/vr/ - Retro Games

[Atari Thread (All consoles, al(...) No.1886443]

Why don't you /vr/eaks and other gaming retroists ever talk about Atari?

[Anonymous No.1886446]

Atari games tend to be shit.
Atari almost killed gaming in general.
Atari hasn't produced anything of worth in over 30 years.

[Anonymous No.1886449]

With their policy Atari almost killed videogames years ago.

[Anonymous No.1886454]

>>1886446
>>1886449
they also made some awesome stuff too, guys and the 2600 is a legendary console

[Anonymous No.1886458]

They played a pretty huge part in the PC proprietary shitfest of peripherals for a long time too. Though I guess Atari was a different company during that time but still another reason I don't really play or collect much Atari.

[Anonymous No.1886464]

>>1886443
Because everyone here is underage. I've tried to start 5200, 7800, and Jaguar threads and they've never went anywhere. It's a shame. The 2600 is my favorite console to collect for.

[Anonymous No.1886468]

Shit's fucking archaic, not retro

[Atari Thread (All consoles, al(...) No.1886484]

>>1886464
See, that's what I'm figuring. I mean, all this shit about Atari almost killing gaming is a bit asinine, considering its been over 30 years since it happened. Besides, it wouldn't have even killed gaming, you melodramatic dorks., it would have all just been on computers or someone else like Sega would have stepped in. So yeah, probably just underage early 20-something giggling about how it looks like blocks and has no save features or whatever.

Regardless, I too collect for the 2600 and the 7800. I particularly like Yar's Revenge, Joust and Boxing.

[Anonymous No.1886491]

>>1886464
>>1886464
Underage is under 35 to you, I assume? Sorry we're not in our 40s, 4chan might not be for you.

[Anonymous No.1886498]

>>1886484
It killed console gaming. Console gaming was dead for a short while. I'm not going to pretend I was around during that time but it's part of the history.
Speculating about what would happen if Nintendo didn't come into the game is interesting though. Console gaming was still going strong in EUland and Japen.

I grew up with the snes/genesis but also played the nes. Games before that era aren't forgotten to me but I have very little interest in playing most of them. Mainly just the arcade games and not the home consoles.

[Anonymous No.1886504]

Old photo of my Atari collection. I now have a 7800 that looks beat to shit, NICE video on RF, buuuut the audio is pure static. Fucking nobody has documented the system, so beyond drawing a fucking circuit diagram myself after scanning the mainboard and re-engineering half the fucking system, I have no way to know what the fucking problem is.

Anywho, I was down with Atari since before Reagan was president. My favorite game as a kid was TOMCAT: THE F14 FLIGHT SIMULATOR. I have it for 7800 now, but the 2600 version was the jewel of my collection. Chopper Command was fucking rad, and my mom played the hell out of Cosmic Ark. I inherited my grandmother's 2600 and everything for it. It was the family Atari for decades, what everyone dicked around with while Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were being prepared. I'm probably the only person in the whole family who would appreciate such a gift, and I'll never get rid of it.

[Anonymous No.1886505]

>>1886484
Eh, I'm 25 and I like the Atari 2600, though it was way before my time.

>>1886458
Atari was split into two companies after the crash, one that made arcade games and one that made hardware.

>>1886468
Seriously, dude

[Anonymous No.1886510]

>>1886464
Id participate in the jaguar threads if you want, Just because of its firstperson shooters like doom, wolfenstein, alien vs predator, and iron soldier.

[Anonymous No.1886528]

>>1886505
I'm 29 and I like the Atari. The 2600/7800 is great for arcade 'ports'.

>>1886498
It was "dead" for the industry, but not the people playing the games. The common gamer didn't stop and there was still console games under the Christmas tree for kids in the early-mid 80s.. It was mainly an industry thing. Kinda like how the economy has 'recovered' since the Great Recession, but everyone is still having an ass of a time trying to find a job and no one can afford shit, except the vice versa.

[Anonymous No.1886565]

>>1886528
It wasn't just the gaming industry. The retailers also got hurt and wouldn't stock video games. What people did buy was just old stock.

[Anonymous No.1886569]

Since most of us were too young for the Atari, why don't we get a list of good Atari games to start with.

Anyway, people always complain about the low quality of 2600 games, but when I pick a random game on my emulator I find something cool way more often than I find something lame.

[Anonymous No.1886578]

>>1886484
>Yar's Revenge
One of the best on the system and still boring

>Joust
Inferior port

[Anonymous No.1886602]

>all this millennial know-it-all faggotry

Jesus, the "crash" only happened in the US. Atari didn't cause it, just that they were the industry leader at the time and suffered the most from it. Meanwhile the average consumer didn't care less or barely even knew about it. The market was being saturated with shit product, the video game medium was still fairly new and had reached its peak. It was inevitable there'd be an economic downturn.

But go ahead and tell us more about shit you don't know about and weren't even alive to witness yourself.
Lol atari a shit amirite guys?

[Anonymous No.1886613]

>>1886602
Activision is more to blame than Atari. They, being the first third party showed that any bozo could make their own 2600 game, opening the floodgates

[Anonymous No.1886627]

It's because of the age range.

I'm 28, and I already see how the 8 bit is in the same state Atari, Coleco and other 2nd gen consoles and gems used to be talked like, 10 years ago: mostly men in their 30s who still cherished these old systems and games, but people from a newer generation (mine) had only scratched the 2nd gen briefly and the true core of our gaming experience was with the 3rd and 4th gen, and the 5th gen was in the same "not retro yet" position of the 6th gen consoles right now.

A high portion of the people posting here are 1 generation younger than mine, and 2 generations younger than the Atari crowd, that is, the guys who are nearly 40.

However, all discussion is welcome, don't feel discouraged to talk about it, nobody talks because few people here actually played these consoles, or only know about them through the bad stuff (ET, crash of 83, etc)

[Anonymous No.1886641]

What is there to talk about Atari and it's games?

Their titles were back when games were in their most primitive state for home use. There's hardly anything to discuss or bring up when it comes to something like Combat or Yar's Revenge.

[Anonymous No.1886649]

>>1886446
>Atari hasn't produced anything of worth in over 30 years.
Forgetting something?

Also Atari computers were top tier.

[Anonymous No.1886663]

>>1886602
>Meanwhile the average consumer didn't care less or barely even knew about it
And this is why no one gives enough shit about that time period to play the games or talk about them much.

[Anonymous No.1886673]

>>1886641

Personally Id love to know more about the POKEY chip in the 2600, and if anyone has developed an lsdj type program for it.

[Anonymous No.1886676]

>>1886673
Try synthcart

[Anonymous No.1886687]

Man, Atari gets no respect. No respect at all!

[Anonymous No.1886690]

>>1886663
>quoting out of context
>that time period
>play the games or talk about them much
>no one

Yeah, no one plays games like Space Invaders, Pac Man or Defender anymore. They're total worthless irredeemable shit not worth discussing yes?

[Anonymous No.1886698]

>>1886443
>Why
Has seeing all the BS regurgitated by kids ITT answered your question?

[Anonymous No.1886712]

>>1886676
Thats perfect anon, thanks!

[Anonymous No.1886719]

Good question. I love Atari. I own a 7800 with the box, owned a Lynx up until about 6 months ago, owned a Jaguar for a while and had fun with it but then it got a little tired, and semi-owned an Atari 400 when my great-uncle left it at my house for a grip.

The 7800 is one of my favorite systems of all time. Best 8-bit ports of arcade games and who can turn down also having access to the entire 2600 library as well? Those controllers though...fuck. They're terrible. Luckily, the brits got an awesome controller that is easy to find online and not too expensive and you can also use 2600 or Genesis controllers. Yes, Genesis controllers.

[Anonymous No.1886724]

>>1886613
Conversely they also showed that third party developers could make top shelf games.

[Anonymous No.1886727]

>>1886724
Also that the road to hell is paved with the best of intentions.

[Anonymous No.1886730]

>>1886719
The 7800 is greatly underrated.
Seriously mishandled by Atari and never reached its full potential.

[Anonymous No.1886732]

>>1886690
>list of games that are arcade ports
>people giving a shit about the ultra shit teir console versions
Everyone point and laugh!

[Anonymous No.1886745]

>>1886730

Nope, it was brilliant. However, I don't think Atari was completely to blame. Arcades were just dying by the late 80's and early 90's. Everyone was favoring the more in-depth games that provided a deeper experience than racking up a high score. Even so, Atari never really put any effort into newer games. Most 7800 games are just 8-bit (granted, excellent) ports of the same games people had been playing since the 70's.

Doesn't mean it's not my favorite way to play those games, however. ;D

[Anonymous No.1886746]

>>1886732
>games of that time period

You (or that poster) made a blanket statement.
Seriously, try to think and thoroughly read what you are writing next time you post. OK?

[Anonymous No.1886753]

>>1886746
The thread is about Atari. Some one brought up the video game crash and the consumer ignorance to which I posted in reference "that time period". You went autistic and assumed I meant every fucking game ever because you can't into relevance and only extremes.

[Anonymous No.1886761]

>>1886690
Talking about the original arcade versions:
>Space Invaders
Shit

>Pac Man
Not shit but not really worth playing when you could play Ms. Pac Man

>Defender
Great

[Anonymous No.1886767]

>>1886745
It was originally to be released in 1984, shelved due to internal bullshit within Atari then relaunched in 86.
If it were released as planned it was still during the highscore-arcade era and could have made a bigger impact. The two years spent on the shelf was seriously detrimental and it was pretty much redundant on release.
But still was successful for Atari

[Anonymous No.1886775]

>>1886753
Nice buzz words and 4chan rhetoric broheim.
Isn't there be another board you could be shitposting on?

[Anonymous No.1886790]

>>1886775
You should stop.

[Anonymous No.1886797]

>>1886790
Stop what, trying to civilly discuss the topic at hand, or responding to shitposting?

[Anonymous No.1886798]

>>1886775
That word. It doesn't mean what you think it means. Your childish demeanor. It belongs here.

>>>/v/

[Anonymous No.1886802]

>>1886798
You should stop.

[Anonymous No.1886805]

>>1886802
>>1886797
Please stop.

[Anonymous No.1886809]

>>1886767

Essentially everything I just said with a little more depth and detail. :D

[Anonymous No.1886819]

>>1886498
Except in Europe and Japan, where things were just dandy. Or did you forget that the Famicom came out in the same year as the oh-so-horrible 'console crash'?

[Anonymous No.1886824]

>>1886690
>>1886732
>>1886746
>>1886753
>>1886775
>>1886790
>>1886797
>>1886798
>>1886802

Chill, lads. We're just here to talk about video games, this shit doesn't affect you personally. Haha.

[Anonymous No.1886826]

>>1886819
>Console gaming was still going strong in EUland and Japen.
read.

[Anonymous No.1886835]

>>1886569
Okay, here's some personal favorites:

Adventure games:

Adventure
Haunted House
Pitfall!

Action games:

Crystal Castles
Demon Attack
Ms. Pac-Man
Kaboom!
Berzerk
Chopper Command
Battlezone


Vs. Games:

Flag Capture
Outlaw
Combat
Pong Sports
Warlords
Air-Sea Battle
That's some of my personal favorites. There are others I can't recall right now, as there's a huge number of Atari games.

[Anonymous No.1886847]

>>1886690

Better on other consoles.

[Anonymous No.1886848]

I'm surprised the 2600 is getting so much hate. It has a ton of fun pick up and play games and it's so cool aesthetically. That sound chip is just awesome.

Fun facts about the 2600:
-There's not enough RAM for a proper frame buffer, so the screen has to be rendered one vertical line at a time.

-It has pixel perfect hit detection built in. Shitty retro games always have awful hit detection so that's pretty cool.

-It has pong bouncing ball physics built in.

[Anonymous No.1886850]

>>1886826
Oh ho, got me. Sorry, too many obnoxious posts earlier got me in a poor posting state.

[Anonymous No.1886857]

>>1886848
4-Player pong sports and warlords together are great party games. Anybody can play them, from old folks to young folks, regardless of whether they play many games or not.

[Anonymous No.1886909]

>>1886848
>It has pixel perfect hit detection built in.
Pixel perfect feels worse than hitboxes. You catch protruding parts on things, or miss things you were expecting to hit because you were lucky with how the parts aligned. Modern 2D games still use hitboxes for this reason despite having plenty of CPU power for pixel perfect collisions.

[Anonymous No.1886957]

>>1886761

Your opinions are terrible please do not post again

[Anonymous No.1887143]

>>1886909
Yeah, that was one of the problems with ET, and a lot of games that didn't use a completely flat 2d perspective. You could probably get around it by making objects with more than one sprite, but I'm not an ATARI PROGRAMMING EXPERT so I don't know if that's actually feasible. I have to say that I still prefer Atari hit detection to those shitty NES games where you fall through platforms and stuff.

>>1886761
>doesn't like space invaders

go back to /v/ please

[Anonymous No.1887147]

>>1886909
you overestimate the number of pixels in an atari game; everything is boxes anyway.

[Anonymous No.1887230]

I still play yars revenge, defender, galaxia, and a few others pretty regularly. There are a lot of games that are borderline unplayable, but I play it a lot more than most of my other cartridge systems. Atari is beautiful in its simplicity. The games that try too hard to force complexity are the ones that fail.

[Anonymous No.1887309]

>>1886454
real talk

the 2600 is legendary because everyone over the age of like 25-30 or so had one at some point

it had a few decent games but most of the library was shovelware garbage

don't get me wrong it holds a special place in my heart for all the memories of playing it when i was younger but in retrospect it was a piece of shit actually

[Anonymous No.1887335]

>>1886498
Europe stuck to Amigas and C64s and didn't really like consoles until the PlayStation.

[Anonymous No.1887620]

I think it's because the vast majority of people play ROMs but VCS and 2nd gen console games in general lack the capacity to fully engage a player entirely on their own. They require the manual, box art, comic books, arcade cabinet art or a plethora of other additional materials to support the pure game, which is all you get when you play ROMs.

So yeah the moral of this story is that if you want to enjoy games from or before the early 80s PLEASE download as much of the art and documentation for them as possible and actually get engaged by them. This is still a good practice in later gens but its absolutely necessary for Atari.

[Anonymous No.1887641]

>>1886649
whoa that looks awesome.

[Anonymous No.1887754]

>>1886443
Because many of the regulars here got their start with NES, SNES, Playstation, Etc, and wouldn't be terribly interested in playing games older than the former two. Shame, as I'm quite interested in older stuff like pre-NES era consoles and early to mid 80's arcade games, but hardly see them discussed here and in /emugen/.

[Anonymous No.1887791]

I really wish there was more support for decent paddles. There's like one adapter that works for paddles and it's not even made anymore.

[Anonymous No.1887817]

>>1887791
wut? There's a bunch and even instructions to build your own.

[Anonymous No.1887848]

You know what I like?

Video games.

[Anonymous No.1887923]

>>1886602
>>1886690
>>1886746
>>1886775
>>1886797
Retard.

[Anonymous No.1887959]

>>1886761
Incidentally, the Atari 2600 port of Space Invaders was amazing, and I hate the arcade original.

[Anonymous No.1888442]

Great ad or greatest ad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiEj4RNpYME

[Anonymous No.1889113]

>>1886491
He's right though. And it's not the physical age but the mentality. Saying that Atari almost killed gaming demonstrates a very short-sighted mind that doesn't understand how everything in life is subject to cycles.

For my part, I experienced Atari 2600 at a young age, but don't have much emotional attachment to it, beyond Joust. Then again I only played it a few times at a relative's house and haven't since given it a spin or tried the other games...

I'm more of a retro-computer gamer though, so maybe the 400/800 machines are more interesting... Most of my 8-bit experience is Apple II, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC.

[Anonymous No.1889290]

>>1886446
>Atari almost killed gaming in general.
All they did was neglect to instill any lockout system for third-party carts. The market would have failed even if Atari didn't make that piece of shit ET game.

[Anonymous No.1890386]

pic related is my favorite atari 2600 game and link related is my fav music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rKW0lRTMaU

[Anonymous No.1890396]

>>1889290
How is censoring the competition a good thing?

[Anonymous No.1890548]

>>1890396
ask nintendo how much they miss that competition from 30 years ago

[Anonymous No.1890558]

>>1890396
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1QsnVa3iBU (nsfwish?)

this is why you need lockout chips on console games

[Anonymous No.1890562]

>>1890396
There's an astounding amount of shovelware for the VCS. Like, PC levels of shovelware for exactly the same reason only there wasn't a very strong culture of reviews so you basically had to buy games based on their boxes or if you were really, really lucky you might get to sample them at a good store. I had Disc Jockey. That's where I discovered Keystone Kapers and Pitfall 2.

[Anonymous No.1890563]

>>1890558
Why is that a reason for lockout chips in consoles?

[Anonymous No.1890569]

>>1890562
>PC levels of shovelware
I don't think there are millions of VCS games. The console wasn't really capable of complex games
What happened to buying things due hearing about them from friends?

[Anonymous No.1890583]

>>1890569
Because gaming has grown since the 70's. Not everyone had a gaming capable device, gaming magazines were. Limited to local prints, and ads were a short spot where no gameplay was shown.

Also parents were more aggressive about getting their kids outside o you didn't have all that !such time to play anyway.

If you're young enough to rememberrentng games on a blind whim, almost every experience for the Atari age was like this.Even if you did get a reccomendation, it could have been what today's standards would have been bad but was slogged through anyway because it's all you had.

[Anonymous No.1890589]

>>1886761
>Talking about the original arcade versions:

>>Defender
>Great

You've never played a Defender machine, have you

it's a fucking nightmare

[Anonymous No.1890603]

Gotta love the Lynx.

Arcade ports on here are awesome.

[Anonymous No.1890605]

>>1890583
How did that change with Nintendo's "Seal of quality"? You'd still get bad games if you bought things blindly.

For the VCS you learned to get stuff like Activision games

[Anonymous No.1890657]

My grandfather owns a trucking business, and had an Atari 2600 in the break room which nobody used. When I visited and he was busy with something, I'd often end up there playing games. The only ones I remember are Pitfall, Astroids, Space Invaders, and Freeway.

It wasn't my first experience playing video games though. And what I find strange, is that I never even thought the graphics were bad (as the only console I had to compare to it was the SNES and NES), I just thought the games were really hard and that made me want to play them more.

[Anonymous No.1890804]

>>1886443
I've read some interviews with the new CEO of Atari and I really hope that he's able to bring the company back to at least some form of its past self. He seems like he's passionate about the brand. I doubt they'll ever make a console again but it would be cool to see some AAA or even just a best selling game published or developed by Atari. They've had a troubled history but I don't want Atari to go away.

[Anonymous No.1890820]

>>1890804
But does he smoke a pipe?

If he doesn't, he can't do shit.

[Anonymous No.1890825]

>>1890804
II liked them better when they were called Infogrames. They should go back to that.

[Anonymous No.1890965]

Why haven't you played Atari today, /vr/?

[Anonymous No.1890987]

>>1890804
They need to die. Especially since they're being fucking assholes about Blood's source code.

[Anonymous No.1891043]

>>1890965
Because I'm at work. Firing up galaxian when I get home though

[Anonymous No.1892259]

>>1890605
>>1890396
It's good when you remember how Purina made a VCS game, sold for full price at retail, based on their "Chase the Chuck Wagon" dog food advertising. Nintendo's five-game limit, among other limitations on Western third parties, is one of the earlier examples of active quality control in home consoles.

>>1890563
It's a games console, at the time commonly sold in the children's toy department. If you're going to be this dense, go look it up.

[Anonymous No.1892281]

>>1886504
>XEGS
Damn, very nice. I'm jealous. I need one of those for a complete Atari collection, but I fear I'll never find one.

[Anonymous No.1892307]

>>1886676
>>1886673
The sound chip built in to the VCS is the TIA, which is also the graphics chip. POKEY was on some cartridges like Pitfall II, and in Atari 8-bit computers. Synthcart obviously uses the TIA.

[Anonymous No.1892331]

>>1892259
How foolish do you have to be to believe Nintendo's rules were a good thing?
Computers in Europe or the Famicom in Japan didn't have such strict rules and they turned out fine.

[Anonymous No.1892378]

>>1892259
They never sold it for full retail price. You had to clip out some UPC, mail them to Purina and then you'd get the game.

[Anonymous No.1893093]

>>1890804
They've already begun doing that, oddly enough. They just announced new sequels to Alone in the Dark and Haunted House, of all things. I hope they're actually worthwhile sequels which have some ties to their original games, and that they don't just end up as crappy sequels using the names as names alone.