Koopa64

O_O Actually, that does sound about right. I hate to say it but I thought I heard about something like that, a Pong machine with interchangeable cartridges, though I wasn't quite sure... >.> If that's true, this further builds my appreciation towards some of the later games the system got and the people who designed them. Holy crap was the 2600 underpowered...

I personally was thinking more Space Invaders or Asteroids sort of games. I highly doubt that. Pitfall reeks of programming tricks.

Probably is an autograph. ... Unless it's actually printed on the paper and not written with a sharpie. Anyway, I believe I've heard of that book before. I've got a little book called "How to Win at Nintendo Games" or something similar. It's a pink (I think) book with tips on how to beat Mario 1, 2, 3 and Mario Land 1. Perhaps this is a similar book?

Maybe the title is a bit too confusing, so I'll simplify it (or elaborate on it). Basically, every system as a base estimation of it's ability given by it's original designers. Many systems start out as such, but in a matter of years, the games being made for it become something the original designers thought was impossible given the capabilities the hardware had from their perspectives. Good examples of this can be Conker's Bad Fur Day on N64, Super Mario RPG, Star Fox, Yoshi's Island and Donkey Kong Country on Super Nintendo. And the NEO-GEO, but there's so many games of this "limit pushing" sort that it's hard to even begin to list them. But I'm sure you all understand what I mean. Anyway, like I said, every system has an estimated limit set by it's original designers. What I'm asking, is what the 2600's limits were originally thought of? Could you give me an example game to represent what was originally thought to be the limit of what the system was capable of?

Anyway, today I finally decided to crack that stubborn cartridge up. I felt that if it was indeed dead, it wouldn't have mattered if I ruined the front label or not. That, and there was no other way around fixing it without opening the cartridge. Either way, I needed to get inside that cartridge to see what was causing the problem. So, after much struggle, I managed to pop the cart open. And to my astonishment, there were six of those stupid clip things holding it in place, guess Atari really didn't want people looking inside these things. As for the board inside, well... It was just fine. No dirt, no corrosion, no soda residue or anything. A little dirt on the pins but it's the kind that doesn't affect how the game works I've found. Seeing as how the board looked just fine, I decided to plug it into the 7800 to see what it'd do... And guess what... It freaking works... I was both happy and angry. Happy to know the game wasn't dead (which I figured all along), but angry that for some weird reason, the casing is causing some sort of trouble with the board (which was one of my suspicions towards that point). I assume the casing puts pressure on the board in some way that makes it not work when plugged into the 7800 as an assembled piece. So, anybody got an idea how I may be able to fix this? I may be able to figure it out on my own, but I'd like to know what the rest of you think. EDIT: I forgot to mention that I put the board back inside the case to confirm my theory that the case was causing the problem. Well, it was in fact. The game wouldn't work at all with the case, but works like a charm as a bare board.

The "label" you refer to was a small red sticker (reading "Atari goes better with Coke") that was in fact on the box. Although there has been at least one instance where a previous owner removed this sticker and attached it to the cartridge. I read on this very site that this wasn't a prototype but a legitimately released cartridge, though not in the consumer market. I thought I read somewhere that it had a label. Still, I always have my doubts about any funny looking eBay auctions for extremely valuable games. Inconsistencies should never be overlooked in things of this matter.

Out of the (paltry) 2 Atari VCS carts I own so far... It'd be Earth Attack (Zellers). The other is Seaquest. Maybe I'll buy a lot of 80 VCS carts off eBay one of these days... There's plenty of those and they go for pretty fair amounts.

Seems too fishy to me as well. I think it's too coincidental that the label is missing. Remember that there's a screw right in the center of the shell where the front label is suppose to go. Say he flashed the game onto an EPROM and slapped it inside an Atari cart, it'd be hard to duplicate the label. Board pics or this guy is a scammer.

Damn, I hope you can get that 128 Stitch, that would be such a massive loss if you can't.

OMG, I don't think I've ever seen an electronic device with MOLD on it... ... And I thought CONSOLES were treated worse than computers... Guess I haven't seen anything yet...

I read that the reason why the 5200 ended up being such an oddity is because Atari was trying to one-up Mattel in the innovations department. Even going so far as to give engineers the incentive to try and get patents on new ideas and giving them bonuses accordingly. "Mattel has a 16-way directional disc? We're gonna do them one better! We're gonna have a fully analog joystick in our controller!" And yes, like everyone says, what looks good on paper doesn't always end up being just as good in real life...

What exactly be the point of this? Just to see if it'd work? No games on the 2600 would take advantage of an analog joystick. (if there are, they must be extremely rare)

WTF! Bumping a two year old thread? What for?! For a moment I thought the people here were extremely slow with these new release sort of things, guess not...

Oh yeah, I wanna buy an original 2600 joystick, those things look freaking rad! I may have to buy a console off eBay to get a decent price on them though, they're way overpriced by themselves. I've never seen a 2600 in the wild before, only a few carts (and a Colecovision Donkey Kong IIRC). At the time I was uninterested in them, didn't have a console to play them on so I figured there wasn't much point in buying them.

I've been considering delving into the 2600 more. I've got a 7800 so the 2600 is only a hop, skip and a jump away. I don't have the motivation to go buy carts right now so I went to all the trouble to set up an emu for the 500 something ROMs I downloaded years ago that I've never bothered to play since emus suck. ANYWAY, first game I tried was Missle Command (Video Gems version, I'll explain later). And you know, even though this was on an emu, this game is actually pretty damned fun! It's simple, but... But... There's just something about it that makes it fun, you know?... I didn't get why there were missles launching on the sides of the screen (though the shots bounce off them, are you suppose to use them to hit the alien ships easier?), but it was just fun to try and shoot those alien spacecraft out of the sky and foil their attempts to obliterate my houses! Sadly, I was playing the Video Gems version because the stupid 1981 Atari ROM didn't wanna work. This is why I hate emus, they're so inconvenient. I'll definitely want this on a cart, not sure when it might be the easiest to grab one (I assume a large lot would be the best right?). If I have the chance to buy it, I won't hesitate at all, Missle Command is epic. I so wanna try some more 2600 games, will likely post my impressions in this same topic. I better enjoy Montezuma's Revenge on more advanced 8-Bit platforms (like 5200 and Apple][), but after giving it a quick test in Stella (I'm on Windows), it seems to run a lot faster than when I tried it before on my old Mac. So instead of it being slow as tar, it plays nice and fast like the versions I'm more accustomed to. Before I wasn't feeling too enthusiastic towards the 2600 (because at first it was too primitive to me), but I think I'm starting to get past the visuals and dig into the gameplay, which is sweet. Feel free to discuss my ramblings...

Yikes! When I read the topic title, I figured "so that's maybe 2 2600s and the 7800?". Guess I forgot the numerous 2600 add-ons for various other systems. That thing really was popular back in the day... >.>

Here's what I (or my family with a small handful of units) got so far: Consoles: NES Atari 7800 Sega Genesis Super Nintendo Sega CD Sega 32X Sega Saturn PSOne N64 Dreamcast PS2 GC Xbox Xbox 360 Wii Handhelds: Game Boy Game Boy Color Game Boy Advance Nintendo DS That makes 19 for me. Maybe I'll get a NEO-GEO next!

Shut up... Please... The Genesis 1 and 2 are definitely S-Video mod compatible. Though IIRC there are a couple of Genesis 2 revisions that don't support it, or it was overclocking, one of those two.

lol, there is nothing enhanced about 3DO versions of games also available on PS1.... Anyway, I´d buy neither of the two ever seemed interesting to me. , and the 5200 is the pontless successor of the 2600, and practically "retconned" later by the 7800 appearing as true successor of the 2600. It´s really two of the most boring systems to get. The 3DO was released two, whole years before the PS1 and Saturn... When the 3DO was brand new, there was nothing else like it. It was the first console to have (near) arcade perfect ports of SF2T and Samurai Shodown.

$60 isn't that bad, you could easily spend $100+ for one on eBay.

First of all...BASIC is interpreted, not compiled. Second of all, you obviously don't understand how the 8bit computers work at a low level. Sprites are generally tricky in BASIC - though not impossible - and there are lots of fancy tricks (e.g., DLIs) you can't do in BASIC, but most everything else is fair game. The main issue with BASIC is that it is sloooow and the overhead eats up a lot of memory. Well... Umm... Guess I'm putting my foot in my mouth now, but no I haven't actually tried BASIC. I assumed that it was just a programming language, like C. And in C, from what I gather, requires libraries to provide graphics. The coding is used to create the fundamental structure of the game. Graphics I don't think can be created in a compiler (or interpreter in this case). But then again, I probably should talk since I was only assuming. Feel free to enlighten me further. Are you talking about the Atari 2600 "BASIC Programming" cartridge, or the Atari 8-bit computer (400/800/1200XL/800XL/etc) "BASIC Computing Language" cartridge? Yeah, I'm talking about Atari BASIC. Actually, I thought I read that Atari actually had their own version of BASIC, not just a re-labeling of the base language. ... O_O So back in the day, any old joe could program in BASIC? I find that hard to believe. Wasn't BASIC made when programming in general was insanely difficult? More so than today? (or even in the 90s). So how is it people could program in BASIC when programming in general was hard, but it's somehow more difficult today (using stuff like Java or C) even though the tools are easier to use.

The "rise of home computers" is often overstated, and don't forget that Atari was also in to home computers. Most of the developers saw the transfer to the mid-80's home computer market as an escape from a declining console market, rather than their switch of focus being the reason for the declining market in the first place. With regards to a main cause, a company representing 80% of the market imploding also severely effects said market. And in reality, also you had an over saturation of game platforms and games for said platforms. Nine separate consoles on the US market at the time, 8+ main home computer gaming platforms at the time, all with their own games plus third party games. Considering it started showing its signs in late '82, its a wonder it took so long for the market to shake out. wgungfu's correct, close the thread please.

... O_O Are you kidding me? How'd they make graphics with just a simple compiler? There had to have been graphics libraries included.

Anybody here actually manage to do something with this back in the day? There were BASIC carts for most Atari systems. Why did Atari even release them way back when? Marketing? Was BASIC even good for anything other than making a temperature converter? I very highly doubt you could make an actual game using it but what could you have done with it? Not very well versed in Atari outside of general history lessons on the company itself and it's business ventures.

*reads whole thread* ... D: I'm glad I'm not ignorant like the kids in your stories guys. I respect the oldies and actually prefer them to the current gen. I don't really have any stories to tell but I have enjoyed reading everyone elses, however heart breaking they may be. ;(