Yoss

It's 11" wide, 9 1/4" deep, 3 5/8" tall. For the depth you would want to account for at least another inch to accommodate the cord sticking out of the back.

I think it was Christmas of 83 or possibly 84 that my parents bought us a Vader console and a handful of games. I was young enough at the time (5 or 6) that I'd barely ever even seen a video game before so it was pretty amazing. I think we started with Combat, Pac-Man, Human Cannonball, Space Jockey, MASH, and Space Cavern. My parents must have gotten the idea from a visit to my aunt and uncle's a little while before. I hadn't been there, but they told me about a machine they had that hooked up to their TV and you played a game actually ON THE TV SCREEN! One of the games they described as bugs and worms crawling around and you had to shoot them. When you shot the worms, they broke into smaller pieces that crawled around and you had to shoot those pieces too. In my young mind that sounded so crazy and gross that it really left an impression on me. It certainly helped not to be aware of the 2600's graphical limitations. It's funny to think that they were just talking about Centipede.

I've been using a junior lately and also been impressed by the video output compared to my vader and 4-switch woodies I've hooked up in the past. Admittedly I've also been running it through a Radio Shack/Archer amplified video selector so maybe that helps too. The "newer" (2001 or so HD Sony CRT) I've been using seems to benefit from amplification compared to other CRTs I've used.

Another vote for Spacemaste X-7 as a good and uncommon game.

Hey, I just picked this one up from the Goodwill last week! I haven't shown it to the kids yet. The Boy is 8 now though and there's a chance he's too cool for Mickey. I suppose if my only exposure to Mickey had been the lame-ass Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, I'd have probably stopped liking the character at an early age too.

Somewhere around 270 not counting label variations or the same game under a different name. I like to collect, but when I got a CC2 it took some of the urgency out of getting new games.

Epyx California Games does a fair rendition of Louie Louie.

For the longest time I used a vader, then a light sixer for awhile. However, until I get my TV cabinet situation sorted out I'm a little limited on space and switched out to a junior. Since the kids have started playing Atari, I feel a little better about them using the junior too. I won't be as upset if it gets a little beat up. I never really liked the junior models either but I have to admit, mine outputs a great picture and the looks are starting to grow on me. If you line it up with the 5200 and 7800 they make a nice set.

Definitely one of the solid games that goes under the radar most of the time.

2600 -Indy 500 can be tons of fun against another person. The controls are incredibly simple and I like the tag and catch the dot modes as much or more than just racing. -Basketball and Outlaw are good head-to-head fun and they're hilarious in their primitiveness. -Frogs and Flies is a favorite of my kids and wife. (For added fun, point out that the frogs can lick each others' butts when they're sitting on the lily pads. Also works to distract your opponent. I can't be the only one that does this. Right?....Right???) -Kaboom gets difficult of course, but it has a "one more time" factor that's hard to rival. -Super Breakout. It's hard to go too far wrong with paddle games. -Galaxian is a shooter that won't overwhelm a kid or non-gamer so quickly they get frustrated. 7800 -Food Fight. Good simple fun. It's one of a handful of arcade-style games my wife will play. NES -Bubble Bobble is a good co-op. Cute characters, infinite lives/continues. Also gets the wife seal of approval. -Tetris. nuf said -Dr. Mario. More puzzle fun -Pretty much any iteration of (non-Super) Mario Bros, but we probably play the NES version the most.

I also have to go with the Pac-Man intro tune. That one takes me back specifically because my mom kept a pair of zebra finches in the living room and the Pac-Man song would really set them to chirping. Now that I think about it though, just about every sound in 2600 Pac-Man really seemed to do it for them. The *bonk* *bonk* *bonk* of dot eating, ghost eating, losing a life. No other game had the same effect. Heheh, we used to have a microwave that made that EXACT beep. I don't know how many times I was playing Asteroids only to have my wife ask "Were you cooking something in the microwave?"

This is a timely threadbump for me. I've been getting reacquainted with some of my gaming stuff that has been packed away for several years. Over the past month or so, I've pulled out my Intellivision, Colecovision, and 5200. I've probably played them more over the last few weeks than when I first got them. While they all have their strengths, the comparison has also reinforced how solid the gameplay is on a lot of the cross-platform 2600 games. My perceptions are probably biased by the fact that I never owned anything but the 2600 back in the day. Also, I'm just a little too young and grew up just a little too far from any sizeable towns to have experienced the height of the arcade scene so an imperfect arcade port probably doesn't bother me as much as it should. If my only standard is how much fun I'm likely to have just sitting down and throwing in a cartridge, then the 2600 is almost always going to win out. For starters, I'm not fighting a questionable controller design. Playing rapidfire shooters with sidebuttons is the opposite of fun for me.

I haven't played either enough to comment much on game play but I think it's probaby their relative rarity that keeps them from being discussed as much.

It's nice hearing about other members' kids getting a chance to enjoy these old games. My son is 8 and he's been playing a lot of Atari lately. He started on SNES and N64, but I finally got the basement into good enough shape to start bringing stuff out of storage. He's really taken to the 2600. He likes Fast Food (I think mostly for the burps and "you're getting fatter" messages.) He also plays a lot of Demon Attack, Seaquest, Donkey Kong, Kool-Aid Man and HERO. Actually the newest system I have is the N64. I've asked him if he'd like to have a newer system (for me too obviously ) but he says he just likes playing what we have. Lots of times he comes home from being with other groups of kids and complains that they're boring because all they want to do is sit around and play on their handheld systems.

That sucks. I hope you can get it working again. The only gaming stuff my wife has thrown out was back when the N64 was still a current system she trashed 3 or 4 game boxes. Granted, I wasn't really collecting much at the time and I'd never specifically told her I wanted to keep them. We were living in an apartment with a communal dumpster. I went out to retrieve them but someone had thrown out a heavy wooden pallet with a bunch of other heavy stuff on top. I could *just* see our trashbags underneath that pallet. I wasn't dedicated enough to climb in because there was some pretty nasty stuff in there. I did however hoist my stomach/ribs over the edge and try to pry up on the pallet to see if I could pull the bags out. I was just making a little progress when something popped in my ribs and started hurting. It must have done some damage too because I could feel it for several months. Even today, it sometimes pops in that spot if I twist just right. Never did manage to get much sympathy out of it either....

I haven't given either of these too much play for a good long time so I threw them in the 2600 last night. Yeah, once you get past the nicer character sprites and in game music of Commando it lacks in game play compared to Front Line. It felt kind of weird to like Coleco's implementation of the concept over Activision's.

Demolition Herby lets a second player control the chase cars. I can't think of any others beside the ones already mentioned. Air Sea Battle sorta kinda qualifies in that one of the game modes lets one player shoot down from a plane while another shoots up from a ship. In the 5200 version of Kaboom! you can play against a friend as the mad bomber.

I agree about the artwork! I enjoy a lot of the games, but the artwork is a lot of the fun in collecting for me too. The black picture label Atari releases are probably my overall favorite. One of these days I need to round up my best example of all of those and put them on display.

Aside from the expected actiplaque on the Activision titles it looks like you've found lots of really nice labels there. That absolutely pristine looking Gorf got me thinking about my own boxes of duplicates. I think I've found Gorf in perfect condition more than any other title.

I always thought the artwork for Mythicon's Sorcerer was pretty cool. That's about the only redeeming quality to be found among the Mythicon games though.

Fast Food is one of my 8-year-old son's favorites. (No doubt heavily influenced by the "You're getting fatter!" messages and the Burp at the end of the game.) My wife only likes to play a handful of 2600 titles and Fast Food is on that list. I think it's a good approachable game. I invariably think of Spacemaster X-7. It's just rare enough that it's not going to be well known outside of the more die hard 2600 fans. It's fast, addicting game play. The difficulty level ramps up pretty evenly so you're always tempted to try to do a little better to beat your last score. Midnight Magic may not be obscure enough to qualify as a hidden gem, but it's a fantastic pinball effort for the 2600. I find myself returning to it frequently when I'm not in the mood for the usual "the enemies multiply and speed up until you die" style of play.

We got our Atari 2600 in '83 as a family Christmas present. I think we had something like 5 games right away and acquired 5 or so more over the next year. As far as I can remember my parents never actually asked any of us kids what games we wanted. Judging by the games they ended up picking out I think they bought whatever was cheap. Still, family finances were always pretty tight so even having that was kind of a minor miracle. By the time I had any money of my own, the 2600 had already pretty much run its course. It wasn't until I was in my first year of college in '97 that I stumbled across a batch of games in a junk shop. That's what got me interested in Atari again. The first games I picked out were Yars' Revenge and Defender. Yars' because I remembered playing it at a cousin's house. Defender because I remembered the artwork from one of my old game catalogs and always wanted it.

My wife used to buy me the occasional 2600 game she might find in an antique store. That was easier before I already had most of the common games. Of course upon unwrapping the cartridges there were always the inevitable questions of where did you find these? And, were there any more? A few years back at Christmas she got me the set of Atari pint glasses they sold at Target. She's usually not that crazy about hitting up the fleamarkets with me and her attitude toward my gaming stuff is more along the lines of resignation than support. That's why I was surprised when she readily agreed to go with me one Saturday and didn't even say anything silly like "Are you sure you need that?" when I bought a nice Intellivision system with a batch of games. In fact, I was kind of on the fence about it and she actually told me I should buy it. Later that evening she told me we were going to have our first baby. It was a planned pregnancy so it wasn't completely out of the blue and of course we were super excited. It turns out she was being extra agreeable because she wanted to give me a day of carefree fun before everything shifted into baby mode. Not exactly a gift but this thread made me think of it. (And as weird as it is, I now associate the Intellivision with finding out I was going to be a father.)

That's an interesting way of looking at it. The N64 really is creeping up on 20 years old now. Where does the time go? The N64 era is a pretty good dividing point for me too. Maybe it's the cartridges. I like to collect for cartridge-based systems but discs just don't scratch the itch in quite the same way.

I always thought of it as a simplified car too. Seems like I've also read that it might actually be intended as a hood ornament. That does make a lot of sense, but after seeing it as a car for a few decades, it's hard to think of it any other way.