2600, Rev.12 won't play some games, but my 7800 will.

[RamrodHare]

I don't know if this has been covered on the forums already or not.I did a few searches and didn't find anything like this. I have a revision 12 board in my 2600. I've ran into a few 2600 games that refuse to play, but work fine on my 7800. Just off the top of my head, Skeleton, and Skeleton PLUS. There's at least one or two more that I know won't play and possibly more that I haven't tried yet.. I have over 700 games loaded on my Harmony, so it's hard to keep track of all of them. Has anyone else had an issue with one console not working with a game when another console does? I've been considering buying another 2600 anyway, but if some revisions are better than others, I need to keep that in mind when looking for one. I know it "might" be the roms I have, so I'm going to check that out right now and then see where I stand. The fact that these games play on the 7800 but not on the 2600 makes me think it's probably not bad roms. Oh, almost forgot, I'm using a Harmony Encore, in case that's relevant.

[RamrodHare]

Here's a quick update.. I went through all my roms on both systems, 2600 and 7800. Heres what I found.

 

Boulder dash , no video signal on 2600 or 7800( this applies to any binaries other than "demo 2", which works).

Galaxian Arcade, garbled junk at the beginning, gameplay works on both systems, but the player's ship is garbled on both.

Skeleton, works on 7800, but on 2600, there's no picture, only sound.

Skeleton Plus, same as Skeleton

Star Castle Arcade, won't work on either system.

Ultra Pac Man, won't work on either system.

 

Based on what I know now, I'm sure that my 2600 is the problem with Skeleton and Skeleton Plus, but the other games have an issue with the roms.

 

So, my original question still stands. Could the issue be caused by a revision 12 board or do you think it's something else? Has anyone had any trouble playing Skeleton or Skeleton Plus on their 2600? If so, what revision is your board?

[+DrVenkman]

If you have a system to swap chips with, I’d suggest swapping TIA and then RIOT and finally 6507 to see if the problems follow the suspect chip.

[RamrodHare]

I do have a donor system that I can remove chips from, but I'm not sure if they are good or not, but it's worth a try.

[RamrodHare]

After some more searching I found an old thread where a fix was found for Skeleton Plus.

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/174878-skeleton-not-working/?do=findComment&comment=2815053

 

I tried the fixed version that Thomas Jentzsch did and it now works.

I'm guessing that the original Skeleton also needs to be patched, but I have no idea how to do that.

 

OK, so Skeleton and Skeleton Plus are the same game, so I don't guess that both need to be patched. It's really odd that both play on the 7800 but neither plays on the 2600, until I found the patched one Thomas did. Very odd..

Edited June 12, 2017 by RamrodHare

[Video]

Their slightly different games. I believe skeleton+ added hit points so you could survive a random number of attacks instead of being instadead. Don't know if there are other differences or not, but if you got + patched and working, you probably have no need for skeleton.

 

I still need to get +. I got the original, and it works fine. Actual cart though, on a Vader so I don't know the board number. A physical cart instead of a ROM on a mulicart shouldn't make a difference, but it might.