DamonicFury

Here's a list of the 77-81 games, which may not be perfect, but should be pretty close. 1977: Air-Sea Battle, Basic Math, Blackjack, Combat, Indy 500, Star Ship, Street Racer, Surround, Video Olympics 1978: Basketball, Brain Games, Breakout, Codebreaker, Flag Capture, Hangman, Home Run, Hunt & Score, Outlaw, Slot Racers, Space War 1979: Backgammon, Basic Programming, Bowling, Canyon Bomber, Casino, Football, Home Run, Human Cannonball, Sky Diver, Slot Machine, Superman, Video Chess 1980: 3D-Tic-Tac-Toe, Adventure, Boxing (Activision), Championship Soccer, Checkers (Activision), Circus Atari, Dragster (Activision), Dodge 'Em, Fishing Derby (Activision), Golf, Maze Craze, Night Driver, Othello, Space Invaders, Video Checkers 1981: Asteroids, Bridge (Activision), Freeway (Activision), Laser Blast (Activision), Lochjaw (Apollo), Lost Luggage (Apollo), Kaboom (Activision), Missile Command, Racquetball (Apollo), Skeet Shoot (Apollo), SpaceChase (Aplollo), Space Cavern (Apollo), Skiing (Activision), Tennis (Activision), Video Pinball, Warlords

To answer my own question, after playing with it some more, it seems the options make the game a bit harder (game 1=easier game 4=hardest) by doing things like reducing the number of balls and shortening the paddle. Interestingly, before cleaning it up, the onscreen paddle wasn't jittery like it would be on a 2600 with a dirty paddle, but instead was 'fuzzy'... the paddle looked like it was disintegrating on-screen when you tried to move it.

I just picked up a Video Pinball Atari until at a yard sale this weekend. It's a cool bit of pre-2600 gaming goodness. :-) There seems to be the ability to select one of four options for each of the games on the console. Does anyone have the list of what these options do?

How about a Kangaroo Black? That blue background really makes the game uglier than it needs to be.

With my heavy-sixer, it takes a LOT of force to get Atari red-label (such as Solaris and Gravitar) carts in. I've found a nice solution however... the select-a-cart add-ons like the Video Game Brain Admittedly, it's easier to use a different style of Atari 2600 (or 7800), but if you REALLY want to play red label carts on your heavy sixer, this is probably the best way to do it.

Anyone know anything about this "Gamekey Compatible" version that's coming soon? Amazon link to Wireless Gamekey Compatible Ms. Pacman

I've always loved their Falcon label for Star Voyager (as you can see from my long-standing avatar)... didn't know they'd done something similar for Subterranea! I also didn't know they had a picture-label version of Subterranea... glad I'm not a label-variant collector!!

Yep, it's been done... Alien Pac Hack

Wow... that box!!! That wonderfully retro box! :-) And those joysticks! Lunar Lander!! Sure looks like Infogrammes is out to make things right this time. :-)

An emulator wouldn't help all that much as the ROM's for these games haven't been been released. I, too, am interested in these games, but will have to wait until I can save a bit more $. Just from reading these boards, I've heard good things about Alia Quest, mixed reviews on the rest.

With many, many thanks to Dennis Debro for his Kaboom! disassembly, Kirk Israel for his 2600 programming tutorial, and Edwin Blink for his Bit Hacker tool, I present a small hack of Kaboom! Just two small differences: 1. You never lose buckets when you miss a bomb, although the levels increment and decrement normally. 2. The Activision logo has been replaced with the word "Cheater!" This was something I'd wanted for years, as I love Kaboom, but get frustrated when I screw up at it and have to restart. Now I can practice as long as I like! Hope someone else finds this useful! Note: If you want to use this game in Z26, don't forget to enable the paddles. (z26 -m0) Thanks again to Dennis for pointing this out to me! kaboomhk.zip

I recently found a game called "Super Pitfall" for the NES at a thrift store. I had no idea such a thing even existed at the time. Turns out the thing is kind of a mutant cross between Pitfall II and Super Mario Brothers. (Pitfall Harry looks A LOT like Luigi! And they gave him a gun for some unexplainable reason.) After searching around the Internet, I've found the game is regarded as a true abomination by most Pitfall fans, but I've found it to be somewhat enjoyable, if not anywhere near as good as the original games.

Oh, it definetly got a US release. I picked one up in a KB Toy store in the early 90's, as I REALLY wanted to see how Xenophone translated to the 2600. It's fairly rare though (a 7 out of 10) on AtariAge's scale).

For me personally, and with no disrespect intended to 5200 fans, the Atari 8-bit is a better choice. It has a much larger library of software, and standard 2600-style controllers. And it's a pretty simple matter to hook it up to your PC (with a SIO2PC cable) and be able to instantly sample any 8-bit/5200 game of your choice. As a collector, I can understand why some might prefer the 5200 (the labels, the more limited library of software, nostalgica), but as a gamer, the Atari 8-bit computer is my clear choice.

My vote for best-looking 2600 games is Keystone Kapers. Not only is it hard to believe it's a 2600 game, it's even harder to beleive it was written by the same guy who did the hard-to-look-at Coleco Donkey Kong port!

On my 800XL, this game just requires a press of the START key or the joystick button.

I gave this some thought, but decided a simple signature was enough for me. I'm very much looking forward to reading the detailed history of the invention of the first home video game console. :-)

Just curious... was the final version of the Saboteur ROM ever released? (Other than in the short-lived, ill-fated AtariAge reproduction.)

Of the classic era systems, here's the 3 that just aren't worth it for me: (Apologies to fans of the below systems - this is just my personal opinion) Colecovision: I had this for years and eventually sold it (at a nice profit) on Ebay. The controllers are pretty awful and getting carts to work on it was nearly as bad as an NES. It does have some nice games that are exclusive to the system, but overall I just couldn't justify keeping it. Atari 5200: Ever since I first saw this sytem in action is 1982, I could never understand why someone would prefer this to an Atari computer. Atari computers are so much more expandable, play almost all the same games, and don't require the use of an awful, non-centering, easily broken controller. Had Atari simply marketed the Atari 400 as the state-of-the-art game machine that it was, I imagine it would have ruled the market for a long, long time. Intellivision: Once again, it's all about the terrible controllers! Intellivision seemed to be competitive against the 2600 in it's early days when it's sports games were clearly superior to the early Atari sports games. But as progammers learned to squeeze more and more out of the 2600, it seemed that the Inty hardware just couldn't deliver the same fast-paced gameplay that the Atari system could, despite the best efforts of it's programmers. Like with the Coleco, there are some nice games for it, but many of it's best were ported sucessfully to the 2600, and their are very common, inexpensive emulations available these days for most of the rest of it's library.

Star Voyager is a long time personal favorite (as you might be able to tell from my avatar - love that Star Wars-inspired box art!) No, it doesn't have the depth of Starmaster or Phaser Patrol, but it does offer a very nice arcade style shoot-em-up. Like it's modern homebrew "cousin" Star Fire, it allows you to enjoy some outer space action without all that fussing around with starbases and power management. For me, I enjoy using the lasers for the first few rounds, but to succeed at the higher levels, it was always necessary for me to switch to missiles.

New personal high score: 86085. Gives me some hope that I just MIGHT obtain 100,000 some wonderful day. :-) Spraying definetly has some effectiveness, especially if it is roughly targeted to where the missile actually appear. For me, my mental mindset is extremely important... I have to realy psyche myself up to be as fast, accurate, and observent as possible. Playing MC without that attitude gives me a mediocre score every time.

As a HUGE fan of arcade Missile Command (I have one in my kitchen!) , I can't express how cool I think this hack is. The title screen is VERY nice, and bringing back the left and right bases really makes this game have that arcade feel again. Great job, Paul!!!! Some minor suggestions (if they're feasible - the game is amazing as is!) Make the P/M graphics for the cursor, plane, sattelite, and smart bomb a bit more like the arcade versions. In the arcade version, the bases fire at different speeds - the middle base is much faster than the side bases. The sky colors in the later waves could be tweaked to be more arcade-like. This is really nitpicky stuff... already the game is so much closer to the arcade than the original. Fantastic work!

It certainly CAN be an RF switch... I've seen some that make the screen very fuzzy indeed. On the other hand, I have one Atari (and it's an honest-to-God heavy sixer) that is fuzzy no matter what I use to connect it to the TV. I've also switched out the cable (which is very easy to do once you open the Atari up) and even that didn't help the problem. Hopefully, in your case, it's just a matter of using a better RF switch or, even better, a direct coaxil-to-RF cable converter (either one should be for sale at your local Radio Shack)

Missile Command Star Wars Pacman Robotron 2084 Donkey Kong

Thanks for the tip, Chrisbid! I was able to pick up one of these after work thanks to the heads-up! Wow, what a nice price! :-)