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Hi, New to the community, just joined. I setup my first 7800 and ordered bunch of games from eBay. I am in my mid 40's and 2600 was my first console (other than a pong clone). I have so many childhood memories with that machine. Recently I had this itch to revive those fun days. Emulators weren't cutting it, so I started looking for a 2600. While I am at it, why not get the 7800, since I learned it was backwards compatible. I am already working on some custom labels for some of the duplicate games with damaged labels. Why the hell not. Here are 2 pics showing the 7800, and the connection hack for a modern TV. Surprisingly the picture on TV is pretty clear without interference unless I touch the adapter.
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I believe the saying that happiness is not always having what you want, but it is wanting what you have. With the Fall season taking hold, I find myself getting back into a nostalgic frame of mind. While I find it is not productive to live in the past, I find that some of the best memories actually help me appreciate what I have more. As I tossed the draw of nostalgia around in my head, I began to wonder if kids today will have the same opportunities. We live in the age of the microwave. We want things when we want them, and that is usually now. I guess one can argue that it has always been that way, but I it is truly a lot more attainable in today's age. Sometimes it makes me wonder if kids of today are missing out. Although I do not prefer them, the rough times in my life have been some of my best opportunities for growth. I am not going to go that deep. I am just talking about video games here, but I find it an interesting parallel, how many of times of want have become some of my most cherished memories. When I was writing this the first time (I accidentally tabbed out and pressed backspace.. gone), "I'll Wait", by Van Halen started playing in my headphones. In my mind, I was thrust back into the late 80's. I was inside the arcade/corner shop, which many would stop by, on the way to our Junior High School. As much as I didn't care for cigarette smoke, it was a small price to pay, because games were 2 credits for a quarter! in fact, I met my longest friend there. We used to play Mario Bros. Sometimes we would play as a team; other times, we would play competitively. We still talk about those times to this day. I was very fortunate to have my Atari 5200, because the Mario Bros version was better than other conversions of the time. In many ways, it even outshines the NES version in animation and competitive nuances. We would sit and play that game all night at times. As much fun as it was, it was still a treat to play the arcade version. Of course we wished we could have our own arcade machine, but that just wasn't realistic at the time. Those are some great memories. Who would have thought that wishing for arcade perfect (or even better than we had) would be just as great of a memory? Pac-Man is probably the game that changed my life. Just as there are memories of actually enjoying the 2600 Pac-Man, I have just as many fond memories drooling over the Sear's catalog, because the Atari 400/800 computers had a version with the same maze layout. The sounds were closer than I ever imagined a home version could be. When the 5200 was released, I was finally able to obtain that version. It was even better than the computer version, because the high score racked up during gameplay, and it had the intermission cut scenes. I was so enamored with it. However, I still longed for that crunchy "whacka", when I dropped a quarter into the actual arcade machine. It wasn't the same. Donkey Kong was another favorite. I had a friend with a ColecoVision. While I was very hung up on that version, it was very lacking. The graphics were very sharp, but it had very few on screen enemies, it was slow, and it was very glitchy. It was still fun. It was like an alternate. I couldn't afford to also own a ColecoVision, and I personally thought the 5200 conversions were more detail oriented. One day, I noticed Donkey Kong in an Atari Computer brochure. Could this be? The 5200 and A8s (Atari 8-bit computers) were just different arrangements of the same hardware. The version I saw had the missing "crazy barrels", "Springers", and the Conveyor level. I later found out that Atari had the computer rights, but they could not produce the video game system version. Now I had to pine after an Atari A8 if I wanted the best Donkey Kong home version. I can't count how much time I spent re-reading that catalog and looking at that still picture. It came to life in my imagination. One of the major retail catalogs later got another screen shot. It just all added to the image in my mind. Just when the 5200 was getting some unique games, such as Pengo and Space Dungeon, Atari announced the 7800. I was a little disappointed, because I felt the 5200 was just starting to see its potential. I had two articles on the 7800. The first was announcing the new system. It touted virtually unlimited sprites, with virtually unlimited colors. The pictures were crude drawing, as screenshots were not common back in the day. I wasn't sure how the game would actually look. I assumed they would be higher resolution, since the current A8/5200 fell a little short on detail at times. The extra colors sounded nice. I assumed the sound would be just as good, if not better. it was also backward compatible with the Atari 2600, which didn't seem like such a big deal in this generation. I was thankful that there would be a module to allow my 5200 to play 7800 games. I was hopeful that my deluxe 5200 TrakBall would be compatible. The second article I had stated that Atari had dropped the 7800. It was a sad article, stating what could have been. At that point, I figured I would never know what incredible capabilities this Atari system possessed. Even though, I can't even count the number of times I re-read those articles. I still fondly look back on how great I dreamed it would be. I still have the tattered magazines. When I look at them, I feel that same excitement, even though the actual system is in my current basement. I've seen how badly the 7800 missed the mark of my imagination, and I still enjoy the memory of wanting one. Around 1985/1986, Mom and Dad said I could get a new video game system. It was a gift for some achievement in school. I heard the 7800 was finally released. I was anxious to get to see how amazing this Maria chip is. I would finally get to see the system that would blow away my beloved 5200. They took me to Children's Palace. There were no systems in stock. I looked at the back of the game boxes. The games didn't really look much better than my 5200 versions. Ms Pac-Man looked almost the same. There weren't many games, and I began to wonder if it was as good as I had heard. They did have the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in stock. I took a look, and I saw graphics that were arcade realistic. Super Mario Bros looked incredible, and I couldn't tell the difference from the version at the local arcade. The pictures of my favorite classics, Donkey Kong and Mario Bros, looked spot on too. I took a chance and grabbed an NES. Man, did I dodge a bullet! I got the NES home, and I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing. The graphics were arcade perfect. The sound was incredible. It was unlike anything I ever thought would play on my television. I couldn't wait to get Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. I didn't see a 7800 in person until about a year later. The sprites were multi color, but the resolution was low, the colors were washed out, and the game play was choppy. I was so disappointed. Worse than any of that was the sound. Unlike some, I can't enjoy a game fully without sound. With the 7800, it's hard for me to enjoy the games because of the sound. I already had an almost arcade mirror of Galaga for my NES. Here was a 7800 version that looked like a colorful 2600 version. It sounded like it too. Apparently, Maria takes up so much processing time, it's hard for the system to draw smooth curves. Similar issues were seen in Mario Bros, where Mario leaps off the ground, ending in a crude arch. In fairness to the 7800, I have seen some redeeming homebrews. Although the 320 mode is limited, it exists. One of my favorite redeeming games is Donkey Kong Pokey. Even with the lower resolution, it would have blown me away back in the day and justified the 7800 as a successor to the A8. My point here is that I own a 7800 now, and I think I sometimes enjoy the memory of WANTING a 7800 more than I do the system itself. I think I enjoy homebrews, because they kind validate the expectations of my fond memories. As for the NES, I was blown away by Super Mario Bros, Ghost & Goblins, and Galaga. However, I was not impressed with Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Pac-Man, or even DK Jr. While they looked better than previous versions, but they lacked the charm and challenge of the arcade counterparts. Pac-Man didn't fit in the maze, the whacka was off, and it was sluggish. Donkey Kong was missing game elements, a whole level, and it was too easy. As much as I felt the NES could have handled a perfect conversion, I am kind of thankful that I still had something to want. The 16-bit generation changed it up a little. I actually started to get into fighters. I wasn't a big fan of the 16-bit era. Sonic was fun. The only thing I cared about was that they could handle almost arcade-perfect versions of SF2, MK, MK2, SF2 Turbo, etc... This was a very fun period, because arcades were still chugging along. I have played games online with friends. It's fun, but it's not like meeting strangers at the arcade fun. It was great to be able to go to the arcade with a few close friends. They were in your corner, you played, and you went home with your close friends. At home, you practiced with your close friends. The home versions were not arcade perfect, but they were great. There's a great memory to still having that superior version to look forward to. I have great memories of wishing I had the arcade version at home. When PS1 came out, I saw the writing on the wall. Ridge Racer, Tekken, and Namco Classics were all about as close to the arcade as I could tell. Memory restrictions were an obstacle for games like MK3, as were loading times, but they were still pretty good. I think this was the crossing point. After this, games at home were pretty much arcade quality. The arcade was dying. Fast forward to today. I caught myself in a nostalgic mood. I now own about every system I have ever owned or wanted. Every system has some sort of SD card to play ROMs, except the 7800, for which I made my own EPROM carts. I can play most games on my PC, phone, PSP, GP2X, etc., via emulation. I even bought a few of my favorite arcade cabinets. When it comes to video games, there's not much that I badly want, but yet I still felt something was missing. That didn't make sense to me. One day, I realized that I think I enjoy wanting as much as having. Some of my fondest memories are wanting. They were looking at still magazine pictures and imagining what it would be like to have all of those games at my disposal. It was using my imagination to dream about the day that I would have arcade quality games at home. Back then, it was only reserved for the elite, like Rick Shroeder. Could some of my fondest memories be of reading video game magazines and "wishbooks"? I think they might be. That explains why it's sometimes fun to just turn the arcade machines on and watch the attract mode. It's almost as fun to think back to the times I wished I had a quarter, as it is to actually play the game. Is that why I enjoy classic game shows so much? One of my friends once made a point that classic game shows don't really change; if you've seen one, you've seen them all. Aside from the fact that "classic" is relative and does change, there's something great about going back and remembering what it was like to WANT those childhood gems. Sometimes, it's seeing something in person that we only saw in a magazine. I then got to wondering if today's generation is missing out. Sure, they want the latest video game, but they are going to have that game when it's released. They do not have to use their imagination to make it fit the arcade counterpart. They don't have to worry about making their quarter last. There's nothing to lose. Maybe that's why I still prefer retro games. I downloaded Rayman3 the other day. The first part of the game was flying through a 3D environment. I needed to steer my character into the gems. It really felt like a lame combination of Pole Position and Pac-Man. It was lame, because there was no challenge. If I missed, I looped back through. if I am going to collect dots on a screen, I am fine doing that on my Pac-Man machine. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the modern games, even though they are just putting lipstick on a combination of our childhood pigs. It's just that I prefer the real thing! Strangely, my XBoxOne gets more Mortal Kombat X play than anything else. lol.
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Happy New Year! I decided to start off the new year with a big adventure video/experiment. I have followed the Zelda series since the beginning and have a great appreciation for the franchise. My buddy who is around the same age surprisingly has never played any of the games in the series so I decided to record his initial reaction/playthrough of the game. In doing so I noticed that as we progressed and he pointed out things that I remember being charming about the game he in fact found them to be a nuisance and explained why. After assisting him to complete the game I started rethinking my opinion on it. At first I defended the game without any question but after a while some aspects of the game took their toll on me as well and I started to realize that my memories of the game in my youth definitely gave me quite the bias that a neutral gamer of today would not have. I am not saying the original The Legend of Zelda is a bad game by far and it is a masterpiece for it's time but unfortunately I am starting to see the age of the game and the magic dissappear that I felt it once had. What do you guys think about the first Zelda today? Have you introduced it to a person that has never played it? If so what reactions did you experience?
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From my earliest experience with the TI back in the early 1980's, up to the present, one thing has remained constant, the drive to improve our TI's and add new software and hardware. Back in the early days, much of the hardware was so expensive, people turned to user groups and magazines to find alternate solutions to their upgrading issues. Not much has changed, many seller's on eBait want some 'interesting prices' on their stuff, so now people come here to Atari Age and find all kinds of new toys for their TI's... and at reasonable prices too. Development continues. Back then we could only dream of GROM emulating Uber Carts, inexpensive VGA boards, or even ponder the ability of storing everything ever conceived or written for TI on a single chip like an SD card, now it's reality. In the near future we are about to see a new speech-in-the-box card, an updated keyboard modification, heck even a Web browser. I myself cannot wait to see what is released at the Chicago Faire this year! Now, what do YOU want to see developed next? Do YOU have any new ideas or concepts? Where do YOU think we and our TI's will be in the next couple of years? Will we finally have more addressable memory? Will we have a new modern HFDC type controller controller? Will we all have a serial/WiFi card plugged into our TI's that can not only access our local networks and the Internet, but also put us into contact with TI users world wide with some kind of built-in messaging software? WHERE WILL WE BE IN THE NEXT 3, 5 OR 10 YEARS?
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Post a photo of the FIRST computer you ever OWNED in it's least expanded configuration as "THEN". If you still have it, or re-acquired one, post a photo of it as "NOW"
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- Nostalgia
- Classic Computers
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A little spot of nostalgia as I haven't done anything on PoP in the past week:I enjoy reading the posts on the recently formed Atari 2600 Basic Programming Forum. A lot of the issues that are raised, and the problems faced remind me of my own experiences with BASIC programming many years ago. I think it is a shame that modern computers do not come with a built-in BASIC interpreter as it is a great tool for teaching programming to beginners without the complexities of pointers or objects (provided that we are not talking about Visual BASIC ).I started with BASIC programming when I was around 7 years old, back in the early 1980s. Through various experiments on the school computer (described in a previous entry), I figured out the essentials, assisted by type-in magazine listings and library books. As a result of these experiments, most of which were simple games, my ambitions quickly turned to becoming a real games programmer. At that time there were frequent stories in the newspapers about wizz-kid programmers who made millions, though I'm not convinced they were actually true! I used to fill books with game ideas, waiting for the time when my programming skills would be good enough to create all of the wonderful games that I could imagine!It didn't take long before the limitations of the BASIC interpreter became very apparent to me. There was precious little memory, and even simple programs took an age to run. I knew that if I was to become a real games programmer then I would have to learn assembly language. But, compared to BASIC, it appeared to be a horribly complex and cryptic method of programming. Nonetheless, I had come this far, and I wasn't about to give up! I learned about binary numbers, and memorised the 6502 mnemonics from a book. I figured out how to use the accumulator and the stack, and I could write simple math operations. However, despite my best efforts at the time, I just couldn't figure out how to put it all together to make a game. For some reason, the complexity of writing a complete program was just too great, and I couldn't make the necessary leap. As a result, I stuck with BASIC for many years, moving to STOS BASIC for game creation when I later purchased an Atari ST. It wasn't until I reached university that the mysteries of assembly language became suddenly clear, and now I just can't figure out why I had so much difficulty.Looking back, it is clear why most machines of the time were bundled with BASIC. Despite the syntactic differences, there are many similarities between BASIC and 8-bit assembly language. The core compiler in batari BASIC is very straightforward as many of the BASIC operations can be directly mapped into assembly. Nonetheless, I can see that many people are struggling with the same issues that I faced. Despite the power of the tool, the limitations of BASIC programing remain, and it will be necessary for them to make the leap to assembly at some point. However, there is something about assembly language that remains mysterious and frightening to even the most accomplished of BASIC programmers. I hope some of them will be able to make the leap that eluded me all those years ago. Chris
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Here is another nostalgia piece before I get back on the Atari track:My love of 8-bit computing started shortly after our school obtained its first computer: a BBC Micro Model A. This was the early 80's and home computers had only recently become affordable. The BBC Micro is virtually unknown outside the UK, but the design was commissioned by the BBC (our national broadcaster) to accompany a range of educational broadcasts on computer literacy. As such, it became the computer of choice for schools in the UK over many years, and became my favourite 8-bit platform. The computer itself was an impressive high-specification 6502-based machine, though I won't bore you with further technical specification here. For the first few weeks, the head teacher proudly showed off the computer through the various classrooms, though his experience was rather limited, and this primarily consisted of running the demos that came with the machine. I was instantly impressed by the computer, and I was really looking forward to learning more about it. However, after a month or so, the computer became rather neglected as none of the other teachers had the necessary knowledge or time to spend with it, and the school had purchased only a few pieces of software. As a result, the school were happy to let anyone who showed an interest use the computer during break times, although games were strictly forbidden.Subsequently, a group of us spent every spare minute that we could figuring out the workings of the machine from the manual. In a short time while we had learned most of the BASIC commands, and could get the machine to play sounds, display fancy graphics, and so on. We typed in program listings from various magazines and books, and a few months later we able to write simple BASIC games such as hangman, and noughts-and-crosses. Unfortunately the time that I got to spend on the computer was frustratingly limited, as the machine was shared between many pupils. I had to write down my programs on paper (a habit I still maintain), and type them in during my precious few minutes computing time. I therefore began a campaign to get one of the machines for myself, and began harrassing my parents continuously!Unfortunately, my parents were unable to afford the machine as it cost a lot of money, and they were not great believers in computer technology. I did not get to own a BBC Micro myself until many years later. However, as a consolation, my father was able to borrow a BBC Micro from his workplace on some weekends and holidays. This allowed me to increase my computing time considerably, though it was never enough! I began to save my money earnestly and took on any job that I could find. My parents did eventually agree to pay for half of the cost of the machine, if I could find the other half, but it was still a mountain to climb. By the time I had saved up enough money, it was the late 80's and the BBC Micro was now rather obsolete. As a result, the first computer that I purchased with my hard-earned money was an Atari ST. However, I will leave that for another day!ChrisFootnote:The BBC Micro was made by a British company called Acorn. To design a successor to the BBC Micro, they span off a microprocessor company called Acorn Risc Machines (ARM). The ARM processor that they designed was used in a computer called the Archimedes, but it was never as popular as the BBC Micro, and eventially the original Acorn company company folded. However, ARM continued to build and market their processor designs, and they became very successful. Eventually they were bought by Intel, and the ARM processor is now used in many different places, including the Gameboy Advance. Therefore, when I play on my GBA, I am in-fact using a distant descendant of my favourite machine: the BBC Micro!