/vr/ - Retro Games

My grandpa just passed his childhood Atari 2600 down to my son. What are some good 2600 games for 7-year-olds? Yes, I'm over 18.

It seems to me like there are three reasons why something like the Atari 2600 (taking it mostly as an example, others from around the same period would be good too) is a good choice for 'introducing games to non-gamers.

First, the games are simple. On account of only having four kilobytes (well, sometimes more later on with bank-switching) they had to be- they didn't have room to fit in much more than a minigame by modern standards.

Second, the controller is simple. Just a joystick and one button- you can hardly get much simpler than that. The other controllers like the paddles and driving controllers are also very simple.

Third, and I think most importantly, it was the first popular home game console, meaning there was no real established set of genre conventions you had to know to jump into a game. In those days nearly everyone was new to gaming.

So why don't more people bring up late 70s-early 80s games as a good medium for introducing non-gamers to gaming?

Did video games just suck before the NES came out?

I notice there's no real nostalgia market, financial or emotional, for the Atari 2600.

What's the best way to emulate and play 2600 games without using PC?

if you play this in 2017 you're a tryhard hipster fuck
desu if you were playing it in 1997 you were too

With the resurgence in popularity retro gaming has seen in recent years, it's interesting to note that ATARI and other systems pre-NES are still largely ignored by enthusiasts. For example, even on /vr/ rarely is there any genuine discussion about gaming pre-NES. Why is this? Are ATARI games fundamentally too simple to attract interest? Are NES games the minimum standard of quality people are willing to put up with?

These are still mostly inexpensive. Local Funko Pop! store had a lot of the games for this system priced $1-$5. This system seems resistant if not immune to the bubble.