Phredreeke

The Fairchild Channel F games were fairly similar (and graphics limited to red, green and blue plus one more color, alternatively black and white), and lets not forget about the RCA Studio 2 with its black and white graphics and "controllers" on the system itself (which were nothing more than numeric keys!)

Perhaps they're not advertising cause they're assuming sales will be low anyway (because it's on the Wii)? Then sales bomb because they haven't been advertising. A vicious circle.

The PAL version of NES also does this. That is how NTSC and PAL is intended to work. Originally it was chosen to improve compatibility with black and white TVs (the grey pattern is less objectable than the checkerboard or "jailbars" of the other methods) but it also provides the additional effect of higher quality separation on modern TVs, since adjacent frames can be mixed together when there's no movement, eliminating color artifacts.

I don't see how it can have a useful NTSC/PAL switch unless it holds two different sets of games (since its the game, not the system, which determines the framerate) Unless it just alters the colour carrier (which would work for 60hz on PAL TV, but not the other way around)

Definitely not! I own both white and silver models and both play every cart I own w/out any issue. I was thinking of this. http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/156758-games-that-dont-work-on-the-beige-ti-994a/

I think the idea is that with a pure RGB signal you don't have to worry about tint and saturation. On NTSC phase errors will alter the tint, while on PAL it will reduce saturation (PAL TVs don't have tint controls unless they also support NTSC) Pretty much all major video compression schemes use chroma subsampling. It's a simple way to reduce video bandwidth by 33-50%.

Isn't the white model incompatible with Atari games?

When I saw the topic I first thought art drawn for the TI-99/4a

I could write a really long reply about SECAM, but in short, SECAM and SCART was invented because France wanted to protect their domestic television manufacturers. RGB was needed for clean graphics overlays (for example frequency data for a satellite receiver). There were no consumer SECAM encoders (not counting the primitive color generator used in the first french 2600) so video games used RGB instead, even when systems didn't natively support RGB. VHS did use SECAM, but the signal was already SECAM encoded on the tape and the VCR merely shifted it up to the correct frequency. In case you want to know more about SECAM (or other video systems) I recommend this site

With or without AV mods? Yeah, that's what I thought. The 7800 mixes the TIA and MARIA signals, so if the 2600 chroma is too high you get interference in 7800 games and vice versa.

It's because of SECAM. Unlike PAL or NTSC, SECAM mixing isn't possible (without major color artifacts) so VCRs, satellite receivers and standalone teletext decoders used RGB to overlay graphics on top of the existing SECAM image. As for LD there was never any SECAM LDs, all french LDs were in PAL format. It's possible the player would have a built in PAL-to-RGB decoder but most likely a person owning high end gear such as a LD player would also own a multi-standard tv. Finally, games. France was pretty much the only market for SECAM hardware, other countries using SECAM were in the communist bloc. So rather than using an expensive SECAM encoder video games and computers were sold with RGB cables instead, sometimes (the NES and 7800) going so far as adding an internal PAL-to-RGB converter in the system.

Well, it probably takes PAL video input and converts it to SECAM or RGB. Does the unit come with RF lead or scart cable?

I'm kinda curious to how you would simulate the Fukushima disaster. The key issue was a lack of electricity to power the coolant pumps, and without those I'm not sure it would be much of a game to be honest.

No one's mentioned Dig Dug yet?

Doubt arcade games + real hardware would be feasable. There are too many different architectures. Frankly even if the hardcore fans could tell a difference, the average customer wouldn't (provided the emulation was decent) and that's what matters.

Since it's running on an emulator the colors should be the same (someone else could probably explain better, but the reason for different colors on PAL and NTSC 2600s is due to the way the TIA generates a color signal. The emulator probably has a pre-defined color look-up table instead and pass that to a modern video encoder)

I think another reason is to make it harder for hosting services to verify that it's copyrighted material (is pitfall.bin Activision's Pitfall, or Joe Homebrew's Pit Fall?)

Not quite true. In 320A (a 1BPP graphics mode) it takes 3 MARIA clock cycles to fetch 8 pixels of data. So that means you need 120 MARIA cycles to fill a single video line (not including Display List overhead). To fill a video line of 2BPP data (e.g. 160A - the most common mode used in the legacy games) you need 6 MARIA clock cycles per 8 pixels. This gets you back to 120 MARIA cycles again. In my mind the main reason the 320 modes aren't used is that you need more programmer tricks to get the game looking "reasonable". Doesn't the 320A mode limit you to 5 colors per line as well? Edit: Ok, it's 9 colors. I should check for replies before I click post

FB1 is not emulating 2600 or 7800. The games are rewritten to run on NES hardware.

So this is "genuine" 2600 hardware and not just another system emulating the 2600?

If you dislike the 5200 controller there is always the Atari 800 version (identical afaik except for the control scheme)

Nope. Refresh rates are coded into the actual game. You'll likely get a rolling picture. If your tv got a vertical hold knob you could possibly use that to stabilize the picture, but it will still show up the wrong colors.

You can have 2 players (user defined sprites) per line. There are tricks you can use to repeat player objects multiple times on the same line but I'll leave it to someone more knowledgeable to explain how that works. You can also have 2 missiles and a ball, these are solid objects 1,2,4 or 8 pixels wide, and share colors with players and the playfield. There aren't enough players for it. You'll need one for Mario and the other for goomba, koopa, whatever enemy you're gonna use.

What about Pitfall? There was at least one enemy per screen.... Well, I guess no Latiku then. Pitfall didn't have scrolling. Pitfall 2 had vertical scrolling only (which is no problem)

At best you can scroll the playfield at 4 pixel increments. See Super Cobra. Other horizontally scrolling games don't scroll the playfield at all (Barnstorming and Grand Prix as already mentioned) and achieves "scrolling" through movement of players. However for Super Mario Bros you can't afford to use players for the background, you'll need both for Mario and enemies. Hence no/choppy scrolling.