 Most people don't think of overlays when it comes to the 2600, but there are
actually several for the system, mainly for use with the various keypad controllers
Atari released over the system's life span. The first overlays for the 2600
were packaged with Basic
Programming, which made use of two keypad
controllers and a unique overlay for each. Atari later released a keypad
packaged with Star
Raiders, and it too used an overlay (no other games ever took advantage
of this controller). Atari also released a much larger keypad
for use with their Children's games (Alpha
Beam with Ernie, Big
Bird's Egg Catch, Cookie
Monster Crunch and Oscar's
Trash Race). This controller was actually blessed with several colorful
overlays.
Only two third-party companies produced overlays for the 2600, and neither
of them is conventional. Activision
created two overlays for Space
Shuttle; one sits over the base of the unit and the other fits over the
switches on the 2600. The other third-party overlay was created by Sega
for use with Star
Trek: Strategic Operations Simulation. This overlay sits over the standard
Atari 2600 joystick,
but in practice was clumsy and not particularly useful. |
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