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You could try making them into a soundfont (.sf2)

You could always take the brute force approach by using samples... little scale has a free download online with every note sampled for every timbre.

Have you tried the Best Electronics paddles with the ”superpot” replacement pots? I recently purchased a pair and I like them a lot. The new pots are rated for lifetime use, so are essentially what you are asking for here.

While I am indeed currently using an LCD, I have played upwards of 200 VCS games on it with nary an issue to be spotted (including 3 other copies of Asteroids as mentioned), so it works just fine for my purposes. It has only been since I purchased some mixed lots of unknown provenance that I have run into faulty cartridges. I have never had a cartridge from my personal collection exhibit an issue that couldn’t be fixed with a q-tip and some isopropyl alcohol, but I’ve cleaned the heck out of these 2 problematic games to no avail. I suppose one day if I’m bored I may pop the cases open and do a basic investigation as you suggest. And if I ever get a Retron, dumping becomes a possibility.

Nope, no video, in fact it took me about 2 weeks to work up the motivation just to take and post those photos above

Thanks John, ultimately it comes down to how it feels; lag tends to bother me personally but only inasmuch as I can feel it in the real world, if gameplay “feels” right to me then I leave it at that. Otherwise, it’s worth testing different solutions to see how they compare to original hardware.

Funny, I'm in the same situation as you (carts mostly stored, pretty much only myself and the kids going to be looking at them) but my reaction is the opposite. Carts with dirty, faded, ripped or missing labels just look WRONG to me, considering the system was known for it's colourful art, packaging and games. Dull and faded just don't seem to do justice to my fond memories of the console. In the Art of Atari book, it is emphasized how important the artists' renderings were to both the marketing and the overall experience of playing a VCS game; they set the stage for the action in your imagination for what was otherwise a rather primitive depiction on your TV screen. This idea of supplemental aesthetics playing an important role in the gameplay experience is extended to all aspects of the system for me: the look and feel of the original console and controllers, and of course the physical carts themselves. If you replace (or degrade) some of these things, it just doesn't feel the same anymore. More so than any other system, the overall presentation somehow does affect my satisfaction of owning and using a 2600.

No one has the device in their hands yet aside from a handful of reviewers (and developers apparently), and of those only Metal Jesus has publicly commented that he noticed a small amount of input lag. We'll most likely have to wait for general availability before any substantive testing is done.

If this in reference to my issue (and not gorfcadets), I'm going to reiterate that 3 other copies of the same game running on the same system and TV don't have the issue at all. When only 1 of 4 copies of a game exhibits a problem, simple logic tells us that there must be an issue with that particular copy. Beyond that, the lines look nothing like deinterlacing when in motion, as the patterns jump around in a chaotic manner and are non-uniform.

This is true, but I have tested copies of the same revision as the faulty cart (both hardware and Harmony ROM) that don’t exhibit the issue. See my recent post, I’m am almost 100% certain that this is a genuine fault with the cart in question.

If you look closely you can see that yours is a different issue. In your screenshots, everything has consistent lines straight through it, including the ship. This is most likely a deinterlacing issue with your TV set. In my case, only the centres of the asteroids suffer from corruption, the outer portions are solid blocks of colour as they should be. Notice the numbers appear correctly as well, and although it’s not obvious from my shot, the ship is also solid as expected and has no lines.

Hmm, that can’t be it though as I have 2 other copies of Asteroids that don’t have the issue on the same setup, and running the game off of the Harmony cart is fine as well. There is something about that one particular copy that is faulty.

Interesting... I have most of the M Network games and can’t say I’ve ever had an issue with any of them (aside from how awkward they are and not being able to stack them properly). It’s the Activision carts that I personally find to be a bit touchy; the PCBs are a bit thinner than the Atari ones and tend not to make as good contact.

Solaris is a late ‘80s cart, the sixers’ slots have trouble with some of those 7800 era games (thicker shell I believe?).

I’d be shocked if you have a set of picture label Activision carts with no adhesive bleed through.

Thanks, I managed to get it working after some fiddling.

Great point, that would be an easy way to regularly test the integrity of one’s collection (sans exotic carts) during the course of normal play, and it would make good use of the fact it is already dumping the carts every time.

I recently aquired some cheap lots of VCS cartridges on ebay. After cleaning and testing, I discovered a few faulty carts. The games were functional, but exhibited some graphical anomalies. Here is Moon Patrol: Notice the corruption on the second ‘o’, as well as the overwriting of the Atari copyright with portions of the ‘Moon’ lettering above. Also, Asteroids: Notice the strange line patterning in the centre of each asteroid. I’ve tested these carts on multiple systems with the same results. Also, I have duplicates of these titles from my personal collection that work just fine on the same systems. Having never had one of my own personal carts fail, I’m wondering what might have happened to these? Water damage? Extreme temperatures? Static? Metal whiskering? Data rot? Factory defect in the mask ROM? It’s worth noting that the shells/labels themselves are in good condition, and the contacts appear normal after cleaning. My understanding is that Atari cartridges are fairly robust (often being nothing more than a single chip on a simple PCB), but after seeing these functional but corrupted games I’m suddenly feeling a little paranoid about games in my collection with undetected errors...

Hi, I recently aquired a pair of Best Electronics paddle controllers with the upgraded pots. When powering on the 2600 with the Harmony and paddles connected, the menu will scroll uncontrollably from page to page and will never stop, making it impossible to select a game. Turning the paddles or pressing the fire button seems to have no effect. The paddles do work fine in-game however, with no issues that I can detect. I have tested on 2 separate 2600 systems with the same results. I have also tried an older set of paddles (with bad jitter) that do not exhibit this issue. Any idea what the problem could be?

+1, anyone willing to travel this far into the past surely must realize that the games were meant to be played in 4:3, and that 16:9 is more of a novelty.

I think overall you are misreading me as somebody who is debating your myriad of thoughts.

Those settings on the Pi come with limitations as pointed out though, namely ‘Using the Dispmanx video driver means you lose the ability to use shaders as well as the on screen text’. Like many, I’m not a fan of raw unfiltered emulation and so that is not a viable option for me (the SNES Classic can display its various screenmodes (scanlines + filter) without any performance penalty). Take that optimization away and the lag gap widens. Even discounting that, almost one frame faster is still almost one frame faster. Especially when you add display lag into the mix, a frame or two can make a big difference, pushing a game that relies heavily on reaction time from borderline playable to unplayable. Ultimately, lag is not something I would care about if I didn’t notice it in the real world, as I’m not a hardcore emulation purist. It’s just something that I experienced first, and then looked into to find a better solution. On a Pi (without the limiting performance tweaks) the lag was very noticeable to me. On a SNES classic, it is still noticeable but I can adapt fairly quickly to it without it being too distracting. Of course, I’m talking about fighting/platform/shooter games I’ve played countless times on real hardware + CRT, with an RPG or strategy game it really doesn’t matter

Yes, the beam racing idea from blur busters does indeed look promising. It’s funny that you called the new emulation run ahead feature “gimmicky”, because that’s exactly how I feel even though I can’t really articulate why. It just seems wrong somehow when compared conceptually to beam racing. Incidentally, this is really off topic from the Metal Jesus Retron ‘77 review, so I should probably stop posting about this stuff in this thread.

I would say this is wise life advice for anyone living in the modern age

Well, of course it would have been a bit much to quote the whole thread . My reply was to a post specifically mentioning that thread, so that was the context. In terms of your results vs Brunnis, I can only say that considering how long he has been at this, how much he has tested and how thorough he has been (not to mention the fact that everything along the way was well documented and open to public commentary/criticism), I personally would tend to trust his results until someone can definitively prove otherwise. At the end of the day, whatever methodology we decide to use, as long as it is applied consistently we really only care about relative differences between platforms, and 1.3 frames more lag than a real SNES is something I can live with (although I am considering a Super NT as well).