Ransom

I'm amazed at how cheap Genesis consoles seem to be. I had one back when, but wasn't much interested in it at the time. I think I only had a few carts for it. I recall getting rid of it about the time it became pretty popular. I'm surprised it isn't more popular now.

I have Intellivision carts that I would like to trade for a working Atari 2600A. Cosmetic condition doesn't matter; only the board, ports, switches and so on must work. No power adapter or controllers needed. In fact, a working motherboard alone would be fine! Here's what I have to offer in return: Intellivision carts with box, instructions, and overlays: Atlantis Beauty and the Beast Las Vegas Poker and Blackjack Las Vegas Roulette Lock 'N' Chase Night Stalker Sea Battle US Ski Team Skiing Space Armada Space Battle Space Hawk Tron Deadly Discs Tron Maze-A-Tron Vectron All of the above have boxes in various states of damage. Astrosmash and Tron Deadly Discs are the worst, being prettycrushed. Most have some pretty heavy shelf wear. But Space Hawk and Space Armada are in pretty good shape -- near mint except for a little warping and some damage in the cartridge holding area on Space Armada. Space Hawk is near mint. All the Mattel brand ones are in the older, book-style boxes. All the cartridges work, and nearly all of the instruction books and overlays are in great shape. I also have some unboxed games, all without instructions : Dragonfire (one overlay) Demon Attack (one overlay) Dracula (one overlay) If you're interested and would like more details, let me know. ==== Edited to add: I attached pictures of the carts.

That doesnt make sense? Werent DK, Zaxxon, etc available on the 2600 too? Yes, games like Donkey Kong and Zaxxon were released by Coleco on the 2600, but they were released at the same time, or slightly after, the Colecovision versions. And, like I said above, they were generally poor ports. My point was that as a 1982 Atari 2600 owner, you had a choice between getting a 5200 and re-purchasing games you already had, or getting a Colecovision and having access to a new library of titles. You're absolutely right. And as I recall, Coleco kept them exclusive to the ColecoVision for six months prior to releasing those games for other systems.

Ah, okay. Thanks for letting me know! And thanks for the heads up on Longhorn Engineer. That will be worth checking out as well, once he's done with the design phase. -Joe

Is it normal for 8bitdomain to be unresponsive to email and telephone inquiries? I've tried to contact them about my order several times via email and telephone messages over the last week, and there hasn't been a peep out of them. I'm thinking of reversing the charges, but wanted to see if this is normal for them or if maybe the guy died or went out of business or something.

What great responses! Thanks to all who voted, and especially those who posted their thoughts. After toying with the idea of collecting just carts and manuals (and putting them in those nice Atari vinyl game cases), I finally decided to begin my collection with boxed carts only. If, later on, that becomes too expensive or takes up too much space, I'll switch. But for now, since I'll be collecting common carts almost exclusively, it'll be OK to start with boxed games....I think! Thanks for all the great responses! It's been very interesting to see the different ways that people view their collections.

All my other carts seem to work fine. I have just just about all the carts Atari produced for the 8-bit line. I'm not sure which are 16K, though. Any suggestions?

I think you're onto something. My 1200XL is upgraded, too. It still doesn't make sense why this is only affecting these four games, and only when they're loaded from cartridge. Hmm. Since removing the RAMBO XL upgrade (which meant swapping three chips plus all the RAM) had no effect on solving the problem, all that's left is the super video upgrade and the powered SIO port fix. Does your 1200XL have both of those mods?

The spare works, but I haven't done the video upgrade on it. I'd prefer to get the current board working if at all possible. I suppose I'll try more chip swapping this weekend and see what happens. I still don't understand why it only affects four games out of 50+, and only when they're in cartridge form (as opposed to files loaded from floppy disks). It makes no sense to me, really. Thanks for your help!

I replaced the RAM and that didn't help. Is there something else that's the likely culprit (I have a populated 1200XL MB that I can draw from as needed)? -Joe

Thank you for the response! In my case, near the end of the first wave, I start seeing the background stars occasionally lining up diagonally in the upper right hand corner. By the second wave, the effect is more frequent and pronounced. Eventually, it just freezes up. So yours doesn't do any of that?

Is the 1200XL compatible with the cartridge versions of Millipede, Galaxian, Pole Position, and Jungle Hunt? I've been using the 1200XL since it was introduced, and I'm embarrassed to say that I no longer remember if these games ever worked in it. They don't now. But I don't know if it's always been that way, or if there's something wrong! The carts work fine in the 800XL, so I know they're not the problem. And when I load the same games from disk, those games work fine in the 1200XL. So I'm kinda stumped. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

When it comes to games for the 2600, do you collect them in boxes or as bare carts? If you care to share your reasoning, I'd appreciate it! For some background, I've always collected everything BUT the 2600 games in boxes. The 2600 games collection I amassed in the early 90s (and later sold) was 100% bare carts (although I did get instruction booklets for most of them). Of course, my original collection in the early 80s was 100% boxed games. Now that I'm getting back into it, I'm debating whether to go with boxes or bare carts, considering that nearly all of what I want is fairly common. Still, even that subset of the huge 2600 catalog will end up taking up a couple of shelves in my games closet if they're in boxes! So are there advantages and disadvantages to collecting 2600 games in boxes that I may not have thought of?

Sure you can play, I hit the big four oh in January Thanks! As others have said, it's kinda weird to be playing the same video games we played when we were 10 years old -- and find that they're still a lot of fun! Actually, as I get older, I find I have less and less patience and time for the long, drawn-out games like Zelda and the current 3D games. Sure, I enjoy them, but I just don't have the time to sit down and monomaniacally play them until I get to the end. The older games tend to give me much more fun and much less frustration. I can sit down and in 30 minutes play three or four different games a few times each. Since it's impossible to finish them anyway, it doesn't matter that I stop after a few minutes. Anyway, belated happy birthday. I hope to join you in that category later this year.

I'll be 40 this year...can I play, too? I just had my first encounter with AA-sold homebrews when I bought Castle Crisis for the Atari 8-bit. Wow, what a great game! I look forward to getting some 2600 homebrews once I get my system together. It'll be hard to choose, but I'll keep reading the forums to try to figure out what I might like. Have a good weekend everyone!

Ooh, I forgot "No Escape" one of my all-time favorites. It's very different from any other shooter I've ever played.

I'd say Combat's not original enough. Similar to Chopper Command -- not a literal (and licensed) port, but an obvious attempt to replicate a given arcade game at home. But it sure does get squishy fast when considering these things. At what point does Pac-Man become a port of Dodge 'Em to the arcade?

Of the games that only appeared on the 2600 (i.e., they were never ported anywhere else, and they were not themselves ports), which are your favorites? Here are a few of mine: Adventure Dodge 'Em Haunted House

Yea, I remember that lol! I saw that some people actually put up over a 100 dollars for that fake adapter. Is the 5200 mod from 8bitdomain real, or is that fake, too? I'd like to buy one, but I'm not sure the place is legit, based on what you're saying. Real. Many people have it here on AA and it is excellent. I like it better than the 7800 because there is no soldering and you can easily move it from one 5200 to another if your 5200 dies. Allan Thank you!

Yea, I remember that lol! I saw that some people actually put up over a 100 dollars for that fake adapter. Is the 5200 mod from 8bitdomain real, or is that fake, too? I'd like to buy one, but I'm not sure the place is legit, based on what you're saying.