Yamo

For me, I just don't find the gameplay that fun. Hunting down the phone pieces? Not fun. Finding the landing zone? Not fun. Collecting candy? Not fun. Avoiding the baddies? Sometimes mildly fun, but not enough to make up for the rest of the gameplay. It's far from the worst game ever made, as there's a big difference between a gameplay element just being not fun (as in boring) and being aggressively frustrating or stupid. But I just don't enjoy it. The core gameplay elements entertain me about about as much as making my bed or balancing my checkbook.

So I popped in Yars' Revenge last night and noticed something strange right off: The screen displayed my score (zero, obviously) but there was no number displayed representing my number of lives. On a hunch, I deliberately killed myself several times and sure enough, the game didn't seem to be keeping track of my lives at all. I was immortal! Not long after, I shot the swirl with the cannon and gained an extra life, but it was no gain in this case since the game now displayed that I had one life total and it ended on my next death. It was sure neat while it lasted, though! Did this ever happen to anyone else? The game played completely normal otherwise and I wasn't "frying" or anything like that.

Not only that, but the twitch action paddle control for Kaboom!, when played on the original hardware, has yet to be replicated by any game/controller combination on any other game console, classic or modern. I dare anyone to prove otherwise. Definitely. I've tried it with a standard "control pad"-type setup before and it's borderline unplayable. A stark reminder that emulation will never be perfect.

I agree for the most part...BUT... I used to be able to play some of these games for hours back in the day. Now I fly through a stack of games in an hour...usually playing no more than one game...sometimes just one life. Fun, yes...but they don't hold my attention like they used to. I've moved on to bigger and arguably better games. You know it's funny, but I almost never play any game for more than half an hour these days. I've even whittled my PS2 collection down to things that can be played in short spurts, like fighting games. Maybe it's a getting older thing? I dunno.

I can't think of a single game that was good then and isn't now. I'm not even sure how such a thing as a fun game becoming unfun can happen.

This is actually why I like Defender for 2600 so much. Sure, my smart bombs are less useful, but at least I can last more than a few seconds.

How could I forget H.E.R.O. and Haunted House? I'll get those for sure.

That's the teeter-totter one, right? I'll look into it.

I'm not much of a collector, but I do play a lot for fun. Here's a list of what I have. If you could recommend some favorite games of yours that I'm missing and why they're worth hunting down, I'd really appreciate it. Adventure Asteroids Atlantis Battlezone Beamrider Berzerk Boxing Breakout Burgertime Carnival Centipede Chopper Command Combat Cosmic Ark Crackpots Crystal Castles Defender Defender 2 (Stargate) Demon Attack Dig Dug Donkey Kong The Empire Strikes Back Enduro Frogger Frogs and Flies Frostbite Galaxian Joust Jr. Pac-Man Jungle Hunt Kaboom Kangaroo Laser Blast Maze Craze Millipede Missile Command Montezuma's Revenge Moon Patrol Moonsweeper Mountain King Ms. Pac-Man Mr. Do Pac-Man Mario Bros. Megamania Pengo Pitfall Pitfall 2 Phoenix Pole Position Popeye River Raid Seaquest Space Invaders Spiderman Starmaster Super Breakout Tapper Q*Bert Vanguard Venture Video Olympics Warlords Wizard of Wor Yars' Revenge

Swordquest: Earthworld here, too! So terrible. Maybe I'm just lucky, but that's the only one I can remember being disappointed in. I actually liked Pac-Man. Maybe because I was just a little kid at the time. I still think it's an okay maze chase game today, although the other Pac offerings for 2600 are obviously superior.

I'm also going to say Joust. I think it was ever better than the original, as the constantly moving/floating eggs made the "egg waves" much more fun.

I had an incredible amount of fun exploring Mountain King. Great use of sound as a gameplay element, too. Was that a first?

I was born a year after the VCS (1978). I guess I'm pretty young still. I plan to be around for a while.

Tell me about it! I am already hooked on Space Treat Deluxe!

Hello, all. I'm 30 year-old man and some of my first memories were of my first gaming system: The 2600 I owned from 1980-1983. So I recently went online and bought a replacement for that long-lost woodgrain wonder. Needless to say, I've felt no need to consider blowing cash on PS3s and X-Box 360s since! I'm having great fun so far, but here are my questions: 1. What's the deal with the a/b difficulty switch? Is there one setting that is considered the default for serious players? 2. My proudest accomplishment at six years of age was earning Activision's "Cliff Hangers" patch for Pitfall 2. Does anybody know where I can find one of those now? Thanks, everyone, from a previously-fallen twenty-something who forgot how good it could be.