riki

I found Space Invaders on the default settings (difficulty B, game 1) unbelievably easy.

I've got Centipede. None of my friends could beat my record score yet.

Actually, those Zellers and Taiwan games and labels aren't too appealing to me. And I'm not extremely interested in the games that Zellers and the Taiwan pirates ripped off.

How about the Zellers labels and the Taiwan pirate labels? I think you can find scans on this site. What's especially interesting, is how silly some of the Taiwan labels are. Take Popeye. He looks like a fat guy who likes to eat and stuff in their illustration. Even worse, they screw up on the names and everything. They don't even call the spinach "spinach" either. They call it cabbage. Also, there's this pirated alien game with a label illustration that says something like "E.T. GO COME!" (should be "go home," but... this sounds even sicker than the concepts behind those Mystique games. GO COME! hehehehe) And of course, the Taiwan "Chess" game, where they have the 3-D Tic Tac Toe label illustration, but the game is actually Othello. The Zellers "Farmer Dan" illustration is actually ripped from Activision's Plaque Attack game (Farmer Dan is actually Gopher I think). And "Challenge" is nothing like its cart label illustration, which looks like a scene from Ghostbusters.

Assembler's hard. The best I can do is C++ type stuff. I agree that we need tons of good resources and tutorials on 6502 programming. Also, I think we should have tutorials on how to do specific stuff (such as creating a man moving around in a maze or creating entire groups of enemies or how to accept input from specific buttons or console switches, etc.) because assembly language commands are full of nitty-gritty (assigning memory registers, etc.) Speaking of which... I've got an interesting idea. How about a C-based programming language that permits for programming real Atari 2600 games without requiring too much knowledge in the 6502 assembly language, and compiles the "Atari 2600 C" code into .BIN files? I think it's probably next to impossible, but...

Hmm... here's my take... The 2600 version is way too easy compared to the arcade Galaxian. It's not too much like the original. It's still fun to play, though. There's no Galaga for the Atari 2600 to my knowledge, although someone did make a River Raid clone and tried to call that "Galaga."

Sounds really cool. But how about also giving away real patches for high scorers just like Activision did with its Atari 2600 titles when they were on the shelves?

I think it just depends on the condition of the unit, really, although I did find some distinctions... My 4-switch woodgrain 2600 causes the screen to snow whenever I flip the Game Reset switch. A friend of mine has a 2600jr that doesn't do that. Also, from what I've read on this site (I think), apparently you can't normally fit Tigervision 2600 carts into an Atari 7800, although Atari 2600 carts are supposed to be backwards compatible with that system.

Oh yeah, and speaking of censored games, note that Doom for the Game Boy Advance is rated T, not M, in the United States. The violence may have been toned down in that game too.

Well, actually... it was probably only found in adult bookstores (I don't know really because I was too young to remember), but still, Atari wanted to maintain a family-friendly 2600 environment.

And then Atari (along with feminist groups) told Mystique to pull that game off the shelves.

I personally thought that the Quest was an interesting game, even for the 2600. I think it's a fairly good game. It's a rare, so I'm thinking about finding a copy. You can flip the Game Reset switch to switch your equipment. You can shoot your gun at snakes and throw acid (hehe, acid) bottles at mummies (although I don't think there were any mummies in Latin American ruins). You can actually search through walls (sort of like in Wolf3D, trying to search walls for secret rooms). And you can even solve a puzzle involving colored rocks and a huge circular panel. Sure, it's probably not as good its non-2600 counterparts, but I thought it was somewhat impressive and actually a little bit advanced for a non-Supercharger game. We don't see very many Atari 2600 adventure games like that around, where you can actually get poisoned by a snake and you've got 60 seconds to find an antidote...

Well, actually, after they made two Atari 2600 games, Milton Bradley published a few NES games too, such as Marble Madness and Abadox (a very gory shooting game that surprisingly got around Nintendo of America's strict censorship board)

Definitely Activision (no brainer here) ...and SpectraVideo. (used to be SpectraVision) SpectraVideo (www.spectravideo.com) with their Logic3 label now sells peripherals for the four new game consoles (PS2, XBox, Gamecube, GBA)

Sure, 2600 games are pretty fun and playable, but I think they're nowhere near as challenging and exciting as the arcade versions. But then again the 2600 versions have their own little game variations and difficulty switch support, so I guess that's a small plus. But Mario Bros. and Space Invaders are way too easy. I do like the 2600 version of Pole Position though... it's playable and it looks pretty good... and I normally don't even like racing games. Centipede's pretty good too; it's pretty "arcade-accurate" with sounds and all, but it's still too easy.

It's a crying shame that everything now looks like Tomb Raider to me. If only people could look back and appreciate the old ways. I hate it that magazines like GamePro compare new PSone and Game Boy color games to Xbox games. That's not fair. The only recent innovation I've seen was Dance Dance Revolution (and I can go up to difficulty level 6!) Too bad you can't fine-tune the difficulty level and make the new games really easy or really hard like you could with most Atari 2600 games. That would be of great help to everyone. Recently though, I found out that Activision(!) made an Atari 2600 clone (it's actually one of those weird controller multicart thingies like the TV Joy or TV Boy or something...) which you can plug in to your TV, and play 11(I think) of Activision's most popular Atari 2600 games like Pitfall. A friend of mine pointed it out to me at a software store. (I think it was EB)

It may not have to do too much with the AC adaptor that you're using, but probably with the cartridge or console. I've had similar problems with my Pitfall cartridge. But don't worry, it's just wear and tear, I think; remember that this kind of stuff is even older than I am. The quality of Atari 2600 goods do vary by some degree. Much of them are, of course, used.

BTW, TLayer is GUI-driven, so you can use the mouse to draw and even do cut-and-paste stuff.

In addition to SHOWGFX/EDITGFX, there's also a DOS program out there called TLAYER. It's designed mainly to hack graphics in ROM images of Nintendo cartridges, but can be used to hack Atari 2600 ROM graphics as well. (just use "tlayer myhack.bin" or something, and it will go into 1 bit per pixel mode, perfect because most Atari 2600 graphics are encoded in 1 bit per pixel.) However, note that the graphics displayed from the ROM image by either SHOWGFX or EDITGFX will appear upside down, and multicolor sprite graphics make take up a lot of work because the 1 bit per pixel graphics are actually monochromatic. Color assignments are stored elsewhere within the ROM. Good luck!

Polyvox probably got copyright clearances to get games like that. For Popeye and Frogger, maybe Parker Brothers licensed these two to Activision for the purpose of bringing it over to Brazil through Polyvox. Yes, Polyvox is the official licensee for Atari 2600 goods in Brazil, according to the Video Game Museum at atari2600.com. They imported mainly Atari and Activision games, although they have imported other games as well.

This is weird. I (an American) bought a Frogger cartridge a while ago and it had a "P" on it, indicating that it was PAL as opposed to NTSC. But for some reason it plays perfectly fine on my NTSC system and my NTSC TV; it just has the colors mixed up. How could this happen? Could I play some other PAL games too because of this? I know normally I can't play PAL games on an NTSC TV or an NTSC system, but...