Derek

If Zevious ending is just you being bumped back to somewhere, how did anyone decide they had reached the end? When you saw something you recognized? I though there were four of those ships that took up most of the screen and shot the black blobs that erupt and turn silver. Then an ending. How disappointing. All these hours of frustration and I wasn't even close. I never got to the third of these screen hogging ships as your ship moves sooo sllooow compared to all the other stuff out to kill you. Perhaps if one could turn off that annoying background loop, that endless doodly, doodly, doop. Even using all the cheats possible for the NES with the Game Genie, it is still impossible to stay alive. As for the ProSystem update, up until this weekend, I had ROMs from many years ago, and was unaware that the 7800 had been emulated. It has been great with the games I have tried. I haven't worked up the nerve to try Zevious sitting here at my computer. I am sure it will be just as frustrating as plugging in my 7800 to my TV. As far as the ProSystem goes, I am awestruck. I am no brain in the computer world, but do like to play 2600, 7800, Coleco, Intellivision games that I do or don't have cartridges for, some are fun, many suck. Either way, you all wrote programs that make this all possible on the computer. Makes my head hurt just trying to fathom how you all did it! Kudos all round! Want a porch built, or your car fixed, come to me. Want to create a cartridge for the 7800 or make an emulator, head for you guys. Guess we all have our areas of expertise.

Interesting thread, brought back a lot of early 80's memories. My local arcade had for at least a few days, most of what has been mentioned. Two that I have never seen anywhere else: LeMans by Kee Games/Atari. Fun black and white driving game, a smaller version of Sprint II. Would have been more fun if you had had at least a small chance of getting "extended play" 90 seconds (I think) for a quarter was quite a rip off to a 12 year old on a $2 a week allowance. Also, Beezer by Tong Electronics 1982. It stayed for about a week, then was gone. I never saw another one anywhere again. I was disappointed as I was quite good at it. You were a bee trying to line up parts of the inside of a hive and each section turned to a honey color when you had that section lined up, meanwhile the enemy beez were trying to kill you, and ruin your efforts to line up the hive sections. It used a trackball and was quite fun. Hard to steer with the mouse using MAME, loses a lot, but nice to play again. Another few that nobody mentioned showed up at Great Games for short appearances. Sea Wolf, Astro Blaster (nice voice sysnthesis), zzyzzyxx (one day and gone,) Route 16, Robby Roto squished into a Wizard of Wor with the bezel for Wor still there, how lazy! Tazz-Mania (could have been fun, but having to stop moving to fire? you were screwed! It got one quarter from me.) There was also a Taito game; Moon something, which has never been emulated as it was encrypted and had one of those batteries that Taito liked to use which would leak and ruin the board, though they probably had no idea of this at the time. You were a space ship and moved up and down the side of the screen as enemies came from the right, a round of space rocks going in rows up and down the screen was another challenge. I'll have to look on KLOV as I had forgotten about this game, but it was there for several months. I seemed to be the only one that ever played it, could never understand why it was still there. Same with Stratavox and The End. Visiting after supper the high score was usually still zero on all three of these, yet they were there for the best part of a year.

Unit powers up normally but no matter what cartridge I put in, or switching joysticks, it still starts the game and going right is the only option. Your character automatically goes right. It doesn't matter if I press any button or steer any other direction. It is a clean system, with no signs that it has ever been opened, no dust buildup on the cartridge contacts, every game starts up and you go right, end of story. It is my first back up system, so I hate to just toss it in the garbage, I'd at least like to recycle it, as I hate to produce garbage and put a little bag out about every two months. Throwing a Coleco to the curb would be painful! I bought it for $3 at Value Village, so I am not out much money, but it would be nice if it would work. The bigger question would be why someone would bother to take the time to donate a Coleco to a non-profit charity organization when the unit does not work. Gee, how generous!

This is a kind of tired topic, but when there stops being new people becoming interested in the old systems, then that is when Atariage starts to shrink, and more systems get relegated to the attic, garbage can, right? I prefer the Coleco, but only after I took apart the hand cramp inducing controllers (how did these ever get past test groups?) and used a dowel screwed to the insides of the Coleco controller, then I slid the grip of a dead 2600 stick over this so I had something to steer with instead of that damn stubby circle. What were they thinking? I still haven't figured out how to get the fire buttons working in a sensible upward direction, but I will. I did the same thing with the credit card size controller for the grey Nintendo, drilling a hole in the center and screwing a dowel of about an inch onto the center. I could then get to the end of Super Mario 3 instead of endless coasting to my death with the irritating thumb pad which I had sped up to usable with the dowel...As for the Coleco, really, why couldn't they have come up with a controller with easy to press buttons and a joystick instead of that miserable circular knub? Even putting less rigid springs inside it so that the knub and buttons were less tiring would have been better. Arcade games had joysticks, so why design a home console with a rigid knub, or a directional circle (Intellivision), a joystick that does not return itself to the centre (5200) or the hard to press 7800 buttons, still on the side like the Coleco, where they should have seen how tiring it was to try and use two buttons that way, but no, there it was again. Coleco was far better, despite the crappy hand cramping joysticks. The games were better, there were more of them, and if their later released D shape Coleco joystick with the joystick on top and the buttons controlled by your hand in the D shape had gone in the direction you pressed, then it would have been a pretty decent stick, but alas, it didn't. Even after I took it apart and removed the contacts for the four other points, NE, SE, SW, NW, it still was useless to play games with sharp corners like LadyBug. But that was hard to steer in the arcade, so maybe that irritation was simply part of the program. Another game ruined by a joystick that didn't go where you pressed when you pressed that direction. That's my biggest beef, all of these systems came with joysticks that were hand tiring, and very often didn't go where you pressed.

Stern. Hands down the producer of the most frustrating games of the early 80's. From their one pixel shots from the enemy that kill you when you could barely see what was coming, i.e. "Rescue" that could have been fun but who could keep track of all the one pixel missile fire from enemies and avoid it all?? Then, well, way before, Berzerk, with the fire button firing in the direction that you last faced, versus where you are now pressing, as well as having to stop moving to fire and having to double and triple tap the joystick in that direction before it [email protected]#$# finally fired a shot...oops too late. Their follow up solution, had you having to once again stop to fire a shot as the walls also closed in, no wonder that failed as well. Bagman could have been fun, but Stern's greed to have you insert another quarter after another ruined it. Normally games have a test group play the games long before they hit the arcade. Was that skipped with Bagman? No rational human could have been part of a test group that said "Stern, this game is ready for the arcade" It is just to F#$%# impossible. Your character moves soooo slllooow. Double his speed and you might have had a chance of picking up the bags of money, and beating the timer, heaven help you if you shoot one of of your enemies, you might as well just walk away as you have 0.00000% chance of living even a few seconds after shooting at one of them. It is no wonder that Stern sank into bankruptsy. They had some great game ideas but ruined them all with a big rush to have you insert another quarter. The proof of this is the games that still make money; Galaga, Ms. PacMan. You had fun playing them versus wanting to punch your fist through the screen having one eighth of your weekly $3 allowance sucked away by 22 seconds playing Bagman. The point of all this, Stern could have released a series of fun, fun, fun, games. Instead they decided to make them all impossible and screen punchingly infuriating with the one pixel enemy fire killing you endlessly when you had no idea what had hit you. How fun could Super Cobra have been if you could have seen the enemy fire coming and had a fair chance of moving out of the way? Versus the one pixel shots that had you blow up before you even had the slightest chance to move out of the way.

What a great memory inducing thread. Such interesting stories, bet you all felt 12 years old again. My parentst bought an Odyssey2 (spelled it wrong, probably) and I recall reeaaallly wanting kc munchkin, as I had wanted an Atari, and that was the O2's offering in that pac man vein. When I initially played it, I thought, 'this sucks, 12 dots and the last pellet keeps running away!' After a while I discovered how many boards there were, and you could also make your own boards. A gazillion times more playability than Atari's Pac-Man with its flicker, bland colors and ridiculously picky collision detection. I wish I still had kc munchkin, but mom put the system and the dozen carts we had in a yard sale for $20 (?!?!?!) one Spring weekend in 1985 when I was away at a Boy Scout camp. I came back to find the tv with no game system sitting under it. I asked where our Odyssey was and her response was that we (my 9 year old sister and I) didn't seem interested in it anymore so she put it in the yard sale. The carts were $40 each and the system was about $200, and she sold it all for $20?!? I was so F#$%$ pissed. Partly because it was gone, but more about the fact that it was mine and she sold it. I know I didn't speak to my mother for at least two weeks till Dad urged me to speak to her as he said that she was feeling bad about selling my game system. After all that, I wasn't even offered the paltry $20 from the sale! Finding a complete 2600, controllers, unit, power supply, two joysticks, two paddles, and nine carts, including Ms. Pac -Man my all time favorite game (which on its own would have made me do cartwheels) for $8 at a yard sale. I turned my back to the table, took a deep breath and turned around holding out a $10 bill hoping to complete the sale before the vendor saw through my poker face and asked for wayyy more. It was mine. I floated on a cloud back to the car. I had no idea whether any of the stuff worked, and once I got it home and found that everything worked perfectly, that was sweet. I think that was 1995 or six, a decade after losing my Odyssey. I played this cartridge a couple of days ago, it still works, and still takes me back to that day. Phoenix and Thunderground were among the nine carts, as I recall, they were fairly rare then.

I have to disagree with a couple of posts. Centipede is kinda boring, not superior to Millipede, though easier to find. Q-bert for the 2600 is not comparable to Coleco as Ugg and Wrong-way are both missing, and the flicker of the red balls often kills you as they disappear and suddenly you are reduced to squished. Some I didn't see mentioned that I like: Laser Volley by Zellers, just try to get to the end. I still have no idea whether anything interesting ends this one. Vanguard, though it doesn't have much for sound, is quite a good cart. Quite faithful to the arcade experience, minus, of course the synthesized voice announcing the different zones. Moon Patrol is quite challenging, and a good 2600 experience versus the arcade, by that I mean they really didn't omit anything of great importance. Solar Fox omits a couple of features of the arcade version, but is/was none the less still fun, until I played MAME's rom of the actual game, then it really seemed quite stripped down, till then it was fun. I'd still recommend it though. Megamania, Plaque Attack, and Robot Tank are good Activision carts to have. Robot Tank being Battlezone, only better, more playable imho. Air sea Battle is a good 2 player cart not mentioned yet. Many games on one cart; Your initial list mentioned Ms. Pac, so there was half your battle Ghost flicker was still annoying, but different boards, moving fruit, ghosts that sometimes followed you, good advances for the 2600. The other half would be getting a 7800 and that systems versions of Ms. Pac, Dig Dug (2600 version is reaaallly bad, you'll see that once you've played the 7800) and particularly Robotron, so close to being in the arcade, it still blows me away to play this. Dozens of things moving and no flicker! A massive improvement over anything on the 2600. Might I suggest getting a Colecovision, and the 2600 expansion module? Using the Coleco four button D shaped controller with the joystick on top was really nice till the two I had started to act up. 2600 Stargate is quite impressive as well, though you will need to secure both joysticks to say, a thin board, as some of the functions of the arcade are simulated by using the second stick, which needs to be right there, solid when you need it, or you'll never get any good at this one. Two joysticks duct taped to a slim board works here, and is how I play Robotron and manage to crack 1,000,000. Just a few recommendations based on the carts that I have held onto over all these years. I'm 37 and still love putting on some 80's tunes, mp3's, Winamp, shuffle play, and playing these games...with no mirrors in sight I almost feel 13 again...almost, wouldn't a do-over be nice, knowing what you know now?

I discovered this site back in 1996, I think, the carts were all 80 cents. I ordered 14. A grand total of $11.20. Shipping to New Brunswick, Canada, was $22. Then when they package arrived, the corner was dented like it had been dropped. The postman then wanted another $5 and change duty, as it had crossed the border, and I had not spent any time in the USA. Duty was based on the shipping and the package value. Since when is shipping a taxable good? Anyway I paid it. I don't recall 7800 Centipede or Donkey Kong or DK Junior being available then, otherwise I would have ordered them. I can't imagine that I passed on them at 80 cents each? They must have revised the list later as I have not looked at this site since then, till discovering this thread. All the games worked, only the top game was box damaged by the obvious drop damage, however, later Scrapyard Dog and Tower Toppler had dates with the business end of my hammer. Why the programmers thought that having to tap the other direction a few times to make your character stop moving, then having to tap back the other way if your guess at how many left taps it took to stop going right over corrected and you started going back the other way again. So frustrating. Meanwhile, if you were near a jump you simply fell to your death trying to stop the stupid character, or the fat headed boy you controlled in Junkyard Dog with near impossible jumps that would have been doable with out the coasting effect and the delay between pressing the button and him actually jumping?!?! What the F?. Save your $10 if you are thinking of buying these two titles simply because you don't have them. Ball Blazer sucks as well, but simply because it isn't any fun. Dark Chambers 7800, ZZZZZ. An obvious Gauntlet knock off, with no ending, no increase in difficulty, you'd eventually just let go of the joystick and wait for the enemies to kill you off, and even that was slow to watch. On the upside, of the ones left, Dig Dug and Ms. Pac on the 7800 list are well worth $5 each. I spent hundreds of dollars at the arcades on Ms. Pac over the years, so 80 cents each for one to use and a backup, what a steal. Still cheap at $5. No surprise that Junior sold out. It is very good for a 2600 cart. Desert Falcon 7800, kind of disappointing as the collision detection is too fussy. You keep dying by things that don't seem to be close enough, like trying to fly between two posts, walking too close to them to collect treasure and flipping over dead when you really weren't that close. The 2600 was worse, as you had terrible graphics and flicker to deal with as well when trying to decide whether you were at a safe distance... Well that's way than my 25 cents worth , O'shea was a good deal then, 14 carts at $5 plus shipping now, $70 + shipping + duty. I would probably hesitate, but I still play all but the above listed hammer victims 13 years later. That's pretty cheap entertainment.

7800 Robotron is definately one of the best they came out with, though impossible to last any amount of time using one joystick. My solution was to take two $2 2600 compatible joysticks bought at Value Village, and duct tape them to a slim board that could be held down by my legs between the chair and the back of my knees. This makes the game fun as you can fire and walk seperately like at the arcade, and there is no fire button motion required to make your hands ache. I get in the 800,000 range this way, and the only thing that really has a chance at taking all your easily accumulated bonus men away is those damn lasers that follow you. You end up walking into one of those rectangles or triangles that are worth zero points, but still kill you while you are trying to fire enough shots to make that damn follow-your-man laser go away. That's what kills me most of the time.

I'd love to convert non-working cabinet to house MAME. But which version of MAME to go with? I still use a couple that are at least 7-8 years old, as it seems the each newer version recognized some ROMS, not others, used some sound samples, not others that previously worked. As for this statement in one of your later posts: "Ive been through the Mame thing before and it is a hassle and a headache to setup plus something tell me i won't get around to playing 6000+ games." You won't have to worry about ever having 6000 games as each version of MAME recognizes and will play some games, others that worked with the last version won't work with the very next version. Junior Pac Man is one that works with some older versions of MAME then suddenly it wouldn't work anymore, same ROM, and since you can't have two versions of MAME even sitting on your desktop, inactive, just links...I don't know how they sense each other, and why successive versions of MAME would be released to recognize more roms, but sencelessly now decide that the AStro Blaster rom that works with version, whatever, now is incomplete.?!? or perhaps a game will still work but not use the sound samples that you spent hours finding, which worked on the previous version of MAME. Frustrating... My point is, basically that you will never get bored as you will constantly be trying to find a version that will recognize your rom for Rally X, and Ms. Pac, and use the sound files for Berzerk and not tell you that your Super Cobra ROM is incomplete or a game will show up on the working ROM's list, yet not work a la Junior Pac Man which shows up a working using MAME 32b-036 yet does not work yet the same ROM works fine on the previous version. That is what is frustrating about MAME. Successive versions should recognize what has been previously achieved, not screw things up and have some new things work, but previous achievements be negated. But since the MAME site states something to the effect that preserving the ROM's for study, dissection, etc. is the purpose and the nice side effect is getting to play the classic games...Geez that seems backwards. But since each version recognizes some previous ROM's, not others...what good is that? How could the code be "studied" if it is no longer recognized or playable using the "newest" version of MAME. Perhaps it is time I downloaded a current version of MAME and see if the old (2000) downloaded ROM's work with sound, or if MAME is still the same frustrating mess of some games work on different versions so you can never just click on your list of ROM's and just play a fun game of Ms. Pac, cuz your ROM may not work on this particular version/improvement of MAME. Thus, you will never have 6000 ROMS to choose from as many won't work for no reason from one version of MAME to the next. Just my sour grapes with MAME, though when it co-operates and plays a ROM that you know is complete it is great nostalgic fun.

OK this is kind of a getting to know you kind of thing. 10 simple questions. 1: How many different titles, counting same game by different company as a different title, do you have in your 2600 collection? about 100, as i have downsized to only what i really enjoyed playing somewhat regularly. 2: What's your favourite 2600 model? (Clones included) A Junior, but for pure feeling 12 again retro, the wood grain sixer has to be in front of me. 3: What are your 5 favourite games for the 2600?Ms. Pac, always #1 on any list of mine:) Vanguard, Moon Patrol, Millipede, and Missile Command. All high on the play it a million times list IMHO. 4: What company made the best looking games as far as casing goes? The later more colorful 2600 issues, such as the silver ones. 5: Do you still own the first system you ever bought? Yes. It doesn't work anymore, just a yellow line up the screen, but I searched for so long to find one that I can't part with it and since I recycle anything possible, I will put it in with the other dead electronics from yesteryear, though the tabletop games will forever sit as memorabilia. Entex Defender and Super Cobra, such fun...sigh...wish they still worked. 6: What other game systems do you own? three 7800's, two Intellivision's, three Colecovision's, three 1985 era grey Nintendo. 7: Do you own any of the "adult" titles for the 2600? nope. Played them before all the roms disappeard from the internet. Stupid games. Kept none of them. 8: Do you buy games online, in the wild, or both? In the wild 100%. Though I got a bunch of 7800's from a site about 10 years ago, it was clearing them out. I think they were 99 cents each. The shipping cost way more than the actual games did, but it got me a 7800 Ms.Pac! 9: How do you store your games? Bookshelf and an Atari Game Center which is so poorly designed, you have to remove carts to get at others, but the 2600 sits nicely on the top of it, so I guess that was the point, getting carts out...an afterthought. 10: Do you have any complete collections from any maker, not including homebrew companies, for the 2600? I have more of the Zellers carts than anyone else that I have looked at the collections of on AtariAge, so that is as close as I come to a complete set. What is the point of a complete collection when so many games are of no interest to me. If I am not going to play it, someone else might as well have the cartridge. If I am not going to play it, it is a dust collecting knick-nack in my mind.

Laaser Voley? Reever Raad II? These labels look like Zellers (a Canadian department store) cartridges that I have several of. Do they have pictures on the front that have nothing to do with the theme of the game, as all the Zellers carts did. For example, Laser Volley has a pic of a red helicopter and a two storey white four engine airplane flying over a battleship. ?!? Told you nothing about the actual game, which as a side thought, is there an ending to it or does it just say END, like when you run out of energy? With memory limitations, I can't imagine it is too spectacular, perhaps CONGRATULATIONS! instead of END. I thought I came close once, the destination line was so close to gone, my heart was racing and my damp hands slipped off the controller. Never got that close again.

Nobody's all time faves have an 'I'm 13 and a girl is paying attention to me' bend, so my favorite is, and would otherwise be, Ms. Pac-Man. I remember the first time I saw this machine, and thought one joystick, I can probaby get my 25 cents worth, as I was on a $2 a week allowance:) Then Linda came along, cuddled close, arm around my neck as I played. Being 12, that was big female attention...such simple times. I still love that game, on MAME, the atari version, the coleco tabletop. It doesn't matter, it still takes me back to that time. Put on some appropriate 80's tunes and you are almost back there. Nuff said. Ms. Pac does it for me.

Play Juno First by Centuri using MAME. That is obviously where this game was ripped off from. You'll then not be impressed by Beamrider. It is ok as an arcade derivitive, but when Millipede came out so good on the same hardware with the same memory constraints, Beamrider could have been done better. Free men are plentiful unlike Juno First (what's with the stupid name?) where you get an extra man every 100,000. I got one extra man once. It would be do-able if the moons that send the points into the stratosphere were more plentiful, but they aren't so an extra man ever 100,000, geez, they might as well have made it every 1,000,000 points...just as attainable. Really, Juno First? What does that mean? What a dumb name for a space game. Juno translates into best or #1, and first means first. Best First? I dunno. Perhaps the people who designed and named the game had no knowledge of English.

A friend of mine finally found himself a 2600 but it has a worn out channel select switch. If it goes off you touch it lightly and the game comes back on the screen. I think that if we opened up the console and used my low heat soldering iron, we could switch his switch with one from my dead 2600 which displays vertical white lines no matter what cart is inserted. Can this be switched with a low heat soldering iron, or will it turn out like me trying to replace an earphone jack in a Sony AM Stereo walkman, with the board melting? He is reluctant to even let me try, since it took him this long to find a console, and I think it would be do-able as I have changed the front switches, on/off, reset, before with the low heat soldering iron.

I have a friend, loosely using that word, we don't do much together, conflicting workdays, that wants to buy my duplicates after finding a 2600 after a really long search. I could have sold him one of my spare systems, anyway, I said no to selling him the carts, but that I would loan them to him indefinately. Should I get him to sign a paper listing what he borrowed or not let him have them at all. They just collect dust as the first carts have never crapped out, but what if I loan him my duplicates and the others start to fail? I think the real issue here is that I would like to be a nice guy and loan him some fun, but at the same time, I had hoped for more involved friendship, and me being the one to once again provide something, I feel that things are too one sided. Anyway, what would you do, fellow Atariage enthusiasts? I told him to bid on a lot of carts on e-bay, but he doesn't have a computer, or a car, or a bike anymore, which is what we mainly did together, and has decided to not bother to get another mountain bike this summer...maybe that says enough. If he can't be bothered to replace his broken bike so we can resume things the way they used to be...I think this has turned into a quest for comments about flaky friends from y'all.

Either title, both were annoying when you died, you had to wait through that half hour musical crap till your next roller could continue.. Plus, when you used the roller to try and crush the critters that were chasing you, they could turn around and double back and turn back on you at the end of the track that you were trapped on as soon as you tried to use the roller to crush them. You were guaranteed 100% to die, as you were trapped to go the whole length of the track. They could turn back, you might as well have taken your hands off the game, as you were helpless till the roller reached the end of the track. When you used it the first time, you'd win and get them, but after that you were trapped, they'd turn back on you trapped to completing the whole wiping experience. Then you had to listen to that annoying 3 hour musical interlude till your next brush could move. This could have been a fun game, but again, like all Williams Titles, let's not make it fun, let's make it completely unfair and frustrating in easily correctible ways, ie, having Bubbles coast beyond way beyond what you pressed your character to move. Or Joust requiring you to press the "flap" button a zillion times to correct bouncing off the top of the screen, usually resulting in your death, as by the time you pressed flap, or whatever it was called, a zillion times. trying to stabilize your Joust character, you then bounced off the top again and one of the enemies killed you as you were trying to just get control of your character again. Or the delay between pressing the "Jump" botton on Moon Patrol, and something actually happening. I remember nearly breaking my foot kicking that game, as I became so pissed off with that delay when you would plummet into a hole because you didn't press Jump three miles in advance. To give them some credit, Robotron 2084 was quite good, though the things that weren't worth any points, yet killed you...were they really necessary? I mean, the game was f*%&*%ng near impossible to stay alive anyway, did we really need deadly object that didn't contribute towards your next free man? I guess greed is to blame once again as designers wished to get the next quarter inserted as quick as possible. Moon Patrol was still fun, just hard to get used to having to press jump at least an inch before each hole as it took that long for the game to jump instead of crashing into the hole, despite pressing the jump button in plenty of time. Well off Make Trax territory, but all Williams stuff. Anybody know why Williams games played using MAME don't respond to the settings? You can't change the difficulty level, # of men, etc. The screen just blinks.

Pengo. That sucked so bad. Endless flicker, no separation between rows or snow blocks. Slow joystick response. God, everything flickered! Surprised no one mentioned it. Desert Falcon. The 7800 version was too hard, even on the Easy setting, you just died for no reason, an enemy was close, but not right on you, yet you still fell to your death. The 2600 was even worse with the flicker, and dying with any enemy within a half inch on the screen, also collecting things to gain a power, it was always up in the air about what you were collecting toward, if you lived long enough to collect anything. This cart died by flying across the room and smashing against the wall. The only others to die that way were the 7800's Junkyard Dog and Tower Toppler, both due to their sloppy joystick response. When I press left or up, etc. I want to *%&$ing go left or up. Then, not a second and a half later. Tower Toppler, I actually took to the basement and beat the living shit out of it with a hammer, I was that pissed with the sloppy joystick response. It could have been a fun game. How does something get released with such an obvious frustration point? Then again Pac Man was rushed to the market, as was E.T. They both needed wayyy more work, but the programmers were obviously rushed. Well, there were no expectations for the two 7800 titles I mentioned so there is no excuse for such sloppy joystick control on either of these titles. Even keeping in mind how Ergonomically uncomfortable the 7800 joystick was. Why was it so hard to figure out that buttons on the side were sooo tiring on the hand. Create a joystick that I can sit on my lap and steer and press the buttons like being in an arcade ?!?! I'm getting off topic, so that's enough! At least the 2600 and 7800 versions of Ms. Pac were quite good, considering the ROM limitations. In neither version did the ghosts show any brains, or ability for you to corral them so as to get all four as blue, but each cart was good for their system limitations.

I bought my Junior for $5.99 and tax at Value Village. I think it had a tv/game switch, power supply and one joystick, all stapled inside a plasic bag. The loose woodgrain 2600's appeared on the shelf for $2.99, a couple bucks more bagged with a power supply or joystick or both. My first Atari 2600 was found at the yearly two baseball field plus sized "flea market' in Sussex, New Brunswick, I really had to keep a poker face on as they had seven games with it, a couple rare ones, power supply, two joysticks and a tv/game switch. $7 for the lot I had looked seemingly everywhere up till then. My point is, there was a window where they appeared in the mid 90's, to the point where I stopped buying $3 backup woodgrain's, then it stopped, and I haven't seen one since. A window of them appearing in your area could happen for no reason, or never at all. Obviously deals like that are never going to appear on E-Bay. Anyway, the junior is compact, works well, and I have had trouble only with some Activision carts fitting in too loosely, and either not working or turning into the vertical yellow lines and that awful malfunction noise that goes along with it, but since this is all old, second, third? hand stuff, one really can't complain. A Coleco with the Atari expansion module, that's a hard find as well, but it works. A 7800 will play all the good 2600 carts, and you can use the 2600 joystick, which is less annoying than the 7800 stick, which with the buttons on the side is so tiring. Try playing Asteroids with it. Your hand will be aching in no time. Anyway, keep looking for any 2600. I bought the only Junior that I ever saw, so an old style woodgrain 2600 is your best bet.

Sooo cool. I've known about this place for three years and I planned a road trip. Last fall I got to go to California and meet fourth cousins and stay there for five weeks. I think I saw at best 5% of Cali. It was a great vacation (the first since high school ended 19 years ago, I think i deserved it:) 19 years, oh my God, I'm so old! That usurped going to Funspot. I just bought a mobile home, so that will eliminate going there this summer, but is nice to know such a place still exists, where you can go and feel like it is 1982 and you are 11 again. Sigh...how many years will these games continue to function? Who knows? It would be fabulous to visit there, but we can't all get to do all we want/crave/desire. I'd like to still be in California...Fantasy life versus reality...California with a massive arcade, owning beachfront property, hot chicks in bikinis. Pure fantasy of everything going totally right!

Welcome to AtariAge. Top 10 of all the sites on the Internet, IMHO. I think we all come to this site, and keep a 2600 hooked up to out tv's because it takes us back to the carefree days of being 12 when having fun was still the order of the day. Also, once you had a (insert your fave game here)Ms. Pac-Man cart, you could play a fun version of it at home, no quarters required! Use current technology and put some 80's tunes on shuffle on your mp3 player while you play, and you can't get any closer to your young and carefree days. As close to perfect escapism as you are gonna get. I don't really want to be 12 again, (though I could do without the facial wrinkles that 36 has brought)but I do enjoy re-living those days where your sole responsibilities were probably taking out the garbage, cleaning your room and getting acceptable grades at school. I didn't have a 2600 then, friends did, I had an Odyssey 2. K.C. Munchkin, where you could build your own boards was so much better than Atari's crappy rushed to market Pac-Man, I'm glad that I had the Odyssey. UFO was vastly superior to Asteroids...Anyway, those are some reasons that I'm still a 2600 lover. 25 years from now someone will post a query about why you loved your mp3 player back in 2007:) Enjoy this site, it is an endless source of information and fun!

Thanks Omegamatrix. It was that simple. I never noticed that key before. What is the point of it? Why have a key that disables the function keys? Does unlocking it change the function of say, F1 to become help, F2 becomes undo back arrow? That more than doubles the games I can play. Perhaps you can tell me why the sound is choppy, especially in Centipede and Millipede. The more sounds there are for the game to put out, the more warbly and choppy it is with split seconds of sound missing, for example, when the spider comes out in either of those games, everything else goes silent, then the sound accompanying the spider resumes but sounds like a cassette that is wound too tight and drags.

I figured that I'd download this as a backup to my upstairs systems and carts. It works fine if a game starts by pressing the fire button. However, F1 to F8, used for various functions don't do anything. Thus, I can't start such games as Enduro or any other where you turned on the power and had to slide the reset switch up and down to start the game. I know the keyboard is responding as escape takes you out, the four directions and space bar as the fire button all work fine. The actual joystick I have hooked up works fine as well, though no buttons anywhere start a game that didn't start with pressing the fire button. This is Stella Version 1.1.3a, a few years old, but the attached read me file tells me nothing about what to do if only some of the keyboard keys work. It just explains that F2 is reset, etc. Well it doesn't reset. Hitting F6 to change skills from A to B, or back, to for example, make the red balls appear in Q-bert, nothing happens. Perhaps I need to get a newer version of Stella? I have this seven year old version as it came with some roms back then.

http://www.mame.net/oldrel.html or get there through MAMEWorld.net where the links to older versions are on the left side of the initial page. This is where I tried other versions and settled on this one: mame32b-036, it won't play Junior Pac, but recognizes many of the others that I treasure, but mysteriously some games have sound some days, and others they don't. No idea how to figure that out. The sound files are there, so why can't it find it today when I played the game with sound yesterday? Who knows. Wish there was a difinitive MAME that ignored the 90's games that I am not interested in as well. Perhaps someone could suggest which version recognized the most games without problems? Anyway, every MAME back to Feb 97, the first one are all there. Though since you built a MAME cabinet, you probably already tried all this Personally I'd like to have MAME running in a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet as that is my all time fave game! I did come across a multi-pac game in a bar once that I would have happily rolled out the door and taken home. Many games that involved pac man were on it, including a strange one with a fish instead of Pac. Pac and Pal was not there, but there were about 10 others to choose from. Ms. Pac sped up was just too easy. You fast, ghosts slow. They never sped up! Apparently that was a kit that just attached to the Rom set inside the game, as the cabinet looked like it was a simple Ms. Pac.

It is the joysticks that ruin the games. That little stubby circle. Geez. How did that ever get settled on as an acceptable joystick. Anyone who was in the test group and held it and tried to steer a game and press those side buttons would have had sweaty hands and tired fingers, my hands cramp up trying to play something like Time Pilot with repeated constant pressing of the side mounted fire buttons. ICK!!! With the D shaped super controller featuring a real joystick on top and the buttons controlled by your fingers holding the D shape, that works quite well. I wore mine out and the stick snapped off, have yet to figure out how to fix it Use the black joystick with that little stiff knub to start a game and then quickly switch off to an Atari 2600 stick, I know, "quick" is not possible with the ultra inconvenient plug in for the end of the joystick cord. Man, so much about the Colecovision was poorly thought out, the joystick port, the hand cramping joysticks, the expansion port door that gets jammed, all those ridges on the top that collect dust and can be cleaned out how?? Some games that I thought were worth keeping versus dozens that passed through and were put in the charity donation bag, were: Mr. Do, a great port, very close to the arcade! Zaxxon, close as well. Subroc, Looping, Bump N' Jump (perhaps the best, with nothing really missing from the arcade experience IMHO), Carnival, very arcade-like as well, Venture, Time Pilot - missing the outer space level, otherwise, damn good, Omega Race - should have left it black and white and vector like, but still quite playable. Super Cobra is missing so little, one of the best carts, you just have to be ready when turning it on as the game just starts, memory constraints methinks. Defender, a later cart by Atarisoft, a rare one is very good. Q-Bert is a lot like the arcade, much fun. I'd like to love Lady Bug, but it is hard to steer often going the wrong way around the moving doors, just like the arcade machine did with that pointy joystick that you ended up pounding on in frustration as the Lady Bug went up when you had pressed right and before you could correct it going the wrong way your enemy had swept in and killed you. That was the first and only time that Universal had a game that regularly didn't go in the direction where you pushed. So why such an irritating feature was obviously incorporated into the home version, makes no sense to me. It had to have been as pulling out that cartridge and putting another in and having it go where you press tells me it was not the joystick. Anyway, Lady Bug, for me was ruined by endlessly going where I didn't press. Now, off to figure out how to get the super controller working again, as I have a new craving to play some Colecovision!