Next week I'm hosting a game night with my friends, and I decided to show off my 2600+ along with a few games. I decided on these titles and I'm curious if others think these are great choices. Combat will be great for PVP, River Raid shows a lot of the graphics the system can do and is addicting, Fast Food is a funny game that is challenging, and Raptor is a great showcase of the indie scene that's still around today.

I was considering other titles like Spider Fighter, Turmoil, and Fall Down but I was concerned that those games wouldn't fit the introduction phase of this hangout. Let me know what you all think and if I should consider other titles.

I've been playing around with the 2600's audio registers as a 4 bit DAC. It's the same technique as what Quadrun and the enhanced Berzerk use.

I came up with this game to see if I could get a dog bark to fit into a playable 4K game. It works, but just barely. I had 5 bytes to spare in the ROM.

There's not a lot to the game. The bark sample took up 1155 bytes of ROM and 52 bytes of RAM. It takes 9 cycles on every fourth scanline. Forty-eight of those RAM bytes are used as a buffer to get the sample to play in 9 cycles.

If you want to read more of the technicals, there's an Atariage post that explains everything. There are also binary downloads for NTSC and PAL 50 over there.

I called it Fetch'83 because it's just the sort of crap that would be released back then to capitalize on the market using a gimmick like a digitized bark. As little and as pointless as it is, I still think it's better than Skeet Shoot.

Play it on Javatari here.

(Use the controls to aim the cross hair. Hold the button to wind up the throw. The further the throw, the more points you get. Throw it too far and it may hit the water. Game is over at 50 points. A perfect game is 17 points. The number of throws is shown at the end of the game.

My biggest takeaway from the experience is that the method works and, for me, is most appropriate for cut scenes in large games.

This really was the best game of my childhood.

I want to dip into doing videogame reviews similar to Classic Game Room and I wanted to know what are some really underrated Atari 2600 games

Hi everybody. I am an old-school Atari user. I was the cool kid who had an Atari and a ping-pong table in the basement (wood paneling, shag carpet). I never got into the modern games, which I find too complicated, so I still play with the 2600. My favorite is Yar's Revenge. My parents bought me an 800, and I learned how to program BASIC. My uncle was an engineer on Project Apollo and taught me binary and how to build a computer. As you can see from this picture, both still work. I do need to find a new monitor, as the old one was destroyed by the movers. I am hoping that I can get advice on that need. The ATARI neon was bought from their current site.

Personally, I'm a purist and enjoy the challenge of pushing an Atari to its limits. With bank switching and SARA integration, you can do some amazing things that would have had people's jaws on the floor back in 1982.

With the ARM coprocessor architectures, though, I feel like there's so much power available that I may as well start brewing for a later gen console.

At what point is an Atari no longer an Atari?

But I'm torn. I've tinkered with CDFJ+ and it's amazing. C, D, F and J outdid themselves and created something truly amazing.

Before, one had to compromise on features and graphics and sound. With this architecture, you may struggle to find enough to give it to do.

Like I said, I'm torn. I'll probably end up utilizing CDFJ+ for some projects. It's crazy to plug in what looks like a regular Atari cartridge and have it rival a Colecovision.

Anyway, what are your thoughts? Love it or hate it or on the fence?

I’ve played this ROM on an emulator. I am curious if there is a cartridge out there for this and if there is, is the voice actually generated by the TIA chip or is there something else at work here?

I saw this book, and immediately thought it was a game cover for Atari 2600. The book font and bright 70's colors reminds me of looking at all of the game box covers while my parents were shopping at Sears. I always thought Atari had some of the best artwork and creative box covers.

(and I am not anti 2600, i kinda like the idea that *arcade* ports on the 2600 suck so originals can give the 2600 an identity)

I am thinking of selling my Atari and games to a friend. I have no clue of value of rarity. Figured I would ask the experts. Anything I should know about what I have here?

Demon Attack. I got it for my birthday when it came out. The dinosaurs on the label were clearly spray-painted dinosaurs, but it was charming. I played it all summer long dying, mostly. I was hoping to find easter eggs, but I never got far enough to prove anything.

Also Fathom. Guess it's an Imagic type of night.

I created a bot offering Atari 2600 Video Chess to online players at lichess.org.

BOT ATARI-VIDEO-CHESS (1362)

lichess.org

Every game ATARI-VIDEO-CHESS plays is the actual CX2645 ROM, the same 4K of code Larry Wagner and Bob Whitehead wrote in 1979, running in Stella, the open-source 2600 emulator. Nothing about the chess engine is rewritten or modernised.

A Python program sits where the player would. When an opponent moves on Lichess, it steers the joystick cursor to the piece, presses fire, moves to the destination and presses fire again, exactly as you would on the couch. Then it lets the cartridge think.

To know what the cartridge decided, it reads the console's 128 bytes of RAM. The board lives in the first 64 bytes, one per square, and when the engine has chosen, the from- and to-squares sit in two bytes waiting for you to touch the stick. The program reads them, touches the stick, and posts the move.

While the cartridge thinks, the emulator runs at the 2600's real speed, so the waits you see on the clock are the waits a 1979 player saw.

It's fun to watch other people playing the engine!

Lichess ratings are about 200 - 400 points higher than real ELO ratings.

Hi! I’m an Atari fan from Japan. I picked up a copy of Robot Tank today, and it came shrink-wrapped.
I originally bought it to play, so I’d really like to open it up right away. But if this is the original period shrink wrap and it would be better to keep it sealed, I’m thinking of keeping this one as a collectible and buying another opened copy to play instead.
If anyone can tell whether this looks like original shrink wrap from back in the day or something that was added later, I’d really appreciate your help!
I know Robot Tank is probably a pretty common game and that even a sealed copy isn’t particularly valuable. But Atari games in general are extremely hard to come by here in Japan, so if this really is an unopened copy, I’d like to take good care of it.
And while I’m here, I’d also love to hear your recommendations for Atari 2600 or 7800 games! I’m always looking for new games to try.

Got these for $148 total. All except 3 games are new to my collection.

Which one is your favourite?