WildBillTX

I think it's a waste of time..the games won't play any better!

I remember these kiosks at my local K-Mart and TG&Y in the early 80's. They always had a combination of different manufacturers games. I also remember they also had a timer that would only let you play the game for just a few minutes, then the console would reset.

This is crazy but fun...thanks for hacking it!

I remember when they called them "Family Amusement Centers", almost as if Arcade had become a bad word like Pool Hall. Mall arcades like Bally's Le Man's or Aladdin's Castle. I think every mall in Oklahoma City and Tulsa had one of them in the 80's to the mid 2000's but by then they were mostly little kid skill games. I went to Jr College in Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa OK in the early 80's. Our student union had 4-5 machines, some classics like Asteroids, Ms. Pac Man and Defender, plus a obscure game like Tatio's Zarzon or Stern's Astro Invaders. And some of the mom & pop convenience stores had converted kit games like Crazy Kong, a Space Invaders copy or a Galaxian machine converted to play Pac Man (with the weird colors and bad sounds).

I agree, I usually start on the first apple wave. The earlier stages just seem too slow for me. If you went to an arcade in the USA where I grew up in Oklahoma and Texas in the 80's most Pac-Man machines were set to play on the highest speed like on this video (starting at :25) Great job Dinar!!! One comment on the cut scenes music, have the harmony notes play in a lower key like on the opening theme.

I agree, those ads made word processing and creating a spreadsheet look like so much fun with mom & dad and the kids crowded around the computer. <Sarcasm> I remember spending a couple hours typing in a C64 Space Invaders type game from Compute magazine only to find out even after debugging the code that it played lousy. The coolest program I remember typing in was one that would very crudely digitize and play back your voice from the data cassette.

Which means if Hyperkin makes this 2600 console, it wont work with the Harmony Cart. BTW I saw on YouTube theres a new hack file or workaround that allows the Retron 5 to load rom files.

I would buy one, if it was under $100, could play all classic and homebrew 2600 and 7800 cartridges, had a SD or USB input for playing rom files, with composite (stereo audio) and HDMI output...and woodgrain. Adding 5200 compatablity would mean extra ports and maybe replicating a joystick/keyboard combo. Then again a 5200-Intellevision-ColecoVision clone system would also be an interesting idea. I dont know why many here are against one, would it drive down the value of your vintage consoles? I dont have a Hyperkin Retron 5, but I have thought about buying one just for the HDMI port for my flatsceens. I do have a Yobo FC Twin system and I wish it was better built.. it's also a hassle to get the cartridges out.

I dont think the Astrocade was as good as the 5200. But if it had the right backing and marketing behind it, it might have been a serious challenger to the 2600. I remember in the late 70's demo'ing one at the local Zenith TV dealer in my hometown. I think he was the only place in town selling them while the local Wards, K-Mart, TG&Y and Wal-Mart had plenty of 2600 and Intellevision consoles and carts.

Which of these models Atari manufactured the most of? From my memories it seemed it was the 4 Switch wood vaneer. It was so common thats proably the reason why its not getting a lot of votes.

Even though I owned a light sixer in the 80's, two 4 switchers and a Jr I still picked the Heavy Sixer. It just looks the classiest. It would also make a cool band name.

Without hitting the walls and at the highest speed, I got 100 cars in 79 seconds, and a whole day and night took me 3 minute 40 seconds. Gotta give a big hand to Larry Miller for programming such a great racing game thats still fun to play after 32 years.

Except for the intermission (which needs a bassline) the music and sound effects right now are about as good as you can get from the TIA chip. Remember the chip only has two audio channels and no special effects like echo and reverb. I'd love like to see normal-fast speed and easy/hard difficulty settings added. I always wind up starting on the apple level.

Works great! Thanks!!

Is there a trainer (no collision) hack of Enduro somewhere? After playing it for 30+ years, I'd like to see how fast I could complete the full course.

Nathan Strum on 17 Mar 2015 - 12:55 PM, said I think that - at their peak - arcades were a social fad. They were an event of their time - like disco. They had an artificial popularity with people beyond those who were really just interested in playing video games, and that level of popularity was unsustainable (I wrote a blog entry about this nearly 10 years ago). Once the fad ebbed, coupled with the advances in home video games, arcades were just doomed. I don't think any changes in business practices could have saved them. I agree arcades were a fad. I remember when they opened a Shane's Games arcade around 1982 in what used to be a large restaurant building in my hometown. It was arcade heaven (around 30-40 of the most popular video games, about 6 pinball tables, and a bunch of pool tables) and instantly became the #1 hangout for teenagers and college students every weekend. There were a lot of teenagers and even adults playing video games and some pinball or pool but most were there just to hang out and see freinds. There were stories and news reports of fights breaking out between rival high school students and worse, drug dealers, which caused the police to be there every weekend to chase off most loiterers. My town had a new mall open up in 1984 which also had a big (and for parents, safer) arcade, and Shane's closed down around 1985 after the fad died down.

That's what happened to me. My dad bought my brother a Vic-20 with datacassette in 1982 "to learn computing on" and it became the center of our attention. I also remember we had a different Centipede clone on cassette called "Night Crawler". (I also found out I could copy computer cassettes using two cassette decks on my home stereo).

I just remember being totally infatuated (LOL) with my Commodore 64 in the mid-late 80's. Most of my money I sunk into it buying a new monitor, printer, modem etc for it and downloading games from BBS's. While my brother had an Amiga 1000 in 1987, which impressed the hell out of me. I wasn't impressed with the NES at all. Had someone shown me a good shooter or a great arcade port like the NES version of Galaga instead of Mario or Zelda I might have bought one sooner. I didn't buy a NES until I bought a used one in the early 90's. I did pick up a 2600 jr cheap in 1987 when Federated Electronics closed up because our old one had died. And also I bought couple cartridges at Kay Bee cheap (wish I had kept the boxes). I remember one mall toy store in the early 90's that had a bunch of Games by Apollo and U.S. Games cartridges they were trying to get rid of for a dollar.

My parents never wanted to play video games, even when we begged them a million times to try. They'd rather watch us play, especially when it was 2-player sport games like Basketball, Boxing and M Network's Super Challenge Baseball (the 2600 version without the shortstop). Later when we got into PC Computers my father thought they were for business work only and my mother still seems scared of them.

The intermissions on the 8K version look awesome on Stella 4.5. Is there anyway you can replace them on the 4K version?

Good example. I get the feeling the Japanese game companies at that time didn't care what the console versions looked like as long as they got paid. Then again I remember that Namco's executives were furious when Midway developed and released Ms. Pac Man without their permission.

Sony and Microsoft have a lot of money behind them, so if they made a mistake in their consoles they can correct it over time. Atari didn't have that luxury. Had Warners hung onto Atari despite the crash, given them a lot of money to manufacture the 7800 or another console and give it a huge promotion push before the NES could get over here, (or in another universe, distribute the NES) it might have saved the company.

Absolutely... to me Atari is the most legendary game console company for not just for creating the first successful game console, but also for what they also did wrong. Lots of big mistakes were made because they were the first to experience and make them. Nintendo, Sega.. Microsoft have made huge mistakes but what they did are not as legendary as the stories of what Atari did to sink their company.

I think Atari was completely controlled by 1982 by the attitude of Ray Kassar and Warner Communications. There were too many people in charge that wanted a fast easy buck. Maybe some at HQ thought that video games were still a fad and wanted to make the most money out of the least cash. Warners owned movie and record companies. Didn't the executives learn by then that an Movie or Album that was anxiously awaited by the public, but was a bomb, got bad reviews and left the public disappointed and felt being cheated out of their money could wind up hurting them in the long run?

By 1982 Pac Man was a mainstream phenomenon. It wasn't just your popular video game that only die-hard arcade gamers knew about. It brought families with kids and females into the mall arcades and pinball halls that were usually the domains of male teenagers. It deserved a first class treatment from Atari and didn't get it. I do feel for Todd, he did the best he could with the 2600 hardware/software limitations and the heavy pressure from quick buck Atari and Warner executives who wanted it finished ASAP. Besides the sound effects and missing fruit he could have least tried to make the maze as close as the arcade version like Ms Pac Man did. That was the biggest complaint I heard his version besides the sound effects, flickering ghosts and missing fruit.