POLL POLL: Favorite Arcade Game On The Atari 2600

Space Invaders.

Space Invaders was the game that drew a lot of new owners to the VCS. I will never call it the 2600, ever.
 
Missile Command. Not quite as hard as the arcade, so I got to spend more time with it.
 
Ms Pac-Man was pretty good at capturing the original gameplay and almost made up for Pac-Man.

Warlords was fun; especially with 4 players.

Stargate was some sort of miracle. I have no idea how they squeezed that game onto the VCS.

Missile Command was probably my favorite.
 
+1 for Stargate - it's an absolutely amazing port, with all the controls and nearly all the enemies intact.

Jr.Pac-Man is also quite well done, and is by far, the best of the Atari-released Pac games for the 2600.

Kyle :cool:
 
Tough one...

It was so different back then, in that if you were a 2600 owner, you just hoped for something that was kinda-sorta...there was no point in setting standards any higher than that, given the hardware. To most game designers' credit, they did try to make up for the extreme downgrades from the arcade versions by including several game options (Space Invaders had 16 basic game variations IIRC, but 112 with all of the one and two player options of those 16 variations included).

Anyway, in spite of the obvious limitations, here's what I played the shit out of:

Space Invaders
Pac-Man (yes looking back on it, it was awful...that terribly redundant maze design...)
Asteroids (the more difficult game selections were a pretty solid rendition of the arcade gameplay)
Ms. Pac-Man (absolutely amazing conversion that unfortunately wasn't enough to wash the bad taste of Pac-Man out of players' mouths)

Some other ports were definitely good (Phoenix comes to mind immediately, and Centipede wasn't bad either).

Of course, as everyone here probably knows, part of what helped to usher in the 1983 crash was the fact that a complete shit version of Pac-Man (the one that made it to market was supposed to be a prototype) managed to sell seven million copies (though far short of the 12 million produced)...it was a double-edged sword, in that Atari was convinced that as long as a game had big-name recognition, that aspect alone would sell both the game AND more 2600s no matter what. That led to the double-whammy of Pac-Man and ET (poor Howard Scott Warshaw had just 5 1/2 weeks to develop ET...when you look at the graphics and the animations, regardless of what you think about the quality of the game, it's amazing that Warshaw was able to pull off as much as he did. Given another month, he would've turned in a solid game).
 
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Space Invaders.

Space Invaders was the game that drew a lot of new owners to the VCS. I will never call it the 2600, ever.

That's why I called it 'Atari'. That's all we ever called it back then. Not 2600, not VCS, not "Woody" or "Vader" or any of the the other foolish Internet Era nicknames either. Simply "Wanna play Atari?" "Mom, can we play Atari on the Color TV tonight?" "Let's go over to Troy's and play Atari." I can't quite remember but wasn't the Moon Patrol port pretty good too?
 
That's why I called it 'Atari'. That's all we ever called it back then. Not 2600, not VCS, not "Woody" or "Vader" or any of the the other foolish Internet Era nicknames either. Simply "Wanna play Atari?" "Mom, can we play Atari on the Color TV tonight?" "Let's go over to Troy's and play Atari." I can't quite remember but wasn't the Moon Patrol port pretty good too?

Yep, ATARI it was. :)
(never did read the fine print)

atari-logo2028129-100336584-orig-100421149-large.jpg
 
That's why I called it 'Atari'. That's all we ever called it back then. Not 2600, not VCS, not "Woody" or "Vader" or any of the the other foolish Internet Era nicknames either. Simply "Wanna play Atari?" "Mom, can we play Atari on the Color TV tonight?" "Let's go over to Troy's and play Atari." I can't quite remember but wasn't the Moon Patrol port pretty good too?

Good point. That's what I called it too back then. Just "Atari"...and even when I got my Atari 800 back in 1983, the 2600 was still just "Atari".

800 was very capable of great-for-the-day arcade conversions. Though some of the 5200 versions were more-or-less direct ports, some improved greatly on the 800 versions (5200 Pac-Man added intermissions, 5200 Centipede was completely redone with far better results, etc).

Moon Patrol was decent given the lack of 2600 horsepower. 2600 Pole Position was actually pretty damned good...not that far behind the 800/5200 versions, all things considered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSfWuN0sZqs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2jLrNYzyr8
 
For those who still play their Atari 2600, get the multi cartridge with the SD card in the top.

You can load every single game ever made onto the SD and have them all at your finger tips! Super awesome!

It's only about $75 and well worth it.
 
The Moon Patrol port was my favorite. I own a dedicated upright Moon Patrol because I cut my teeth on the 2600 version.
 
Juno First on the 2600 is really good, but it's homebrew though so not sure if that officially counts. If we're only talking about original games back in the 80s then Space Invaders would be my pick.
 
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