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I've been refurbishing old consoles and building a new retro gaming center for myself, this year. I figured I would dump the photos here from the past few months so I don't lose them. It all started when I found this really nice old Sylvania flatsceen TV that is still old enough to not be widesreen ($7 Goodwill). After that, it was a matter of cleaning dust and grime off the old consoles, which had been sitting dormant on bookcase shelves, and diagnosing which controllers worked, and which were defective. At this point, my Atari controllers were stuttering or intermittently unresponsive. The Atari was still dusty, and lots of cartridges really needed to be jiggered around to get them to work. Without any cleaning for this, the problem resolved on its own after some use swapping cartridges on the console over a few weeks. The Intellivision II functioned, but still needs serious jiggering to get cartridges to load, but none of them were found to be dead. The playstation 2 works beautifully, but none of my memory cards were recognized. Some of the controllers turned out to be broken, especially the "clear red plastic" one seen plugged in here. I found a nice woodgrain cabinet for a stand at goodwill for 5 bucks, and used an old xetec Amiga hard drive casing for the stand to raise the TV up a bit. Next, I took apart the 2 sets of Atari paddles, which suffered from "Jitter," and cleaned them. Reassembled after cleaning the residue and grease with alcohol and swabs, they worked perfectly. The next challenge was to open up both joysticks, remove the clear adhesive over the boards, clean them, and reassemble with packing tape over the boards. Both of them worked very well, aside from an issue with one of them: The cable plastic seemed pretty stiff, and would lose control if it was not held in a certain position - ultimately a small tug downwards of the connector end plugged into the back of the console got whatever connections were loose to connect. But, this one went into my "museum" for non-use, ultimately. Next, I took apart the console and cleaned the case. I found three areas on the RF cable where the plasic cord exterior had torn, but it seems that the cable is still working perfectly, so a little electrical tape was wrapped around the frayed parts to protect them. Ultimately, I want to replace the cord and fix the connectors in the B&W switch, and get a second Atari joystick, but this is good enough for now. After the next photo was taken, I popped the caps off the paddles and cleaned them some more. Next, I identified two playstation controllers that still functioned, though only one PS2 dualshock controlled worked, so a PS1 controller was borrowed from the old console which is in my "museum." I added a VCR to the mix, running the PS2 through that. Finally, I set up a spare tablet to be able to quicky hit a website with atari manuals on it, for reference if needed, and bought myself a Harmony Cartridge for the Atari for loading games from my organized rom library on SD card, which I continue to explore and learn about. My Atari Keyboard Controllers needed no maintenance - so they will be nice to have for Star Raiders. Finally, the Commodore 128 (64) computer and accompanying Commodore 1571 (Disk Drive) were set up as part of my functioning retro gaming center. It's still going to need some refurbishing to get it all cleaned up and "retro-brighted", with the 128 boot not functioning, lots of keys lacking spring or being loose, and the old RF video cable lacking proper RF shielding to prevent interference. But, it functions and I have access to all my old files and games. This was my primary computer literally from like 1985-1998. I'm making good on my "perpertual student" label for myself. Pacing myself, but aside from some repairs on this and the Atari, I still have two Commdore 64's and an Amiga 500 that will need to come back to life. The Amiga will need cleaning and retrobrighting, keyboard fixes, proper video cable, and a boot disk. The 64's with need to have their problem diagnosed. I have a Timex Sinclair 2068 with no cables, and an Atari 5200 that has a rusted end to it's RF (Power?? WTF) cable, which sparks when turned on. My playstation 1 is probably fine, but with the PS2, there's no rush on that. I'm definitely going to need a proper belkin surge protector instead of these two cheapo power strips. Projects for much later.
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Video Checkers (Atari VCS, Dec 1980, Atari) In 1980, Checkers feels like the new Blackjack. Blackjack seems like it was a requirement to be on every system. Checkers... well, maybe not on every system. It was already on the Fairchild Channel F (which, I missed back when I played through 1978 like... more then a decade ago, but less than 40 years ago. I'll get to it soon.) and we've seen it on the Intellivision and Atari. Now we get to play it on the Atari again. This time, I did think about going to use the world-famous A.I. Checker Program, Chinook, but alas, I wasn't patient enough to sit through the Atari's "thinking" phases at its top level, so I'm just going to go over the features that this Checkers has. Nine levels of difficulty: Games 1-9 represent Checkers against the Computer in 9 levels of increasing difficulty. Game 10 is human vs. human in case all of the checker boards in your house had been stolen or something or you wanted the novel feeling of playing the game on the TV. I'm not judging you for this. The computer takes longer to decide its move the higher the skill level. Ranging from less than two seconds on Level 1, to 30 seconds on Level 6, to 15 minutes per turn on Level 9. "Giveaway" Checkers: Games 11-19 are called "losing" or "giveaway" Checkers. Giveaway Checkers is a variant of the game where you try to lose your pieces first by forcing your computer opponent to jump your pieces. I honestly had never of this version of Checkers before. Skill level of the computer increases as you move from game 11 to game 19, of course. Game Select (to change skill level) functional during a game: Something interesting about the Game Select switch. You can start playing a game on a skill level and decide, in the middle of the game, (but not while the computer is thinking) to increase the skill level. I thought that was kind of neat. Checker notation is used: Atari's Video Checkers uses checker notation and it's noted at the top of the screen. The manual specifically mentions playing other computer opponents and using the Checkers notation to convey the moves to avoid any confusion. (I tried playing two computers against each other when the board is inverted on one. It is hard (for me) to turn my brain around like that. The number system makes it easier to translate the moves to the other computer.) Checker Notation bonus: The B/W switch lets you change up the numbering system in case the computer playing against the Atari is less flexible. This was thoughtful to include and makes the Atari seem to be the more gracious opponent. ("Oh, of course, binary opponent. This unit is happy to adjust its numbering settings for you! It's no trouble at all!") Set up your own board: Moving the left difficulty switch to "a" allows you to set up the board however you like and then play it by putting the switch back to "b". Actual instructions on playing Checkers!: Yeah, I mention this because Activision's manuals are pretty light in general (which was mostly fine). Their manual for their Bridge game didn't fuss with giving the rules at all and their manual for Checkers was also quite brief. Atari's Video Checkers' manual seems absolutely luxurious in comparison. My impression is that the feature set of Video Checkers is pretty rich. I'm not knocking the others (and I'm not going back to actually compare them, lawds no.) but if I had to pick the one I've liked the most so far, I'd have to pick Atari's Video Checkers. I still need to look at Checkers on the Fairchild Channel F though. One game left for the Atari in 1980, Activision's Skiing.
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Old people: "Play new games but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold" It's me. I'm Old people. There's a game we play our entire lives called "Explore vs. Exploit". When seeking to entertain ourselves we are faced with the decision to Explore something new that we might enjoy, or to Exploit something we already know we enjoy. This idea is talked about more broadly in a book called "Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions" by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. If you haven't already read it, I do strongly recommend it. I know this sounds crazy, (we prefer the term "mental disorder", btw, thanks.), but I always struggle with deciding on what to play and I've literally wasted entire weekends on this indecision. Having every game available to me from 1972 to around 1995 has not helped me at all when trying to figure out what exactly to play when I'm trying to catch up on what I missed when I wasn't paying attention. Dragster (Atari VCS, Jul 1980, Activision) I never really understood this game back in the 80s. I don't think I ever owned a copy and the concept behind it (efficient gear-shifting for maximum speed over a limited distance) was outside of my experience. I do blame this for never having learned to drive a stick-shift until I was in my early 20s. You can play Dragster over and over and over and afterwards find you've only been playing it for about 10 minutes. If you don't have any idea of how you shift gears in a car with a stick-shift then it can be quite frustrating, at first. My first few times I simply blew the engine out and my vehicle didn't even move until I re-read the manual and realized I was trying to shift incorrectly. It's a fun game for what it is. Learning how to quickly engage a learned sequence of actions while perfecting the timing can tickle a challenge urge in us that we sometimes find it interesting to indulge. (I never beat 6.33 seconds. I will never be worthy enough for a patch. So be it.) The second game on the cart adds the challenge of steering. I found that additional challenge interesting but it didn't quite engage me after all the time I'd spent grinding my gears on the first game. If you decide to try it, I do recommend reading the manual as well as being aware that you can reset the game after an attempt by pushing the joystick to the right. It's better than leaning forward to hit the reset button a couple dozen times. That takes us out of July 1980 for the Atari VCS. We've covered a bunch of the other 1980 games already (some were 1981 games that we covered pre-maturely, oh well) but all we have left in this year (for the Atari) is December's Video Checkers (Atari) and Skiing (Activision). I still haven't even gotten to the Fairchild Channel F or the Odyssey^2 games, yet. This seems like a long year, because it's taken me 13 years to get through it, but it's not even half as long as 1982 is. Hopefully I'll get back into the rhythm.
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I hope this is the best forum for this topic. I currently own an older JVC 720p set and when I connect the Atari VCS...in either Atari OS mode or PC mode, the overscan is pretty bad. The Windows 10 start button is hidden behind the bezel as well as the top and bottom of the screen. This is correctable in the AMD software in Windows 10, but it is not correctable in Atari OS. The JVC does not have picture size adjustments aside from ZOOM, WIDE, etc which doesn't help. I'm curious if anyone has this TCL and can shed some insight on it's overscan.
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I'm selling three Atari 2600 VCS's: 4 switch Sears Tele-Games model: includes 2 joysticks, pair of paddles, and 5 games of your choice (see listing below) (Sold) 4 switch woody model: includes 2 joysticks, pair of paddles, and 5 games of your choice (see listing below) (Sold) 6 switch woody model: includes 2 joysticks, 5 games of your choice (see listing below), and at no extra cost a TV plug&play console. All have been recently refurbished, are clean and 100% working, deoxidized the contacts in the joysticks and the pots in the paddles as well as the switches on the consoles. You can see more / buy them on my store at Jaded Chicken: https://www.divarin.net/dcag/items.php?categoryId=13 For shipping outside of the US contact me here as i haven't gotten around to coding international shipping calculation on my store site yet. Asking $75 per set.
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Hi Everyone, Yet another question, because as previously stated I am 100% new to working on electronics. So I have another Atari VCS that is displaying very strange behavior: It only plays some cartridges, but not others. The ones it does play it plays repeatedly - that is, with repeated re-seating of the cartridge. This is only about 1/3rd of all carts that are seated in the loading slot - the rest simply show blank screen or occasionally wide vertical lines. Does anyone have experience with a picky cart-playing Atari VCS 2600? Thanks! Evan
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In 1975, Atari came out with an 8-player, top-down racer called Indy 800. Unknown to most, however, also in 1975, in an alternate timeline where Nikola Tesla managed to prove his genius, a motorsport known as GRITS was skyrocketing in popularity. The eight cars in Indy 800 are really from that alternate universe. Anyhow, (for legal reasons, I'm sure) my game, GRITS Racing, isn't really a reboot of Indy 800. But, it is a game inspired by Indy 800 (among others) and the eight car colors for the eight players in GRITS Racing are definitely borrowed from Indy 800, as seen here: We've just released our first demo of the game, still in development, on itch.io and Steam. I would appreciate some fellow Atari fans taking a look and telling me what you think. I've put a ton of effort into the physics of the car trying to take this game to where no top-down 2D racer has gone before. Drawing the permanent skid marks with good detail was also a huge challenge. You'll need multiple players and dual-analog controllers to really understand this wacked-out, up-to-8-player game. I hope to also publish this on the new VCS... that is, if I ever hear more than just the occasional blip of an email from their dev team. Also, considering a one-button mode for the game -- which should totally be doable.
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We cordially invite you to the 12th edition of the largest event for fans of ATARI consoles and computers in the world! This time we are celebrating our 20th anniversary... "Silly Venture"! Join us! Last year we broke the record in terms of the number of participants and works submitted for competitions! Just face the facts: All of that at an ATARI-only party! Without your participation this would not be possible - many thanks! The legend continues. Just has to. Long live the Atari demoscene! My Dears, due to the 20th anniversary of Silly Venture, we wanted to give you more than one T-shirt colour to choose from - especially since the logo designed by mOOnie looks simply amazing on all of them! (not forgetting the neat ATARI logo on the sleeve) We will probably choose the 3 or 4 that get the most votes, however we ask that people who decide to buy them take part in the survey. T-shirts will go to print next week - you will be able to order them pretty soon! (also with home delivery). Oh, and the most important thing - t-shirts will be even better quality than in previous years. The survey can be found at the official SV2020 profile on FACEBOOK: CLICK ME NOW! PLEASE DO NOT FORGET TO VISIT OUR SV2020 WEB-SITE FOR MORE INFO! WWW.SILLYVENTURE.EU
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Remembering the game hack that started my love for game hacking, with a request by fans to have an original character for that hack I present.... BUSTER Buster is just your typical BBSing Bobtail cat (Felus Catus Atarius) who will not be stopped by rain, sleet, snow, or penguins to get his favorite Atari 800 computer and talk to his BBSing friends. Help Buster pounce over Galloway Guin and his Waddle Raft Pack to get all of his Babbles and unlock their SEKRET SURPRISE, and of course back to his computer! Buster_TBBSB R01.bin Buster, also lover of cosplay, dons his cape (or is it a plastic bag that he accidentally got caught in..??)
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A MORE than decent port of one of my all-time favorite arcade games!
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Here we've got an Atari 2600/VCS "Light Sixer" Bundle with 20 games. Everything has been cleaned and tested and works great. Please see the attached pictures for exact condition of all items. In addition to the console itself, you get 20 handpicked games (seven with manuals), an OEM Atari power supply, an OEM Atari CX-40 joystick and an RF adapter so that you can hook up the Atari to a more modern TV without the need for a switchbox (your mileage may vary on the newest TVs); basically everything you need to get gaming immediately. A couple of the Atari Corp. games fit a little snugly in the cart slot but still work just fine. A couple of the games' end labels are coming up a bit on the left corner. Here are the games: Asteroids (with manual) Battlezone Berzerk Combat Crystal Castles (Atari Corp., with manual) Defender Donkey Kong Joust (with Atari Corp. manual) Jungle Hunt (Atari Corp., with manual) Kangaroo (Atari Corp., with manual) Missile Command Pac-Man Pitfall! (with manual) Pole Position (Atari Corp.) Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari Corp., end label misprint) River Raid (with manual) Space Invaders Tennis Vanguard Yars' Revenge Looking for $100 plus shipping OBO. Please shoot me a PM with any questions or to get a shipping quote. Thanks!
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I decided not to throw out my three Atari 2600A motherboards. I have had these motherboards for a few years. One of them I removed and cleaned the switches but it actually made it worse. My second board I had removed the switches but never finished after the first board didn't go so well. Both of those boards are socketed, and may need one or more of the IC chips replaced. The third board I have not touched because it is not socketed. I bought it from a man who told me outright that all three chips are bad, so that board needs to be socketed and then the IC chipss replaced. One of the boards is missing a DB-9 joystick port, and I had purchased two new DB-9s, so those will be included. Also included are 3 cap kits from MOJOATOMIC - I bought them from him here in AA in 2017. At any rate, these boards are for sale, and I am asking for offers. I'm not looking to get rich but I will need at least enough to cover the shipping. I figure I'll hold on to thee for another month or so. FYI, I will be away from dec 30 to jan 3, so during those days I may not respond. Feel free to ask me any questions (about these boards ) Kind regards,
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1978 Atari Heavy Sixer Complete in Box. Made in Sunnyvale. Early enough that it doesn't have a Channel Select Switch, late enough that it has the Channel Select Switch cutout and verbiage on the bottom of the console. Serial number 20657J. I tested the console and it displays a *beautiful* picture and plays games. However, I could not get any sound. I don't have the know-how to fix it, which is the primary reason I'm selling it. Could be as simple as a bad trace/solder point or a cap or two that need replacing. Additionally, the TV Type Switch does not respond to commands but outputs beautifully in color. As far as I know, all of the original packaging, inserts and accessories that came with this console at retail in 1978 are included in this bundle. Here's everything you get: - Atari "Heavy Sixer" Console. In great shape cosmetically overall. - Original Atari Gray power supply. Works perfectly. Comes in its original box. Box top flap is torn but still fits on top where it should reasonably well. - Two original CX-10 joysticks. One works as it should while the other only responds to left, up, and fire commands. Comes in original cardboard cutout. - Two original paddles in Paddle-specific box. They seem extremely consistent/smooth in operation and not loose, which often means jittery operation, but I didn't have a paddle game handy to test paddle gameplay. - Combat CIB *Gatefold* - VCS Owner's Manual - VCS Warranty Registration Card - VCS Warranty Registration Card Addendum x2 - Atari mailing list card for new game announcements - Original inner box/cardboard - Original outer box (mostly sealed at one end). Has wear but in good shape overall. Asking $225 shipped OBO (more on eBay). Would also be happy to meet up in the Philadelphia area, which would easily drop this below $200. Hard to get a proper valuation on these, as not too many complete Heavy Sixers are sold on eBay. Please let me know if you have any questions. Shoot me a PM with q's and interest. Thanks. Disclaimer: this is cross-listed on eBay, AA Marketplace Facebook and Facebook Marketplace. Forgive me for not making this an AA forum exclusive ?
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Looking to find a copy of Desert Bus for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision systems. I can't seem to find much about the Atari 2600 version besides outdated links that usually end in error 404s, and I did see that the Intellivision copy is for sale on ebay at the time of this post, but I would prefer a cheaper option as that one is $40 PLUS $15 shipping.
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From the album: Raspberry Pi Custom Atari case designs
Atari VCS inspired controller used for my raspberry Pi which is a 3rd party PS3 Bluetooth controller. -
From the album: Raspberry Pi Custom Atari case designs
My Raspberry Pi case inspired by the upcoming Atari VCS. Made with Vinyl wrap and an Atari Vinyl logo sticker -
What exactly is missing from our knowledge of the Atari VCS/2600's hardware that prevents us from making a perfect hardware clone of it? I've looked around, and apparently there's already a lot of information, and even hand-drawn schematics, on the TIA custom chip. What else is there missing?
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Does Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure contain a VCS/2600 Emulator to run the Atari 2600 version of Pitfall? I don't think so. I would like to be wrong. Over the years Activision has managed to port Pitfall fairly faithfully from the Atari 2600, Atari computers, Intellivision, all while looking about the same. They took a slight divergence with the ColecoVision, but all this to say Activision has had the ability to port their games and keep the same look and feel. So to me it was not surprising that they could do it yet again with the Atari Jaguar. And that's all fine and good, but what I am bringing to this age old debate/mystery? Since this is practically hexediting/emulation month for me (sprite hacking in past months) I thought I would look for the hex values of the original 2600 Pitfall. Now previously I had said on the VirtualVCS thread that I looked for these values in the Jaguar Pitfall image and did not find them. Then I realized that the Jaguar cartridge image was in a compressed format. At one time I was guided to use a program called Multi Ripper or "mrip260.zip" as it can be found on the internet for unpacking a compression format that Imagitec tends to use from the Rob Nothern Computing or RNC for short. The multiripper can look for these files and it spits out... a bunch a files with the .RNC extension. This worked really well in breaking down Bubsy: Fractured Furry Tales into graphics, map, music, and other files, though I had to pull (with help) the file directory to rename most of those files. Still have some to identify or file, but found like 90% that way. So I did the same to Pitfall tonight and looked for the opening "78D8 A200" characters of 2600 Pitfall throughout all the RNC files that Jag Pitfall spit out annnnddd... no match. But this might not be the end. As you can see in the picture above there is the RNC in the text portion, leading me to wonder if this needs to be further unpacked? But tonight I took it through at least one level of compression and found nothing so far. (File contains the unpacked files I looked through if others want to do more digging and comparison.) Pitfall.zip
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If you wanted to see Bubsy on a Atari system other than the Jaguar, now's your chance to play it online! http://www.virtualatari.org/soft.php?soft=Bubsy Enjoy! -Doctor Clu
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See: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/269668-bombs-away-vcs-2600/ - for the game...
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From the album: Atari VCS
The box for the Atari VCS -
KC Munchkin - The $130,000 Game preorder thread! KC Muchkin Monster Maze is an innovative and unique homebrew with tremendous gameplay that cost $130,000 to develop: Written in 100% optimised Assembly and featuring such goodies as a dozen tile mapped sprite characters on screen at once (or off interating elsewhere in the virtual world) on a constantly changing four way scrolling board, this game clocked in at 2,000 hours of professional development for a total development cost of $130,000. Follow the link here to read some reviews from gamers at AtariAge and to watch the video review by Metal Jesus and the Immortal John Hancock - it's at 12:15 in their SuperCharger anthology PREORDER: If you'd like a copy to play with your Harmony or SuperCharger flashcart, KCMM is available for preorder here for $60 and will begin shipping again in November! The game ships with a four page colour manual and a genuine retro flyer/advertisement from my 80's Video Game Company, Saint John Gallery Software A deluxe edition/upgrade with an incredible reproduction box is also available for an additional $20/14 Euro from Marc Oberhäuser. AWESOME OPPORTUNITY TO OWN THE PRODUCTION RIGHTS: Like that awesome game you see in the video and reviews and want the chance to control all aspects of production? No problem! - a unique opportunity can be had own the full rights to KCMM for one lucky individual at cost with no extra charges or fees - I am willing to sell all rights to the game for just the development costs with no extra fees or profit - just the $130,000 it cost to develop. Purchasing the rights will enable you to: Sell the game on Tape or Cart Set any price you think is fair Make piles of cash, like this: Do the Math!!! (Jaguar, Jagual Jaguar!!!) All you'll need to do to break even is sell 2,000 copies at $65 each, and then some more to cover your production costs - after that it's all gravy and you can just rake in the profits like it was 1982; that's the beauty of owning the IP! Alternately you can just make the ROM and the media (Tape, Cart, CD) available free for everyone to enjoy and include a Robot with each order! You can even make the game unavailable to watch the ebay copies go through the roof and then surprise everyone with another production run!
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Finally had a chance to bust the package open!
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Hi everyone, I would like to share photos of my collection in this thread. Most of my collecting is for the Atari 2600, and my acquisitions are primarily focused on replacing the lower quality items I have with higher quality ones (boxes, replacing carts with poor labels, filling in missing manuals, etc). As I replace items in my collection, or upgrade them with higher quality duplicates, I will update the items shown in this thread. I also have an Odyssey 2 collection, and most of what you will see in this collection are things I have held onto since childhood. Many of my loose carts were stolen a few years ago, but I am the original owner of almost all of the boxes. My collecting has recently begun to branch out in acquiring titles by my favorite Atari 2600 publishers (Activision and Imagic) for other systems. My postings below will be organized primarily by publisher, and I will add new messages to the thread over time covering various publishers, as I can find the time.
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Atari is awesome! Atari just shipped me this cool Nolan Bushnell era Legacy Development Kit!!! I did some recent work for them and shared my admiration for the iconoclastic VCS and the Flashback consoles. I haven't opened the package yet - just shook it to listen I need to pickup the hardware to connect it along with a six switch model it's designed for; I've only got a Vader and a Junior at present but I've been wanting six switches on the console for some time and now I really have no excuse! I will post pictures of my Retro Development Kit once I have that equipment; for now, here is a picture of the package as I received it from Atari last weekend - you can see it's from California and was shipped to my software company
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