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/vr/ - Retro Games

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File: 2.10 MB, 3940x2300, Atari-2600-Wood-4Sw-Set.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6751354 No.6751354 [Reply] [Original]

Back when the Atari 2600 was the only real popular console, did everyone actually enjoy it that much? Or was the attitude like, "well I guess this'll have to tide me over until technology improves in a few years"?

>> No.6751358

>>6751354
If they were kids, yes they did enjoy that much

>> No.6751375

>>6751354
>Or was the attitude like, "well I guess this'll have to tide me over until technology improves in a few years"?
Why the fuck would anyone have that attitude? Only a zoomer could ask such a question.

>> No.6751383

>>6751375
Nope, unless being born the day Reagan was inaugurated makes one a zoomer. I just started out with the NES and my poorfag neighbor friend still had only a 2600 and I couldn't stand playing the thing.

>> No.6751390

2600 was fun with someone else. otherwise you were playing fast twitch games that are for high scores only for the most part. basically arcade gameplay. and there was nothing wrong with that, since no kid wanted to stay inside all day and turn into a potato.
>muh open world map filled with nothing to do!
>muh immersive story with cliché NPCs!

>> No.6751409

>>6751354
What a stupid question

>> No.6751423

>>6751354
I can't speak for others but I know me and my neighbours enjoyed it a lot. My childhood's best friend had 4 brothers and we spent hours playing shit like Outlaw, Fishing Derby, Tennis, Boxing against each other.
Even single player games like megamania we'd just see how far the other could go.

>> No.6751462

>>6751354

I played the 2600 a lot as a kid and I liked it very much. I was young enough to be immersed in the games despite their crudeness. I had no thought of the future of gaming and I didn't perceive this console's games to be deficient in any way.

On the other hand, I can't think of any 2600 games that I really LOVED. I remember being dazzled by Super Mario Bros. when I first saw that (in arcades!), and feeling that it was something new and amazing. I don't remember any Atari game giving me that kind of feeling. My family owned at least one vaguely Mario-ish game for the 2600 (that being Jungle Hunt) and at least two vaguely Zelda-ish games (Adventure and Tutankham)... and I also played Pitfall! which is vaguely Mario-ish as well, though we never owned that one for some reason... but all of those games are too primitive to touch what the NES would later be able to do. I think that Adventure and maybe Pitfall! really did stretch beyond the norm for the 2600, but even so, having stepped into a futuristic design space they were not able to actually do much there. In particular, they both have super simple mechanics and painfully limited worlds.

Adventure is a great game and I liked it a lot but I never quite loved it the way I would later love Zelda games. If I'd been ten or twenty years older then I suppose I might not have gotten deeply into video games at all. In that case I might have wanted Zelda or even Civilization III right from the start (depending on how old I was), and with the medium failing to deliver anything so deep as those games, I might have just seen it as a novelty, the way my parents may have actually done.

>> No.6751561

>>6751354
What a dumb question. There was no "console cycle" yet back then. Nobody was holding out for new stuff because most people didn't know if/when something better was coming.

>> No.6751881

In my family it was treated sort of like a board game that we'd get together and play for a bit.

>> No.6751908

People liked it well enough. The games were something you popped in for like a half hour or something.

>> No.6752515

>>6751354
>"well I guess this'll have to tide me over until technology improves in a few years"?
No, at the time it was thought as a record player, why buy another?

>> No.6752586

>>6751354
We had one in our parent's room before the NES came out. Yes it was fun, but it wasn't something that we'd spend hours playing everyday. The technology was mesmerizing and futuristic. Keep in mind this was back when black and white televisions were still common.

>> No.6752591

>>6751354
People actually enjoyed it, but you have to recognize it as being a largely arcade style experience.
And also remember that a lot of the time people were playing against other human beings, which adds a lot more depth than the console itself could provide.

>> No.6752605

>>6751354
about 50 / 50 OP. yeah it was shitty but it was first proper system that made gaming a household thing.

>> No.6752609

>>6751354
Don’t be stupid, the idea of being able to control stuff on your TV and for it to be pong, pac-man and space invaders at home would have been incredibly “space age” at the time.

>> No.6752610

>>6751383
That still doesn’t explain why you would ask such a ridiculous thing. Literally no consumer plays with brand new technology (as in a home game console where games are stored on cartridges) and thinks “gee this sucks, but maybe the technology will catch up to what *I* have in mind”. Who the hell thinks like that? It was state of the art. The alternative was spending quarters at an arcade.
>I just started out with the NES and my poorfag neighbor friend still had only a 2600 and I couldn't stand playing the thing.
My story is the opposite, despite being a little younger than you. I first played the NES at the house of some family friends, but my parents were too poor to get us one. So they got us an Atari 2600, and then an old Apple IIe, and then like a year later we finally got a second hand NES with some games. And you know what? I still played text adventures on my Apple II and games like Pitfall, Skate Boardin’, and Kangaroo on my Atari alongside SMB, Tetris, and Metroid on the NES. It’s cool growing up not completely spoiled—I like to brag about it, as you can see.

>> No.6753723

>>6752586

Ahaha I forgot about those. Why yes I seem to have memories of playing my family's Atari 2600 on a black and white TV. It wasn't great! But it was good. It got the job done.

>> No.6754450
File: 5 KB, 1280x960, 1280px-Pong.svg.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6754450

>>6751354
AncientFag here.
I remember when Pong on a home TV was an amazement. So yes, the Atari was cutting edge for it's time. I mean Space Invaders at home? Damn Yeah

>> No.6754457

>>6751354
when was the last time you went outside OP?

>> No.6754458

From what I've heard people back then didn't even really understand graphics as a concept. It didn't occur to average people Atari games looked primitive unless they were heavy other gamers and could see first hand how inferior it was to arcade games.

>> No.6754503

Some of the first games I played were Namco arcade ports to windows. I had no real conception they were outdated or had comparatively primative graphics. They were just the games I had, and they were fun. I imagine it's the same kind of thing,

>> No.6754509

>>6751354
>"well I guess this'll have to tide me over until technology improves in a few years"?
Is this a troll thread? No one thinks like this, especially when you have zero references to what games would become later.

>> No.6754567

>>6754509
seeing "I Robot" in the arcades would certainly be one such reference for what game consoles "might" become, no?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmvWxG2zvs8

>> No.6754590

I love it. Can't get enough of River Raid.

>> No.6754814

>>6751383
>I couldn't stand playing the thing.

Eh, there's tons of kids out there who feel this way about the PS3/Xbox360 right now.

>> No.6755187
File: 1.52 MB, 1032x1336, ads15.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6755187

>>6754458
Didn't take very long before it became a thing, though

>> No.6755219

>>6751354
I remember being bored and hanging out in my cousin's basement and it was a couple years before the Super Nintendo maybe Sega Genesis was out but Nintendo was still popular and I was annoyed I couldn't play Nintendo so I tried his 2600 and good god it was hard to stay entertained. I remember trying to play Stampede the one where you have to lasso bulls and it was frustrating. Can't remember what games he had but not really any fun ones. I remember this one called Odyssey I think and it was baffling I kept playing to figure out how to play but it was E.T. like if you didn't have a guide you couldn't progress. All you did was walk across a galaxy and I think you had to dodge black holes but it didn't seem easy to play. I still think about that day as a kid and how Atari sucked ass. Evidently if you didn't have the right games it was a snooze fest

>> No.6755228

>>6751354
I remember as a kid knowing both Atari and Nintendo but if you compared those to the Arcade they were both blown outta the water. Meanwhile at school we just had Apple and played Oregon Trail so you know...

>> No.6755294

>>6751354
They enjoyed. The jaded incel gamer who can't be pleased is a modern thing.

>> No.6755325

>>6751354
These were legitimately fun. Realism was never a concern, each game was fun as its own toy.

>> No.6755331

>>6751354
Of course, I like it to this day. Games like Keystone Keepers, Frostbite and Demon Attack are still pretty solid.

>> No.6755395
File: 2 KB, 274x176, RealSportsBaseball2600.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
6755395

>>6755187
Never believe advertising.

>> No.6756929

i remember playing atari at my uncle's, in my mind it was the atari 2600 , though the game i played was actually commando from atari 7800 whereas the rest of the game collection were clearly atari 2600. am i misremembering? was it the mandela effect? is the 7800 backwards compatible? find out next time on unsolved mysteries.

>> No.6756987

>>6756929
The 7800 is backwards compatible with the 2600, but skipped the 5200. My uncle had a 2600 for a long time, and later replaced it with a 7800. I remember feeling like the difference was staggering between Grand Prix and Pole Position 2.

>> No.6757221

>>6755395
>filename
not even the same game

>> No.6757238

>>6757221
The intellevision commercial picked the most primitive looking game they could find, and pretended it was typical of the 2600.

>> No.6757245

>>6751375
because arcade games were better?

>> No.6757263

>>6752515
reminds me of that video where parents are angry at nintendo for making the super nintendo
a new console? what was wrong with the old one? they both play video games, don't they?
while i'm not nearly old enough for the 2600, i can certainly imagine most people will have imagined it to be a one-off deal, like that's just what a video game is, more technically inclined people would have recognised that arcade machines were more advanced, and so could expect more advanced home consoles later on, but... most people aren't those people, especially not little kids and their parents

>> No.6757418

>>6751354
>Back when the current tech was current did people not buy current tech because they demanded future tech?

Only children without money had that "excuse", the rest lived in the now.