Atari Flashback Portable FAQ and Compatibility List

[Atari Flashback Portable FAQ and Compatibility List]

On 10/13/2019 at 1:04 PM, board 3659 said:

Today it is worse than before. It won't turn on unless it is charged, and when it is on, it is just a white screen. can someone help me fix this portable, buying an other one is hard, and fixing it myself isn't going to work.

Similar thing happened to my FBP. My son dropped it and the only way it would turn on was if it was plugged in. I opened up the unit and found that the battery must have shifted during the fall, damaging one of the tiny connectors on the board. It was one of the connectors from the battery to the board.  I was able to solder the connector and it works. Sure was tiny compared to working on a real VCS!

[Atari 2600 games with GOOD graphics]

Space Invaders- it may be basic but compared to the arcade it stacks up quite well. Also, Ms. Pacman.

[Super Hero Games]

Flash Gordon and Kool-Aid Man.

[Need New Joysticks]

If you don't like Best where would you go for a good quality 2600 joystick?

You would still go to Best, you would just hate yourself. Honestly the Best rebuild kits are better than the reproductions I have purchased. As for his website being behind the times...so what? We are playing a game system from 1977!

[What are your 20 Atari 2600 Classics? (Not counting hacks or homebrews)]

20) Maze (Sears) This is a lot of fun with a second player

19) Tank Plus (Sears) Another great 2 player game

18) Race (Sears) 2 player madatory

17) Journey Escape

16) Demon Attack

15) River Raid

14) Galaxian

13) Superman

12) Frogger

11) Asteroids

10) Video Olympics

9) Star Voyager

Pitfall II

7) Jr. Pacman

6) Realsports Baseball

5) Warlords

4) Space Invaders

3) Missile Command

2) Ms. Pacman

1) Adventure

 

[Any interest in redoing Star Raiders the "right way"?]

What about Solaris?

[Holographic Atari Logos]

I have a lot of interest in some Atari decals. Who wouldn't?

[Best 2600 two-player games?]

I absolutely love Sears Telegames Maze. I do not remember the Atari name but Maze with two people would make us laugh and also get really angry growing up. Tank Plus was another gem and as a really young child Target Fun was a beast. I remember playing with my dad and hearing those Target Fun sounds brings me back in time.

[Interest Check: Reproduction Activision Cart Labels]

I'm interested in this. My laser blast looks terrible. River Raid is the text label. Why did Activision use the text labels?

[Winter Olympics]

Watching the winter olympics is making me want to bust out Activision Skiing, Any other games that are good for the winter games?

[Your biggest Atari blunder]

In the late 80's I loaned out a signifigant amount of my vcs games to the neighbor kid. I was too busy playing the XL and never noticed they were not returned. I also loaned out Airball for the XL, never got it back either.

[Does Primal Rage really need to be on a CD?]

A Genny is a Sega Genesis. The cartridge that saved cd games was the memory track. Keep in mind that cartridges took longer to make and cost more too. That may have been a reason they decided to release pr on disc. Also, of the cd games that were also released on cartidge I seem to remember certain things being cut from the cartridge version. Mostly video scenes.

 

That's a good point... the cartridge that saves the games (forgot what it was called) could have come with some extra ram... that definitely could have helped.

 

What is a Genny?

 

I have a Jaguar CD player... bought it new from Go Atari back in the day. I just don't like playing it because I don't want to mess it up.

[Best all-around joystick?]

I am a Gemstick fan. I think the button was a little larger than on the standard Atari stick. The Gemstick seemed to hold up a little better on Track and Field (A8) too. I had the slick stick too, but always preferred the Gem. Years later I got the 500XJ and it is great so long as you get used to the button placement.

[You know your Atari reputation precedes you when...]

I got an Intellivision and a Heavy Sixer. The Atari plays great and came with the original box and a letterhead from Atari Service stating the unit had been repaired. The Intellivision had a gimpy contriller that was easily fixed and it is a great machine too. There were some cartridges too but they were so common I forgot what they were.

[Atari T-shirts at Target]

They are really discounted now , picked up 4 Pitfall Shirts yesterday from Target for a net total of $11.29 [2.82 each ]

 

Too bad these were not more succesfull as Kaboom!, Stampede, River Raid, and Laser Blast shirts would have been extremely cool. Although in today's world my guess is Kaboom! could never be done.

 

They had the Atari shirts as well although they were full price, but even if they were discounted the current owner of the Atari name will never, I repear never, get one cent from me.

Too bad you don't understand the way licensing works. Regardless of how much Target sells the t-shirts for Atari has already been paid.

[Happy 35th birthday !]

Also, Jack Black was not in an Atari commercial if the game was Pitfall. Back then everyone knew the difference between Activision and Atari.

[how to build a pong replica?]

Hmm I seem to remember it being a magnavox 13" BW

[Where were Atari games sold?]

Sorry for the late response here... I just wanted to mention if it hasn't been already that I don't think Radio Shack sold 2600 games. They has their own Intellivision clone called the Tandyvision and I think they only sold games for that. Could be wrong but that's what I remember.

At some point you could go into a Radioshack and purchase games. I did so during the Jr. era- they also sold them in the store catalogs in the early 90's.

[Top 100 2600 games of all time]

1- Adventure

2- Jr. Pac Man

3- Space Invaders

4- Tank Plus ...Ok Combat

5- Warlords

6- Ms, Pac Man

7- Pitfall 2

8- Journey Escape

9- Missile Command

10- River Raid

[Sears different names for Atari VCS games]

Remember that in the 1970's Sears was huge. Getting your product in the catalog meant big time money. Atari already had a good relationship with Sears. Sears calls up Atari and says they want to sell the VCS, but they want it to be branded as a Sears product and Atari says "of course!" I do not remember people being confused at all back then. We knew the VCS and Tele games were compatible. Heck, Sears even got an exclusive redesign of the 2600 and a couple exclusive titles so I don't think it was a situation where Sears was "allowed" to change names. It was a negotiation.

[superman special edition]

I had the wallet and it came with a text label cart (Atari version.) I seem to remember the box mentioned the free wallet and it was bigger than the standard box. The wallet was nice for the time, but extremely cheap. I would be surprised to find any in good condition as the interior was cheap plastic. Still, it was cool for a 4 year old.

[What's The Worst 2600 Joystick?]

Worst? Any stick that just had the misfortune of being used to play Decathlon or Track and Field! Those games killed every stick I owned.

[Greedy merchants]

I don't know how the Canadian buck stacked against the USD in the late 70s-early 80s (I think our USD was worth a little more than yours at that time) but it sure sounds like a hell of a lot of money, perhaps $1200 or so today? I was born in 1980 and don't remember shortages or scalping with Nintendo stuff when I was a kid, though I do remember launch prices- $99 for the Game Boy and I believe $200 or $220 for the SNES. Nintendo Power published a cautionary tale warning kids not to buy scalped Super Famicoms because all of your games would be in Japanese haha! I only remember two incidences of price jacking, both on internet sights and not through legit businesses- the early days of PS2 and Wii, where parents who couldn't wait shelled out extraordinary amounts of cash.

 

By the way, $80 for Pac-Man???????

Yep, and the lines including the $80.00 one were all very long, always 10 or more people waiting to buy Pac-Man.They had no problems selling them, everywhere they were sold out pretty quick the day Pac-man was released.I remember the hype campaigns stores were doing a month or two before it came out, posters every where. They were handing out Pac-Man stickers to everyone coming off the escalators at this one department store, it was unreal!!!!!

 

Gah there must of been some pretty pissed off kids later on that day when they got home.

 

Maybe not as many as you think. It's been stated before and I'll repeat it but Pac Man was a popular game when it first came out.

[Any love for Journey Escape?]

arcade version was better

 

 

You can say that again!

You can stop saying it since Journey Escape and the Journey Arcade are not the same game. Escape came out in 1982 and shares the artwork with the Journey Escape Album from a year prior. The arcade references the Frontiers album which was released in 1983. So one is not a version of the other. The arcade is better though.

[Least played game in your collection?]

Bugs. I ended up with the family VCS but Bugs was all my brother's doing. He got some cash for his birthday and bought a couple Data Age games for the same price as an Atari or Activision game. Man did he make a mistake since Bugs and Encounter at L 5 really suck. I only have a few of the original games from my childhood. Most were borrowed and never returned after I moved onto the 800XL. I guess none of the neighborhood kids wanted to get stuck with Bugs.