Behold, the power of Atari's 2600!! (2 Viewers)

[Camp]

I just couldn't hold these back! The use of all 8-colors is simply stunning.

Air/Sea Battle: those planes are actually moving!

Asteroids: Yes! Finally a console that can draw 4 asteroids per frame!

Canyon Bomber: And you thought gameplay innovation ended with Pong! Even grandma's glaucoma won't stop her from reading the score.

Star Wars Arcade: Good night GameCube! Pappa Lucas has a new #1 console!

-Camp
[Edited last by Camp on August 02, 2001 at 11:42 PM]
[Edited last by Camp on August 02, 2001 at 11:44 PM]

 

[Adam Nixon]

Absolutely stunning -- words cannnot express the beauty of these shots. I actually HAD some of those games for my 2600.

 

[Calvin Watts III]

Had???
Heck, I HAVE these games for my Atari 2600

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"Don't make me angry....You wouldn't like me when I'm angry......"

 

[Sean Oneil]

WoW I had forgotten what 'Low-Res' was.

These games may look BAD (and boy do they ever) but the concept behind the video game was revolutionary.
Now THAT'S power!
Great shots! I miss the game 'Adventure' with the dragons 'Rendel' 'Grendel' and 'Yorgel' each named to coordinate with they're respective colors.
[Edited last by Sean Oneil on August 03, 2001 at 03:28 PM]

 

[Dean Cooper]

Check these out
http://www.atari-history.com/movies/thefly.avi
http://www.atari-history.com/movies/funisback.avi
http://www.atari-history.com/movies/mtv_centipede.avi
Dean
[Edited last by Dean Cooper on August 04, 2001 at 01:42 AM]

 

[Jesse Skeen]

When the 2600 was developed, all it was meant to handle were two moving objects and a ball. Considering that it's impressive some of the things they got it to do- "Star Wars Arcade" was rather impressive when it came out (though I was quickly able to reach the point in the game where it stopped getting any harder and I could literally last FOREVER!) Often they had to cheat by flickering multiple moving objects which is why the ghosts in "Pac-Man" flicker- there's really only one on the screen at a time. With "Ms. Pac-Man" they figured out how to stretch the limits a bit further, so characters only flicker when they are close to each other.
Has anyone ever flipped the "TV Type" switch to black-and-white to see the alternate color schemes used on some games to make them more visible on black-and-white screens?
I wish I knew how to add an S-video output and direct audio out to a 2600.
One thing I never figured out is why does every game have those lines on the left-hand side of the screen?

 

[Jason Seaver]

The thing is... Many 2600 games are fun. Insanely so. In college, we would have marathon "Combat" sessions (and it was 1994-5, so we could have done better), and I can still blow an afternoon on "Circus".
When you consider what the programmers did with 128 bytes of RAM, a 1MHz processor and 2-4K of ROM, some of those games are truly astounding.

 

[Rob Varto]

Remember when you could get the "On/Off" button half stuck and double shoot on Space Invaders? I can't believe how far we've come.
Great pics Camp!

 

[Andre F]

Canyon Bomber looks awesome.

-Andre F
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-= Take your stinking paws off me you damn dirty ape! =-

 

[Jesse Skeen]

A lot of games do weird stuff if you turn the system off and on real fast- I saw this being called "Frying" on the rec.games.video.classic newsgroup.
A point that bears repeating- yes, these games were simple technologically, but they were FUN! Maybe I'm just getting old, but I was REALLY into video games back in the day, and now they just don't do it for me. I've had a Playstation 2 for a couple months now and the games I play the most on it are Pac-Man (from the Namco Museum disc) and the "Classic" version of Space Invaders (which you can only get to when you 'beat' the new-fangled version- which is fun but why'd they have to let it end like that when the original goes on forever???)