davyK

You have used a CRT before , but I will state the obvious here - you will have to tune the TV into the channel the 2600 is set to. Better said than assumed. I'm in the UK and when I bought a US 2600 my CRT wouldn't pick up its signal - moved up and down the entire tuning range and nothing. Had to get the 2600 modified for composite. Tuning controls are at the front. Some TVs have auto tune but you have to press a button to activate it. Please don't think I'm being condescending here but I don't know how old you are if you have never owned a CRT you may not know that.

I don't remember any games in shrinkwrap when I was buying new 2600 games 82-84. I got a brand new copy of Super Breakout in the late 90s and it wasn't shrinkwrapped - the box top was glued closed.

I agree re Night Driver - it's actually a smooth game. But maybe some variation with oncoming vehicles would be nice. My suggestions:- Surround could benefit with a graphical and sonic overhaul. Kaboom! with a 2P versus mode (one player controls the bomber - such a modification of the ROM is in the hack threads) Official Warlords update to bring it up to the level of Medieval Mayhem. Circus with round(er) balloons? Keystone Kapers with different shop layouts. Sky Diver with slightly higher res graphics with smaller parachutists and targets having longer to fall. Small change to Yars Revenge - don't restart the game with a button press after a game over!!! Leave it a few seconds before reading the button so I can see the score!!! Outlaw update to the level of Gunfight.

For classic arcade games - to set a high score it has to be independently witnessed at an event recognised by TG. It's the only way. Throw any non event witnessed score in the bin. Or at least have them in a "best score" category for historic reasons with official high scores being the genuine article. Even with best intentions and I'd say old TG had the best of them, it simply isn't feasible to do it any other way. Now that there's room for doubt with the Todd Rogers Dragster time analysis in emulators and the Mitchell DK MAME presentation then it can't be done any other way.

Years on and the old Dx is still working great.

Yep - that sound is the intended one - I get it on my Dx cabinet too.

Apparently Tempest has a glitch that gives infinite credits. I came across a Tempest one time and the previous player must have executed it because I was able to play and play and play without putting a coin in!! I remember finding the "BP" easter egg in 2600 Defender. Also remember the secret bonuses in Track n Field (photo finish in 100m and 110m, hurdles, the bird in the javelin and the mole in the high jump). Got the photo finish once and the bird many times.

It's possible HSW also has a life with higher priorities.

oh please....

Megamania with the laser temp feature added to it would make it a great deal tougher.

I don't want to speak out of turn but I suspect it was maybe over ambitious. A straight narrated/commented source code listing with some text to explain some of the techniques would be a job in itself. I think that would have made most people happy? Better that than nothing. The most famous case of over ambition is Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming Started in 1962 and it still isn't finished!!! Vols 1,2,3,4a and 4b are published (these were initally planned to be chapters!) but there's a planned volumes 4c-4f , 5 , 6 and 7 !!! All the code examples in the book are in assembler.

These sum the 70s up for me:- Pong and its variants (Video Olympics) Breakout/Super Breakout (1981 sadly, so the original will have to do even though Super is a 70s game). Tank (Combat) Night Driver (1980 on 2600 unfortunately, but it's very much a game of the 70s) I remember playing the old "belt" racing games with back projection and Night Driver was marvellous step up from those. Surround Dodge 'em Air Sea Battle (stands in for all those 70s timed shooting gallery style games) Gunfight (Outlaw) Space War Something like Tailgunner would complete that lineup - Star Ship is the closest thing to that.

Just looking at the plan of that book and all its chapters. Very ambitious. There's a pile of work in it just looking at that.

Loved Astro Blaster in the arcade but it was super tough. Run out of fuel and it's game over even if you have more lives!!! It's a real MAME favourite now. Quite ahead of its time with the secret bonuses etc - not unlike modern day achievements. Megamania is a clearly inspired by it.

Agree with you there, but they had the freedom to take influences instead of having to do an accurate arcade port. Chopper Command and Defender is a case in point - you don't have to rescue and catch falling humanoids in Chopper Command for example. That must have been a nightmare to implement in Defender.

yep!

In these enlightened times even an unreconstructed late 50s male like me winces when I think of Custer's Revenge in particular. It's practically a non-game that crudely depicts inter-racial rape. I'm no revisionist but it deserves to be forgotten. Shouldn't be whitewashed out of history but it's a huge black mark on gaming to this day as far as I'm concerned.

Activision , like all devs, have a chequered library. But like great devs, their best are great. Their hit/miss ratio is favourable. Unlike Atari they didn't have to try and squeeze arcade games onto the 2600 so they could design games that played to the console's strengths which is why they looked so good, but also sometimes they can feel samey. I still rate Kaboom! as one of the best on the 2600 library. I consider Megamania the best shooting game on the system too. It's a proper modern shmup with loops that introduce new enemy patterns. A superb game. Tennis is a mini masterpiece - seemingly a primitive pong clone with sugar coating but it has depth of play and is a truly great 2 player game when skills are well matched. I also like Keystone Kapers - at first I wasn't impressed with it as once you caught the thief it seems to become repetitive - but the way the game introduces changes on each loop is masterful. HERO is probably them at their technical peak and it's an excellent game as well. Fishing Derby is an original and highly enjoyable game and the 2P mode is great once you mastered the CPU. Space Shuttle is a masterpiece of synergy - a sequence of micro games that add up to more than a sum of its parts and it's got superb presentation. Pitfall! is a bit of a bore and its sequel is impressive but I've never liked explorathons. There were too many time trial games, though they can be enjoyable if you play with someone and try to best each other. The slalom style games like Sky Jinks and Skiing are the best of the bunch. Laser Blast is a dreadful game - you've seen everything after about 30 seconds. That could be OK but it's basic action isn't enjoyable. Never liked River Raid - I appreciate many liked it but it's too repetitive. Spider Fighter is lovely but it's too easy. Practically all the games have their hallmark graphical presentation that makes them instantly recognisable. The point is they have something for everyone. And most of the games I don't like I can admire. Where Atari at their best trumps Activision is how their games feel which compensated for sprite flicker etc. But that's down to their arcade heritage. How they pushed some of the later ports out is a miracle. But we were lucky to have them both as they pushed each other to excellence.

This has been discussed before...

The tone/beep you get in Surround every time your line grows by one block. The collision sound isn't great either. There's a pretty horrific jingle in Cosmic Creeps when you complete a level.

When it comes to older games, I only look for physical copies of the games I really liked back in the day. I have physical copies, complete in the box of Asteroids, Super Breakout, Warlords, Space Shuttle and Surround. I'd like copies of Yars' Revenge and Kaboom! but I'd likely be happy with that. Maybe Video Olympics. I prefer to have a curated collection that reflects my gaming tastes now. I did a pretty big clear out about 7 years ago of my cross-platform collection. Went from >800 games down to 500. There were many games in genres I knew I would never play, and I also got rid of games that had been superseded by superior reduxes (e.g. GC games like RE4, Pikmin that got redone on Wii). I also upgraded PAL games to NTSC (e.g. my N64 collection is almost all CIB JP-NTSC as the box art is far superior to US or PAL). But I was selective, I used PAL games (which cost a lot now when boxed) to fund only my N64 favourites - so I had an overall reduction in size of that part of my collection.

Asteroids is the only game I own associated "tat" for. Coffee cups, badges/pins. Anything like that. I have a CIB copy of the 2600 game, NTSC version. Just to sit on the shelf. I have many happy memories of playing that port with my cousins (now both deceased) and my brother. It was the 2nd game I got for the 2600 (counting Combat as the first) and it's probably my most played in that era. It got regular play for 2-3 years. Sadly , I foolishly sold my 2600 and games in the mid-to-late 80s but those memories are golden. Have a couple of woodys (1 PAL and 1 NTSC modified) and a Harmony and 2600 Asteroids will get a quick blast from time to time but it's really only for nostalgia.

With the FAST setting, the angles the asteroids break up at are sharper than with slow. But there is a limit - you won't see rocks moving horizontally for example - the sharpest angle is a 45 degree diagonal. It still makes a big difference though. I used to play game 6 (or 39 in 2 player) at diff A which is FAST,HYPERSPACE,1UP@20,000, UFOS ON. We used to play game 32/65 as well - no extra lives and no hyperspace/shield/flip.

Even old AI routines like the one on this cart would be very good at checkers. The number of legal moves at any time is small and reduces as the game goes on and the number of pieces reduce. It might even be doing an exhaustive decision tree search at high diff levels and/or late in the game which would equate to perfect play.

@zzip The boss "fight" in 2600 Vanguard to is crashing disappointment. There's no barriers, gates etc. You just fire up the screen once and the boss is defeated!! Shots come in from left and right and if you dodge them and delay firing as long you can you get more points.