Mef

Ohhh, such a good thread! It's particularly hard for me as english isn't my main language. But really like some of those above, so I'll post mine just in case someone enjoys that. Easy guess: Rows of Invaders, Next are lasers and whirlwinds, Mothership, repeat.

I can see some very good insights in the critical replies to the OT. There is a way, however I can see for a new VCS game to become a major success. That "way" is to find a completly unthinkable idea for a VCS port and make it flesh. Something that would make people wonder - how on earth did you do that! You don't even have to pull out any new gfx gimmicks, nor added cartridge circuitry (which was a kind of a cheat way to overcome console limitations - back in the 80's already!). Just stick with something that is widely reckognisable, make it into Atari 2600 game and show it to the world to compare to the "top" games from the era (flash shitty looking screens from Space Ship, Golf and E.T. for maximum bias!). Imagine this as an extremely inflated sister-case of Halo 2600. This will grant you instant entry to the first pages of all the Indie Gaming blogs and Forums' newsposts, Dailymotion-grade content aggregators, Geek-related blogs and websites, etc. Mary such incredible domino-like avalanche of sudden exposure with some advertising (Google Ad Sense or whatever) and you've just gotten into top-dollar area! Keep the small-running retail of the carefully hand-soldered collectible carts (with printed booklets and classy box art) of your game, just for the sake of gentlemans' appeal. Win, win - you get fame, hookers and lasers. In my vision at least. Take care, and Game On!

Hey, just wanted to drop my 2 cents here. At first I didn't think much of that game, because it looked less polished than say River Raid, Robot Tank or H.E.R.O. for me, which I take for the ultimate pinnacles of Atari 2600 graphics AND gameplay pantheon. But... What you've done in my opinion, and what deserves deepest respect, disregarding the subjective opinion on the game's appeal, is that you took the fight to the enemy. Instead of making another typical game with Atari 2600 sprites' and game field's constraints untouched, you've taken the bold Activision-like step and made the VCS soar into the enemy space of isometric shooters, against all odds and programming challenges. And it worked! Worked really well, indeed. I can see the starship's shadow which gives me the general feeling of depth and the sense of current altitude, I can see sprites being shaded slightly from the bottom to pop out more from the environment, and finally, I can see the enemies and my own ship shrink down into perspective as it lowers its flight. This is pure gold. Obviously blocky, the graphics are fairly clean and informative, while also way, way more realistic than most VCS games ever hoped for. Congratulations, you've shown them how it's done! Hope that sounds as inspirational as I meant it to be, no pun intended.

It's an ordinary late VCS clone. They've been producing them as late as till 1994, selling mostly in Europe/MiddleEast/Asia. And the screenshots are from newer generation of consoles obviously, because these were simply available already. And would appeal to the buyer much more than real Atari 2600 games' screenshots. So in fact, the packaging is a scam to make you think into having bought a modern console, while you're getting repackaged dinosaur. Because there were still some motherboards, cases and chips left in the factories in Shenzen to make them - someone was still cashing in on it, while the stock lasted. There were quite a lot of those available in my homeland of Poland in early-to-mid nineties, imported from taiwan and sold "half-legally" on the flea markets and such. Mostly known here as Rambo consoles (Google it) or Rambo TV-games, because of the ridicoulus RPG-totting Rambo picture that adorned the most popular boxed version of these. Another supplier here, other than the one using the Rambo packaging, was Callifornia Access (supposedly the same one that made bootleg Atari floppy drives), calling it's version "CA-160" to signal the 160 built-in games. These were only available in exclusive shops, but were generally the same thing, only in a shell shaped after an Atari Junior. As for the number of games, the most typical are 128 (512k of 2-4k games) or 160 with 2 piggybacked ROMs built in instead of 1 and a swicth at the back (replacing chanel selector switch) to select between 128 and 32-games banks (built-in ROMs). They're mostly compatible with regular VCS cartridges, with the most notable exceptions being: - No Paddles support. The whole thing was built around single (usually UMC produced) 48 pin chip, a mock-version of Janice, with analog input lines unavailable at joy ports. - Some carts will refuse to be autodetectd and the game will boot to the built-in ROM(s). That is because they've left some edge-connector pin floating, or maybe they've bridged it to another one, something like that. Small modification will solve this pernamently, I bet there was a topic on that, for those interested. - Some rare tricks or illegal opcodes used in Demos, Homebrews or rarely in "regular" games, might not work like intended, leading to glitches. The core Atari-on-a-chip die is made to resemble the original chips as per the official datasheet, without caring for some rarely triggered behaviours. Also, forgive me for the wall of text, I'm mercilessly stoned at the moment.

Long rainbow ATARI CORPORATION MADE IN CHINA PAL-B S.N. X 717 4 153998 Board: CO21503 REV F1 19-91 3 chips. First 2 I can see under the shielding are UMC, dated 9119G, can't see the third well enough to read. Bottom side of the case reads: C021604-E-(10) inside. Top of the case reads: C021603 F REV (I2) inside Past unknown, apart from never being opened before. Got it from a local auction site, it must have been originally bought in Germany. It produces extraordinarily good RF picture, AV quality.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/129102-informationsdetails-about-a-2600-clone-sankyo-192-games-inside/ A topic with some info on the clone systems. At the second page, you'll find a list of games, which covers a lot of those clones' variations. The memory banks may be ordered differently, but the sum/order of games within an EPROM is usually similar.

I've finally found some time to reply in this other thread. Thanks again mate, much apprecieated!

This is perfect, thank you very much! I just didn't have the time to respond yet, because of this whole Easter business. Thanks again for all your trouble and please attach a file in vector format as well. Initially I wanted to make a small print out of it, but since it went so well, I might go for a larger sized poster now.

I was about to call you my Hero, but then the image loaded and has shown its horrible jpeg artifacts. Any chance to upload uncompressed version onto some hosting service?

Hi Atarians! I'm looking for a nice (read: hi-res) digitalised version of the River Raid box art. Something like this one: Uncle Google is only giving me some dirty scans/box shots. If any of you has a good looking copy, please share. I only need the picture that is inside the thin green frame, everything else is irrelevant. Vectorised version would be almost too much to dream of.

This seems to be one of those "TV Game 2600B compatible" with PCBs marked as made by Yone Yuan Telephonic Enterprise Co.Ltd. I got one like this and never figured out how to mod it, but here's a link to certain Polish community: http://www.forum.emunes.pl/index.php?topic=1706 In one of the posts, pinouts are mentioned for the AoaC (UMC 6599 9037-BS): pin 20 audio out pin 29 chrominance pin 27 luminance So with some knowledge one could make an AV/S-Video mod from those outputs, but I can't really help you with that. Btw, those pinouts are propably the same as on this schematic:

I wouldn't have ever thought of that. Thanks!

Thanks for all the anwsers, Alex! I'll try with b/w switch tommorow and let you know of results.

Hello everyone! This will be my first post here, so I'd like to throw in a little background first. I was born in 1982 and spent large portion of my childhood playing oldchool 8-bit games (which is propably typical here). The older I was getting, the stronger I desired to revive my old Commodore 64 and getting some Famiclone like the ones that were very popular during my adolescence. Now after almost 30 years have passed, I've finally brought these plans to fruition and not only I got 2 working C64's a NES and a quality Famiclone (Pegasus IQ 502, one of the best available in my homeland back in the old days) but also a friend of mine, knowing my passion has given me a broken Atari 2600 clone he's found in the attic. At first I was like - I never really played Atari VCS or simillar, but then I realised that I've seen Pitfall and River Raid at my grandpa's house way before any of us got a "home computer" or any of the afformetioned consoles. Quick call and it appeared that I have indeed seen an Atari 2600 back then, even tho my memories of it are very foggy (hey, I was propably below the age of 5)! Invigorated with these news, I decided to finally get myself together and do something with this sad broken clone. Its one of those typical "Rambo"/"Rinco"/"Sankyo" xxx-in-one consoles looking exactly like a black four-switcher minus the Atari logo and with BW/Color switch exchanged by "Game Switch" and Channel 2/3 with 32/128 Games (it claims to have160 onboard but this ofcourse is bullshit). Here's some more details (I'll post pictures if needed, but its almost identical to this one).: Sticker on the back says: TV GAME COMPATIBLE 2600B NO. 900150496 Printed on the board itself: Jone Yuan Telephonic Enterprise Co., Ltd. CY2600B - 4609 Printed on CPU: 6591 9102A 823410 Printed on ROM chip: JY0001P Apart from that, nothing worth noting apart from 2 small DIPs: - Phillips one: HEF4011BP 714790T Hnn9105P4 - Mototolla one: (M) MC 14024BCP FFFG9043 The cartridge slot appears to by fully wired and functional. The switch in top-right corner has 2 positions labeled 32 and 128 After this introduction, here's a couple things I'd like to ask you guys.: - Is it possible to reinstitute the BW/Color to the circuitry? In the built-in ROM there are games like Starmaster which recquire this switch for crucial features (displaying the star-map). - I've found an info that this clone's CPU (or rather VCS-on-a-chip) outputs Luma on pin 27 and Chroma on pin 29, so if they're separate does it mean one can build an S-Video mod for this console? - Do these consoles play original carts which use bankswitching/extra onboard RAM? (Not sure whether I used the proper terms, anyway I mean games like Pitfall 2) - Last but no least: This consoled arrived to me after some major mishap with previous power supply. Most propably someone messed up the polarity. With my poor electronics knowledge I've located an obviously swollen 16V 1000uF capacitor and replaced it with a new one, the 7805 stabiliser was blown as well and after fitting it with a new one the "Video Game System" sprung to life and it plays very well, BUT... I'm not sure whether the JY0001P ROM was really unharmed. See, most of these systems really had 128 games, mine only has 64. When you look at this list in other thread, here's how my console works: - When the switch is in 32 position, games listed under BANK B are available. - When the switch is in 128 position, it starts just like BANK C from the list but it lacks the whole part from where it should skip to BANK A up to the point when it goes back to BANK B again at the very end. In other words thera are only the first 32 games from BANK C and then 32 from BANK B. Oddly enough, when cycling thru these games in 128 mode, after BANK B ends, it doesn't go back to the beginning of BANK C but will only cycle thru BANK B just like in 32 mode, untill the console gets hard reset (power off and on again). You guys think I just got a 64 games version or could the ROM be busted? P.S. I really apprecieate it if you had the patience to read this wall of text!