Which Atari 7800 games are to one you love most, and why these?

[toiletunes]

9 hours ago, Giles N said:

You said you also liked Pole Position 2.

 

What is your opinion about Motor Psycho (since you love a driving game)?

 

Is it, in your view, a good driving game?

It's good, not great. I like that Atari was trying different things. You score more points while jumping, but have no control where you land. I'd like it more if it was the only racing game on the 7800, but PP2 is so common (and MS is so rare and expensive). It's much better than basketbrawl.

[Giles N]

10 hours ago, toiletunes said:

It's good, not great. I like that Atari was trying different things. You score more points while jumping, but have no control where you land. I'd like it more if it was the only racing game on the 7800, but PP2 is so common (and MS is so rare and expensive). It's much better than basketbrawl.

Well, I’m European, and my first 7800 was a PAL version, and PAL editions of Motor Psycho is not hard to get a ebay.

 

Not necessarily expensive either.

 

I use jump mostly when I know there’s a straight.

 

Getting used to gear-down to break or let go of acceleration in turns, is paramount, but high difficulty-level for sure.

 

I would give it 8/10 for a 8-bit racer.

 

PP2 is 9/10: colourful and playable.

 

 

Edited September 3, 2019 by Giles N

[Atarifever]

32 minutes ago, Giles N said:

 

I would give it 8/10 for a 8-bit racer.

 

PP2 is 9/10: colourful and playable.

 

 

I'd put PP2 as the second best of those two personally.  I really like MotorPsycho.  I only kind of like PP2.

[Giles N]

7 minutes ago, Atarifever said:

I'd put PP2 as the second best of those two personally.  I really like MotorPsycho.  I only kind of like PP2.

We all have our favourites.

 

Whats your top 10 or top 15 Atari 7800 titles?

Edited September 3, 2019 by Giles N

[oyamafamily]

Pac-Man Collection, which is my TOP favorite homebrew. I love playing Pac-Man triology - Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man mostly.

Recently, I played this 7800 homebrew on my real console and recorded my gameplay footage via camera, like this:

 

[Atarifever]

1 minute ago, Giles N said:

We all have our favourites.

 

Whats your top 10 or top 15 Atari 7800 titles?

I like almost all of them in some way (even RealSports Baseball made an absolutely epic High Score Club week), so it's hard for me to choose. 

Top 15 in no order right now might be:

Dig Dug

Ikari Warriors

Food Fight

Robotron

Midnight Mutants

Fail Safe

b*nQ

Double Dragon (especially with my 7-year old)

Rampage (only with my 7-year old, as it is boring as dirt alone)

Galaga

Dungeon Stalker

Scramble

DK Jr.

Motor Psycho

Joust

 

 

 

[Giles N]

11 minutes ago, Atarifever said:

I like almost all of them in some way (even RealSports Baseball made an absolutely epic High Score Club week), so it's hard for me to choose. 

Top 15 in no order right now might be:

Dig Dug

Ikari Warriors

Food Fight

Robotron

Midnight Mutants

Fail Safe

b*nQ

Double Dragon (especially with my 7-year old)

Rampage (only with my 7-year old, as it is boring as dirt alone)

Galaga

Dungeon Stalker

Scramble

DK Jr.

Motor Psycho

Joust

 

 

 

I’ve test-tried Midnight Mutants on emu, waiting for the PAL version in the mail.

Perhaps I’ll review it then.

 

Agree with many of titles, but not tht Ranpage is boring alone.

 

With my brother we could keep on using infinte continues, and we went through all named 132 cities.

 

Single player I last 7 or 8 cities.

 

—

I’ve not gotten in to prototypes or homebrews as of yet, so don’t know.’

—

question: I liked the parallaxing field of touchdown football and the grfx on the players; is there a good way to learn to handle/master it well?

[Giles N]

39 minutes ago, oyamafamily said:

Pac-Man Collection, which is my TOP favorite homebrew. I love playing Pac-Man triology - Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man mostly.

Recently, I played this 7800 homebrew on my real console and recorded my gameplay footage via camera, like this:

 

Is the Ms.Pac Man here the standard 7800 version with additional games in the package, or is also Ms PacMan redone?

 

—

cool joystick you had there

Edited September 3, 2019 by Giles N

[Atarifever]

1 minute ago, Giles N said:

—

question: I liked the parallaxing field of touchdown football and the grfx on the players; is there a good way to learn to handle/master it well?

I've honestly spent almost no time with that one, which is odd, as football is a sport I absolutely love to watch.  In the HSC post I linked to, if you real through all the pages you'll see that me and another few people started to really dig into Realsports Baseball and learned how to beat that one at least, despite it originally feeling impossible and deeply broken.

[Giles N]

1 minute ago, Atarifever said:

I've honestly spent almost no time with that one, which is odd, as football is a sport I absolutely love to watch.  In the HSC post I linked to, if you real through all the pages you'll see that me and another few people started to really dig into Realsports Baseball and learned how to beat that one at least, despite it originally feeling impossible and deeply broken.

Ha ha - someone need to be the first’ to ‘break the code’ for mastering touchdown football

 

?

[Giles N]

24 minutes ago, Atarifever said:

I like almost all of them in some way (even RealSports Baseball made an absolutely epic High Score Club week), so it's hard for me to choose. 

Top 15 in no order right now might be:

Dig Dug

Ikari Warriors

Food Fight

Robotron

Midnight Mutants

Fail Safe

b*nQ

Double Dragon (especially with my 7-year old)

Rampage (only with my 7-year old, as it is boring as dirt alone)

Galaga

Dungeon Stalker

Scramble

DK Jr.

Motor Psycho

Joust

 

 

 

You didn’t mention Dark Chambers...

 

On ‘advanced’, it could be a challenge for both 1P and 2P.

 

[Starius]

1 hour ago, oyamafamily said:

Pac-Man Collection, which is my TOP favorite homebrew. I love playing Pac-Man triology - Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man mostly.

Recently, I played this 7800 homebrew on my real console and recorded my gameplay footage via camera, like this:

 

That was a lot of fun to watch!  

I love my Pac-Man Collection too, but I haven't played it much on Fast mode.  I'm gonna have to try that more!

[+FujiSkunk]

On 8/30/2019 at 5:10 PM, Giles N said:

Yes, I think Food Fight is one of those arcade games that only was ported for the 7800.

 

Food Fight also appeared on the Atari 8-bits as part of the XEGS line, and "sort of" for the NES, that is, the Atari Flashback 1.  The 7800 version is by far the best.

[oyamafamily]

On 9/2/2019 at 11:08 PM, Giles N said:

Is the Ms.Pac Man here the standard 7800 version with additional games in the package, or is also Ms PacMan redone?

 

—

cool joystick you had there

The Ms. Pac-Man on Pac-Man Collection has the same sound effect on the standard 7800 version (my cartridge refers to conventional sound).

There are additional game variations to play - Plus Mode, Fast Mode and Lives.

[davyK]

 

I'm a 7800 PAL owner and as many will know - switch the console on with no cart in the slot to get Asteroids.

 

It's a superb port - the best of any home version. Asteroids is a special game to me. There is just something about how it feels to play - the randomness and the aiming and leading your shots is highly satisfying. It's a game, like Tetris, that I never tire of. I didn't play it much in the arcade because it was too hard and I had to make my money last.   But I played the 2600 version to death. Loved that game and I love the game of Asteroids generally. While it would have been great if the 7800 version had the extra features that the 2600 version does, I still play it now over the 2600 version as it's just a bit too primitive now. I own an actual Asteroids Deluxe cabinet so usually play that , but 7800 Asteroids still gets play time. That's how good it is.

 

Centipede is a rock solid port. Again , I didn't play it that much in the arcade so I don't miss the trak ball - and I didn't play the 2600 port much, but the 7800 port is excellent and just has that hook that keeps me playing. Like 7800 Asteroids it has some great 2 player modes as well.

 

Food Fight. I only ever saw this in the arcade once - and had a lengthy enjoyable session with it and it a big impact on me. It isn't a game that has been ported much, so this was a must buy for me. Really nice port though it feels a bit slow to start with. The speed is great later on but I'm not sure if that is a PAL thing or not. Asteroids and Centipede don't feel slow and I've compared both ROMs in an emulator and those 2 games seem to be speed adjusted for PAL.

 

Joust is a rock solid port too. Again - not much arcade play but I've played a lot of retro compliation Joust and the 7800 version is at least as good as those.

 

Pacman Collection Got this from the atariage shop. Superb collection. It feels a bit slow at the start which is probably a PAL issue. Some of the colour selections and the higher resolution style of game means it suffers a bit with the RF signal - but this is another game that just keeps me playing once I boot it up.

 

To be honest if I lost all my cartridges I wouldn't mind because my beloved Asteroids is built in.

 

I know people like games that are more NES like on the 7800 - but the console is at its best when it hosts arcade games. My dream would be to own an NTSC 7800 with a video mod and the cartridges I list above.

 

 

Edited September 6, 2019 by davyK

[Giles N]

On 9/6/2019 at 11:17 AM, davyK said:

 

I'm a 7800 PAL owner and as many will know - switch the console on with no cart in the slot to get Asteroids.

 

It's a superb port - the best of any home version. Asteroids is a special game to me. There is just something about how it feels to play - the randomness and the aiming and leading your shots is highly satisfying. It's a game, like Tetris, that I never tire of. I didn't play it much in the arcade because it was too hard and I had to make my money last.   But I played the 2600 version to death. Loved that game and I love the game of Asteroids generally. While it would have been great if the 7800 version had the extra features that the 2600 version does, I still play it now over the 2600 version as it's just a bit too primitive now. I own an actual Asteroids Deluxe cabinet so usually play that , but 7800 Asteroids still gets play time. That's how good it is.

 

Centipede is a rock solid port. Again , I didn't play it that much in the arcade so I don't miss the trak ball - and I didn't play the 2600 port much, but the 7800 port is excellent and just has that hook that keeps me playing. Like 7800 Asteroids it has some great 2 player modes as well.

 

Food Fight. I only ever saw this in the arcade once - and had a lengthy enjoyable session with it and it a big impact on me. It isn't a game that has been ported much, so this was a must buy for me. Really nice port though it feels a bit slow to start with. The speed is great later on but I'm not sure if that is a PAL thing or not. Asteroids and Centipede don't feel slow and I've compared both ROMs in an emulator and those 2 games seem to be speed adjusted for PAL.

 

Joust is a rock solid port too. Again - not much arcade play but I've played a lot of retro compliation Joust and the 7800 version is at least as good as those.

 

Pacman Collection Got this from the atariage shop. Superb collection. It feels a bit slow at the start which is probably a PAL issue. Some of the colour selections and the higher resolution style of game means it suffers a bit with the RF signal - but this is another game that just keeps me playing once I boot it up.

 

To be honest if I lost all my cartridges I wouldn't mind because my beloved Asteroids is built in.

 

I know people like games that are more NES like on the 7800 - but the console is at its best when it hosts arcade games. My dream would be to own an NTSC 7800 with a video mod and the cartridges I list above.

 

 

Ok, thanks for input...

 

Well, it doesn’t need to be a competition between NES-like games and Arcade ports:

you have Commando which I think is as good, or better than the NES version.

 

But I agree there’s lot of quality in the titles you mentioned with exception made for PacMan-collection which I have not played so can’t tell. But Ms PacMan is very good.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Giles N

[Giles N]

On 9/3/2019 at 3:29 AM, oyamafamily said:

Pac-Man Collection, which is my TOP favorite homebrew. I love playing Pac-Man triology - Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man mostly.

Recently, I played this 7800 homebrew on my real console and recorded my gameplay footage via camera, like this:

 

Cool stuff!

 

Cool set-up!

 

Good round!

 

?

[Giles N]

On 9/6/2019 at 11:17 AM, davyK said:

 

I'm a 7800 PAL owner and as many will know - switch the console on with no cart in the slot to get Asteroids.

 

It's a superb port - the best of any home version. Asteroids is a special game to me. There is just something about how it feels to play - the randomness and the aiming and leading your shots is highly satisfying. It's a game, like Tetris, that I never tire of. I didn't play it much in the arcade because it was too hard and I had to make my money last.   But I played the 2600 version to death. Loved that game and I love the game of Asteroids generally. While it would have been great if the 7800 version had the extra features that the 2600 version does, I still play it now over the 2600 version as it's just a bit too primitive now. I own an actual Asteroids Deluxe cabinet so usually play that , but 7800 Asteroids still gets play time. That's how good it is.

 

Centipede is a rock solid port. Again , I didn't play it that much in the arcade so I don't miss the trak ball - and I didn't play the 2600 port much, but the 7800 port is excellent and just has that hook that keeps me playing. Like 7800 Asteroids it has some great 2 player modes as well.

 

Food Fight. I only ever saw this in the arcade once - and had a lengthy enjoyable session with it and it a big impact on me. It isn't a game that has been ported much, so this was a must buy for me. Really nice port though it feels a bit slow to start with. The speed is great later on but I'm not sure if that is a PAL thing or not. Asteroids and Centipede don't feel slow and I've compared both ROMs in an emulator and those 2 games seem to be speed adjusted for PAL.

 

Joust is a rock solid port too. Again - not much arcade play but I've played a lot of retro compliation Joust and the 7800 version is at least as good as those.

 

Pacman Collection Got this from the atariage shop. Superb collection. It feels a bit slow at the start which is probably a PAL issue. Some of the colour selections and the higher resolution style of game means it suffers a bit with the RF signal - but this is another game that just keeps me playing once I boot it up.

 

To be honest if I lost all my cartridges I wouldn't mind because my beloved Asteroids is built in.

 

I know people like games that are more NES like on the 7800 - but the console is at its best when it hosts arcade games. My dream would be to own an NTSC 7800 with a video mod and the cartridges I list above.

 

 

I tend think of the games for the Atari 7800 as belonging to sort of generational types of games:

 

So I get to like 2 or 3 generations:

 

1978-1983

 

84-88

 

89-92 (incl. officially unreleased titles).

 

The ports from the ‘classic era’ 78-84, really do shine: 

Ms Pac Man,

Dig Dug,

Joust,

Centipede

Food Fight,

Robotron 2084,

Galaga,

Xevious,

Asteroids,

Mario Bros,

Donkey Kong,

 

Among the titles of the next period you have more bland quality, and not all of them are at all as close to the arcade as the ports from the classics era.

- Pole Position 2 is good, and has many of same elements as the arcade but feels much stiffer,

- Rampage plays very crisp, but has graphics thats ok, but not like the Arcade with its large-sized monsters and colourfulness, 

- Double Dragon have nice background grfx, but slowed-down action and much stiffer gameplay, 

- Xenophobe (which I hardly knew about), which has fairly crisp (1:1) gameplay but little options, and much less variation in grfx.

- Choplifter plays and looks well, but is very short,

- Ikari Warriors is slowed down but ok++, lots of fun

so I guess Commando is the best here

 

But many games from this midfle era are also ports, not from arcades, but from home-computer market, or unique games to sell the 7800 or compete with other consoles or homecomputers, rather than be Arcade ports per se:

- Ace of Aces, F14 Tomcat, Karateka, Wintergames, etc.

 

Then you have these games released by Atari in about 89/90 to try to regenerate or revive the interest for the 7800; 

I think many 7800-fans really often tend to have at least one favourite from this ‘batch’, Ninja Golf, Scrapyard Dog or Alien Brigade.

[Giles N]

Actually - when considering the really short line of titles for the 7800, it’s a comparatively strong line up with quite a lot of variety for a console given the few titles:

flight-simulation to classics-arcade to homecomputer-style games (Tower Toppler), newer arcade-ports, unique titles only found on this system, puzzle-action like ‘jinks’, etc.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Giles N

[sidney]

I've lost many an hour to Food Fight, Xevious and Asterodes. 

[+MrFish]

 

 

 

 

I've lost many an hour to Food Fight, Xevious and Asterodes. 

 

"Asterodes"? Sounds like some kind of illness. [emoji16]

 

 

 

[JacobZu7zu7]

1 hour ago, MrFish said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Asterodes"? Sounds like some kind of illness.

 

 

 

The original title does too ... Asteroids... hemorrhoids. ?

[+MrFish]

 

 

 

The original title does too ... Asteroids... hemorrhoids. [emoji2960]

 

Haha... granted, but I think one medical problem is enough for the game. I don't want to have to take my cartridge in for a medical examination and surgery every six months. [emoji855] [emoji856] [emoji40]

 

[JacobZu7zu7]

3 minutes ago, MrFish said:

 

 

 

 

 

Haha... granted, but I think one medical problem is enough for the game. I don't want to have to take my cartridge in for a medical examination and surgery every six months.

 

Its kinda like being on Steroids?! Breaking the Asteroids 

[+MrFish]

 

 

 

Its kinda like being on Steroids?! Breaking the Asteroids  [emoji3]

 

It's a cool version of a classic -- with the spinning, colored asteroids.