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Atari Modern Classics

the-minusworld.com — Before the over the top, logo heavy madness of today ’s next-gen masterpieces became the visual norm for video game cover art, there was the basic beauty of the Atari 2600’s approach to package design. But what if the biggest games of now fell into the hands of a 2600-era artist? We’d have Atari Modern Classics, a vintage look at our fresh favorites

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  • bixby1, on 09/16/2008, -1/+39If I could have played GTA IV on Atari as a kid I would have been a much more violent and therefore better person today.
    • badwithcomputer, on 09/16/2008, -0/+15I would have learned the rules for darts a lot earlier too.
    • yayintertubes, on 09/16/2008, -1/+9I would be a lot more efficient at killing hookers to get my money back if I'd had GTA4 in my childhood.
    • passedoutghost, on 09/17/2008, -0/+2Careful, don't let Jack Thompson hear...
  • graahBrains, on 09/16/2008, -0/+288-bit side scrolling halo 3 looks freakin' amazing. It's like Double Dragon with guns and muppets.
    • jaybol, on 09/16/2008, -0/+15dugg for being the first time ive seen "double dragon with guns and muppets" as a phrase. and people say there is nothing new under the sun.
      • leerayIG88, on 09/16/2008, -0/+5ever heard of the lava people?
      • Modulo, on 09/17/2008, -0/+2dugg for being the first time ive seen "there is nothing new under the sun."
    • badassninja, on 09/17/2008, -0/+2For real. If someone made a online game JUST like that, (for free, lol) I would be playing that right now.
  • Peachi, on 09/16/2008, -1/+17smash brothers looks like a hoot!
  • TroutMouth, on 09/16/2008, -1/+18Bioshock for the Win!!!
  • condonm, on 09/16/2008, -0/+19I'd love to see some one port Portals to the 2600.
    • macweirdo42, on 09/16/2008, -0/+3I was gonna post a link, but somebody already did below.
  • Stan44, on 09/16/2008, -0/+12haha this article is amazing..love the art!
  • anchalsingh, on 09/16/2008, -0/+16I want to see more of these for other games...Fantastic!
  • drone02, on 09/16/2008, -0/+11The renditions are flawless.... Props to the artist. My favorite is No More Heros.... I'd love to see more of these :)
    • raindog469, on 09/17/2008, -0/+1They're not flawless at all; Atari boxes didn't have screenshots on the front and these are much more wordy. The screenshots they use are also about Commodore 64-level graphics rather than Atari 2600. They could say they were meant to be pixel art, not screenshots, but Nintendo was the first to go there as far as I know. Here's an example of an Atari box from Wikipedia:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(Atari_2600 ...

      They tried, though, and for that they get a digg.
  • Jedravent, on 09/16/2008, -0/+35They actually did make Portal for the Atari 2600!

    http://kotaku.com/5048537/portal-ported-to-the-ata ...
    • thePTS, on 09/16/2008, -1/+10The real question is, did they make Crysis?
      • SanTe, on 09/17/2008, -0/+10Yes. It runs at 0 fps, just like the original!
    • pentomino, on 09/17/2008, -0/+1Nice concept, but it doesn't have that cool momentum-conservation thing that the original does.

      Apparently, that was written in an Atari 2600 implementation of compiled BASIC. So it's only a hint at how awesome a real machine language version could be.
  • verbaldouching, on 09/16/2008, -0/+8I miss my Atari :(
  • MasterOfHyrule, on 09/16/2008, -0/+8Atari was good and what made some games the way they are today.
  • michaelwong38, on 09/16/2008, -0/+8I would like to play Rez for the 2600, but only if it comes with the vibrating controller for obvious reasons. :)
  • Butt3rs, on 09/16/2008, -0/+8Barley 200 Diggs and down?
  • blackmesa, on 09/16/2008, -3/+3Database error
    Traffic too great for server
    Please provide mirror
  • QsheiK, on 09/16/2008, -4/+4Mirror pls.
  • Marcatto, on 09/16/2008, -0/+12The system...is down
  • 888gavin, on 09/16/2008, -0/+5Atari Flashback 2 is ***** awesome. Just crack open a can of RC, rock some Pitfall, and you've got a good time.
  • thePTS, on 09/16/2008, -0/+7aww ;( Did anyone manage to jot down an ascii interpretation of the art before the site boinked?
  • Yeknom, on 09/16/2008, -0/+4COD4 as a sidescrolling shoot-em up? Hell yes.
  • jerrycurley, on 09/16/2008, -2/+8they coud have put a ltitle more thought into this rathr than just lower the resolution of the characters. At least make it accurate. There is NO WAY that the Atari 2600 would have made those games pictures on those box covers. Those characters had far too many pixels to be moved on the screen all the time.
    • bigteebo, on 09/17/2008, -0/+1Agreed. Homestar Runner already did this, just without the game box being Atari-specific. Let's take it down further to see what it would REALLY look like on the Atari 2600.
    • Elranzer, on 09/17/2008, -0/+2True, those colors and sprites on the A2600 would be impossible. Though, they probably would be possible on the Atari 7800, but nobody bought that.
  • Doomsan, on 09/16/2008, -4/+3mirror?
  • Biosfear01, on 09/16/2008, -4/+4mirror now plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
  • MasterOfHyrule, on 09/16/2008, -0/+31Mirrors:
    http://neebit.com/s?134dd33c5f.jpg
    http://neebit.com/s?697118455e.jpg
    http://neebit.com/s?9334002b50.jpg
    http://neebit.com/s?25a1f866ab.jpg
    http://neebit.com/s?71817eab1a.jpg
    http://neebit.com/s?e348ad2a48.jpg
    http://neebit.com/s?c74a790b25.jpg
    http://neebit.com/s?326c1ac561.jpg
  • MadEnvoy, on 09/16/2008, -0/+6demake is the new sweded.
  • toddhenkel, on 09/16/2008, -0/+7Too many sprites for the day... and yes, I did back then... now get off my lawn!
  • liquisoft, on 09/16/2008, -0/+6For some reason the level of imagination required to play some of these older blocky games made them so much more interesting to me.
    • FlyingSpaghetti, on 09/17/2008, -0/+7When playing Adventure I used to think of myself as a Conan-type character. Too bad I was a ***** square on the screen.
      • liquisoft, on 09/17/2008, -0/+4Indeed. I remember an old game for my PC (can't remember the title of it, though) where the visuals were about equal to that of Atari, except it was a top-down fantasy adventure RPG similar to Zelda in many ways. I had a ***** ton of fun with that ugly game.
      • djruden, on 09/17/2008, -0/+5You are probably talking about 'Castle' which used ascii characters for its "graphics".
      • bitsmartuk, on 09/17/2008, -0/+1Save the green dots with your fantastic flying red square!
  • chiliwilli, on 09/16/2008, -0/+8 i dream of a world without 404s and overloaded servers
    • antdude, on 09/17/2008, -2/+5Are you Martin Luther King of the Internet?
  • JeremyO, on 09/16/2008, -0/+5this is THE good stuff
  • Ioncannon, on 09/17/2008, -0/+5The Atari 2600 could only display two sprites and two missles at a time (unless you drew another sprite every other frame, which caused flickering). Thus most of these game wouldn't look like that.
  • MommaLu, on 09/17/2008, -0/+4I was an Intellivision gril myself.
  • r3m1x645, on 09/17/2008, -0/+2dug for Resident Evil 5 candy cane men
  • dle5, on 09/17/2008, -0/+2I'd rather play these games than the real thing. Most 3D games are garbage these days.
  • raydeen, on 09/17/2008, -0/+3Best Atari game I ever had was Tunnel Runner.

    http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=9gY46PF5hdo
  • fishpicker, on 09/17/2008, -0/+5Does no one remember those old game boxes? they almost never had pictures of the actual graphics. the boxes always featured cover art that didn't even resemble anything in the game.
  • joy2k9, on 09/17/2008, -0/+1i miss the smash brothers!
  • frepnog, on 09/17/2008, -2/+0too detailed. the 2600 was no where near strong enough to produce those kinds of graphics. sorry.

    the captions on the boxes suck too.
    • YME1280, on 09/17/2008, -0/+1You're an idiot...
      • frepnog, on 09/17/2008, -1/+0why am i an idiot exactly? the "screenshots" on those boxes are cool, yes, but the 2600 could produce NOTHING that looked like that.

        i had a 2600. there was NO game on it that looked that good.
      • pentomino, on 09/17/2008, -0/+1To be fair, lots of "screenshots" on the box were better than what they actually looked like on the 2600. Usually the real 2600 games had similar shapes, but less color, fewer objects sharing scanlines, and, of course, objects flickering on alternate frames.
  • AussieVesti, on 09/17/2008, -0/+1That's some great conceptual art there
  • pentomino, on 09/17/2008, -0/+5I'm glad that the screenshots were presented as how they'd look on the box, and not as actual screenshots, because there's no way Atari 2600 games actually look that good. And I hate to bust people for unrealistic 2600 screenshots, because that's like going to the renaissance faire and asking why people aren't covered in boils.

    I wish I'd never learned how 2600 games really worked.
    • gadgetlust, on 09/17/2008, -0/+1I'm with you pentomino. This is a great and creative concept, but the graphics depicted are indeed far better than what the old 2600 can do, with its 192X160 resolution and its 4 color (out of a palette of 16 colors) display. Actually, some of the screenshots look more like they could have been from the C64 or early NES.
  • MrEggs, on 09/18/2008, -0/+1rad. ***** the others talking about sprites and *****, ***** pansies.
  • piattorney, on 09/27/2008, -0/+1Cool string.
  •  

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