DamonicFury

Wow, seeing as how I really like most of the games considered 'overrated' in this thread, I'll go ahead and nominate a game a lot people think is one of the 2600's best... Demon Attack. I really just don't get the appeal of this one. Kill demons, dodge their fire, repeat, repeat, repeat. Good old Space Invaders is far more interesting, in which you have the shields, the saucer, the large alien formation, and the threat of imminent alien landing to cope with. The graphics aren't even up to Imagic's usual high quality... they look more like an Apollo game. Admittedly, the Swordquest games are far worse... but other than Electronic Fun, not many people think fondly of them.

How is it possible that Super Breakout was the top seller in 86 and 87? Aside from being a fairly poor 5200 game, didn't it come with most 5200 systems?

For a giveaway game, it's really quite fun! I love the style of the plastic dolls, the oriental music, the funny quotes, and the variety of challenges to unlock. I'm not really a fan of Smash Brothers type of games either - but I find I'm really enjoying this one anyway.

A Space Invaders overlay (red for the saucer, green for the shields and player) would be great for Y*A*S*I!

For the first time ever, I found an Atari 5200 at a yard sale. I've been a skeptic about the system, as I'm a long time user of the Atari computer line - still I couldn't resist a dirt cheap classic Atari system. It came with Pacman, Robotron, Dig Dug, Jungle Hunt, Gorf, Keystone Kapers, and Pitfall 2. The controllers didn't work, of course. I went ahead and added the foil contacts as has been recommended numerous times on this board, and that brought them to life. As expected, the games are just like their 400/800 counterparts. The controller, once fixed, wasn't quite as bad as I expected. It's certainly not great, mind you, but not as terrible as I expected. Pacman is controllable, if just a bit trickier than with a standard 2600 stick. Since I already have a pretty extensive 8-bit library, I don't expect to do a lot of collecting for the system, but it's nice to have one to complement my Atari collection. Looking forward to trying Adventure 2 in the near future - the one exclusive the 5200 has that I've wanted to play for the past few years. :-)

Doesn't bother me either. I've bought just about every rock game since the first Guitar Hero, and had a blast with each. Yeah, I'll skip on the DJ Hero and the new kid-friendly titles, but they aren't being made for me, any more that GH: Metallica was made for young kids or hip-hop fans. Looking forward to the Beatles game and GH5.

That's awesome if you can find one. I haven't ever seen anything like that.

An arcade monitor and a PC monitor are roughly the same size. The real problem is the lack of a mounting bracket on a PC monitor. On my MAME cab, I just created an internal horizontal shelf to hold the PC monitor in place. In your case, the monitor was meant to be bolted on at an angle, so you'll have to be a bit more creative about how to mount it, if you want the monitor mounted at the angle that your cabinet intended it to be.

More RAM probably won't help much. The processor speed is key for MAME games. If you don't want to swap out the main computer, you can squeeze out some extra performance by using earlier MAME builds. .36 runs most of the classics at full speed, for example. On my 500Mhz setup, I use .36 for most games, .54 to play games that weren't yet included in .36 and .102 to play a very few games that weren't included in .54. As you can get a 2.8Ghz machine for $100 now (see TigerDirect if you need one) it might be more effective to just replace the current computer. Adding games is easy, IF you can find the right ROM. You just add the zip file to the roms directory. The trouble comes because the MAME team is constantly changing the damn ROMS, so that a ROM that worked just fine in .36 won't work in .54. (Standard disclaimer: Downloading ROMS is generally illegal.)

If you are ever in York, PA, there is a collectibles store in the West Manchester Mall that has a small assortment of Atari, NES, Sega, and newer games. I've actually picked up a few R5 Atari carts there.

Here's some more firsts... (please correct this list if you know of earlier 'firsts') First game to use a steering wheel - Gran Trak 10 (1974) First game to use joysticks - Tank (1974) First color video game - Indy 800 (1975) First game to use a microprocessor - Gunfight (1975) First game with high score displayed - Sea Wolf (1976) First game with vertically mounted monitor - Breakout (1976) First game allowing you to enter your initials - Star Fire (1979) I'm curious, was Space Invaders truly first at anything? Other than 'First truly great video game design', but that's somewhat subjective. :-) Which earlier games let you play as long as your skill allowed you to?

Over three years later, and I finally went ahead and did this myself. Thanks to Atari Dogs and his Popeye 2 hack of Kangaroo for inspiring me to figure this out! Also thanks to Jeff Wierer's Hack-O-Matic 3, without which I wouldn't have been able to do it at all! kangblak.bin

Hi, Atari Dogs Any chance you could just change the Kangaroo background to black, leaving the rest of that game intact, and post that ROM? I've always hated that blue background in Kangaroo. Best of luck with the Popeye hack... looks good so far.

I'll second that! Pacman CE is the only Xbox exclusive that I'm sorry I can't play.

It will be something of a tough call as to whether to go with a PC running MAME or original arcade internals. It depends on what's important to you. Here's some pro's and cons's as I see it: Original arcade hardware: Pro: Completely authentic gameplay Boots right up - no BIOS or OS load to deal with Con: Somewhat expensive (about $200 each for the PCB and the arcade monitor. Plus you'll need the controls, wiring harness, and power supply) Much more difficult to obtain than a PC and a standard monitor More difficult to maintain (arcade hardware does break down from time to time. Of course, so do PC's, but it sounds like you know how to deal with that.) PC / Mame: Pro: Easy to find hardware, fairly cheap too, for older equipment Can run numerous games (but you say this isn't important to you) Con: BIOS and OS load will make the user wait a few minutes before starting play. And those screens are decidedly non-authentic. (Yes, they can be masked to some degree, but you'll never get the instant-on experience of true Galaga hardware.) Your cabinet isn't at all designed for mounting a PC monitor... you'll have to get creative to get it to work. While playing Galaga in MAME is very, very close to the real thing... it's still not the real thing. A PC monitor is much sharper than an arcade monitor... which will make the game look less authentic. So it's your call. If you love Galaga as much like it sounds like you do, you'd really probably be happiest with true Galaga hardware (or even a true Galaga machine.) On the other hand... have you played Galaga on MAME yet? If that experience is good enough for you, perhaps a MAME conversion is the way to go. Again, it's your call.

Have you considered the possibility of installing a Galaga board and arcade monitor, if all you want to do is play Galaga? This would give you a truly authentic Galaga experience.

The Colecovision versions of these obscure arcade games ARE generally pretty good, especially for 1982! Space Panic, Mousetrap, Carnival, Pepper II, Looping, and Venture are particularly strong. In fact, it's pretty amazing how much of the Colecovision library consists of arcade games that STILL haven't been given a modern release. Still, it's always nice to have the true original arcade game code if it's available. And Mr. Do is a much stronger game in it's arcade format than the Colecovision port.

While I don't intend to buy games that I've already bought on compilations, I'd be happy to buy some that have never been released outside of the arcade. Nintendo's own arcade games come immediately to mind, but I'd also like to see some games from smaller companies. For example, Universal: Mr. Do, Ladybug, Cosmic Avenger, etc. Stern: Berzerk, Frenzy Exidy: Venture, Mousetrap, Crossbow Yes, we can all play these games in MAME, but I'm always happy to buy an official release. The VC seems like an ideal venue for some these games to finally be sold.

Most Odyssey 2 resemble the earliest 2600 games (such as Air Sea Battle, Combat, Outlaw, etc.) While the technical specs weren't vastly different from the 2600, Atari games started becoming much better than Odyssey games as Atari programmers started learning it's unique tricks and pushing the machine to it's limits. The 2600 simply had a more flexible design that let good programmers make games that took it far beyond what it was originally designed for. By the time the best 2600 games were coming out (Pitfall, River Raid, etc.), the Odyssey paled by comparison. But the Odyssey does have some nice games (UFO , Pick Axe Pete, and KC Munchkin come to mind.

As it happens, somebody already did port a bunch of Atari Games to the NES. And you can get them pretty cheaply. The catch is that they were released at the first Atari Flashback, a standalone dedicated game machine, not as a NES cart. The games were ported to NES-compatible code as it was easier and cheaper to quickly port them to easily available NES clone hardware than to properly run the 2600 code on compatible hardware (as was eventually done with the Flashback 2.) Here's the games that it included: 2600: Adventure, Air-Sea Battle, Battlezone, Breakout, Canyon Bomber, Crystal Castles, Gravitar, Haunted House, Millipede, Saboteur, Sky Diver, Solaris, Sprintmaster, Warlords and Yar's Revenge 7800: Asteroids, Centipede, Desert Falcon, Food Fight, Planet Smashers Don't expect perfect (or even particularly good) ports. But if you really want to see what Atari games would like and sound like on NES hardware, this would be your best bet. Looks like they are selling for around 10 bucks on Ebay.

Question to fans of the heavy-sixer: How do you get around the issue of Atari red label carts that barely fit in the machine? I can get them in, but it takes a lot of force, and certainly risks label damage. Because I find that issue rather bothersome, I'm voting for my first Atari, the 4-switcher.

How the 2600 forged the home video game future

I spend a lot of time with 2600 Raiders back in the day, and Fate of Atlantis was fun also, but my vote has to go to the Atari arcade game, Temple of Doom. Great use of the classic Indiana Jones music, sound clips from the film, and fast, fun gameplay. It gets a lot of play on my MAME cab.

Anyone ever tried Darkstar One, the space simulator PC game? I played space simulators CONSTANTLY throughtout the 90's (X-Wing, TIE Fighter, Wing Commander, Freespace, etc.) but it's been a long time since I've found one that engaged me as much as those classics. I picked it up at Target on a whim in it's jewel case edition, and have fallen in love with it. Fantastic graphics, engaging story, exciting gameplay (rather arcade like in space, more like Wing Commander than TIE Fighter). Very Privateer/Elite kind of game, with lots of missions to choose from, and upgrades to purchase. It does have an annoying tendency to crash every few hours, but this is less of an issue as it does save automatically pretty often. HIGHLY recommended to space sim fans!

It IS pretty rare to see 8-bit computers at yard sales, thrift stores, etc. ... still I've seen more of them out in the wild than I have 5200's. Don't worry about a monitor... it is NOT necessary for use with an Atari computer. They hook up to your TV just the same way your 7800 does. I haven't done recent price checks on Ebay, but a 800XL/XEGS shouldn't really cost much more at all than a 5200 (and you should save on the shipping, as the computer are much smaller!)