Atari 2600 Secret Quest

[trey]

The boxed new in the shrinkwrap game did smell new. In fact it looked so new I was looking on the box for the word reproduction because I couldn't believe it was that old. I got it from Telegames and I think it had just been sitting on the shelf all these years.
Vectrex had the cool arcade style vector graphics, and as a result came with its own monitor.
1981 Pacman on the Atari 2600 was a poor effort. I have a copy in my collection, but I rarely play it. On the other hand 1984's Jnr. Pac Man for the 2600 is as good as the arcade. Each ghost is a different color, they have facial expressions, Jnr Pac Man changes body direction depending on where you are pointing. You get the big scrolling mazes, in several different colors. Great sound effects. This was one of the 16k game carts that was released in the late 80s when the 2600 console was relaunched as the 2600 jr. The original 1981 Pac Man 2600 was only a 4k cart.

Jnr. Pac Man 2600

Some links on the Magnavox Odyssey:

Odyssey 1

Odyssey 2

Odyssey 2 screenshots

 

[dfergie]

And we paid 40-50$ new for these...

 

[BobMurdoch]

Which is probably about $80-100 in 2005 dollars. Jeez, how the games have changed. I look forward to being one of those 65 year olds with a joystick in my hands (by then we'll hopefully have games so advanced they'll be indistinguishable from the real thing.......)

 

[dfergie]

Which is probably about $80-100 in 2005 dollars. Jeez, how the games have changed. I look forward to being one of those 65 year olds with a joystick in my hands (by then we'll hopefully have games so advanced they'll be indistinguishable from the real thing.......)

Be VR codgers huh?...

 

[BobMurdoch]

I keep waiting for the same VR experience they were pushing in the movie Brainstorm........

Of course, I'm still waiting for hovercars too so this PROBABLY won't happen anytime soon.

 

[trey]

Many of Atari's early coin ops made it into the early 2600 games. Tank became Combat, Gran Trak 10 and Crash N' Score made their way onto the 1977 2600 game "Indy 500". Breakout was a hit in the arcades and on the 2600. Plus, if you have the 2600 cart Air Sea Battle, you will recognise Atari's 1974 coin-op "Quak" in one of the cart's variations, as the one where you get to shoot the ducks. The ducks did veer away from missed shots on the 2600 version, but, unfortunately the 2600 version of Quak didn't have the onscreen dog to retrieve shot ducks : ( I suppose many people dismiss the early 2600 games without realising that they are ports of what were successful arcade games in the very early days (1972-76).

70-74 coin ops

75'

 

[dfergie]

The game that came with most is my favorite... Space Invaders....

 

[tdti1]

I love spider fighter my bro has it on his PC, damn I suck now!!!

 

[trey]

The great thing about the 2600 Space Invaders cart is that if you hold the reset button down when turning on it enables the double shot facility which makes things more interesting. Plus it allows simultaneous 2 player action which was big stuff in those days.
This F-1 game by Namco was one of the first games I ever played in the arcade.

F-1 (Namco)

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[MustangLX89]

I just packed up a heap of 2600 and 7800 games with a 7800 system a few days ago during the move to our new place. I've got a bunch of obscure (at the time) games and nicely enough they all work. I even have one that's a knockoff of Space Invaders made by Coca-Cola. Basically it looked the same but with Coke and Pepsi colors. You would shoot the Pepsi "aliens" in the same way as the original. Just for preservations sake I try to get them on Playstation and Playstation 2 disks. They made a few but didn't get to many copies I suppose. The only places I've been able to find them are at second time around video game stores. I let my friends kids (ages 3, 8, 10) play a few of them and they were hooked. Surprisingly enough they said they liked them more than regular PS2 games. At first they didn't think we had gaming systems when we were kids. You know I had to break out with the original system then. They about passed out seeing a game system that old still working.

 

[dfergie]

I don't know how many times I took my joysticks apart and cleaned or traded parts to make one work better, or just plain old work...

 

[BobMurdoch]

Or how many times I wore my thumb raw (I didn't wrap my hand around the stick..... I used to hold the base and strecch my thumb until it pressed down on the top of the stick.... I found it easier to control this way.... but extended sessions could give me a blister)

 

[dfergie]

I used left hand to hold, left thumb for button and right hand for control...I think I've slept since then....

 

[trey]

I used to hold the old 2600 controller the same way, but the palm still got sore. Much later on I discovered their joypad controller and that is very comfortable.

Joypad controller

The 7800 console of 1986-92 is pretty rare, only 2 million sold in the US. This was the time when the NES was dominating and the Sega Master System and 7800 were in the minority.
You might recognise the 7800 casing as the one used on the early 80s Sears Telegames II console, which was basically a 2600 with four controller ports and controllers with joystick & paddle controller in one.

Sears Telegames II

 

[GEOCOLLINS]

Got my Atari 2600 for Xmas in '80 or '81. It came with Space Invaders and Combat. Video Pinball, Frogger, Night Rider with the paddle controllers and Pitfall were my 4 favorites as a kid. Atari still works. Don't play it that much anymore..A Atari case I have holds the cartridges and handles.

 

[dfergie]

I also still have a ColecoVision somewhere... Zaxxon and Donkey Kong....

 

[GEOCOLLINS]

I have a Zaxxon Atari Cartridge. You fly over these barricades and go through holes just big enough for the plane. You need to land to get fuel by crashing into the pumps. Longer you live, faster you go. I haven't played it in 5-10 years. Favorite game I never got was QBert that others had.

 

[jbcheshire]

yeah, i loved Qbert arcade version!!!

What's cool is a lot of those games coming out retro for my gameboy advanced SP and N64. I've got the Robotron?? for N64 and it's great.

 

[TuxCoder]

Ok, now you guys are forcing me to post this.
Here are the games I can remember owning back in those days ('82-87, before we got the NES that stole my attention), in order of most to least favorite:

1. Warlords         7. Q*bert               13. Air-Sea Battle
2. Kaboom!          8. Space Invaders       14. Combat
3. Demon Attack     9. Pac-Man              15. Casino
4. Jungle Hunt     10. RealSports Football  16. Breakout
5. Super Breakout  11. Bowling              17. E.T.
6. Mario Bros.     12. Asteroids

I personally found Demon Attack more enjoyable than Space Invaders (it's similar to Space Invaders). I think Jungle Hunt was just a Pitfall! knockoff, but I didn't know about Pitfall! back then, and loved Jungle Hunt. Also, Super Breakout kinda overshadowed Breakout, so I didn't really ever play Breakout. But E.T. I did (try to) play on occasion, and it was just lame.

 

[dfergie]

almost wore out my joysticks playing dragster... an activision game...I went to C-64 games after the atari faded and coleco did not take off...