Any Atari Fans Here?

I grew up with it but there was always a game I couldn't find or afford. It's enjoyable to have options to play them now.

As far as hipsters, whatever, they're saving systems from going in landfills or recycle centers.

Kaboom , Crackpot, and Pitfall(2600)

Ninja Golf, Midnight Mutants (7800)

Some of my favorites.

I like what Atari was. I don't really have much desire to play it anymore. From time to time I will but not very often. 2600, 5200, and 7800 are all systems I have shit for, though it stays in the closet for the most part. Some day I may put some of that stuff on a shelf or something and do a youtube video in front of it.

No, but really, I loved it as a kid. I keep it around because I like what it used to be. I like a lot of the box art and things like that but don't have much interest in the games these days.

FAT$TACKS said:

No, but really, I loved it as a kid. I keep it around because I like what it used to be. I like a lot of the box art and things like that but don't have much interest in the games these days.

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Exactly. Good times back in the day as it was all we had. Fun for a trip down nostalgia lane every now and again. These millennial hipsters must be so empty inside to try so hard at convincing themselves the games are still relevant.

madman said:

Exactly. Good times back in the day as it was all we had. Fun for a trip down nostalgia lane every now and again. These millennial hipsters must be so empty inside to try so hard at convincing themselves the games are still relevant.

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I can agree with that. 1985? Yeah, 2600 was fine and I'll admit that I spent a ton of time playing one. Once the NES came along? I didn't pick up a 2600 again until I got one and about 50 games at a garage sale sometime in the late 90s.

Horrible thing. Joystick looks like a finger.

The great video game crash was the best time to be a kid.

Brand new games going on clearance for $1.

My parents (who rarely gave me cool toys or games outside of special occasions) would bring home like a game every week.

madman said:

Well, you have to remember: hipsters. The 2600 is so bad, to them it's good. And the 5200's shit controller = hipster heaven. Anything pre-crash, other than the Vectrex, is pretty hard to stomach even for those of us who were there back then. Back then it was a way to somewhat experience the arcade at home, but now you actually can play the arcade versions at home. It is amusing to see hipsters try to defend this shit, though.

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It had it's day many, many years ago, how anybody can gleam any kind of entertainment from a 2600 is crazy to me.
We were so hungry for arcade ports back then that i even liked the poxy 2600 port of pacman, which has since gone down in infamy as a terrible, rushed out money grabber.
I could never play those games in this day and age, when as you say madman, you can play the arcade versions at home.
I'd really like a vectrex though, there's something about those wire frame graphics combined with the overlay's that are pretty much timeless to an old codger like me.
It also has a port of star castle which i loved in the arcades as a kid.

I have three Atari 1040 ST computers, two ST-Fs and a ST-E with 4MB of RAM. One of the ST-Fs is for creating new patches on my Yamaha FM synths, the other one is for gaming and the ST-F I use for running Notator which is a MIDI sequencer software I make music with.

Also have a new-style 2600 to play some Dogfight and the Tank games every now and then.

Back in the day I also dabbled with an Atari 800XL 8bit computer that I had borrowed from a friend, it was more powerful than my C64 but difficult to program and thus didn't get as much software as other Micros.

Well... it can't be denied that without Atari, the world of video games would have looked very differently.

Growing up a friend across the street had a 2600 (we had an INTV) and we played the heck out of Pacman. Sadly we also played a lot of ET and Superman as well. We simply didn't know any better. In 2017 we know better.

The Vectrex is so unique it's worth it. Minestorm that is built-in is an amazing Asteroids clone. You could do fine with just that game. A lot of the titles are space shooters, but there are some stand out games. Star Castle is a great version, Pole Position is pretty satisfying if you're a racing fan, Scramble is a good port and Web Wars is fun times as well. Then you have the homebrew scene which has its share of stinkers, but plenty of fun titles as well.

I really liked tail gunner as well back in the day, which was another wire frame cinematronics game, vectrex would have been perfect for a port of that.

I'm in the process of seeing if my old computers even work anymore, so... timely thread.

Got the TI-99/4A going last night. In a few weeks I'll be working on the Atari 400 and 800XL.

2600 sucks, good only for a few minutes of play tops, but I like the 7800 and Lynx. Never was the worlds biggest Atari fan.

Atari is dead for a reason. They never evolved. This isn't the music business where you can be Pearl Jam and keep playing "Ten" for 25 years and still make millions of dollars.

madman said:

Growing up a friend across the street had a 2600 (we had an INTV) and we played the heck out of Pacman. Sadly we also played a lot of ET and Superman as well. We simply didn't know any better. In 2017 we know better.

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Superman ... Back then, for the longest time I couldn't figure out what the point of this game was. Because of 2600's limitations, even the most easily communicable of ideas felt surreal somehow. Even though there were games I did enjoy on this platform, I'm for the most part uninterested in it today.

I did however dig Atari's 8bit computers. Hard. Especially when Poland realized they had a large user base longing for new titles. Polish developers made some kick-ass games back then. I'm still a sucker for that Pokey sound. Adam Gilmore composed some kick-ass tunes for the Atari 8bit family. Even though titles like Draconus were released on C64 as well, and even though Adam Gilmore was responsible for the SID music, it just doesn't sound as good.

I suppose if I were going to play Atari these days, this would be how I would want to do it.



Also, when I was a kid, at school they told us some crap about how we are better mentally in the mornings and such after a good breakfast. I would eat my breakfast before I left for school real fast so I could get in a few rounds of DK and try to beat my high score in the morning. I had sticker of the game with a place to write your game scores, it was stuck to a cabinet in my room. I would put my high score on it and and updated as needed. Anyhow, that whole morning gaming thing didn't really help much.

I think my dad has that piece of furniture in his garage still. Next time I go over there I'm going to see if all my old stickers are on it.

The Atari 2600 was my first console I ever got to play. Sort of a hand-me-down from my father, so I played the hell out of it. Yars Revenge was definitely one of my favorites. HATED ET. There were a few others I really enjoyed, but I haven't played my 2600 in years.

Also had a Lynx, which I absolutely loved. I remember playing APB as much as I could. Not the best game, obviously, but loved it in the arcade, so at the time it was awesome to get to play it at home.

I'm not exactly into playing Atari, but my family had a 2600. My sister used to torture me by beating the hell out of me at Pac-Man. I got so pissed.

I read a really interesting story about the game Dragster (Activision's first game) the other day. First, I had no idea there was such a voracious, venomous Atari world record crew out there. Anyways, the record for this game is highly, highly scrutinized. Moreso, these guys treat this game like it's the holy grail of games/records. Really. It's that bad.

ACHTUNG, WALL OF TEXT!! -

Those were the days (circa 1980 ~ 82) when I started dreaming about having a video game system of my own. As in many parts of the world, the 2600 was on its height over here and everyone wanted one. Well, really everyone? I have to say that I wanted one at first but soon changed my mind about it. Before the 2600, the only gaming system I knew of at that time was a box called "Telespiel" released by Quelle, a large mail-order company similar to Sears, etc. They offered a console-style machine with six builtin games, among them Pong, but also a more sophisticated motorbike stuntman game with multicolour sprites (you had to jump over an increasingly long line of barrels) and others. The parents of one of my classmates had one and I often tried to find excuses for visiting him and playing on what I thought was a really great system with lots of cool things to do. Sadly, my classmate's parents did not allow us to sit in front of the machine for longer than maybe half an hour. Before that, our family had a small Pong home system (also bought at Quelle) with Pong, Pelota (play alone against a wall) and Hockey (with two bats per side). Kinda nice but we only had one TV set in the living room back then so playing time was always heavily limited.

A little while later, Philips aquired a license for the Magnavox Odyssey2 and released it over here as Philips Videopac G7000. I already knew about the advantages of cartridges from the Intellivision and 2600 but the G7000 also had a foil keyboard and Philips promised to make full use of it later on with various applications, consequently, the G7000 was marketed as home computer system. Even though I was mainly into gaming, I also had a thing for computers, and when news of the latest computers developed in the US and UK like Commodore VIC-20, Sinclair ZX81, Dragon 32 and of course the ZX Spectrum started to spread over here, my mind slowly wandered away from pure cart-based gaming systems to something more substantial. The G7000 seemed to hit the spot so I started saving up for one. My parents were not too happy about the thought of having one of those noisy things in our home and rightfully feared that the TV set would be occupied 24/7 so they bluntly told me that I was on my own with that computer thingie and should not expect any more financial support for it other than my usual monthly allowance of 10 Deutschmarks (about $5 back then). Considering the price of a G7000 of roundabout 400 Deutschmarks which was less than a new Commodore VIC-20 (that I found very cool back then) but more than a 2600, I buried my plans of owning the system one day.

Things changed dramatically when the Commodore 64 hit the streets in 1983. The father of one of my friends was a travelling salesman who dealt in computer parts and other technical stuff and one day brought a C64 and 1541 floppy drive home for his son. I was thunderstruck by what I saw - the graphics, the sound, the real keyboard, floppy disks... ...wow! The very first game I played was Jumpman Jr. by Epyx which nailed the coffin shut for me; I WANTED ONE, AND WANTED IT BADLY.

At the same time in 1983, the video game market in the US had already crashed. Due to an overload of run-of-the-mill arcade games and consoles with tons of crap (among other things), the bubble bursted and many companies went under or got bought by bigger ones. This was when home computers got a huge shot in the arm, they were deemed superior over simple cart-based machines because you could do much more with it, like writing your own programs in BASIC or Assembly language and become the next video game superstar coder like UK-based Matthew Smith (of Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy fame). The following price drops of the 2600 and G7000 were quite tempting but I stuck to saving up for a C64, and not only that but really worked my ass off for it with all the jobs you could do as a kid, you know, delivering papers, washing cars, going shopping for old folks, and so on.

Meanwhile, my parents had slightly changed their mind about having a computer in our home, partly fuelled by the fact that I had just got a small used colour TV set from my uncle for my 14th birthday. It was kinda broken and glitchy, the antenna was weak and you could barely make out what went on on the screen but our home Pong machine worked on it like a charm so I was convinced that it would also be good for a C64... the change of mind on the part of my parents also improved my financial situation quite a bit, I had saved up about 700 Deutschmarks at that point when they agreed on adding the rest to buy one of those beige breadboxes plus a Datasette (tape-based mass storage device). Yay!

Finally on Christmas day in 1984, a shiny new Commodore 64 entered my life. Even the early games looked and sounded way better than any console game around and software support was huge, specially in the heyday of the system between 1985 and 89. People sold their old Atari consoles left and right to buy a C64, 2600s and other stuff could be had for mere pennies, that was when I bought mine (a Junior model) plus a big box full of bare carts for 20 Deutschmarks. Still have most of it, and yes, some games are still fun to play, like the aforementioned Dogfight and Tank games, River Raid, etc. I even fire up the dreaded Pac Man conversion from time to time and chuckle about its crappiness while at the same time thinking back to little me and the fun we had with stuff like that. Even 2600 Pac Man looked glorious in the late 70s/early 80s, the fact alone that you could play it in your own home on your own TV was enough to make people go crazy over it, it cannot be stressed enough that this was a big thing at a time when playing video games meant going to the arcade and spending lots of money (depending on your skills, of course...) for a short thrill.

So, notwithstanding the ritual idioting of hipsters and retro freaks, the early Atari and video game days were a cool time to be alive.

FAT$TACKS said:

I suppose if I were going to play Atari these days, this would be how I would want to do it.

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Is that a console TV with a freaking flat panel in the cabinet?

Really?

Stupid bitches...

the atari 2600 and some what the 7800 are probably amongst my favourite consoles of all time. for their limitations (especially the 2600) they did a great job of porting arcade games over. i still play yars' revenge, centipede, millipede and joust on the regular.

smokehouse said:

Is that a console TV with a freaking flat panel in the cabinet?

Really?

Stupid bitches...

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Yeah, I can only assume that it was done that way to make it more easy to move for conventions. I don't know for sure though. However if you are going through that much trouble to set up the little fake room then it seems kind of silly even if it is more easy to port around. I think it is one of those Crosley retro tv sets so I would imagine they started out with that and then just put it into the cabinet to make it look more in the day.

Similar to Tak, once I got a C64 that was pretty much where my gaming time was spent. The INTV still got played every now and again, but not quite as much. It wasn't until I got a NES that the C64 began to fade for my gaming, but was still being used into the beginning of the 90's until I got a sweet ass 286-16.

Without the Atari 2600, we wouldn't have had the crash and the NES re-birth of the video games market in the US.... even though the "NES seal of quality " meant shit, because some of those games still sucked...

for Madman's response.... 486 was where it was at!

madman said:

Similar to Tak, once I got a C64 that was pretty much where my gaming time was spent. The INTV still got played every now and again, but not quite as much. It wasn't until I got a NES that the C64 began to fade for my gaming, but was still being used into the beginning of the 90's until I got a sweet ass 286-16.

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I never really stopped playing C64 (and MSX for that matter) games, still have the original system that I bought in '84. I worked in IT starting from 1988 onwards so I was in touch with the latest PC-based hardware but never really considered getting one myself for gaming at first, they were way too expensive over here. That is, I bought one in the 90s, a P200 with 64MB, some expensive ATI gfx card + a Diamond Monster 2MB piggyback, 2940 SCSI card and a 3.2GB Quantum Fireball HD and also played some games on it like Doom, Mech Warrior 2, Quake! and various point-and-click stuff but was more into consoles and micros so PCs mostly were machines for working for me.

When did idiots at garage sales start asking $150 for a 4 switch atari system and a dozen games?