sure about things unless you're actually, you know, sure about them.

Adventure was released in 78/79 wasn't it? So it was only a secret for 2 or 3 years before EG published the solution. I'm sure that Atari looked over their prime competition (Channel F in the early days) and knew about the first egg.

Oh yeah, and "Nolan" never used deodorant. Nyah. As to the original question? Already answered: there were no "legal reasons" for any delay. The delay that pushed the 2600 from 1976 to 1977 was a lack of money. Which is why Atari was sold to Warner. So all you fantasizers have to understand that without Warner there would never have been a 2600. Development costs alone were estimated at $100M. It was Warner who wrote Jay Miner's paychecks. There's the reality of the situation. Much of the AtariAge trivia pieces were written years ago, when information was harder to find. Like the "Adventure was the first easter egg" myth, "2600 delayed for legal reasons" just isn't the case.

"Pocketmego" should do a litlle research. He really tells it like it ain't. Bushnell resigned from a floundering Chuck E Cheese in 1983 when the board of directors decided that they weren't going to listen to him any more. After he left, the chain was bought by competitor Showtime Pizza and finally turned things around. He started over 20 companies. The only ones to make real money did so after he sold/lost them. And uWink smells like total failure. uwink

Well, Jobs stole from Wozniak when "they" were creating Breakout so there you go. Bushnell didn't have the ability to buy Space Invaders. And if he'd used his own money, the 2600 wouldn't have lasted long enough to see its release.

Pac-Man, no doubt about it. Oh hell. That was the standardized response to the wrong question.

Not exactly the feature that should have been showcased. Atari was just greedy and pompus, thinking that they could make kids' parents buy anything. Why waste a good title as the pack-in? Make 'em pay extra. But what a horrid title to select. Was Atari smart enough to realize that pack-ins were the usual game of choice for displays? Coleco gave up some cartridge money by naming Donkey Kong as the pack-in. But they sold a lot of systems. Throw in the absolutely killer apps Smurf Rescue, Venture, Zaxxon and Turbo plus surprize hits like LadyBug and Pepper II and you have the best system launch in history.

It's not a matter of debate. Coleco was first. The most-often agreed-upon specifics are September 82 for CV and November 82 for the 5200. Unless you were there at the time, you have no idea how pathetic the 5200 looked next to the Colecovision that Xmas. The CV launch titles were all spectacular. But in 83, the 5200 had all the great games while Coleco concentrated on selling accessories like the damn Super Action Controllers. Super Breakout or Donkey Kong? And many stores put Smurf Rescue up on their system, which really settled the matter.

Colecovision beat the 5200 to market by two months. And their launch titles beat the 5200's launch titles pretty much across the board. Coleco dominated the fall of 1982, but a year later the 5200 had the best games. Unfortunately, fall of 1983 was a very bad time to be peaking in the video game biz.

If Bushnell had kept Atari, we'd now be members of OdysseyAge. Bushnell didn't have enough money to launch and support a programmable system. Only a major company like Warners could handle that sort of investment. The VCS never would have became a mass market commodity without them. Bushnell was in the right place at the right time. He got his start by ripping off SpaceWar. He made his money by ripping off Pong. Throw in the home consoles and he was pretty much ripping off Ralph Baer in general, taking advantage of Magavox's missteps to do things a little better. The guy from the Sears sporting goods department who took a chance on Atari consoles is the real unsung hero. Bushnell had Sente. It created nothing of note and failed miserably. If he's such a genius at the video game business then why hasn't he done anything with it in the almost 40 years since? He was an immensely important figure, but his time was over in the 70s.

It's not a realistic soccer game unless it includes a "flop and whine" button.

It's a foolish question. Any company would have gone through many changes in the last 20+ years. Who's to say what Imagic would be doing in the 21st century? Case in point: back in the early 80s there was a software company which truly broke new ground. They were all about original games being created by people who were true creative geniuses. Innovation was their sacred mission. They made a lot of great stuff. And they're still around today! The name of the company is Electronic Arts.