Atari 2600 Games for Atari 2600 Haters

[louisg]

The only trouble with 2600 Phoenix is that the enemies always appear in the same spots. With a little practice, I was able to take them all out with no effort. I think I played for about an hour and then just turned off the system and walked away.

[BrianC]

Jr. Pac-man was great and has aged well.

It was actually ported by the same company that did the arcade version (GCC). The funny thing is that the arcade version is a vertically oriented game that scrolls horizontally and the 2600 version is a horizontally oriented game that scrolls vertically, so it doesn't lose as much space compared to the arcade as you would think. Even with the awesome 7800 homebrew and the Atari 800 proto (the finished version is only available from some sellers and doesn't seem to have been dumped. It has closer sound to the arcade compared to the 5200 version and lacks the bug that sometimes keeps a level from completing when a power pill is destroyed at the same time), the 2600 is still one of my favorite ports of the game. It feels somewhat more polished than the Atari 800 version (Atari 800 version lacks the intermissions and the music that plays during them, which the 2600 has the latter, though some was cut short) and the ghost AI is very well done.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I played a shoot em up where you controlled a submarine, but I can't remember what it was called. When you fired your torpedos you could adjust their path by moving your sub up and down.

Nautilus?

[louisg]

I played a shoot em up where you controlled a submarine, but I can't remember what it was called. When you fired your torpedos you could adjust their path by moving your sub up and down.

Nautilus?

Sounds like Seaquest to me. That game gets overlooked a lot, but it's not bad. The trick to it is that every time you surface, it levels up the game. So you have to collect enough people first to make it really count. Cool stuff.

[louisg]

Bumping the thread cuz I just added Pressure Cooker, phenomenal game that it is.

[BrianC]

Bumping the thread cuz I just added Pressure Cooker, phenomenal game that it is.

agreed. Garry Kitchen made some good stuff for the 2600.

[BryanM]

I like the little story about that one.

The developer wanted some sexy music to start the game off with. So he hired a musician for a day to write one. He presented the man with a piano with certain keys marked - the only notes that the 2600 was capable of rendering well. "Write meh a jingle" he says to the schmuck.

And the schmuck wrote him a jingle. The end.

[louisg]

I like the little story about that one.

The developer wanted some sexy music to start the game off with. So he hired a musician for a day to write one. He presented the man with a piano with certain keys marked - the only notes that the 2600 was capable of rendering well. "Write meh a jingle" he says to the schmuck.

And the schmuck wrote him a jingle. The end.

Yeah, it sounds good! It seems like the 2600 can do major scales fine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn6RFUtKLgo



Also, the music in Princess Rescue came out great! Check that out if you haven't. It's a version of Super Mario Bros for the 2600. Whoever did it did an amazing job.

[BrianC]

Also, the music in Princess Rescue came out great! Check that out if you haven't. It's a version of Super Mario Bros for the 2600. Whoever did it did an amazing job.

He mentioned it in another post, though I think he played an earlier demo before it was renamed to Princess Rescue.

In Actually Exists news, the guy who was making a Mario clone for the beast in Batari Basic finally got published by Atari Age.

It looks pretty heinous, but playing the demo it's not as bad as it looks. It still misses button presses time to time (and thus killing you) and Mario less inertia than a Metal Slug character or Megaman, but still. (Also I like the "turtle stuck in blocks" bug - I've seen the same thing happen in the arcade version, too.)

Honestly I've not been a fan of attempts of horizontal screen scrolling with the 2600: don't try to change him, he is what he is.

The full version is available for download at the AtariAge forum (as far as I know, it's still up). The store was selling it, but Nintendo issued a c&d, so it's not available in the AtariAge store. I didn't have any issues with missing button presses in the full version, though the game seems to hate some 7800s. I think the music came out pretty good, but I like the music in games like Thrust, Marble Craze, BMX Airmaster, and Pitfall II a bit better.

There's more than just 2600 Sonic music being made. Zippy the Porcupine. Unfortunately since it's 64k, the demo doesn't work on Harmony Cart.

[BryanM]

Took the time to learn how to play ET today. So just in case anyone needs protips on how to move your electric turtle, I'm your guy.

In retrospect I don't think it's that godawful once you know what you're doing. Slightly worse than Yar's Revenge, much better than Superman. Average 2600 fare - remember the great crash happened because that was what passed as "ok" to release, not due to one overprinted turdmaster. ET's still a good icon for the crash - not because it was exceptional, but because it was average.

Putting it in the same bucket of Kusoge as Heroes of the Lance (HotL features being kicked in the shins by nude midgets and spat upon by Mountain-Dew spitting lizardmen) or Stargazer seems a little far, since it's not a complete wretched disaster.

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One thing that's been pestering me is - is it feasible to load a different sprite halfway through drawing a line in time to display it on the other half of the screen, so as to have four colors on a single line using the sprite objects if they're far apart from one another?

That old ancient failed Homestar RPG that one guy started has always made me wonder about the limits of the system.

[Doctor Butler]

20% of Bosconians can't even locate Bosconia on a map.

Even more alarmingly, only about half of respondents correctly identified the following photo of the nation's founders:

Well-played, you deserve a golf-clap.