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Well, I can only speak for myself, but I was born in 1965, and grew up visiting arcades in the mid 1970s-early 1980s, so I was there for the birth of videogames. Early games like Pong, Breakout, Starship, Night Driver were interesting curiousities that I played a few times and that was it. Then Space Invaders came out, and I was hooked. From then on I was totally into videogames. So yes, I would agree that Space Invaders was the game changer. But... Today I find Space Invaders boring to play.... Too repetitive and predictable. In the summer of 1981 I got Adventure for the 2600. At the time it blew my mind. Multiple screens that you could freely move between at will? You could ignore the goal of the game, and just wander around and do other things? Like try to gather all objects in one room, or trap the bat in a castle, or make a dragon swallow you and have the bat carry you room to room? And then one night when I stumbled upon the secret dot and wandered around with it for over an hour until I finally stmbled into the secret room? Totally unique and just so cool at the time. Today I mostly play open world game like Skyrim, Far Cry, GTA, Fallout.... When I think back, Adventure was the very primitive precursor to these types of games. I still like to occasionally play a whole bunch of my old 2600 games....but the one 2600 game (or for that matter ANY old videogame) that I play most often is game 3 of Adventure. It's a game that I have never gotten bored with.

Out of 3 2600s, a 400, an 800, 3 800xl's, and 4 1050 drives.... All still work fine except the 400, which just shows a solid green screen. So I'd say longevity is pretty good overall. And in contrast to the person who said 50% of their disks were bad, as of 2 years ago, I was shocked that every disk but one that I tried still worked fine. These items were in regular use throughout the 80s, and then stored in their boxes in a bedroom closet from roughly 1990-2009. Since then they get rotated, seeing light occasional use/playtime. I would assume that an item left in a damp basement for years, or in a hot attic, would be more likely to have a shortened lifespan. But if reasonably cared for, they can last a lifetime.

Been using MaxFlash studio for years, had it with the default configuration to use Atari800WinPlus. Just set up a new computer, installed Maxflash studio, but want this new install to work with Altirra. Can't get it to work. Set the preview config under tools to use Altirra, with command line -xl -cart "%TARGETCAR%". Altirra just gives an error that it can't find the file "cart". This is on a Win10 machine. Any ideas?

Awesome. Thanks for this. Venture was always one of my favorite arcade games back in the day. The original Coleco cart was "ok", but this finally does the game justice on the 2600.

Thanks for the tip about SDrive max. I was just looking into it and think I'm going to get one. Love the look of the case on this one : https://www.vintagecomputercenter.com/product/atari-1050-sdrive-max

Over the past several years, I've bought a few handheld's that play dedicated retro console games....Atari 2600....Genesis.....NES. I've also seen some handhelds online that supposedly emulate multiple old consoles. But what I REALLY would love to find is a handheld that would let me play real arcade games via MAME. I have an Android tablet with MAME on it, which is cool, but controlling games with touch is awful. I have a bluetooth controller that'll sync and work with it, but that's not ideal either because my tablet is just too big to hold comfortably, and the controls aren't attached to the unit. What I'd love is something the size of a typical cell phone with some built-in controls (maybe 4 buttons on one side, and a d-pad on the other). Also, it should be relatively easy to set-up...no more complicated than it was for me to install the MAME apk on my tablet and then copy some roms via usb cable hooked to my computer. Older MAME version totally okay; I'm only looking to play simple games from late 70's and early 80s (Pac Man, Galaxian, Galaga, Asteroids, etc). Any recommendations? (I've looked for and have been unable to find a small size Android tablet that just comes with some controls built into it. That would be great....just load up all the emulators you want on it and have a fantastic retro handheld. I can't imagine why some company doesn't make a "gaming tablet").

When I got back into occasionally playing games on my old 800xl, 8-10 years ago, I ordered a half dozen or so Maxflash Carts and loaded them up with games. I've been very happy with that method except for one issue - two of my favorite games, Alternate Reality City and Dungeon, won't work that way because of multiple disk sides/swaps. A couple of times I've hooked up my old 1050s and played it the "real" way. Ideally though it would be nice to play it via a modern storage system that doesn't rely on me using 30+ year old floppies, and which may also load faster. I'm thinking that going with one of Lotharek's SIO2SD's is probably the best bet, but I figured I'd ask if anyone else recommends an alternative. Thanks for any input.

Superman was always one of my faves, even though it was a flickerfest.

It was one of those arcade games at the time that I loved, but was bad at playing. 2600 version was good, but much easier than the arcade. Played it a lot but was always annoyed that after the second level it started repeating. Arcade version had 3 or 4 levels before repeating. Though I'm pretty sure somebody made a "venture arcade" version in more recent years with the missing levels.

If you do manage to figure it out, I'd very much like to hear what you did. My first computer was a 400. Didn't touch it for over 30 years... When I got back into Atari stuff a dozen years ago or so, I only hooked up my 800xl, which replaced my 400 in 1984. Finally I decided to dig out and play a few cart games on the 400 one day a couple years ago. I got the same brown screen as you. Tried re-seating socketed chips on the board and such. Only thing that ultimately accomplished was getting different solid colors on screen... Very dark green, maybe maroon, instead of brown. One thing I will ask - does your 400 have a stock (Atari installed) RAM module? The one thing I did to my 400 back in the day was upgrade to a third party 32k module. When I was tinkering with my 400, I was wondering if the RAM was shoddy and was the culprit, but I don't have the original 16k module any more to test-swap.

>C AA00 EA EA Indeed. Much thanks. For anyone else who wants it, attached is the hacked rom with cheat. >There's a highest level? Every 2 levels the color scheme changes. I think colors keep changing until something like level 20 or 24, then it wraps back to the level 1 colors. The highest I ever made it was something like level 15, 16, 17? Never made it all the way until the colors wrapped back around again though. Missile Command (cheat).rom

Yes it would.... But it would also allow me to finally play through to the highest level, which i've never managed to do. 🙂

Was just wondering if anybody ever hacked a cheat version of Missile Command to give you unlimited missiles?

What's funny is that back in the day, my 800xl had the ingot and it was plugged in 24/7 for something like 7-8 years, and i never had a problem with it. 15+ years later when i got back into atari, i just happened to start using one of my other power supplies, the large brick black one with a couple of small vents on the edges. Only learned about ingot issues a couple years later. Guess i was lucky, but my ingot never had an issue.

If it were around April 1, and I hadn't played Mappy, I would have definitely thought this was an April Fools joke. As it stands, I'm pretty sure this will be the #1 thing on my Christmas List 6 months from now.

The only game I remember frying was Asteroids. I mostly thought Atari did a decent cart of the game, and I played it a lot, but I always thought the multi-colored asteroids looked silly. Then one day I accidentally tapped the power switch and fried the game... Only to find that all asteroids were white. After that I often played the fried, white-only asteroids.

This topic had me thinking back to what my Atari area looked like back in the day. I pulled out my photo albums from the 80s, but unfortunately this was all I could find. (back before digital photography I guess I wouldn't have "wasted film" on something as mundane as my room). This would most likely have been 1988, and I was in college at the time. Anyway, this was my 800xl with 256k Rambo upgrade, three 1050 drives (2 with US Doublers), SX-212 modem, 410 recorder, half a dozen boxes full of disks, (and in the lower left, some actual packaged software). I had the 800xl hooked up to both a monochrome monitor for BBS/word processing, and a 20 inch tv for gaming. Sound from the tv was fed into the 2 speakers on top of the bookcases. As I'm looking at this, one thing jumps out at me....that blue thing in the lower right. It was a joystick, but made like a trakball - the ball didn't spin, you just laid your hand on top and pushed in whichever direction. I'd forgotten about that strange joystick until now and have no idea why I bought it. I think I tried using it for a day or two and hated it. Anybody remember what that was called?

Looks really good. Anybody happen to know if it will work off an AtariMax cart?

Started with a 400 in 1982. Moved to 800xl in late 1984. I continued to use my 800xl long after all my friends moved on to PCs and had retired their Ataris and Commodores... I was still using my Atari to call BBS's and play games in 1992. But then, after using Macs at work for the previous few years, I finally broke down and replaced my 800xl with a Mac IIsi. All my Atari stuff got packed up in their original boxes and then hibernated in a closet for the next 15 years or so. Until one day while walking along the beach on a sunny summer day I started thinking about all the games I used to play on my 800xl. Thoughts of various Atari things continued to randomly surface over the next month or two until finally I went and dug out all my old stuff, set it up in the basement, and spent the day playing lots of old games. It's been set up there ever since.

I have 4 1050s from back in the day. For some reason, one of them was always MUCH quieter than the other 3. The 3 noisier ones I put a little WD40 on the rail, which definitely made a slight improvement... But yeah, even when they were brand new, 1050s typically were pretty noisy.

Just stumbled upon this.... Add me to the list of people who would love to see an NTSC version.

Definitely THEN. If for no other reason than that on difficult/intense games, my fingers cramp up now....didnt have that problem when I was a kid.

Question - I've heard of SIO2SD but never really looked into it. Can anyone confirm that it works without any problems with both Alternate Reality games (which use multiple disks, plus a character disk). I've been using Atarimax carts for 95% of my Atari gaming these past many years, but my one gripe is playing Alternate Reality... For that I need to dig out and connect my old 1050s and use real disks. If Lothariks SIO2SD works flawlessly with AR, I think maybe it's time to treat myself to a new toy.

while on this topic... I know Sega Game Gear was originally packaged with Columns. It later came with Sonic as the pack-in. Does anyone have any info as to the date Sonic started shipping with the console? I think it must have been early 1992, but am curious if anyone has a more solid date.

I had a Game Gear back in the day. After years of not being used, I got it recapped last year. Also bought another refurbished Game Gear console and a handful of new games (ie games I didnt have before). I only just took notice of the fact that my "refurbished" console displays the "tmss" message at power on, and my original one doesn't. Until now I just was thinking some games displayed the message and some didnt. Then I played Lemmings on the refurbished one, and the next day on my original one and was like What The!?! It made me curious, so I googled it and found a couple sites that say the tmss copyright screen was added in later versions of Game Gear and that it seems early non-tmss Game Gears have "flat" screen covers, while tmss-enabled Game Gears came with curved screen covers. Hmmmm. MY Game Gear from back in the day definitely has the curved screen cover but no tmss (I never have even seen a GG with a flat screen cover! ). I dont know the date I got my GG but it was right when Sonic first started getting packaged with it. Just wondering if anyone else has a curved screen cover without tmss, or any more info about the topic.