/vr/ - Retro Games

>>349054
Is that really the only reason?

Because they haven't aged well.

>>349059
They suck. Nothing more than a novelty for collectors now.

>>349067
I don't think they suck.

>>349079
Good for you

>>349084
Well shit. Then why can't I find a console with all the chords and a working controller for cheap?

>>349054
oh i'd say adventure has aged well. but it's one of the few exceptions.

>chords

>>349096
Ha ha whoops.

theres only like 10 good games and there are abundant copies of them

>>349176
>only like 10 good games
Which are those?

>>349241
Pacman
Pitfall
Asteroids
BattleZone
Breakout
And a few others.

>>349265
>Pacman
>Atari 2600

>>349265
What about Adventure, Bezerk, space invaders, kaboom, river raid, demon attack, missle command, and solaris? Also why would you put pacman for atari 2600. That's like putting et.

>>349302
Those are good too. that makes about 10. Demon Attack is great. cant' believe i forgot that one.

>>349321
>just listing a few off the top of my head
>adds up to over 10
>that makes about 10

Most games are shit and they made far too many of them those days.

Because no one wants to remember the company and system that almost killed videogames in it's infancy.

>>349443
Was it really Atari's fault though?

>>349443
that was vectrex you ass

>>349458
Whoa, slow down pal. Don't diss the Vectrex. It has an awesome homebrew community.

>>349531
Atari has a better Homebrew community, you CGR-watching piece of shit.

Doesn't OP know that the video crash happened for a reason?

The fact that you can find better clones of every game on every flash site might have something to do with it.

I know there are a few games that are absurdly expensive though.

There are no arcade ports on the 2600 which don't exist on other systems in a better form

Simple: atari doesn't have the branding that Nintendo and Sega and other game companies do, so hipsters never latched on to it.

You can't go into hot topic and buy nearly as much retro atari merchandise as you can nintendo, so hipsters can't buy the shit to show off their nerd cred.

Atari didn't have designated mascot characters so hipsters can't sound knowledgeable about it as easily (e.g. "I love mario and zelda!!")

>>352206
>Simple: atari doesn't have the branding that Nintendo and Sega and other game companies do, so hipsters never latched on to it

More correctly, Atari has nothing to run on but nostalgia or kitsch value. Also it doesn't really exist anymore except as a brand name owned by Hasbro.

All of the modern-day video game industry was born on the NES. The Atari era was really very different from what we think of as gaming now. In a sense, similar to music pre and post-1955.

Is it just me or does OP's image remind you of the old aD&D adventure paths?

Who said Atari wasn't the zenith of gaming ;)

>>352226
the art for those fn games was FANTASTIC.

>>349086
You can buy a Nintendo + controllers (and lightgun) + games for 30 - 40 dollars. If you buy a Gyromite cartridge, you can open it up, and use it to play Japanese games. Most common NES games will range anywhere from a few bucks (on ebay) to $15-20 USD. Gems will cost anywhere from 10-30 dollars. Rare Japanese titles will cost even more.

>>352226
its almost as if it was the same time period and they were both catering mostly to the same demographic.

is still miss that 80s/90s fantasy art

>>352234
You can buy a woodgrain Atari 2600 for roughly the same prize (controllers, games, and console).

>>352241
>and they were both catering mostly to the same demographic

Which was basement-dwelling nerds. D&D/Tolkien stuff was cool in the 80s if you didn't know.

>>352248
price*

I think the Atari 2600 is a beautiful console that has a unique charm to it. Most of the time I get cartridges for like 4€, not as cheap as in america here in germany I guess.

I'm 20, so no nostalgia

>>352231
>50-cent games were unheard of

Oh the hilarity. The hilarity. The bloody, sandy hilarity.

>>352248
Can't you also get one of those Atari Flashback machines and open it up and easily modify it to play actual atari carts?

>>352250
You could see it in a lot of 80s pop culture especially heavy metal songs which often had that fantasy kind of imagery

There's not many 2600 games worth playing except maybe Pitfall and its ports of Winter Games, Kung Fu, and Double Dragon just because they're technical miracles.

Also the 2600 is still widely considered to have the best Space Invaders port

>>352268
heavy metal book report?

>>352268
Listen to Dio-era Sabbath and you'll see what I mean

>>352264
Maybe. I don't know. I think there was a Atari (maybe we are thinking of the same thing) that was released in the 2000's and it could play old cartridges. It was made during the time when people started making homebrew cartridges on Atariage.

I do have to say, the 2600 does have a lot bigger homebrew scene than Nintendo and Sega consoles

>>352264
Well, looking on eBay, I've noticed that a lot of people are selling Atari 2600's bundled with a ton of games for under 60 dollars. One is doing a buy it now with a complete package for 90. You can get a Atari by its self for roughly $15 USD.

>>352272
its the truth... it was built for 1976 ... and they still kicked carts out till the 90s.

BURGERTIME is one of my faves.
the AI is still aggressive, love MEGAMANIA - i miss the rock tie ins and music tie ins that the 80s had - it was cool - The Tubes did a commercial for MegaMania by activision - i met the tubes - saw em in 94 and my old speed dealer's chick used to be the band's babysitter.

If I get more money, I'll consider buying a 2600. God damn the prices are so low compared to the NES. People are selling games on eBay for .99 cents.

>>352293
Only because it's so simple and the games tiny. You can't really make homebrew NES games except for <40k thanks to mappers and the fact that ROM chips are expensive.

>>352304
they made tons of carts.

tons .

literally.

god bless Atari. Thank you, Nolan Bushnell, thank you Todd Frye, thank you Todd Fullopp, Howard Scott Warshaw, all of you at the original campus. You wacky, wonderful you.

Welp, I found a sdk for making atari games in basic. Time to waste hours making some games. If I figure how to make a game, I might make /vr/ the game.

>>352309
It's a little easier with Genesis/SNES since 90% of their games don't have any bank-switching, but even so, ROMs that big aren't cheap.

>>352334
To make a game you install Stella and Visual bb (Atari Basic). Once you do that, you watch, or view tutorials, and you are good to go.

>>352354
Holy crap, this is very easy.

>>352419
well come on, the 2600 has only 4k ROM and 128 bytes of RAM

>>352431
Once I finish a test game, I'll try something more complex.

>>352446
Since you're apparently an Amiga user, try Superfrog on the 2600.

>>352298
meant to say i think i met em, i know i seen em in 94.

need to be clear and try to be honest-ish, haven't done that well with it for 30 yrs.

>>349531
> It has an awesome homebrew community.
WHERE

PLEASE TELL ME WHERE OH GOD I WANT TO PROGRAM THE VECTREX

>>352298
I met the guy who programmed Burger Time. Don't know if he did the original or some port, but he had a little plaque from Mattel congratulating him.

He lives in a tiny, run-down 1-room apartment in southern Arizona.

>>352858
Yes, there is a community to make homebrew games. I don't know where it is, but there are youtube videos with homebrew projects.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbUrl0AALN4
Lightpen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCiP6ka-irI
Vacmania and others

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E85K0tfFgIs
Vector Pilot

>>353068
I know you're probably not still here but how hard is it to learn basic with no previous programming experience? I'd love to be able to make atari games.

Most of Atari's best games were made by 3rd parties or were made late in the 2600's life, so they don't show up in retro collections.

Try playing Solaris, Midnight Magic, Desert Falcon, or any Parker Brothers 2600 game.

Just go pick up an 2600, buy a lot of maybe 50 carts on ebay, make sure you have some paddle controllers, have yourself a good time.

Seriously. It's worth $50-80 just to check out vidya history. You can get these carts cheap, and laugh at the bad ones and be surprised by the playable ones. It's a good experience.

If you're in Portland and want a 2600, I have two extra I can give away. Or you can come over and play with me, I have about 80 games for the VCS.

>>349047
>Why are atari 2600 games worth so little compared to nes and snes games?
because they were crap. you posted the closest thing the atari had to a decent game

we're talking about the console that caused the crash of '83, ffs

>>355993
>how hard is it to learn basic with no previous programming experience?
it's not too terribly difficult

>I'd love to be able to make atari games
then you probably want to learn 6507 assembly. it's a bit tougher than basic

Demand is low. NES games can be collected and enjoyed, whereas 2600 games can largely only be collected. Not only that, but many NES games were either competent arcade ports, or the start of legendary franchises. 2600 games are neither.

>>357575
It wasn't the console itself, it was the saturation of the market with shitty games. Lodes and lodes of shitty games led retailers to marking them down and began a crazy downward spiral.

There's plenty of good books out now that talk about it in detail, Replay is good, there's also Ultimate History to etc etc which is excellent.

Is it weird that VCS Video Tennis is still my favorite sports game?

Random 2600 question: are there any games that have music, and not just sound effects? I'm not remembering anything except Pitfall.

>>352248
May as well get a 7800 if you want to play 2600 games

>>357692

I remember playing a game called Fire Fly that only had one song, that's about 5 seconds long.

I think it's because of shovelware giving the system a bad rap, and the fact that most coherent stories in the game were hard to pull off. Those who could get around this are generally considered the good games from the system.

It's not for lack of appeal (although there really is a lack of appeal to even most retro gamers) but rather because publishers tended to churn out more copies of games then they could have ever hoped to sell, making almost all very common. Too much supply, not enough demand. Simple economics.

Because console gaming didn't really get good until the NES.

>>352298
>Mega-fucking-mania

The sound of your cannon missing that one remaining enemy over and over and over before it finally plowed into you is still embedded in my brain.

>>360980
I agree 100%. During the Atari era, all the good games still worth playing today were on computers.

>>357692
Right here.

>>355993
Basic is very easy. That is why its "Basic". You can make a game with Atari Basic, but to make a game with pizazz, then you'll have to learn Assembly. There are plenty of guides on Atari Age. There is a youtube video explaining how to use Visual BB (tinkernut video, its how I learned the basics). Visual BB is like Visual Basic. It is very easy to make stuff. You draw your sprites then you click and drag your sprites onto the source code.

My goal is to make a sidescrolling shooter like R-type.

>>361913
grab the kool-aid man he makes you invincible.

Man I loved the box art on some of those games. They looked so detailed compared to the actual game graphics themselves.

>>357692
Commando had music, and so did Double Dragon.