Haha.. THAT I agree with. Some games came out at a time when we all knew they could be so much better ports than they were, pac man certainly was a big one of those.
Atari 2600
- Thread starter SuperSprint
- Start date
Haha.. THAT I agree with. Some games came out at a time when we all knew they could be so much better ports than they were, pac man certainly was a big one of those.
Phetishboy
Well-known member
The first 2600 game I ever played was Missile Command, the second was Combat.
Spyridon
Well-known member
Phetishboy
Well-known member
Hey, did anyone else have a game called Star Master(I think) came with a control keypad that plugged into the player 2 port? Mine musta been faulty, as I played the game for an hour one time and no enemies EVER showed up. It was a first person space shooter like Star Trek for the Vectrex. Anyone?
OP
OP
SuperSprint
Well-known member
Logic? None. Just reminiscing about some games I played and thought I would throw it out there for discussion in case someone wanted to talk about it.
As for the discussion itself, you're missing my point entirely. I'm not comparing the games so much as the experience then and now. DK, pitfall, etc haven't changed. And while I still enjoy the dedicated arcade classics every bit as much as I did then, I do not get that same pleasure out of the VCS versions that I once did. In fact, while I played a hell of a lot of Pacman on that $50 (~$125 today) pre-order cart, today I would seriously be pissed if I laid out $125 and it was that bad (compared to the original).
I think you meant Star Raiders.... I remember it vaugely, and I remember playing it a good bit but little beyond that.
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VectorJunkie
Well-known member
Agree with the comments about Activision. Played a great deal of Pitfall, but man River Raid seemed so advanced compared to the Atari crap. River Raid was one of my favorites on the 2600.
scott9050
Member
Starmaster and Adventure were two of my favorites. I got my first Atari 2600 in January 1981 after getting a good report card before Christmas break. I used to stay up playing Space Invaders, Asteroids and Combat with my dad. I remember playing the 2600 version of Pac Man and Donkey Kong and thinking "WTF is this crap" while wishing I had a Colecovision. I still have several hundred carts laying in my closet.
pookdolie
Permanently Banned for excessive trolling.
Star Raiders. You had to navigae the map to get to the enemies.
I loved that game. You could take shield & torpedo damage (one of your guns would stop working), dodge asteroids, dogfight, get blown up in hyperspace if your shields were weak, etc.
You defended your starbase, and had to kill all the enemies before they got to it. Nothing was worse than chasing enemies all the way to the starbase and then, in the middle of battle, hearing a sad little tune letting you know that the base had been destroyed and everyone was dead. And you still had to fight...
joeycuda
Well-known member
I had it. I don't recall much about it other than the keypad. I'm pretty sure I got that one when the stuff started getting marked down real cheap.
Hyde
Well-known member
Yeah, you are talking about Star Raiders. I have a copy of it for my Atari system, but I don't have the keyboard controller.
On a side note, the Atari 2600 had a lot of great games. Here are some of my favorites:
Berzerk
Yar's Revenge
Donkey Kong
Pitfall
River Raid
Vanguard
Galaxian
Dragonfire
Ms. Pac Man
Moon Patrol
VectorJunkie
Well-known member
Star Raiders. You had to navigae the map to get to the enemies.
I loved that game. You could take shield & torpedo damage (one of your guns would stop working), dodge asteroids, dogfight, get blown up in hyperspace if your shields were weak, etc.
You defended your starbase, and had to kill all the enemies before they got to it. Nothing was worse than chasing enemies all the way to the starbase and then, in the middle of battle, hearing a sad little tune letting you know that the base had been destroyed and everyone was dead. And you still had to fight...
Star Raiders was my favorite game on the Atari 400... Of course I didn't have many games for that system.
pookdolie
Permanently Banned for excessive trolling.
I once found a Chase the Chuckwagon cartridge at a tag sale in the middle of a cow pasture. Terrible game, but valuable. Seller had no idea what he had, and was asking for a dollar. I talked him down to 50 cents, and ended up trading it for a boxed Vectrex and some games...
Level42
New member
What ? Not Avalanche ?
Level42
New member
Why's that ? I had LOADS of them for my XL and later XE.
Star Raiders was and is still brilliant. It was released in the same year as Space Invaders....go figure....
About the 2600: compared to all the Pong clones that everybody had before the 2600, it was a dream machine !
I remember it came with Comat (=Tank) and that was actually a lot of fun to play with my brother. The best game on it was Demon Attack, I still remember I went to buy it with my dad.
149 Dutch guilders it cost, a fortune in those days ! (to compare, the 2600 itself had cost us 499 Dutch guilders, that was after the very first price cut.)
I rented most carts because they were so insanely expensive AND most games were simply not worth buying....
I even remember a friend owned a PCB to run EPROMs in the 2600, ha piracy is as old as computers I guess. I think it was the first time I saw EPROMs and couldn't understand how it was possible to program those things yourself....
However, even an empty EPROM was very expensive for us then
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SanTe
Well-known member
Yars Revenge could've been a coin-op, if only for the sound. It would've added significant atmosphere to any arcade.
Yars' Revenge was a coin-op. You know it as Star Castle.
Porting Star Castle to the 2600 proved to be virtually impossible at the time, and necessitated so many changes that it morphed into something similar yet unrecognizable at first glance as Star Castle.
Since then someone in the 2600 homebrew scene has succeeded in porting Star Castle properly.
No one has yet mentioned Activision's Megamania as a top title for the 2600 platform. I thought that game ruled.
Level42
New member
Wow I had never thought of Yar's Revenge as being (initially) a conversion...
It's a great game, I had that too. (I should still have it, on my parent's attic).
I still can't believe how one person can create such a great game (apparently the best selling cart from Atari) and then something like ET. I know: time....
I liked Atlantis too.
It's a great game, I had that too. (I should still have it, on my parent's attic).
I still can't believe how one person can create such a great game (apparently the best selling cart from Atari) and then something like ET. I know: time....
I liked Atlantis too.
IvanTT
New member
Very true, I loved my 2600, In fact I've got a pic of me in my jammies unwrapping it on X-mas. I liked the retail experience much better in those days yes even when we were still playing things like Tank and Biplane in the pizza places that was still better. I think it had more to do with the ergonomic design of the cabs that made the biggest difference on those types of titles. I also had an Atari Electronic Pinball, got that one first and really enjoyed it too and that certainly was nothing like real pinball.
VectorJunkie
Well-known member
Why's that ? I had LOADS of them for my XL and later XE.
Star Raiders was and is still brilliant. It was released in the same year as Space Invaders....go figure....
About the 2600: compared to all the Pong clones that everybody had before the 2600, it was a dream machine !
I remember it came with Comat (=Tank) and that was actually a lot of fun to play with my brother. The best game on it was Demon Attack, I still remember I went to buy it with my dad.
149 Dutch guilders it cost, a fortune in those days ! (to compare, the 2600 itself had cost us 499 Dutch guilders, that was after the very first price cut.)
I rented most carts because they were so insanely expensive AND most games were simply not worth buying....
I even remember a friend owned a PCB to run EPROMs in the 2600, ha piracy is as old as computers I guess. I think it was the first time I saw EPROMs and couldn't understand how it was possible to program those things yourself....
However, even an empty EPROM was very expensive for us then
The Atari carts were too expensive. Now my Apple ][ software collection at the time was awesome. I would take my giant disk tubs in a gym bag over the the Fresno State Apple ][ lab and trade copies of games. I looked out of place since I was in the eighth grade, but no messed with me. If anything I was who they wanted to see for trading games.
bungy
Well-known member
There was an Activision game called Star Master that is similar to this description. You had to use the pause button to view a map where you could navigate to enemies. I hated it back in the day, but play it a lot now that I have the patience for it.
Oh, and one of my favorite 2600 games is ET. I don't get what all the hate is about.
Jungle Hunt, Pitfall (II), Moon Patrol, Pong Sports (Sears Tele-Games), and Enduro were some other favorites.
Oh, and one of my favorite 2600 games is ET. I don't get what all the hate is about.
Jungle Hunt, Pitfall (II), Moon Patrol, Pong Sports (Sears Tele-Games), and Enduro were some other favorites.
Star Raiders. You had to navigae the map to get to the enemies.
I loved that game. You could take shield & torpedo damage (one of your guns would stop working), dodge asteroids, dogfight, get blown up in hyperspace if your shields were weak, etc.
You defended your starbase, and had to kill all the enemies before they got to it. Nothing was worse than chasing enemies all the way to the starbase and then, in the middle of battle, hearing a sad little tune letting you know that the base had been destroyed and everyone was dead. And you still had to fight...
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I wrote a letter to Activision suggesting they get the rights to Defender because their games were always so much better than Ataris in-house games(naive kid).
I actually got a letter back from them saying they tried not to make or copy games from the arcade. 3 or 4 months later, Chopper Command was released. Great game and suspiciously similar to Defender!
