Why did early-ish Atari VCS games change colour at game over?

[Loccy]

Subject line says it all. In case I'm not clear, I'm talking about the way, if you left a game and didn't start a new one, the background colours, the sprite colours and the playfield colours would all cycle through different combinations, changing every few seconds. What was that all about - was it an early implementation of a screen saver?

[NovaXpress]

Yes.

[BydoEmpire]

I would guess it was to display something clearly different from the main game screen while using as few resources as possible. It also sort of had an "attract mode" feel of drawing your attention.

[NovaXpress]

No, it was a screen saver. Older TVs were prone to "burn-in" and that's why the colors cycled on the 2600. Other systems such as the CV would just go to a blank screen.

[Video]

That's it exactly. Old TV's suffered very badly from burn in, and projection screens....forget about those.

 

Of course, all these problems have been pretty much fixed on new systems now, but back then, it was an attempt at saving some of the TV's.

 

I always thought it would be cool, if you could play the game in one of those color sets. Slamming start and having invisible players, or reversed colors while you play would have been cool.

[Foxsolo2000]

So was Combat the worlds first screen saver or did another have that particular honour?

[NovaXpress]

Some Pong consoles did the same thing, don't know about the Odyssey or Channel F.

[mos6507]

That's it exactly. Old TV's suffered very badly from burn in, and projection screens....forget about those.

 

Of course, all these problems have been pretty much fixed on new systems now

 

Plasmas still have problems.

[Uzumaki]

And some projection TV that uses CRT rather than LCD.

 

But a majority of TVs are safe to play without the burn in risk.