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- Zomgondo, on 11/10/2009, -1/+11No, the Atari 800 was like a programmable 2600... it had almost the exact same video and audio chips. I owned one. It ruled.
- kevinmoore, on 11/10/2009, -0/+9If you didn't grow up with an Atari 2600, you owe it to yourself to at least spend a few minutes (hours? days? weeks?) with a 2600 emulator. I recommend Stella http://stella.sourceforge.net since it's open source and available for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows.
- Zomgondo, on 11/10/2009, -0/+9Dugg for knowing about the "disappearing trick" in Defender. You were pretty much invincible once you mastered that.
- horakhti, on 11/10/2009, -0/+9... and they only scraped the surface here. I'm looking at your way Q*Bert, you poorly ported bastard.
- Atario, on 11/10/2009, -1/+9Aw, what the ***** *****. MORE Dragon Age crap?? I thought it was over! D`:
- EddiePotato, on 11/10/2009, -1/+7Dugg for passionate defense on largely irrelevant topic.
- one1plus1one, on 11/10/2009, -0/+6PS:
Atari did make up for it by releasing pitfall. Whoever programmed pitfall on the 2600 platform was a true artist and genius. That person really put effort into the craft, and made it an amazing game for it's time and platform.
(In comparison to pitfall, I do agree that many of the other games seemed overly rushed, with little effort being put into the craft, design, and making the most of the system's limited power and ability.) - AZTriGuy, on 11/10/2009, -0/+6Nice list, but it would have been better if they showed the arcade versions along with the 2600 ports for comparison. Some were obvious, Pac-Man for one. But some of the others, I could have used a refresher on exactly what they looked like. I mean, I remember playing Gorf in the arcades, but that was nearly 25 years ago . . . I have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast this morning.
- Gr00ver, on 11/10/2009, -0/+6I loved Defender.
- one1plus1one, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5Downvoted for passionate defense of Atari version of Pacman which was a huge disappointment and completely ruined the summer vacation for the kids in my hood. It was a devastating release.
(Although I will agree that I did enjoy the Atari version of Donkey Kong.) - PhillyMJS, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5What's funny is, to this day you can hear the 2600 Donkey Kong and (less frequently) Pac Man sound effects used as generic video game sounds on some TV shows. The only specific example I can think of right now is on Sliders once or twice in the mid 90s, but I know I've heard it elsewhere more recently.
- one1plus1one, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5As a world leading expert in the Atari-2600 (with thousands of hours from my youth "stolen" by the Atari corporation) I concur: Atari-version-PacMan was by far the biggest Atari let down of the decade for us kids.
However... the story does not end so tragically for the youth of my day.
A few years later the TI/99/4A hit the neighborhood, and saved the day.
That machine ran an amazing version of "Defender" rip off called Parsec, that absolutely rocked, complete with a female-computer voice speaking during the game.
TI had another amazing game called Miner-49'er. And the TI version of Donkey Kong was very good.
So our childhood was not fully ruined by Atari's overly rushed and uncreative ports to the limited 2600 platform.
(Not to mention the Apple IIE games that took off at the time and initially seemed better than PC games ironically enough, in the early days. But at the time few people I knew could afford the Apple IIE at home. So Atari it was for a couple of years.) - EddiePotato, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5That makes you a minor deity of my childhood. Good to meet you!
- kevinmoore, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5A real 2600 is great, but many of the cartridges are hard to find.
- PhillyMJS, on 11/10/2009, -0/+5Stella rocks, it's perfect to stick on a laptop for some quick, casual gaming.
The simplicity of the old Atari games translates very well to using the keyboard for the controls. I have racked up scores in Frostbite and some of the other Activision games that would have made me the king of my grade school, had I achieved them 27 years ago. I still may send in photos of my scores for the patches. :-) - kevinmoore, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4Well, I'm 36 years old so the nostalgia factor is very high for me. I vividly remember getting a 2600 for Christmas of 1978.
- bmiami69, on 11/10/2009, -1/+5Donkey Kong sucked
- EddiePotato, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4A noble invitation, but as a guy who cut his gaming teeth on a 2600, I can't last more than 20 minutes on an emulator without getting bored to tears. Not sure how much appeal these games could possibly have for someone with no nostalgic connection to them!
- EddiePotato, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4Alright, mea culpa. I feel kind of like a jackass for saying that, since I've actually used 2600 sounds in some music compositions, and there were a lot of very distinctive tones coded for it. Yars' Revenge was a particular favorite. And Adventure. Forgive the glibness!
- andreo, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4That would have been David Crane
- EddiePotato, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4ET, for example. You may need to seek out the landfill where they dumped the overstock. :)
- kevinmoore, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4And an Atari 2600 joystick plugged in to a 2009 eight-core Nehalem machine (via Stelladaptor) is an odd-looking thing indeed.
- Coffeedemon, on 11/10/2009, -0/+4I remember convincing my dad to get me a 2600 when they first came out. I managed to get a copy of Space Invaders too. Apparently the novelty would wear off those silly video games very shortly afterwards... the memories *sniff*
Anyway, this article is weak. We're talking about a friggin ancient console and they're critiquing it like it came out 5 years ago. - kevinmoore, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3What are you talking about? They're not the same at all.
- AnalogAssassin, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3Yeah... I remember being on the waiting list for Pac-Man. When I rushed home and plugged it in to my Atari VCS (Video Computer System, as it was known before it was called the 2600) I was utterly disappointed. I think I played E.T. more than Pac Man. Hell, I actually figured out E.T. and even found my first-ever Easter Egg in E.T.
- RobotBuddha, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3Same here. I had one of the bastards as a kid, and even with the entire library to choose from I get bored pretty quickly. Where with old nes games, the time just flies with most of them.
- CzechSix, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3I vividly recall my 11 year old self being so severely disappointed by 2600 Pac Man that I almost cried. And to rub it in, for some reason every TV show from about 1985 until about 2005 that featured a "kid playing a video game" scene used the sound effects from 2600 Pac Man as the generic "video game" sound. You'd see some half-rate kid actor wiggling a joystick like an idiot while they played the asinine "bong bong bong" sound of that crappy jaggedy non-Pac Man thing eating those big stupid chunky lines. Good times.
- kevinmoore, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3E.T. has a really bad reputation. It's probably because they made millions of that cartridge but didn't sell nearly that many. That said, I had that game and actually liked it. It was no Yar's Revenge, but I thought it was enjoyable.
- antdude, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3Pooyan is Defender?
- andreo, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3I'm not sure, but I think that Warner Communications owned Atari by the time Pac-Man came out. Warner not being a games company was just looking for cash cow. Then the company was sold to Jack Tremmel and he finished running it into the ground. He sold the name to a JTS who made hard drives or some crap.
- Chordonblue, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3That would have been Activision - a company made up of disgruntled ex-Atari programmers sick of getting no recognition (or appropriate pay) for their work. Activision pushed Atari to create incentives and better games like Ms.PacMan (amazing).
- doshindude, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3I didn't grow up with a 2600, but I went out and bought one a few months ago instead. Far better than an emulator.
- one1plus1one, on 11/10/2009, -0/+3Space Invaders... ah yes... my brother and I played it until we flipped the score counter, by playing all the way up to 9 9 9 9, and watching it reset back to 0 0 0 0
After hours and hours of play, and carpal tunnel syndrome setting in... moments before it was about to flip we screamed:
"Mom! Dad! Quick! Come see! We're about to flip the counter!"
I wonder what my parents thought of us wasting precious youthful energy on that endeavour? My brother and I were ecstatic breaking out into high-fives and endless cheers at the achievement. (At least we went to play outside afterwards and rode our bikes!) - Chordonblue, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2I totally agree. But the 'tricks' were there all along - from the first 2600 to roll off the line in 1977 to the last 2600jr made in the 90's. The problem was the motivation. Atari treated their programmers like dirt, and it was only after a year or so of Warner's abuse did the programmers form companies like Activision and Imagic. THEN, we saw major programming progress. Atari was shamed into producing better games in large part because the buying public had seen better attempts by Activision by then.
There is also the question as to whether or not companies like Coleco WANTED to produce a better product. Looking at games like Pitfall II or Montezuma's Revenge, it's hard not to at least tolerate the thought that Coleco purposely screwed the pooch to drive fans to it's Colecovision.
Now I'm not saying for sure this happened - but... - Chordonblue, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Indy was a terrific game. The gfx weren't so hot, but, like most RPG's, you didn't play it for the gfx. A friend and I played the crap out of that game until we finally finished it. We never did get the signature though... :(
- Chordonblue, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2I did too - in the arcades. I was a huge fan of Defender but the 2600 version really disappointed me. They made up for it when I got Defender for my Atari 400 computer - MUCH better port.
Defender II (Stargate) on the 2600 was also a terrific translation - and unexpected. Who'd have thought you could have that much stuff going on and still maintain gameplay on the 2600? It's a shame that the 2600's glory days didn't include some of the best programming efforts on the machine. - Elranzer, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2A brief list of the Atari 2006 arcade ports that sucked:
All of them - 1ofMany, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Talk about rough graphics, huh? ;-)
- Chordonblue, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Heh @ Eddie!
Nah, you can find E.T. almost everywhere! Hell, our local Play 'n Trade has two or three still! - frontaxle, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Quietly, the VIC-20 slumped in envy
- fuzzynyanko, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2What's bad is that Pac-Man on the 2600 was an engineering feat (done in 6 weeks), even though it sucked horrible compared to the arcade version.
I did play the 2600 Pac-Man before ever playing the arcade one, and I would agree that it was good for the 2600, but not compared to the arcade port. - RobotBuddha, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2I sometimes think I'm the only one who actually liked that game. Though given that I also owned indiana jones, pacman, and asteroids(with colored shapes) my reference was probably a bit skewed.
- gerrylazlo, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2I remember playing the 2600 and having the most insane ideas of how it worked ( I was 8). I remember 2 of them were that there was a lot of video tape in the cartridge that it was somehow just displaying. The other was that the program had about 500 million if/then statements. (since all I knew was quickbasic back then). It might as well have been voodoo magic to me.
- bmiami69, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2oo the sounds were cool, back then it was so unique
- Chordonblue, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Don't laugh, there was a lot of evidence to agree with your assumptions here. Clandestine visits showed executives sporting elephant foot trash cans and non-Atari computers doing their accounting while at the same time, Atari was trying to convince everyone else to use their computers for the same thing!
A lot of money was spent on stupidity, yet, the programmers who were actually making them the money were paid poorly - and that's how Activision got it's start.
Atari should have been planning it's next console by 1980, but they rested on the laurels of the 2600 for a few more years and then produced a warmed-over console port of their computer systems (the 5200), which had no backwards compatibility, crappy (and very breakable) joysticks, and a ridiculous price point. Had the 5200 come out with regular sticks, at a decent price, and with 2600 compatibility in 1981, it would have been a huge hit for Atari. But Atari, like so many other big corps got greedy.
In 1977, you could get away with Breakout and Adventure. By 1981, people expected more, and the 2600 was showing it's age - especially when the programmers of the system weren't really encouraged to try and outdo themselves. Games like PacMan and E.T. ended up buried in a concrete grave someplace out in New Mexico. So much money was spent licensing these titles and they ended up literally BURYING those 10's of millions of dollars!
The only reason the 2600 lasted as long as it did was because of the superhuman efforts of the programmers and THAT only happened because of companies like Activision. - dtfinch, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Tutankham was hard.
- andreo, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2I've play (and still own) all the games on the list. I enjoyed every one (with the exception of Pac-Man). Considering the power (or lack there of) that the 2600 had I say that they did a pretty good job. Also keep in mind that some of these games were licensed to competitors and ported over to the 2600.
Burger Time was a Mattel license. Congo Bongo, Donkey Kong was Coleco. They just wanted to release something for the people that were not going to switch over to the console. And with the exception of Pac-Man (and the ported games) the programmers normally squeezed as much out of the console as they could for the time. As they learned new tricks they created better looking games. Ms Pac-Man was considered very very good considering the hardware it was running on. And Pac-Man Jr was also considered great. - Chordonblue, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2The world at large was such a wonder to a kid before the Internet. Now, even my 11 year old son has answers to questions I could only assume about back in the 70's. Not sure if that's a good thing sometimes...
- Chordonblue, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2The 7800 was a machine that could've and SHOULD'VE been released in 1983, not 1986 (thanks Jack Tramiel!)
It had better joysticks, decent sprite system, great sound, better graphics, and most importantly - backward compatibility with the 2600. It was ready by 1984 (still too late), but Jack pushed it back to late 1986 and by then it was a dead dog next to Nintendo's NES.
Oh, what might have been! - Chordonblue, on 11/10/2009, -0/+2Yep. I had an unfortunate friend who actually picked the Vic-20 over the Atari 400 (mainly because of the keyboard.) To his credit, he did get the 5K expander so you could actually DO something with it. Without that extra memory, you essentially had the equivilent of a color version of the TRS-80 Model I.
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