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Non-NEC Console Related Discussion => Console Chat => Topic started by: KnightWarrior on September 11, 2015, 12:31:43 PM

Title: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: KnightWarrior on September 11, 2015, 12:31:43 PM
I remember getting the VCS for Christmas with my brother in 80 or something, I don't have a clue what year

Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: johnnykonami on September 11, 2015, 12:40:22 PM
My first game console was a Colecovision with expansion module #1 to play 2600 carts with.  I had some great Coleco carts, but they were outnumbered by 2600 carts easily.  Haunted House was one of my favorites, along with Maze Craze and Outlaw.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: KnightWarrior on September 11, 2015, 12:49:34 PM
E.T got alot of hate by being a bad game

Read the Manual, Can be a good Game
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: wilykat on September 11, 2015, 12:54:28 PM
I can remember the first time I played it.  It was my cousin's in '79 when he had it hooked up at Grandparent's house one holiday.  My parent had a hard time getting me away and ultimately they got me and my bro one for Christmas '80.  It was the Sears "heavy" 6-switch model with pack in Tank Plus (Combat to Atari) and we got Circus as well.

They also discovered they had a hard time getting me off Atari when I visited my aunt's house (her son got one, different cousin) and Adventure game was the one game I spent the most time.  I ended up getting one later along with a few more games like Yars Revenge and Space Invaders.

I also remembered not liking Pac Man because it was so different from the arcade version. I didn't know until many years later it was a hack job because the person who was assigned to create it didn't like Pac Man and didn't bother to follow the pattern.  That and with slower CPU, only 128 byte of RAM, and all it had been made much simpler to make it work.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: SignOfZeta on September 11, 2015, 01:20:29 PM
Proof that %80 of success is just showing up. This system pretty much sucked but with no competition there wasn't much else to play. f*ck...that controller. Kids complain about "Nintendo thumb" but the 2600 stick could have been sold as a strength training device. When you are five years old, trying to get that POS to register "left" was some real work. If there is another stick with a worse ratio of actuation effort versus leverage from the base of the stick, I'd like to know what it is.

Only until the Colecovision though....Once I had one of those 2600 activity was reduced to Warlords, Combat, Megamania, Star Raiders and Breakout...maybe two or three other games. The vast majority of the library is unplayable Stygian crapola.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: johnnykonami on September 11, 2015, 02:00:57 PM
Proof that %80 of success is just showing up. This system pretty much sucked but with no competition there wasn't much else to play. f*ck...that controller. Kids complain about "Nintendo thumb" but the 2600 stick could have been sold as a strength training device. When you are five years old, trying to get that POS to register "left" was some real work. If there is another stick with a worse ratio of actuation effort versus leverage from the base of the stick, I'd like to know what it is.

Only until the Colecovision though....Once I had one of those 2600 activity was reduced to Warlords, Combat, Megamania, Star Raiders and Breakout...maybe two or three other games. The vast majority of the library is unplayable Stygian crapola.

Oh man, Megamania.  Had that one too.  Also Demon Attack!
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: Gredler on September 11, 2015, 02:07:24 PM
River Raid, Keystone Kapers, OUTLAW
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: Black Tiger on September 11, 2015, 02:20:18 PM
My family had Intellivisions. I got to play much less 2600 at friends' houses than I did Collecovision and Odyssey2.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: johnnykonami on September 11, 2015, 02:30:10 PM
River Raid, Keystone Kapers, OUTLAW

I didn't ever have Keystone Kapers but I played it later on and it's great.  Outlaw, I played the hell out of, gotta be one of my favorite 2600 titles and one my original 2 player .VS experiences.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: johnnykonami on September 11, 2015, 02:35:19 PM
My family had Intellivisions. I got to play much less 2600 at friends' houses than I did Collecovision and Odyssey2.


Always wanted to play Intellivision, didn't know anyone who had one though sadly.  That D&D game looked pretty sick.  My Grandparents had an Odyssey 2 which I inherited from them.  They had like 30 games in box, not in superb condition but complete.  I can't honestly say I had lots of good times with the thing, but there are a few good ones, mainly concerning this thing:

(http://www.museumofplay.org/online-collections/images/Z005/Z00539/Z0053991.jpg)

Typed every curse word we knew into that sucker.  Sitting right behind me on a shelf, thinking about getting it out again and involving it in some music production.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: TheOldMan on September 11, 2015, 03:11:31 PM
Quote
It was the Sears "heavy" 6-switch model with pack in Tank Plus (Combat to Atari) and we got Circus as well.

My first Atari, too. Tank Plus sucked, Circus was fun... for a while. The Star Trek game was pretty good, too.

Quote
My first game console was a Colecovision with expansion module #1 to play 2600 carts with.  I had some great Coleco carts, but they were outnumbered by 2600 carts easily.  Haunted House was one of my favorites, along with Maze Craze and Outlaw.

Upgrade time. Had all the colecovision stuff (Turbo wa great).
Haunted House was okay, on the harder levels.
Keystone Kapers was fun, but got boring after a while.

#1 in my heart: Kaboom!
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: johnnykonami on September 11, 2015, 03:18:59 PM
Quote
It was the Sears "heavy" 6-switch model with pack in Tank Plus (Combat to Atari) and we got Circus as well.

My first Atari, too. Tank Plus sucked, Circus was fun... for a while. The Star Trek game was pretty good, too.

Quote
My first game console was a Colecovision with expansion module #1 to play 2600 carts with.  I had some great Coleco carts, but they were outnumbered by 2600 carts easily.  Haunted House was one of my favorites, along with Maze Craze and Outlaw.

Upgrade time. Had all the colecovision stuff (Turbo wa great).
Haunted House was okay, on the harder levels.
Keystone Kapers was fun, but got boring after a while.

#1 in my heart: Kaboom!

You know, we never had paddles, sadly.  I once picked up Demons to Diamonds and could not for the life of me figure out how to play it.  Turned out I needed a paddle controller of course.  Since we had the ColecoVision though those were my controllers.
Title: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: esteban on September 11, 2015, 03:52:31 PM
My first console experience.

Tons of fun games, but Combat, Pole Position and Asteroids were some of the first that I became obsessed with.

Not surprisingly, KABOOM! will always have a special place in my heart.

I won't list all the games I loved.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: lukester on September 11, 2015, 03:54:09 PM
Not a big 2600 fan, but I do like Yar's revenge, adventure, jungle hunt and Phoenix.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: MrBroadway on September 11, 2015, 03:59:51 PM
removed
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: johnnykonami on September 11, 2015, 04:42:28 PM
My first was Pole Position. I can't play it now, but I do still have this nostalgia for games like it. I now have 59 2600 games with a few homebrews. I never understood why nullity hated it, but I think he's just jealous.

Some favorites:

Demon Attack, HERO, Kaboom, Missile Command (best with the trakball hack), Pitfall and Pitfall 2, River Raid, Solar Fox, and Yar's Revenge.

I'd own and list a lot more, but after getting a ColecoVision, I traded out a bunch of 2600 games for the better ColecoVision versions, like Defender, Jungle Hunt, Moon Patrol (homebrewed!), and Venture.

I had Pitstop instead.  It was pretty cool.  Don't worry though, I played Pole Position in the arcade along with Turbo, Super Sprint, Outrun, and well, you name it.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: gheebee on September 11, 2015, 04:46:47 PM
I wanted a Nintendo as a kid but my parents would never buy it for me because they thought it was a waste of money. Instead my dad came home from work one day with an Atari 2600 and a bunch of games that he got from a co-worker. It was disappointing since it wasn't a Nintendo and didn't look or sound nearly as nice but it was the only system I had at the time, I had a few of games, and it was fun playing it for hours on end.
I just hooked it up and played a few games, Demon Attack was by far the best revisit, but as fun as it was it didn't take long for most of the games to annoy me like they used to. The controls are so bad on this thing even with a control pad.
Happy Birthday, Atari 2600! :]
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: johnnykonami on September 11, 2015, 05:30:19 PM
I wanted a Nintendo as a kid but my parents would never buy it for me because they thought it was a waste of money. Instead my dad came home from work one day with an Atari 2600 and a bunch of games that he got from a co-worker. It was disappointing since it wasn't a Nintendo and didn't look or sound nearly as nice but it was the only system I had at the time, I had a few of games, and it was fun playing it for hours on end.
I just hooked it up and played a few games, Demon Attack was by far the best revisit, but as fun as it was it didn't take long for most of the games to annoy me like they used to. The controls are so bad on this thing even with a control pad.
Happy Birthday, Atari 2600! :]

I didn't have a NES either, but I had a couple of buddies who did so I could go over and play theirs.  My best friend got pretty much everything that came out so I didn't miss out on much.  In retrospect, I think I preferred it that way (I did eventually pick up my own NES well into adulthood).  The ColecoVision was a hand me down from my sister who is 8 years older than I am, and of course I enjoyed it, and I also rocked a Commodore 64 which was probably my main gaming platform all the way up to the TG-16.

I think there is definitely something to say about the Atari experience, though.  I think it gave us time to also play outside (or whatever else) as the games didn't require you dedicate so much of your time like they do now.  Classic arcade games are the same way.  You just put in a little of your time, blow some shit up or whatever, and get a little fun from it.  Now you can be glued to a game forever without getting anywhere in it.  I had a couple great experiences but I find it hard to self monitor even in my thirties when everything is designed to psychologically keep you playing!  Case in point, Hearthstone running in the background of this window this very minute...
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: Dicer on September 11, 2015, 07:05:43 PM
Love the 2600 I still rock a few games to this day.

Keystone Kapers
Lazer Blast
Bezerk
Cosmic Ark (f*cking LOVE Cosmic Ark)
Asteroids
Warlords (this is a blast 4 player)
Yars Revenge
Moon Patrol, and the list goes on....

Easy to pick up and play games, not a time sink and you get a burst o' fun and move on with life.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: TR0N on September 11, 2015, 08:28:53 PM
Very first console i ever had as a kid.I can't say i have much nostalgia for it now but when i think of the console it's these games.So have you played you're atari today ?

Enduro
Pitfall
River Raid
Keystone Capers
Missile Command
Berzerk
Ms.Pacman
Kaboom
Frogs and Flys
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: wildfruit on September 11, 2015, 09:12:25 PM
I'm too young for Atari. Though I remember one of my friends had a 2600jnr. Then I saw nes compared to that. No contest.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: Jinxed on September 12, 2015, 04:20:09 AM
Not a big 2600 fan, but I do like Yar's revenge, adventure, jungle hunt and Phoenix.

Same here, not a huge fan but there is a few games i like. my fav for the 2600 is gravitar, such a great game. I can waste hours playing it.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: gheebee on September 12, 2015, 07:23:44 AM
I didn't have a NES either, but I had a couple of buddies who did so I could go over and play theirs.  My best friend got pretty much everything that came out so I didn't miss out on much.  In retrospect, I think I preferred it that way (I did eventually pick up my own NES well into adulthood).

I was actually a lot happier to have the 2600 once I managed to win my NES. People used to complain about the Atari when they were over and I didn't like coming home from playing NES at their houses and only having the Atari but once I had both it was nice to have what they all had and something older that they didn't have. I was kind of like you shortly after in the 16-bit era though, my friend had all the systems and we had a blast playing them, but I never really felt the need to go out and buy most of them.
Title: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: esteban on September 12, 2015, 07:30:32 AM
I sold my NES and all my games to fund TG-16.

I was so happy my friends still had NES because, otherwise, I would have missed out on tons of fantastic NES games.

I wish I had my 2600 and my NES during 16-bit generation...it would have been nice to keep playing the older games at home.

My friend actually got Double Dragon 2600 new because his parents were convinced he didn't need NES.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: EvilEvoIX on September 12, 2015, 08:54:40 AM
My first game console was a Colecovision with expansion module #1 to play 2600 carts with.  I had some great Coleco carts, but they were outnumbered by 2600 carts easily.  Haunted House was one of my favorites, along with Maze Craze and Outlaw.

Same here, although I was too young to really understand it.  It had Smurf and Lady Bug and Donkey Kong.  I was like 2 when I tried it and couldn't really get any where with it.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: SuperGrafx on September 12, 2015, 10:02:45 AM
I have such fond memories of the 2600.
As much as I grew up playing the NES, I'll always be loyal to Atari since that was my first ever gaming console.
Title: Re: Atari VCS/2600 turns 38
Post by: Necromancer on September 14, 2015, 03:53:36 AM
I had a lot of fun on the 2600 growing up.  So many entertaining games, like Towering Inferno, Wizard of Wor, MASH (ferret face!), River Raid, Stampede, Pac-Man, and even ET was okay once I figured out what the point was.