Skippy B. Coyote

If we were talking about a real product here I would definitely agree with you, more games = better. Though in this case I was really just interested in seeing what others consider to be the 30 most essential Atari 7800 games.

I began pondering this subject because I have a friend from out of state coming to visit in August that grew up with the NES, and I'd like to introduce him to Atari's main console from that time period while he's here. He was one of those lucky few who managed to get a NES Classic Mini at retail and loves it, which got me thinking about what 30 games would belong on an Atari 7800 Classic Mini if there ever was such a thing (sorry original Atari Flashback, you don't count). Like with the NES Classic Mini I think the game list should showcase the most popular highlights of the system's library as well as the system exclusive games that made the platform unique. For my own personal list I decided to include some homebrew and prototype titles that have stepped up to fill in genre gaps from back in the day (which I think is reasonable since the modern homebrew community has added so much to the 7800's library) but you're certainly welcome to keep your list confined to just original releases if you'd prefer. My list also has a pretty heavy focus on multiplayer arcade game ports, because I feel like that was probably the Atari 7800's biggest strength and one of the best reasons to sit down and play the 7800 with a friend today. That all said, here's what my personal Atari 7800 Classic Mini game list would look like: Alien Brigade (With XE Light Gun) Asteroids Ballblazer Basketbrawl Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest (Homebrew) Centipede Choplifter! Dark Chambers Dig Dug Donkey Kong PK (Homebrew) Donkey Kong Junior Double Dragon Food Fight Frenzy! (Homebrew) Galaga Ikari Warriors Impossible Mission (Bug Fixed Version) Joust Klax (Prototype) Mario Bros. Midnight Mutants Ninja Golf Pac-Man Collection (Homebrew) Pole Position II Rampage Robotron 2084 Scramble (Homebrew) Tower Toppler Xenophobe Xevious What 30 games would find their way onto your Atari 7800 Classic Mini list?

Hey there guys and gals I'm trying to get my Atari 7800 collection in good order before a friend from out of state who grew up with a NES comes to visit in August, since I want to show him the best of what Atari's offering from the time period was all about. With that in mind there are a whole bunch of games I'm hoping to pick up for the system before he comes to visit but being a little short on cash (and not wanting to pay massive fees for selling games on eBay) I've decided to see if anyone here would be interested in buying some of my lesser played PS1 and GBA games or trading some of the Atari 7800 games I'm trying to track down for them. To give you a reference for my reliability as a buyer and seller, you can see all the feedback I've received from selling games and related accessories on eBay over the last half a dozen or so years here: http://www.ebay.com/usr/hanz0d0g You can also find my AtariAge Marketplace User Feedback thread here: http://atariage.com/...pic/254880-jin/ That all said, here's what I have available for sale / trade: PlayStation Games For Sale / Trade All games are complete in box and, since I'm more than a little obsessive about the condition of the games I buy, are in excellent condition with no cracks in the cases and all discs, manuals, etc. present and accounted for. The condition of the discs vary from pristine to lightly scratched but still perfectly playable with no problems whatsoever. The prices listed below are firm and do not include shipping costs. 2-Xtreme (Greatest Hits) - $3 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Greatest Hits) - SOLD Crash Bandicoot (Greatest Hits) - $30 Crypt Killer (Complete but missing UPC from back of case artwork) - $10 Dance Dance Revolution - $8 Dance Dance Revolution Konamix - $6 Final Fantasy Chronicles: Chrono Trigger & Final Fantasy IV (Greatest Hits) - $18 Jet Moto - $6 Riven: The Sequel to Myst (Includes official PlayStation edition Player's Guide book) - $20 Spyro the Dragon (Greatest Hits) - $20 Star Wars: Dark Forces - SOLD Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Greatest Hits) - $18 Game Boy Advance Games for Sale / Trade As before, since I'm a wee bit picky about the condition of my games, all games available for trade here have near perfect mint condition labels with no trips, tears, or significant scratches unless otherwise noted. The prices listed below are firm and do not include shipping costs. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (Has slight color fading near the top of the label) - $5 Doom II - $40 Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls - $10 Iridion II - $10 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - $5 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - $5 Mario Golf: Advance Tour - $9 Missile Command (Original GameBoy game) - $5 Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance - $12 SimCity 2000 (Complete in Box) - $13 Street Fighter Alpha 3 - $18 Tetris Worlds - $4 Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear - $6 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 - $4 And now for the things I'm looking for! Atari 7800 Games & Accessories I'm Willing To Trade For In terms of games I'm willing to trade for I'm really only looking for loose cartridges or cartridge + manual copies, however I will consider trading for complete in box games if the offer is right. Just be aware that I'll probably resell or re-trade the box once I get it since I don't collect boxes for Atari 7800 games. Lastly, just as a reminder, I am very picky about the condition of labels and will only trade for games with excellent condition labels with no rips or tears and minimal scratching. Accessories Atari XE Light Gun (New in plastic or gently used like-new condition only) Games Alien Brigade Ballblazer Basketbrawl Centipede TB (AtariAge homebrew cart) Crossbow Desert Falcon Food Fight Frenzy! (AtariAge homebrew cart) Ikari Warriors Midnight Mutants Ninja Golf Rampage Robotron 2084 Scramble (AtariAge homebrew cart) Space Invaders (AtariAge homebrew cart) Tower Toppler Xenophobe Thanks for taking the time to view my trading thread and just shoot me a PM if you're interested in buying or trading!

Taking a break from the High Score Club games to play a few random other games today, and I think I did pretty well in Choplifter! Choplifter! (Atari 7800): 62

Good point! I had a lot a fun when we did Jr. Pac-Man in the 2600 High Score Club earlier this season, so I'll give it another go.

Hmm... looks like I'm going to have to skip this round. I don't have the cart and as far as I can tell there is no way to perform Player 2 controller inputs on my Wii emulation rig. Good luck to all who can participate though!

That it does! There are 4 hidden white flags that will give you 1,000 points for uncovering their location by dropping a bomb on them and an extra life for flying over and collecting them, plus dozens of Sol Towers to find that will give you 2,000 points for uncovering them with a bomb and another 2,000 points for blowing them up with a bomb once they're raised. The flags are in the same vertical position every game but their horizontal location changes every time you play, whereas the Sol Towers are always in the exact same spots every time. You can find their locations on the maps that I linked to in my last post. Awesome score Oyama, but you really shouldn't have let me win if you could have beaten my score. I'd rather take second place and know that you played your best than get first place because someone let me win. There is no victory without honor.

It's been pretty clear to me this week that if I was going to improve my score in Xevious then I'd have to know more than just where the 4 secret flags were located, I was going to have to memorize the locations of all the hidden Sol Towers as well. I put it off for much of a week until tonight I finally sat down and spent about 4 hours playing Xevious while carefully studying area maps for the game to learn the locations of all the Sol Towers and memorize them as I played. It took quite a bit of practice but eventually I was able to memorize the location of every Sol Tower up to Area 14, which is the farthest I've ever made it in the game. The studying and practice paid off and I have what I feel like is a pretty good new high score to show for it. On a side note, I tried playing with the left difficulty switch set to the A position to make the ship fire it's gun and drop bombs with a single button press but I just couldn't get the hang of timing my bomb drops when both actions were on a single button; so I ended up playing on the normal B/B setting where one button fires the ship's gun and the other drops bombs. I've included some video evidence too this time to show that I was indeed playing on Advanced mode. Xevious (Advanced, B/B Difficulty): 211,300 https://youtu.be/UHanemJEKpE

Popeye (B/B Difficulty, Default Settings): 54,250

I spent some more time playing this round's games tonight and had a good bit of fun. Popeye is a great game all around and Smurf is just the smurfiest, but even after studying the technique that Oyamafamily used to roll the score in He-Man I still found the game very frustrating and couldn't get too far in it; so I think I'm done with He-Man for this round. On the flip side of things I am really happy with my Smurf score, so I may be done with that game as well for a different and much more positive reason, but I think I can still improve my score in Popeye with a bit of practice so I'll probably focus on that game the most for the remainder of the round. Anyhoo... Masters of the Universe: The Power of He-Man (A/A Difficulty, B&W Mode, Default Settings): 20,600 Popeye (B/B Difficulty, Default Settings): 39,100 Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle (B/B Difficulty, Default Settings): 150,100

As hard as this game is for me I still wanted to keep playing it, so after writing my last post I went back and tried again. With some more practice I did manage to defeat the witch at the end of Level 1 Round 8 and made it to Level 2. I really dig the different music and parallax scrolling clouds and waves in Level 2, but like you said it does really ramp up the difficulty. But as hard as it is Crystal Quest still stands head and shoulders over the 7800's other platformer Scrapyard Dog, and I'll definitely have to buy a copy as soon as it hits the AtariAge store. Or sign up for an AtariAge subscription again to see if there's any early copies available for subscribers.

I just played this game for the first time this afternoon via emulation on the Nintendo Wii and my first impression is: Multiple layers of parallax scrolling on the Atari 7800!? Are you kidding me!? It's absolutely mind blowing what you've pulled off with this game graphically speaking, and as many others have already said the control is very tight. I do have a few minor niggles with it here and there, but overall the game should definitely provide a lot of entertainment for people who like really difficult 8-bit platformers like Ninja Gaiden or Mega Man. Unfortunately for me I'm terrible at those kind of games so I couldn't make it past Level 1 Round 8 before throwing down my controller and rage quitting, but I know that those kind of super tough platformers were mainstays of the 8-bit era on the NES and Master System so it's great to see a homebrew game step up to fill that gap in the Atari 7800 library.

Right you are, at least half a dozen times. I have a tendency to buy new systems, try them out, and if after a week to a month I don't absolutely love them then I resell them and pass them on to someone who hopefully will. I've been working on structuring my gaming center and collections of original hardware and physical media into just the stuff that I really love for a while now, and if I ever have a system that goes more than a month without me feeling the urge to play something on it then it usually gets sold. There have been mistakes along the way, like selling my initial Atari 7800 then deciding I liked it too much to let it go and buying a new one later, but for the most part I've been happy with my regular additions to and removals from my collection to keep it relatively minimalistic. That said, it occurred to me today that I had a rather pricey arcade stick project for my favorite home console (the GameCube) to finish, and after buying all the tools and parts for that as well as paying for an Atari 7800 homebrew that was on hold for me my gaming budget is pretty well spent for the time being. So the computer purchase is going to go on the back burner for a while, probably until September, but that's alright. It gives me some more time to mull over my options so that I'll be a little more certain of what exactly I want when the time comes to make a purchase.

That was all really fantastic advice eightbit! I'm on a somewhat tight budget but I do have about $215 that I can afford to spend on the whole computer setup right now, with the possibility of adding a little more to the fund if I unloaded one or two of my lesser played console games. I've been trying to read up and educate myself about my choices and the way I'm looking at it right now is that the TI-99/4A would be a somewhat less expensive way to get started that I could gradually upgrade as I go, whereas the Atari 800XL would be a matter of "buy once, cry once" where I'd have to put down a big chunk of money up front then be done. With the TI I'd start with a pristine condition computer that would probably run me around $60, an Atari joystick adapter for $15, a composite video cable for $8, then finally tack on another $88 for a FlashROM 99 with a pretty 3D printed case. So the initial setup cost would be about $170. As I got a feel for the TI and if I decided I liked playing around with it then I could gradually add a Speech Synthesizer ($25), NanoPEB ($80), and Extended Basic 2.7 Suite cart ($46) to unlock the computer's potential to reach my ultimate endgame roughly $320 later... which happens to be playing Zork I-III on original hardware. On the other side of the coin there's the Atari 800XL, which would set me back $125 or so after shipping costs for the computer, but then the only other things I'd have to buy for it are a $14 composite video cable and a $96 (after shipping costs) SIO2SD device from Lotharek; bringing the total to a significantly smaller $235 and not requiring any hardware upgrades. The downside of course is that I'd have to put all the money down up front, but once that's done the Atari ends up being 1/3 less expensive in the long run and I could get busy getting eaten by grues right away. All in all I'm definitely starting to get the picture that the Atari would be the better investment, but the TI sure is a charming little machine isn't it?

Don't feel bad about it at all, it's a real beauty and I'm glad it's going to an AtariAge member. When I was looking at the auction I was thinking that the computer itself was most likely a factory refurb unit that someone got to replace a problematic computer then never used it, since the computer itself appeared new and sealed in the factory wrapping but the power supply was used and none of the documentation was included. The computer was also missing the little insert that goes in the slot above the keyboard to explain what all the Function key combinations do with the numeric keys, which is why I didn't bid higher on it. You'll have to let me know what you think of it when it arrives though, and I hope you get a lot of enjoyment out of it! I'm sure another NOS TI-99/4A will come along for me to bid on before too long, if that ends up being the computer I decide to go for (which it very well may be since I haven't been able to even find an Atari 800XL in that sort of condition).

Thank you very much to everyone who has responded so far! There have been a lot of great insights and things to consider, far too many to quote individually​. It seems like a pretty well established point that the Atari is a better computer in terms of technical prowess and software selection, and since I'm already pretty well invested in the Atari ecosystem with a 2600 system, composite video modified 7800 system, CX-80 trackball, Atari light gun, Edladdin Super Twin 78 for Robotron, and so on it would make total sense to get a computer that would natively support all the hundreds of dollars in peripherals that I already own. It also makes sense to go for the computer that would provide me with a standard and more widely applicable BASIC experience when I decide to dip my feet into the programming pool and learn the ropes. But I think Carlsson put it well when he said... For me one of the big reasons I'm drawn to the TI-99/4A is how different it is in it's design and software selection from anything I already have. With an Atari 2600 and 7800 in my gaming center I already have access to excellent versions of most of the big name arcade and Atari titles from the time period, and the TI offers something new and charmingly different while still having some well made and unique versions of most of my old arcade favorites and working with most of the peripherals I already own with the addition of a $15 or so adapter. The other big upside of the TI is of course something several people already mentioned: That it is inexpensive and readily available. It's not at all difficult or expensive to find a perfect mint condition TI-99/4A (still in the original box no less) for $70 or less, whereas I haven't even seen a single Atari 800XL in the kind of condition I'm looking for on eBay over the last month or so that I've been keeping an eye out for one. The 800XL may be a better computer, but it's technical prowess and software selection doesn't mean much if I can't find one in a condition​ that I'd want or at an affordable price point if I do stumble across one. At this point I'm still mulling it all over, but I sure appreciate all the insightful responses that this thread has gotten thus far. They really do help me a lot sorting out all the pros and cons.

Uhh, S.BAZ... I think you accidentally gave toiletunes Popeye score to me. I actually haven't played Popeye yet.

$23 + shipping you say? I think you may be the person who outbid my bid of $21.68 + shipping for a mint in box TI-99/4A on eBay Monday morning.

Hey there everyone! I had originally made a status message post about this topic, but when the status reply stack got up to 20+ posts I figured it was time to make a proper thread for the topic on my mind. The situation is that I've been wanting to get into classic computers for a few years now and have narrowed my choices for my first computer down from a dozen different options to just the TI-99/4A and Atari 800XL, but no matter how much I mull it over I just can't seem to make up my mind between the two. The five big factors that are important to me are: 1.) Price Those who know me know that I am absurdly picky when it comes to the condition of my classic gaming stuff, and I only buy like-new or new old stock hardware. What can I say, I'm a style queen. With that in mind the the TI-99/4A definitely wins out in the cost department initially, since I've seen numerous like-new and NOS TI computers go for $60 to $70 online, whereas the Atari computers seem to range anywhere from $100 to $150 for one in the condition I'm looking for. On the flip side of things, the TI does require a special joystick adapter to work with all the standard Atari style joysticks I own and a Speech Synthesizer is pretty much a "must own" accessory; and after factoring in the cost of those items the price gap tightens up a bit. Both computers have the majority of their software available on inexpensive and reliable cartridges, and the cost of aftermarket composite video cables is relatively the same between the two as well. All totaled up the start up cost of a beginner TI-99/4A or Atari 800XL setup seems to be roughly the same, so there's no clear winner here. 2.) Simplicity of Use This is one of the departments that (from the perspective of someone who has never used a 80's microcomputer before and knows nothing of the commands or BASIC) makes the Atari 800XL seem more appealing. The built in Atari DOS looks really easy to navigate, and I get the impression that the BASIC terms might be more simple for someone with no classic computer experience to learn and wrap their head around. I do know that for whatever computer I choose I would like to learn how to take it online and poke around on BBS services with it, but I have no idea which computer would be more simple and accessible to set up and do that with. 3.) Software Selection The other department where the Atari wins out in my mind is the amount of software available for the platform. The Atari 800XL was a really successful computer during it's time and has a metric ton of games and productivity software, but the TI really isn't too bad in this category either. They both have their exclusive games that I'm sure I'd enjoy playing (Pitfall II, Montezuma's Revenge, Blue Max, and The Eidolon in the case of the Atari and Parsec, Alpiner, Adventure, and Tunnels of Doom on the TI) but both also have good ports of most of the classic arcade games I enjoy. Centipede, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Frogger, Q*Bert, Defender, and so on. The Atari definitely has the edge in the quantity of software available for it, but I think I'd still have a lot of fun with what can be had on the TI. 4.) SD Card Solutions & Modern Hardware Upgrades This is a tough category for me to sort out, since both systems have good SD card solutions that I can set up from a modern Mac computer (and all the modern computers in my household are Macs). The Atari has the SIO2SD from Lotharek which can run just about everything I'd ever want to run on the computer, since almost all cartridge based games for the system as well as Atari 5200 games have been converted to disk type formats that can be run via the SIO2SD, and the TI has the FlashROM 99 cartridge. The big difference here is that the FlashROM 99 is about $20 cheaper but has compatibility issues and doesn't work with all the cartridge based games on the system, but it seems like it can still play most of the games I'd want to use it for. When it comes to modern hardware upgrades I am more drawn to the Atari, since once I got an SIO2SD I really wouldn't need anything more to do everything I might want to do with the computer, whereas several people have mentioned to me that the TI can really benefit from the out of production and seemingly impossible to find NanoPEB; and I've got no idea whether or not I could set up and configure the NanoPEB with a modern a Mac even if I could find one. The Atari just seems more approachable when it comes to making modern additions to the hardware. 5.) Aesthetic Charm In this final category that I've been pondering the TI wins hands down. I love the aesthetic styling of the compact black and silver original model TI-99/4A, the cartridge focused design (I am someone who has played video games on consoles almost exclusively up to now so I dig cartridges), and the graphical styling of the games and the interface have a certain magical simplicity about them that I really like. Yes, the Atari 800XL is a vastly more powerful and graphically capable computer than the TI-99/4A, but there's just something about the clean and simple way the games look on the TI that I find myself really drawn to. And I'm drawn to it enough that I think it balances out the TI's deficiencies in comparison to the Atari, for me at least. Well, I think that about wraps it up for my current thoughts on the matter. What do you guys and gals think? For a first time classic computer user just beginning in the hobby which computer would you recommend? Any thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated.