DamonicFury

Graphically, 7800 Dig Dug looks just fine. Donkey Kong for the Atari 8-bit computers is one of the best pre-1990 ports. More about these machines later... You'll find Pacman Collection to be quite similar to Ms. Pacman, as it's a masterfully done hack of Ms. Pacman, adding in the orignal Pac-man, Pac-man Plus, new mazes, and some other cool options. The 2600 has tons of great, great games! This thread shows the top 100 as selected by the membership here. If you like Seaquest (great game!), you'll find many other Activision games are of similar quality. (River Raid, Pitfall, Pitfall 2, Kaboom, and H.E.R.O. leap to mind as some of the must-have classics.) This is somewhat controversial, but I'd highly recommend an Atari 8-bit computer (probably a 800XL or the XE Game System) over the 5200. The 5200 and the computers share very similar hardware, but use different cartridges and slightly different internals, making them incompatible. The game library for the computers is much larger, contains almost all of the 5200 titles, and you don't have to deal with the lousy 5200 controllers.

The PAL version certainly seems to be less rare than the NTSC one. I bought a UC on Ebay, and it turned out to be PAL.

I believe that Circus (their version of Circus Atari) was hacked to use the joysticks instead of the paddles.

For years, you could get Glacier Patrol direct from Telegames, boxed, for a mere $15. (I was lucky enough to do so.) I remember there was a Ebay seller who would regularly buy them up and sell them on Ebay for twice as much. It's safe to say Universal Chaos is rarer than Glacier Patrol. Anyone know how long UC was available for sale?

Currently playing LittleBigPlanet, with some Rock Band 2 and Guitar Hero: World Tour thrown in from time to time as well. My wife is playing the hell out of Civilization: Revolution. I end up playing Spore on the PC while she's conquering the world.

I love these kind of games, but yes, escort missions can make them enormously frustrating! Anyone who's played X-Wing probably will always remember that vicious mission where you have to defend a Nebulon-B against two sets of Tie Bombers that are coming from opposing directions. Took me a long, frustrating time to figure out how to beat that one! I had to admire the cunning of the mission design for that one.

Just a suggestion... Twilight Princess is selling for about 30$ on Half.com, while the Namco Remix is selling for about $15. You shouldn't have any problem selling TP for around $25, then buying the Namco game for $15 (plus shipping) and actually making a few bucks in the process.

The "no saves" is certainly a part of the difficulty... it's certainly less likely that I would be able to beat modern games like the more recent Mario titles and the Crash Bandicoot games without the saves. Both the lack of walkthroughs in the 80's/early 90's and the size of the games are certainly factors also. Even given those factors, I still feel like platform games like SMB, Mega Man, and (oh my god) Star Wars/Super Star Wars are far harder than the usual 2600 games. I feel GREAT after playing the Atari games mentioned above. I can beat Pitfall and Pitfall II, and play for a long, long time in River Raid, for example. Getting "in the zone" in Kaboom is one of the best experiences in videogaming. And to give a more recent example, I can beat all but the very hardest Guitar Hero songs on Expert. But I feel like an uncoordinated moron after playing an NES/SNES platformer. I have nothing but respect for all of you who can enjoy and beat those games... it seems like a feat that will be forever beyond my grasp. :-)

Is it just me, or were MOST NES (and SNES) games really hard? I haven't ever been able to finish any platform game of that era (even frickin' Super Mario) I pretty much stuck to Atari stuff and PC gaming during that era, as it seems all those Nintendo console platform games required superb reflexes, impeccable timing, and infinite patience. Thankfully, games from the 32/64-bit era and forward seemed to finally accept that not all gamers are in possession of superhuman skills.

I haven't used the Joyboard since I WAS a kid over twenty years ago. But even then, I found it to be something of a waste of plastic. My memories are of it being massively unresponsive, with the game controlling far better using the joystick. Playing the Wii Fit skiing game today is just like what I hoped the Joyboard/Mogul Maniac experience would be like back then. Sometimes great ideas just need to wait for the right technology to come along to truly utilize them.

No currently sold PS3's still have backwards compatibility with the PS2. All PS3's can play PS1 games however. All PS3's are profile 2.0 compliant.

Tail of Beta Lyrae fans... I've had this game since I was about 13, but I learned to hate it because the screen would wash out soon after starting the second level. Is there some way of avoiding that?

I'd say the overlays only enhance the games very slightly. While I've tried to collect most of the original overlays, I find that it's fairly rare that I actually use them. The originals really aren't that expensive... you may just want to order a couple from Ebay or elsewhere just to try them out.

I think ClassicGMR has the right idea. You can take this a bit further, and show Jr. Pacman as the post-crash game (although programmed pre-crash), and Nukey Shay's amazing Hack-Em as the showstopper. It would make for a clear progression of improved graphics as programmers learned more about the system.

Yeah, I'm watching it, too! Other than the fact that the Missile Command was made by Atari, their 'facts' are hilariously wrong. Still, fun to see one of my very favorite games featured in the show.

I have it for PS2, but I suspect the differences with the Gamecube version are minimal. It's a pretty basic 3rd person shooter. It's reasonably fun, but nothing I found myself coming back to. The game strongly encourages you to scan for bounties on a regular basis, and I found doing so to be cumbersome, especially during firefights! Ignoring that mechanism might make the game more fun. The storyline and cutscenes are nice for Star Wars fans curious about Jango Fett's backstory. In short, if you like Star Wars, and can pick it up cheaply, you'll should certainly get some fun out of it, even if it's unlkely to become your new favorite game.

Fun game... I've always enjoyed it since it's arcade debut. I tend to play it fairly frequently even now on my MAME cabinet.

There will be a new touchpad on the GH:WT guitars, which can be used for 'sliding' notes. But you can still use your old guitar.

As I understand it, you should be able to enjoy Guitar Hero World Tour without the extra instruments just the same way you did the earlier Guitar Hero games. Currently, I enjoy Rock Band solo just fine 95% of the time, but on the rare occasion when friends or relatives come over to play, the full band experience really IS quite fun. But I can certainly understand where everyone doesn't want the extra clutter of the drum kit hanging around!

Played it all day yesterday, and so far, it's been a complete blast. The Cell Phase is fun, but very short. The Creature Phase took much longer, and was really fun, as this is where you get to do the majority of your evolving, plus interacting with lots of interesting species (that is, killing them for food or mimicing them to create alliances.) I was kind of sorry when this phase ended, and turned into the Tribal Phase. This was kind of a kiddie RTS game... really not very exciting or original, but still fun enough, and fairly brief. Now, I've just started the Civilization Phase, and it seems so far to be a bit more involved RTS game. Looking forward to trying to Space Phase soon! It really does feel like separate games, but the 'hook' of staying with the same species and watching them evolve keeps it from feeling entirely disjointed. Most reviews have complained a possible lack of replayability, and I could see that I might not want to endlessly guide different species through all 5 phases, but I can say for sure that I've had a great time with it so far... definitely the best game experience I've had in a long time.

It's a shame Imagic's Star Voyager never gets any love. (Yeah, that's the box art for it in my profile.) No, it's not quite as challenging and in-depth as Starmaster/Star Raiders/Phaser Patrol, but it's a fun pick-up-and-play space shooter. The ability to switch between lasers and photons gives it a nice strategic element preventing it from just being a pure twitch game, lasers being easier to use and more fun, but massively energy draining. And the stargate effect it uses was quite nice for it's day (at least, I remember loving it as a ten year old.) :-) It's certainly on my personal list of underappreciated games.

It's really surprising that Atari didn't adapt some of it's own arcade games to the 2600. Space Duel and Red Baron were just mentioned, but even more surprising is the lack of Lunar Lander... that was a early game that would have been fairly easy to port to the 2600, and would have probably been reasonably popular.

Terribly sorry to hear about that glitch and the lack of a resolution for it. It IS a damn shame that such an expensive machine wouldn't play the games exactly as they did originally... especially since that machine seems to be the only legal way to purchase a new version of the Donkey Kong arcade games. ( Wish Nintendo would release it's old arcade games in a cheaper format somehow... the Virtual Console would certainly seem like an ideal place to do it.

Lots of games didn't get 2600 ports. Some of them were attempted, and prototypes exist of them. This list would include Tempest, Sinistar, Xevious, Elevator Action and Turbo. An even longer list were never attempted for a number of possible reasons (too complex for the 2600, licensing issues, lack of interest). This list would include Galaga, Robotron, Tron, Scramble, Super Pacman, Rally X, and Qix. There are, of course, many others. Recently, homebrewers have been adding some fantastic arcade ports to the 2600. Star Fire, Seawolf, and Ladybug come immediately to mind. Hopefully, there will be more on the way!

Besides Skunkworx' excellent recommendations, I would add: Arcade Games: APB Rygar Rampart Puzzle Games: Chip's Challenge Klax Crystal Mines