DarthDuke

A first-person shooter or Elderscrolls like hack and slash might be more than the 2600 can handle. It would be really tough for the player to tell what he or she was looking at I suspect. Might be able to pull off 'vector graphics' looking outlines of dungeon corridors, but there wouldn't be much in the way of details in the environment or enemies.

Dungeon and Dungeon II remind me a bit of Final Fantasy 1, especially the original NES version of it. They are turn based games in which you quest through a maze, sometimes outdoors in a forest, sometimes underground in dungeons or in castles. You even have an inventory of items and spells to choose from. It's amazing how it works. I'm not sure if anything even more graphically ambitious than those would be possible though.

My Atari 2600 was new when I got it for Christmas in 1979. My sister and I were 7 and 9 years old. We tried to be careful, but I'm sure we weren't as careful as we should have been at times. All these decades later and the only problem it has is that after playing it for an hour or so, the graphics on the screen go all wonky. Many times over the years, I have carefully taken it apart and cleaned it. That would help quite a bit for a while. Over the years, the time that it could play without looking weird grew less and less. I have tried adjusting the RF modulator which helped a little, but never totally solved the problem. It has always loaded and played games well enough that you can sort of see what's happening and can hear the sound, even when the RF is out of whack. It's one tough console alright.

Darn it! I got Dungeon II from the store and it arrived in amazing shape! So cool to have a box, cartridge and poster for that game. Would be sweet to have that for Draconian too. Not sure how I missed seeing Draconian on the store page. Oddly enough, nobody on Ebay is selling one. It's unusual to come up empty on an Ebay search. Maybe someone could convince Spiceware to make a few more.

I've got to try this one! I saw someone mention it in the comments section of a YouTube video about homebrew Atari games and had to look it up. I love Bosconian and the Star Wars version of it too. Glad to see that someone has made an Atari 2600 version.

It sure is. Millipede and Centipede are two of my favorite Atari games. I really wish they had paddle controls now that I have a good paddle wheel on the Retron Ranger. Even better would be a trackball controller for the Atari 2600. That would be sweet!

I just got Demons To Diamonds on cartridge today. I forgot it was a paddle game. Thanks for this list! I sold all of my paddle game cartridges years ago when my paddles quit working and the two different sets of other paddles that I bought to replace them quit working rather quickly too. Now, I have Retron Ranger controllers with built in paddles that work fantastically, so I'm gradually going to buy the best of the paddle games again. Got Circus Atari so far (my grandma's favorite game when she used to play Atari with me) and now Demons to Diamonds.

Very interesting stuff! I'm not sure that I'd want to risk ruining my Genesis to try it though. Maybe with a bad looking, barely working one that I could find at a thrift store or something.

That's pretty neat! I've never seen these video game console themed ornaments. Must be all gone by the time I go looking. They are pretty cool though. Would like to find these sometime at a place that doesn't price them like they are rare.

I know what you mean. I've been a member for a while, but am only active on here now and then. I'm glad that it still is around. A lot of the good ole forum sites have been replaced by social media. These re-releases look really cool, but they sure are pricey. Makes me glad that we've got sites like this one and AtariMania where we can get ROMs of so many games. Some of the homebrew games on here are quite interesting too and rather affordable, especially compared to what Atari wants for those games they have on the site that Nall3K linked to.

I was looking around a game store in Las Vegas' Chinatown when I came across a complete in box of Secret Quest! I'd never seen the game in person before. I'd only heard about it from articles and youtube videos. It was in like new condition too. I almost didn't get it, but my wife went and got it before we left, paid for it and said 'happy birthday'. She's quite a keeper. I've gotten it on the AtariMania site since then and can play it on my Retron 77 that way, but it's really cool to have a complete Atari game in such good condition, and one that I'd never had before to boot. I've played it on the cartridge, and it plays quite well. Since my wife got it for me as a present, I didn't ask how much she paid for it. It's a complex, but pretty fun game. I'm glad that I have the manual to help me make sense of it.

I have my childhood 2600 and it was working on my modern TV fine with an adapter that give the RF cable a coaxial cable end. But then the RF modulator quit working and no amount of adjusting would make the picture look decent again. One of my cousins gave me an old RF modulator that he said would work, but my soldering skills aren't very good, so I haven't gotten brave enough to try swapping them. I've thought about getting a 7800, but the price of complete ones in good shape made me get a Retron 77 instead. I take it from your reply (thank you for replying btw) that the 5200 ROMs won't work on the Retron 77.

I have both Solaris and Secret Quest on cartridge. Secret Quest isn't easy to find but I stumbled across a complete one of it earlier this year at a convention. It works great on the Retron 77. Solaris works quite well too. I bought my Retron 77 in January and installed what was then the newest version of Stella on it so that may help too.

I got a Retron77 earlier this year (in January, I think) and have been really enjoying it. I can get it to play all of the 2600 carts I already have from back in the day. I've noticed that there are still quite a few that I don't have though. My local game store has some of them. When I asked about getting some of the ones I don't already have for play on the Retron 77, they said that some cartridges work on it and some don't. Is there a list somewhere of the cartridges that aren't compatible with the Retron 77? My store has a good return policy, but I'd rather know ahead of time before I go buy some. Also, I'm wondering about Atari 5200 and 7800 cartridges. Can the Retron 77 play them? If not, I noticed on the AtariMania site that there are ROMs for the 5200. Would those work if I downloaded them and saved them on the microSD card that I've gotten for my Retron 77? I've managed to save ROMs of 2600 games from the website onto the microSD card and those work quite well. I don't mind playing games in emulation, but I also really like collecting the cartridges, manuals, posters, boxes too for the artwork. You don't get that with just computer files usually. Even if you do, you can't display them in your game room really. Thanks for any info you can help me with. I've done searches online, but mostly find review articles and videos of the Retron77 console instead.

It's too bad that Stella, which is a pretty good emulation program that I have sent a couple of donations to over the years, doesn't support 8K games with bankswitching. Or, if it is something to do with Hyperkin's part of the emulator console, I'm surprised that they didn't include that support. I'm glad that Empire Strikes Back works, because it's my favorite Star Wars game on the 2600 as well as one of my favorite Star Wars games of all.

I was recently at one of our local game stores here in Las Vegas and came across a complete in box version of Secret Quest. I have it on the ROMs list for my Retron 77, but it's very cool to find it on cartridge, epecially one that is within my budget. Sometimes, cartridges, especially CIB ones, are too expensive. This one looks like it was never played and was maybe only opened once - and quite carefully at that. Very fun to find such things. Do you guys have Secret Quest? If so, what do you think of it? I find it tricky to figure out, but reading the manual does help. It's certainly one of the last set of games published for the 2600 because of the maroon and black & white packaging. It also tries to push the console to its limits graphically.

My childhood Atari is having problems with bad video now too. I've tried everything to adjust it or fix it, short of replacing parts. My soldering skills are a bit rusty. I need to practice more before daring to try it. In the meantime, I got a Retron 77 which is pretty cool. I love the Ranger controller! It's frankly a huge improvement over the original controllers. One of these days, I'll get brave and try replacing parts in my original 2600.

It's odd that the Empire Strikes Back and Arena games work, but the other Star Wars games don't. It's too bad that Pitfall II, Mr Do's Castle and Gyruss don't work. Good thing that you can put a Micro SD card in your computer, download ROMs from sites like Atari Mania and plug it into your Retron 77 to play them anyway. It's too bad that Hyperkin didn't set something like this up for their other consoles. Some of the cartridges of certain NES and SNES games are crazy expensive now. This list is helpful. Thanks! I'll check it before buying more Atari games on cartridge. I have most of them on ROMS now, but it's still fun to stick the cartridges in there for a more 'retro' experience. I also like to get ones I don't already have for the cool box art, manuals etc.

Yes, it seems to play better on the SNES. I don't have a three-button controller for my Genesis 3, but I saw it available for a decent price for the SNES at my local game store, so I got it and traded in my Genesis version rather than buying a three button controller that I hoped wasn't worn out already.

Very cool! I haven't listened to an audio podcast in quite a while. I also haven't posted on this board, or other boards, in a while. In a way, these message boards are kinda better than social media because they aren't bogged down by all the 'features' that most social media sites are burdened with now. I'm glad AtariAge is still around. I'd like to post more often, but there's so many competitors for my time and attention now. I remember Battlezone. It's very difficult for me, but I still love it! When I do manage to destroy even one tank, it feels like a major achievement since the game is so hard. In most games, you are mowing down enemies left and right with relative ease compared to this. But that's how it is on a real battlefield, I'll bet. My cousin was a tank gunner in Desert Storm and he said that it was much more difficult to actually hit your enemy than you might think it would be. Battlezone is probably the most realistic tank sim that I've ever played. Maybe a few have fancier graphics, but this one still really gets you into it. The Atari 2600 version is great compared with the arcade version because it has color graphics rather than just green raster graphics. I get lost in the maze of lines with the raster graphics sometimes, especially when there are objects close to my character's location in the game. Great interview! It's great to hear the stories of these guys as they and their stories are just as important as the games they made.

I don't have any PAL games on cartridges. I do play some of the PAL games on my Retron77 emulator though. The original hardware is great but personally, I'm having trouble keeping mine working. It worked fantastically from 1981 until about 1999, then I started having trouble with it overheating and needing taken apart and cleaned now and then to keep it working. The RF Modulator on mine has essentially quit working, so I got an emulator. The cool thing about it is that the Range joystick is easier for me to use and I can play games that were PAL or never even released on cartridges with it.

It's funny that your parents thought you were nuts for not wanting a new console when you were a kid. My family was the other way around. I'd circle and dogear pages of the Sears Christmas Catalog with newer consoles and games on them, and talk to my family about them, but they were like "You already have a game machine and it still works, you don't need another one." In a way, they were kinda right - you can only play one console at a time, but in another way, it's great to be able to switch back and forth among a few different ones to experience different gameplay styles. I kept playing my Atari 2600 and didn't get a new one until I was out of college and could afford to buy consoles myself. I did tinker with computers in high school - mostly used ones that I'd buy really cheap from neighbors. The 2600 was still pretty impressive compared to early PC games. Especially when it came to getting the game to work. Those early PC games were a chore to get working compared to just blowing in the cartridge and sticking it in the port.

My grandma bought me an Atari 2600 for Christmas from Kmart in 1981. At the time, she also got me Asteroids and Space Invaders to go with it (it came with Combat). Every year after that, she and my great uncle would get me a couple of new games for it for my birthday and for Christmas. I've bought a few since then. The Atari was my one and only console for my entire childhood from 81 on. Before that, we had a Pong console that my other grandma got me in 77 I think. We still played it a bit now and then after we got the Atari, but not very often, especially after we got Circus Atari which I liked much better than Pong. I never had any other console until I earned enough money in high school to start buying my own consoles and games. In high school, though, I got into computers and bought a neighbor's old self-built PC and a box of games on floppy disks from him. I didn't buy another console until I graduated from college. One of my roommates had a Sega Genesis that I really enjoyed playing, so after I graduated, I bought my own Genesis used at a pawn shop. I still don't have as many games for it as I have for my Atari, but I sure enjoyed playing it. I sold it about 15 years ago when I needed cash badly. Now that I'm in better financial shape (and have learned that I really shouldn't sell such things because I miss them so much later on), I bought a used Sega Genesis 3 and several games from a hobby store. I've played Sega games that have been ported to Nintendo's consoles like the DS and 3DS, but it's not the same as playing them on the original hardware. The next console I bought was a Gameboy Advance. I skipped the original Gameboy because I wasn't impressed with the tiny green screen and the battery hungry console. Then, I got a Gameboy Micro (which was a mistake - it was way too small for my big hands so I sold it), a DS, DS Lite, DSi and 3DS about as fast as those consoles came out. I kept the DS Lite because I found out that I could play Gameboy games in it which works well. I really love the portability and huge library of GBA and DS. I later traded my first 3DS for a 'new' 3DS XL which is much better. For a while, I had a PS2 and Xbox that I got used at a pawn shop. They didn't really interest me as much for some reason. I decided they were too expensive to keep getting games for and sold them to get a Nintendo Wii. The Wii worked great for a few years until it started overheating, so I gave it to someone who thought he could fix it and got a used WiiU which I still have and really enjoy. I never had an NES, SNES, N64, etc. when those consoles were new. I knew other people who had one and tried playing on theirs, but I didn't have the money to buy them at the time they were new. For a while, I really wanted an Atari Lynx, but it was too expensive and the game library showed no signs of getting bigger. Years later, I got a Hyperkin system that plays NES and SNES games quite well. I like the way it works much better than the original consoles, especially loading carts. All this time, I was also upgrading PCs, building my own usually, but occasionally getting an off the shelf one and upgrading it. I now have a PC that is like a spaceship compared to the early game consoles. I'm playing and loving the Ant Arcade. I really love being able to play games from so many consoles and arcade cabinets that I couldn't possibly find the room nor money for. I've heard a rumor that it is owned by Atari. I've always kept my trusty Atari 2600 though. I've kept going back to it and occasionally buying another game for it when I find a deal somewhere. A couple of years ago, the RF Modulator quit working right. I tried following instructions on websites and videos on how to adjust it, but it just never has looked right anymore. A friend of mine gave me a different RF Modulator, but I've yet to screw up the courage to try replacing the original one. In the meantime, I missed playing the games on the cartridges (the remakes and ports are cool, but no the same), so I got a Hyperkin Retron 77 and installed ROMs on an SD card for it. I still also play the original carts in it now and then for old times sake. That Ranger controller that I got for the Retron 77 is an amazing bit of kit with a built in scroll wheel for paddle games and a fantastic joystick. I love the scroll wheel because I hadn't been able to play the paddle games like Circus Atari, Night Driver, etc. ever since my original paddles quit working years ago. I tried buying some different used paddles, but they were already worn out too. I tried taking them and my original joysticks apart and replacing the worn out bits, but it only kinda helped. I love original hardware, but I have to admit that I score so much higher on these 2600 games with the Ranger.

It works in two player mode too? I'll have to see if I can get my wife to play it with me. Very cool.

I really enjoy Cosmic Ark! Will be cool to try it with additional creatures to rescue.