Considering a 5200 system

[Wayne2072]

I am considering picking up a 5200 system.    I've checked out screenshots, and have emulated a few games.  I have to admit, the arcade quality video and sound is impressive for a system from that time.   I wish that things could have been different for the Atari 5200 (not released so close to the crash, had better controllers, etc.).  Still, it has a nice library, and more games are being produced even today.

   

There are a ton of consoles on eBay, but I would want to make sure it's one that is definitely operational.   There are some which have AV mods and rebuilt controllers.   However, I've read some threads that "rebuilt" doesn't necessarily mean much, in terms of the controllers on eBay.   I'd probably be better off either buying the Best Electronics ones outright, or sending Best the ones that I get from a system on eBay.    From what I've read, it sounds like Best does an incredible job with the controllers.   Anything else I should consider?   A TrakBall, certainly.   Atarimax cart, definitely!  Some of the Homebrews in the AA store?  Absolutely.    Anything about the system itself?  2 port or 4 port?   Can I trust the AV mods on eBay?  Or, would I be better off just getting a system with no mods but works?  

 

I'd appreciate any insight from those of you who have faced this same decision in the past. 

Edited January 2, 2020 by Wayne2072

[Omega-TI]

Opinions may vary, but in my humble opinion...

 

1) Get a two port unit.  You'll not have to mess around with the power switcher box, or pay any extra for a modded unit.  The less to go wrong the better.

2) Don't bother wasting money on individual carts (unless you are a collector or rich).  Get the Atari Max right out of the gate, you'll save a ton of money.

3) Consider a joystick splitter and a dedicated analog joystick for improved game play.  

 

 

[+sramirez2008]

1 hour ago, --- Ω --- said:

Get the Atari Max right out of the gate, you'll save a ton of money.

Couldn't agree more, especially when you consider the 8-bit conversions.

[Keatah]

Ever consider going the 8-bit computer route? As that's what a 5200 is, an 8-bit computer with minimal BIOS and no keyboard. Otherwise the graphics and sound is exactly the same. And so is the software library, 99% of the stuff has been ported from one to the other.

 

The thing you gain by going the 5200 route is the easier access to games. No computery stuff to get in the way. And of course the analog controls - if you like that sorta thing.

 

[+discotronic]

Best rebuilt controllers are a must.

TrakBall because of Tempest.

AtariMax cart in my opinion is required. 

Plan for the controller from Maker Matrix if you are serious about getting the system. https://www.maker-matrix.com/product/5200-controller-left

 

I have a 4 port board that I picked up from Best that is modded to work with every game and the 2600 adapter. Had it for a few years now and it has been solid for me. No AV or power mod. A 2 port might be the way to go unless you want to play Castle Crisis with 4 players. The 4 port switch box is getting harder to find. 

 

Other than that I can say that eBay sucks for buying a 5200 unless you actually buy from someone that knows what they are talking about and can give you an honest description of the system and controllers. If they say they don't know if the controllers work then they don't work. If they say the system is untested don't even bother. It will likely be a waste of money. 

 

I love the 5200 and there have been some really nice conversions and homebrews over the last few years. This is not a cheap system to get up and going. For me this system is worth it since it was one growing up that I thought was just the coolest looking slap of high tech wizardry ever made. 

[0078265317]

All great advice.  But regarding 2 port yes no switch box and vcs adapter compatible also.  But without 4 ports no 4 player games like super breakout.  And also others.  BTW how many of the original 69 were 4 player possible?

[+sramirez2008]

These two new homebrews take advantage of the 4 Port: Ratcatcher and RealSports Curling ?

[deepthaw]

If you've ever soldered, the power mod for 4-ports isn't difficult. I'm terrible at soldering and pulled it off.

 

Every time I want to play my 5200, I just get angry at the controllers. And I don't feel like spending the money to have Best fix them up. To be honest, my 5200 is more of an accent piece in my retro-cave than something I actually play at the present.

 

(Okay, Missile Command actually plays really well with the stock controllers, to be honest. And I think I'm alone in enjoying Pole Position. And Pac-Man's good.)

[TB-303]

Yes.

[+discotronic]

19 hours ago, sramirez2008 said:

These two new homebrews take advantage of the 4 Port: Ratcatcher and RealSports Curling ?

Don't forget Castle Crisis which is a homebrew of Warlords. Got 4 player there as well. Works with both controllers and paddles if you can get them. 

[+Ryan Witmer]

On 1/2/2020 at 7:02 PM, sramirez2008 said:

These two new homebrews take advantage of the 4 Port: Ratcatcher and RealSports Curling ?

Yeah, but who would want to play those?

 

I do have some more plans for those 4-ports.  Hoping to have something new for them in 2021.

[+sramirez2008]

7 minutes ago, AverageSoftware said:

 

I do have some more plans for those 4-ports.  Hoping to have something new for them in 2021

Can’t have too many 4 player games!

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Not exclusive, but if you can get the cart or the Atarimax SD for the 5200, then M.U.L.E. conversion also supports 4 players as well?

 

[Giles N]

On 1/2/2020 at 6:31 PM, Wayne2072 said:

I am considering picking up a 5200 system.    I've checked out screenshots, and have emulated a few games.  I have to admit, the arcade quality video and sound is impressive for a system from that time.   I wish that things could have been different for the Atari 5200 (not released so close to the crash, had better controllers, etc.).  Still, it has a nice library, and more games are being produced even today.

   

There are a ton of consoles on eBay, but I would want to make sure it's one that is definitely operational.   There are some which have AV mods and rebuilt controllers.   However, I've read some threads that "rebuilt" doesn't necessarily mean much, in terms of the controllers on eBay.   I'd probably be better off either buying the Best Electronics ones outright, or sending Best the ones that I get from a system on eBay.    From what I've read, it sounds like Best does an incredible job with the controllers.   Anything else I should consider?   A TrakBall, certainly.   Atarimax cart, definitely!  Some of the Homebrews in the AA store?  Absolutely.    Anything about the system itself?  2 port or 4 port?   Can I trust the AV mods on eBay?  Or, would I be better off just getting a system with no mods but works?  

 

I'd appreciate any insight from those of you who have faced this same decision in the past. 

Well, I just wanted a system

that was an intermediate between the 2600-generation and the Sega Master/NES generation and which had ports of titles I had a relationship to and which also was a pure cart-based console, so I landed on the Atari 5200, which had tons of early/classic-arcade ports, and after some tweeking with controls (ie getting refurbished original joysticks and WICO joysticks with Y-split cables) + getting to run it here in Europe, I’m satisfied as to what I looked for.

 

—

 

Ask yourself: ‘what are youblooking for as a home-console-gaming device’?

 

What do you want?

Edited January 6, 2020 by Giles N

[Giles N]

On 1/5/2020 at 2:06 AM, AverageSoftware said:

Yeah, but who would want to play those?

 

I do have some more plans for those 4-ports.  Hoping to have something new for them in 2021.

Team up with other 5200-homebrew developers and create ‘Dauntlet’ - the 4 player simultanous top-down dungeon-maze crawler where you are to go through 450 dungeons!

 

?????

 

???????⚔️?

[vtadave]

Anyone know a good source for a Y splitter?  Ones on eBay appear to be for the 2600.

[Giles N]

@Wayne2072

I use two variations of the 5200.

 

One 2-port with RF input to a CRT TV.

 

The other, a modded 4 port with A/V-input into my brother’s modern flat screen.

 

It seems games like Pitfall (1) and Mountain King will not work/boot on either system.

 

The rest works well (but I do believe I can detect some input-lag on the A/V used on flat-screen; not sure if its the mod or the flat screen).

 

I use either Wico’s connected via Y-split-cable to refurbished original controller or sometimes a modded Neo Geo joystick.

 

This latter is good for games like Pengo, Mr Do’s Castle, Pitfall 2, Moon Patrol, Vanguard etc, but absolutely useless on games that requires analogue movement of joystick.

Edited January 6, 2020 by Giles N

[bohoki]

if i didn't already have one i wouldn't start now i consider the 5200 a kind of gen 2.5 system along with the colecovision

 

instead of the 5200 maybe try a colecovision for another system with a weird controller  or a sega master system the gun games are great

[Giles N]

@Wayne2072

What sort of oldschool/retro consoles/games do you enjoy per today?

 

What do you have (already?)

 

What type of game-thing makes you tic?

 

 

[Wayne2072]

First of all, thank you everyone for your thoughts and suggestions.   Also, there have been many good questions.  Let me explain a bit of my thought process.

 

Currently, I have an Atari 7800, with the Harmony Cart full of 2600 games, and I have most of the 7800 library.   The 5200 interests me for a few reasons:

 

1) Quality of the video and sound on most of the games - very nice!

2) A smaller library, but most games are good, and there are many spot-on, or very close to it, arcade ports. 

3) There are many games, including XE conversions, that just aren't available for the 2600 or 7800, and are fun to play!

4)  I like quite a few of the arcade ports better than the 2600 and even some of the 7800 ports.  

5) I've been emulating the 5200, but want to play on an actual machine.   

 

As for other consoles, I have a working NES system, as well as a Nintendo DS, DS2, an XBox 360, and a Nintendo Switch.   I still find myself gravitating toward Atari, as it's what I started on, and played for years before the NES even came along. 

 

I saw the 5200 when it first came out.   A few problems with getting it back then.   I was a kid - I think 11 when it came out?   I already had the 2600, so it didn't fly with my parents to get the 5200, too.   Plus, I saw the initial game offerings back then as being repetitive compared to the 2600.   I didn't realize just how much better the graphics and sound were.  Most stores like K-Mart, Sears, etc. had the 2600 set up to play on.   I don't recall the 5200 being set up similarly, but it might have been.   Instead, I wound up with a Commodore VIC-20, as my second "system".   ?

 

Wayne

 

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by Wayne2072
Rewording beginning of post a bit.

[glazball]

It's always been a favorite of mine, though admittedly it's been on a pedestal since I was a child.  If you remember (or imagine) before the crash, before NES, before SMS, when Atari 2600 ruled the gaming world - the 5200 was a top-of-the-line elite machine that appeared to completely blow away anything we saw on the 2600.  I only knew one family who had one and seeing Pac-Man on it blew my mind.  Hindsight has cleared things up a bit and history hasn't been very kind to the 5200, but to me it'll always be special.

 

I wish you luck on your hunt.  You'll love it.

[+Cafeman]

I feel much the same way as glazball's memories from BITD.  Nobody I knew had an Atari 400 or 800 to compare against (too expensive!), so the 5200 was amazing when it debuted. But stores like JC Penney or Sears would set up a 5200 with ... Super Breakout, ARGH!   Nobody was interested in that game at that time.    In fact I only owned my 2600 for 1.5 years before I sold it to finance my new 5200.  I wasn't a huge 2600 fan ... not until the 2000's when I re-evaluated the fun and flexibility of the system.   The 5200's A/V was so fantastic.  Hearing speech in Berzerk and other games was really neat for example.  Comparing Pac and Ms Pac tunes to the 2600 'music' showed the gulf between both systems' Audio capabilities, at the time at least.  Playing games like Joust, Defender, Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Vanguard, Qix, Realsports Baseball, Berkzerk, Jungle Hunt ... wow. almost arcade perfect, we thought. 

 

Sadly, the 5200 over time has defeated me. I grew tired of all the technical problems with my 5200. The controllers are rebuilt, but still need cleaned (especially the fire buttons) after sitting a while. And something must be 'off' with my 5200's Pokey chip, because no matter what I do, the controllers seem to lean a bit to the left with control. This makes some games unplayable with the CX52's.  I do have a Masterplay interface and use a Genesis 6-button with games, but this is awkward if the game uses the keypad or 2 fire buttons!   So I've fallen back a bit to just emulating or using my XEGS (which also uses A/V cables, a better signal than 5200's RF).    I do love the 5200 though, that's why I supported it with my only 2 homebrews. 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

@Cafeman It sounds like you need your 5200 and your controllers re-calibrated to each other. It was because of something similar on mine that I eventually ended up buying the controller loop back board along with the diagnostic cart to test and correct for this. You have to do them all together because it doesn't do any good to adjust the pokey to factory values if the pots in the controllers are also slightly off as well.

 

[+DrVenkman]

3 hours ago, -^CrossBow^- said:

@Cafeman It sounds like you need your 5200 and your controllers re-calibrated to each other. It was because of something similar on mine that I eventually ended up buying the controller loop back board along with the diagnostic cart to test and correct for this. You have to do them all together because it doesn't do any good to adjust the pokey to factory values if the pots in the controllers are also slightly off as well.

 

But there is still "slop" in the system, aside from the controller pot calibration. @MakerMatrix and I have become innately familiar with the quirks of the 5200 controller scheme and how variances from system to system and controller to controller can affect things. The Field Service Manual advises to calibrate the X-axis to +/- 1 unit on the diagnostic cart, but the Y-axis is merely less than a maximum. Why? Because for one thing, the POKEY resistor adjusts both values rather than adjusting them independently - you literally cannot adjust one value independently. Therefore, to be playable on the 5200, games have to accept a certain amount of this kind of sloppiness and just deal with it. Some games are - we have found - decidedly less accepting of this variation than others. Gyuss, by the way, is a good one - if you can move the player to the right/counterclockwise from bottom-dead-center, or right/clockwise from top-dead-center, your controller will almost certainly work just fine in maze games. 

 

No every game is nearly so picky - most of the Atari-published titles that we've tested with our controllers can handle much more variability in POKEY resistor setting and variability in the components we use to build controllers (the MCP42100 digital potentiometer chip has a LOT of "acceptable" chip-to-chip variability per the manufacturer but much less so when tested with a game like Gyruss!). The third-party titles are the ones we have received complaints about not working very well - Popeye, Bounty Bob Strikes Back and Miner 2049'er, along with Gyruss. Makes me think those publishers didn't do nearly the amount of compatibility testing Atari did internally, testing their own programmers would've been privy to when porting A8 titles over. 

 

I also believe personally that as the 5200 consoles themselves have aged, along with the internal caps and timers used internally inside the POKEY chip for analog input, and every component between the chip and the controller port, these tiny variances are increasing due to system age. 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I don't doubt that and you are correct about the pokey adjust controller both axis at the same time. That is why I stated the controllers have to be calibrated to your 5200. Anytime I have a client want to send me their 5200 controllers to be repaired, I advise them that unless they send me their 5200 as well, I can't be sure that the controllers will still work 100% as well as they did on my setup since I would only have the ability to calibrate their controllers to my 5200. So yeah..it is a pain for sure and the only way to compensate for the combined adjustment is to move the arms on the pots manually. But again, adjusted to work with one 5200 doesn't mean they will work 100% with another.

 

In addition to Gyruss (Which is the one game I own that I use for this), bounty bob is also pretty picky about it in that you might not be able to activate the teleports or move right...etc while other games work fine.