Atari Appreciation Thread...[ ]

The Atari 2600...one of the best video game systems of all time. Of all time, yo.




The Atari 7800...completely backwards compatible and improved graphics (Also, I just bought one on eBay).

Atari is so awesome, I felt I should make a thread about it.

Let's show some retro love. But nothing about the 5200, Lynx, or Jaguar. Those were lame. [ ]

BEST GAMES???

Q*BERT, AMIRITE

Yeah, Q*Bert...and also Galaxian, Space Invaders, Ms. Pac-man, Berzerk, Yars' Revenge...man there are so many! [ ]

I had Dungeons and Dragons Daggerdale and Alone in the Dark. I can't remember if I was ever good or understood those games at the time but they took up a lot of my childhood, so they must have been fun, at least.

Gentlemen and ladies...I just won a lot of somewhat rare blue-label Atari 2600 cartridges:



The rarest ones of the lot are Megamania, Demon Attack, and Robot Tank, but they will all make excellent additions to my collection...☻

They don't look like videogames. They look like stone tablets from some long-forgotten civilisation.

Bah...so much you know...[ ]

Jonny wrote:They don't look like videogames. They look like stone tablets from some long-forgotten civilisation.

The year is 1926, Cairo aspiring archeologists discover an ancient map in Thebes, hinting at treasure and lost lore in an ancient buried city. They risk it all.

The unit of archeologists and members of the French Foreign Legion reach the fabled only to be ambushed by Arabs and creatures thought dead and only to exist in mythology and horror stories.

It's a long night of sweat, tears, and blood.
But they've done it.

They've found the ancient treasure of the lost civilization.

River Raid for Atari

I'd play Atari but I can't read cuneiform.

YOU GOT TOLD

So my collection of games has gone from 26 to nearly 60...

...took a trip down to The Exchange today and picked up Air-Sea Battle (black label), Commando Raid, and Laser Blast for $1 each, as well as a QuickShot controller...


...this gonna be a good weekend.☻

So I'm planning to construct a cabinet to hold my growing collection of Atari games...I have hand-drawn blueprints, but I felt the need to open up LibreCAD (and polish off my rusty CAD skills) and make something a bit nicer looking, which also helped me work out exactly how to build it:



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One of the things I really love about games on the Atari 2600 is that, in the manuals, there is often a message from the game designer (complete with picture) on how to be a better player. I see these almost always with Activision games, and it's a really cool personal touch. Often the game designer will even be credited on the cartridge. I guess it hearkens back to an era when a single programmer could create an entire game, something almost unheard of these days.☻

JT_the_Ninja wrote:One of the things I really love about games on the Atari 2600 is that, in the manuals, there is often a message from the game designer (complete with picture) on how to be a better player. I see these almost always with Activision games, and it's a really cool personal touch. Often the game designer will even be credited on the cartridge. I guess it hearkens back to an era when a single programmer could create an entire game, something almost unheard of these days.☻

This is actually something interesting to think about. As we evolve into the digital distribution way of handling information the fact we need no longer need paper manuals anymore has become glaringly obvious.

Buying the newest Resident Evil game I was disheartened when I opened the case and found nothing more then a disk and a couple thin sheets of glossy paper stapled hastily together. I feel like games have become more and more impersonal as we progress into larger, bigger-budget game management.

Manuals are redundant, and a waste of resources now that tutorials and button-command layouts are built in game (popping up on screen to show you the controls if you're really unlucky), but there's something really wholesome feeling about holding a nice manual and knowing the developers spent all that time and effort to tell you about their game.

True, and a lot of times the manuals for Atari games are really helpful, because they'll detail what each game on the cartridge does. Most Atari games have multiple "games" that you switch between with the Select switch, mostly different variants but sometimes different games on the same cartridge. It's also really cool to see what they could do with just one button as far as controls. [ ]

JT_the_Ninja wrote:True, and a lot of times the manuals for Atari games are really helpful, because they'll detail what each game on the cartridge does. Most Atari games have multiple "games" that you switch between with the Select switch, mostly different variants but sometimes different games on the same cartridge. It's also really cool to see what they could do with just one button as far as controls. [ ]

Right?

I remember when I had my genesis collection there were options similar to that where you would switch between versions with 'select' and it was a compact way of adding more value and entertainment to the limited space the cartridges had.

It really was ingenious how they managed their space in creative ways.

Exactly. And there were no hour-long cutscenes or quick-time events...[ ]