KAZ

I agree with this. Whatever was made by Atari for the 7800 back in the 80's is the only games you should count as being a part of the "official" 7800 collection. However, consider this: What if an actual Atari programmer from back then designed a new game for the 7800 nowdays. I would submit that this new game would have to be a part of the totality of your collection. Your collection would not be complete without it. But also, what if someone made a homebrew and somehow wrote to Atari (or whatever they call themselves now...Infogrames?) and asked them to officially sanction their game. Would this game be considered an OFFICIAL Atari 7800 game? I actually think it is interesting to see some Atari 2600 games going "7800". I imagine it like this: Combat on an Atari 7800 can utilize enhanced memory, correct? Perhaps then there can be more stages and tanks, but the graphics and sound remain intact.

I'm going to have to keep this little fact in mind for the time when I have a room big enough to make it a "classic gaming" room. This equipment might go well with the 5200 in a room. I agree about the beauty of the 5200. I like the way the sega genesis looks too, more than nintendo or super nintendo, or even playstation.

Pengo, Space Invaders, and Real Sports Football are definitely needed in a 5200 collection. Using the keypad to call plays in football is really fun. Pengo is a must have no matter what. I love how the 5200 renders the sound effects and graphics when you get three STAR bricks together. Oh did you guys forget Dig Dug? For shame. When I was young I spent about 9 trillion hours on this game alone. It is no secret that this is my favorite system of all time. The way the 5200 does games like Pac-Man and Centipede is irreplacable by anything modern. Modern technology will NEVER go backwards, and will never have the same flavor.

Does anyone have the romset for Super Pacman for JROK'S "Jas" program. I have the one for mame, but it is missing this rom: spc2-1c.bin I've been looking for it around the net, but can't find it. I'm was just curious if the super pacman would somehow be "better" than the version for mame. Thanks

I just tried Pitfall! also, hilarious!

I just ran Pacman WITHOUT a bios rom on Atari 2600 for MESS. It looked like garbage, BUT...it looked like Pacman to me. The controls were inoperable. It is hard to describe how bad it was-but it was Atari 2600 pacman. So that's the answer to the bios question. You only need the software rom, not the bios rom.

I'm really happy with MESS, I finally got some stuff to work with it. Atari 7800 looks very nice, mean 18 was absolutely thrilling to play-it was the first time I had even seen it for any emulator. I used to have it on my Apple 2 GS. I played Colecovision, and I was VERY impressed by it. It did Donkey Kong Jr. about 5 times better than my virtual colecovision I was using. The one disappointment was Atari 5200. Pacman looked like garbage, and was completely non-working. I tried Kangaroo, and it looked fine, but my computer is so slow (400 mhz) that the framerate was really suffering. And what's up with Atari 2600 and Nintendo? Are these even supported through MESS? MESS would be an absolute dream if everything worked as it should. It IS quite a hassle, things are just not really that straightforward. I don't have any trouble with my Atari 2600 standalone emulator, or my 5200, etc. etc. I did find some really neat images to stick in the snapshots folder. It was fun to look at what all the systems looked like. So far I'd give MESS a B- Not that in a million years could I ever figure out how the MESS team did all of this. The difficulty must be unbelievable.

Ok, I got it working now, I was just not clicking on the software panel, where it lists the games.

Ok, I renamed 7800.zip to a7800.zip in the bios folder. I still have mspac.a78 in the software folder all alone. Now I get the error message: Unable to initialize machine emulation. At least it is a different error message, I'm making progress, but not far enough. Please help!

Mitch, I was wondering if you could help me get my MESS to work. I downloading the 7800.zip from your site, and I stuck it into the BIOS folder I downloaded mspac .a78 from your site too, and I put that in the SOFTWARE folder. When I do this I get an error message like this: MESS Error 7800.rom NOT FOUND ERROR: required files are missing, the system cannot be started. I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. Can you assist me? Thanks!

Mitch, that's a great site. Everything is laid out in a perfectly straightforward way.

Intensely funny. Did you catch this part tho (it was a mispelling on the part of 2cpu.com): "Here you can see the actual motherboard you are bidding on being CARFULLY packed and readied for shipment." They spelled "CARFULLY" incorrectly. It is almost ironic because it is a car that is running over the motherboard. Perhaps the mispelling was on purpose. It is all funny anyway, but the mispelling was interesting to see.

I love 5200 games, they are my favorite. Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Pengo are always fun. So anything that would enhance this system is on my WANT list. I have two refurbished controllers, with Wico Controllers, and Y cables, and I have a Trak Ball. It is either a Masterplay or this cool product. I'd want either one. Anything to support playing these games. I notice sometimes that the start button doesn't work on my gold contact controllers hooked to the Y. Sometimes I have to unplug it, and then plug it in again-THEN the start button will work. It is kinda strange, does anyone have an explanation why this would somehow "reset" the inputs? I have no other explanation for this.

I better post THIS link, in case anyone might have forgotten: http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7337 We will never forget.

This game is super cool. I own it and love it.

I was playing Ms. Pac-Man the other day on Mame, and was on the Pear Stage. The ghosts remain blue for quite a bit of time, and I was able to get a "glitchy" sound effect by doing this: I ate one power pellet, and did not eat any ghosts, and then I ate another one, and the sound continued to get "higher and higher pitched". I ate a third one, and the sound got even higher. By the fourth pellet, the sound got so high that it started making strange goofy noises. It was really really cool!

Jr. Pac-Man on Atari 5200? Coolness! Is that a homebrew? I wanna get that somehow...any ideas?

haha, good point

I think there is a deep way to think about this issue. Although I agree that these prices are too high, let's think of this in a different way... You say this may ruin the hobby for people, but consider this... The seller gets $125 from a buyer for this game. What do you suppose the seller might do with this money? I would submit that they may pump it back into the market, because their interest centers mainly on games (specifically classic games). Of course, if this seller no longer has any interest in the classic gaming scene, then YES, I would agree that he might be ruining the hobby for others, as you say. If someone lives in a small town, for instance, and wins the lottery. Provided that they don't hoard their winnings, they are actually contributing to their community and the businesses there by purchasing items, or buying goods/services. If they leave the small town, then you could refer to them as being "a traitor". Is this an "off the wall" philosophy about this?

The "rumor" is true. The Super Pacman I've got does not display properly on my Atari 5200 4 port. I've even messed with the color pots on the inside and there was no effect. The display issue I'm talking about is that the locked doors that should be display are NOT displayed on my version playing it on my 4 port. The regular power pellets also do not display. Instead of locked doors or power pellets, there are none. Course I've not got around to getting a 2 port.

I agree, what an idoit. Good poynt!

Here's how I think it happened. This ebayer sells electronic stuff on ebay frequently. Because of this he has become accustomed to writing this: Please Note: do to the age of the system all electronics items sold in any of my auctions are SOLD-AS-IS. I do my best to test and clean each item before I list them for sell. He probably sells alot of video game stuff, and this is what he writes on ALL of those auctions. He is probably just too lazy to change his "default" description to fit a specific situation. But it is funny for the reasons you stated. I do not think, for example, that he opens up these boxes, and then re-shrinkwrapps them. That is most likely NOT what is happening.

I think it would be cool if a company would make an Atari 2600, keeping the same graphics and sounds-but would beef up the memory like 10,000 times. I would think it might be theoretically possible. Of course then it wouldn't BE an Atari 2600. It would merely have 2600 graphics but the games would be a HUGE size. And maybe memory cards too. If you mess with the graphics capabilities even a little bit it would make it NOT like the 2600.

That could be a neat new goal: Over an extended period of time... Play each of your Atari 2600 games for 24 hours straight. First might be a full day of Pitfall! Followed by 24 hours straight of Phoenix Eating and bathroom breaks allowed. It would give some measure of how each game ranks on an "extended play" index. Like, for example, which games did you get "sick of" the fastest. The chance of getting "in the zone" during a 24 hour play period on the same game would be really high. But how would you decide what difficulty setting to have it on, or mode of play? Those variables might mess this whole thing up, but even if it were space invaders, at least only this game would be in the system for 24-hours.

I recently watched the movie "Road Trip", featuring Tom Green. I noticed that two characters were wearing Atari logo shirts. I thought it was most unusual. I was curious if one of the producers of this movie liked Atari, or might have worked for Atari, etc. etc. I placed this topic in the Atari 2600 section, not being sure which was the most appropriate forum to place it in. If you can find a better home for this topic... "r u too good for your home?" -Happy Gillmore