What used to drive you crazy, as a kid, with your Atari 2600

[Kenwood]

I think the thing that sucked the most was getting a game for Xmas or your Birthday: required TWO people to play when you were an only child. You needed to have a buddy to play.

[+Random Terrain]

1. Not being able to have the paddles and the joysticks plugged in at the same time. Big pain in the butt.

 

2. Games that didn't restart by pressing the joystick button.

 

3. Toilet paper games (games that were not replayable where everything was always in the same place every time you played).

 

That's all I can remember right now. And yeah, I hated two player only games. There should always be a one player option.

[Adrian M]

The lack of a visible timer in some of the earlier games like Combat and Air Sea Battle.

[joeybastard]

No second fire button. While many of the VCS games make brillant use of the single button and various joystick positions for different actions, I always wanted a second button. Especially after I got a CV and saw the beauty of having the 2nd button.

[Kenwood]

Always picking up the wrong paddle

[sku_u]

Seeing awesome teaser ads for games that never saw the light of day.

[Gabriel]

Playing Zaxxon and encoutering the random death bug over and over again.

[Chris++]

Working up a good score in Yars' Revenge and accidentally getting the HSWWSH.

[InanimateCarbonRod]

What bugged me most was when our 2600 system bit the dust. I don't recall what the exact symptoms were (probably quite fixable nowadays), but it did die......

[MK ATARI]

My dad breaking the original set of controllers, the second set of replacement controllers, and the wireless controllers all while trying to nudge the ball in Video Pinball. That was the first and last video game he played.

 

MK

[SS]

Always picking up the wrong paddle

 

[bjk7382]

Always picking up the wrong paddle

 

 

I put a little sticker with a 1 or 2 on them. 99% of all paddle games use the same setup. Only tac-scan that I noticed, used the player 2 port with the player 2 paddle.

[Mot]

The bat in Adventure!

 

"I jumped!, I jumped!" (hitting the button just slightly too late)

 

Kid: "I want to play Atari"

Other family member: "too bad, I got the TV first!"

 

The black cover coming off the joystick and playing with the white stick.

 

jittery paddles.

 

Not having a b-day or x-mas or money for that game you gotta have.

 

Knowing people could really impresses the "Mad Bomber," and never getting anywhere close!

[atari_wizard]

our 2600 rf cable was messed up and we had to wrap it around the atari and put tape on it to hold it in place. then as soon as someone would bump into it, the game was lost. this was really the only thing that bugged me.

[AtariChild840]

losing an intense match of warlords.

[NE146]

How in ads/reviews/articles in magazines oftentimes the picture they showed of a game was some artist rendition and barely matched what the 2600 version looked like. Or they'd show pictures from another console, etc. Or other times you'd have NO idea what a game looked like AT ALL! (that was the case with me and 2600 Zaxxon). It was like the only way you'd solve the mystery of how a game would look was you had to buy the game! Those were sometimes dark ages they were...

[Mr Oni]

well for me it was the frequency in which the joysticks broke. The atari joysticks broke a lot and I had like 4 dollar allowance

 

 

 

Mr Oni

[Dolt]

Losing the manuals so that you had to play a variation game for a few minutes to find the right one you were looking for (especially a pain with a game like Space Invaders, with 100+ variations).

 

Trading games with kids down the street for a few days, only to discover that their game sucked and you had loaned them your favorite game.

 

Dumb-ass kid down the street losing the manuals.

[ATARIPITBULL]

For me there were a few things about the 2600 that did kind of pissed me off:

 

1) No pause switch.

 

2) Games like Haunted house that had a cool looking box, but the game its self was a little less than you expected.

 

3) Trying to figure out how Atari thought that a 10 year old boy could solve any of the Swordquest games!

 

4) Having my father all but rip the power cord out of the wall when I was into my second straight hour of Yars Revenge.

 

[Chadivision]

1. Two player games of Pac-Man (on the Atari 400). My brother would be the first player. His first life would last about 15 minutes. I would forget that I was playing, so I would just sit there. Right before the ghost killed me I realized that it was my turn, but it would be too late. My brother would play for another 15 or 20 minutes and then the same thing would happen again.

 

2. The fact that I was horrible at just about every single game.

 

3. I spent about 5 hours writing a text game on my 400. I hadn't saved my program yet. One of my friends said "What's in here" and opened the cartridge lid, which turned off the power and wiped out my program.

 

4. My brother let someone borrow all of our Atari stuff and we never got it back, but that's not the worst part. The worst part was when I got into collecting and realized how much my Swordquest: Waterworld (with the poster) was worth.

[ntavio]

My parents nagging me to "turn that damn thing off."

[Osbo]

waiting for the turtles in middle of frogger, in the level with the snake moving around, when it comes out and you are kinda close to the edge. That and playing River Raid or Enduro for hours to an end to find out there's no 'airstrip' or 'winning check flag'

[+Random Terrain]

1) No pause switch.

Yeah, I forgot about that one.

[Saikyo]

I used to get drove crazy in a weird way.

 

You see I used to chew on the joystick (OUCH!) and eventually the top came off

revealing the white tube inside.

 

And I did this to all the joysticks except one.

[Mr Oni]

Yep saikyo I probably could have filled a box with the corpses of those joysticks with no top on theml.

 

 

Mr Oni