What causes a game to "not work" on an Atari 2600? Is there a list of them?

[Csonicgo]

Okay this is a very weird thing and I searched for a topic like this, and came up with a thread about activision games not working. It turned out to be a physical cartridge issue. But the problem I have is much , much different.

 

I have a Sears Tele-Games (Heavy Sixer) that refuses to play California Games. Every other game I have works just fine. Thinking it was the cartridge I had, I loaded up my Harmony (and Encore) with California Games, and... nothing.

 

Convinced I had a bad ROM, I went to my light sixer atari and... it worked. Flawlessly. What the heck?

 

So I know about Kool-Aid Man not working on some later 4-switch woodys , vaders and Jrs, so what exactly is going on here? Is this a CPU bug that only California Games has found?

 

Is there a list of problematic games around?

[Opry99er]

Send me your Sears and I'll send you my 4 switch woody and we'll both be happy.

[Keatah]

There could be many things that cause a game not to work on a certain console:

Software buga

Chip revisions (TIA alone has 14 or more revs I think!)

Aging analog components

Engineering revisions to boards (cart or console)

Software that rides or pushes timing to the limit

Power consumption of certain parts (cart or console)

Cleanliness of hardware

Circuit board or connector thickness

Different manufacturer of certain parts

Sloppy power supplies

Low quality parts that failed prematurely

Intermittent or marginal timing in memory

Loose connectors

And other reasons no doubt!

 

I don't know of a list of problematic games on console xyz.. You can be sure if a game has/had problems it would have been discussed at some point here. But going back and parsing and vetting and verifying all the games at this point would be a time-consuming task.

 

Virtual consoles (emulators) probably have/had the worst compatibility issues at some point in their development. But, now, I find them to be more compatible. And because of this, emulator forums and threads might be one of the magnets to attract such bug reports. The rest being individual threads, 1 for each problematic game. Reported as found. This is so partly because of crowd-testing, partly because of the quest to get 100% accuracy, and partly because there really is only 1 version of the emulator that's important - and that's the latest W.I.P. version.

 

I would also tend to think that games made in-house by the same guys that made the console, Atari and Atari for example, would tend to be most trouble-free. I would guess those programmers would have had access to coffin-corner Do-Not-Do lists of things not to do. Atari likely kept many revisions of the VCS available for final testing. Not necessarily a difficult thing to do, but I bet 3rd party houses didn't do that. At least not as thoroughly as Atari/OEM.

 

In thinking back to the halcyon days, I never had an OEM cartridge fail to work. But I had a couple M-Network, Activision, and TigerVision carts not work. And this included physical fit/finish problems. I had some Coleco-made carts not work on either the VCS or Intellivision.

[high voltage]

Buying an Intellivision game, thinking it was for Atari (happened to me way back)

[Video]

Kool-Aid man has issues with some 7800 consoles. Probably some revisions of the 2600 too. Like the Jr consoles, especially the integrated versions.

 

Most things are a physical fit problem, Activision carts are a bit bulky. Those xonox carts are issues on some consoles. And the super charger doesn't physically fit in some consoles.

 

Mostly it's a physical thing, outside of Kool-Aid man, I can't think of a game that's a known issue programming wise.

[Nukey Shay]

Underpants Gnomes. They still can't figure out the middle step which leads to profit from stolen underpants, but now suspect that computers are involved somehow.

[+SpiceWare]

Yep, hardware revisions can cause games to not work. Some sixer's didn't like Stay Frosty 2 on a revised Melody board. See Al's response (reply 35) with a fix - which also fixes the problem with River Raid II not working on those systems. In a latter response (reply 78) batari posts that using a ferrite bead in conjunction with that fix will clear up RF interference that can occur.

[Csonicgo]

Yep, hardware revisions can cause games to not work. Some sixer's didn't like Stay Frosty 2 on a revised Melody board. See Al's response (reply 35) with a fix - which also fixes the problem with River Raid II not working on those systems. In a latter response (reply 78) batari posts that using a ferrite bead in conjunction with that fix will clear up RF interference that can occur.

That is strangely fascinating. I know my Sears passes all the "Stella" tests, so I had assumed my board was fine. However I never tried River Raid II, so I'll test that and see if it's playable.

[Keatah]

Heh..passes all the Stella tests..! Making it sound like the emulator is better and more compatible and versatile!

 

---

 

An engineer buddy of mine thought the extra inductor was for FCC and RF noise compliance. Something to decouple the noise created by the ROM chip in the cartridge. Or to prevent noise generated by the motherboard from going up into the cartridge (acting like an antenna).

 

Probably both. RF often behaves in non-intuitive ways.

[Csonicgo]

Heh..passes all the Stella tests..! Making it sound like the emulator is better and more compatible and versatile!

 

---

 

An engineer buddy of mine thought the extra inductor was for FCC and RF noise compliance. Something to decouple the noise created by the ROM chip in the cartridge. Or to prevent noise generated by the motherboard from going up into the cartridge (acting like an antenna).

 

Probably both. RF often behaves in non-intuitive ways.

The FCC was so draconian over this stuff yet they never cared about existing equipment being used to cause RF chaos, or at least they didn't in my area. A bunch of punks got away with rigging their CB transmitters to bleed over every single channel for months and months

 

It's even worse now! I bought an RF adaptor recently for a Sega Genesis console, and if that thing passed FCC regulations, I'm the flippin' Pope. I didn't even have to plug it into the TV, and the TV in the kitchen picked up the signal, as well as the TV in the living room. And to think people were worried that modding their VCS would get the FCC to knock on their door. Pff!

[Mr SQL]

The Flashback portable console has slightly different memory access protocols than other Atari consoles though it is possible to make those schemes 100% cross compatible with legacy consoles that uses those schemes via the Harmony cart:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260383-flashback-portable-f4-bankswitching/?p=3666740

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/259166-flashback-portable-needed-controller-hacks/page-4

 

 

Some emulators like Stella don't support the portable console's memory schemes by default but have a setting you can change for compatibility.

 

If the games push the console for a high framerate, your LCD monitor could also be the source of incompatibilty as well as emulators that merge frames - those can both create a blurry mess

[Csonicgo]

Welp, I tested River Raid II and... it worked!

 

However every single Released Epyx game for 2600 doesn't work on this machine. They all use standard F6 Bankswitching, which I know Dig Dug uses, and Dig Dug works, so I guess I can throw that idea out.

 

It's not a huge loss, but it was shocking to see a common game not work on my Heavy when she plays pretty much everything else I have. I assume they share similar "bootstrap" code. i mean it it would make sense to me at least.

[gbag]

California games doesn’t work on my heavy sixes either.