Have you played ATARI today!!!

[noiseredux]

Bumped this because I have been on an atari kick lately. I watched once upon Atari documentary and I have more appriaciation for those games and developers now and to find out what they had to go thru to make a game.

nice! So you enjoyed the documentary huh?

Now you should see Atari Game Over. That's wayyy better. You'll love it.

[prfsnl_gmr]

I still love collecting Atari games, and I am only 11 games away from a complete Atari 7800 collection! (A few of those, unfortunately, are going to hit my wallet pretty hard.)

I also love trying to make sense of all the interesting cart variants, and I love the fact that most of the games are so inexpensive. I discovered yesterday that one of my Ballblazer variants very likely has a POKEY chip in it. Apparently, these are sought after by certain collectors...but I have no idea why. Stuff like this makes collecting for those old systems a lot of fun, however, and I am glad I got into it.

[noiseredux]

I grew up w/ a 2600 so the system has huge nostalgia for me. But nowadays I don't collect for it. I am cool w/ compilations and the Flashback 6 for now.

BTW, the current Retro Gamer special is about Atari. A little pricey but a really nice retrospective. I couldn't resist.

[ElkinFencer10]

I've got probably 60 or 70 games for my 2600, but I've only got four games for my 7800 right now. =/ I actually have more games for my 5200 than I do for my 7800.

[mas]

I watched a little of game over but not all of it or maybe I did but don't remember. I've said this before but for me even though I have the arcade compliations on the ps1/2, when I think of games in that early 80's era like paceman and galaga I think of arcade and Atari.
The designers really tried to make the games as close as they can to the arcade ports but the 2600 was so hard to program for which gave me more respect to the designers

[mas]

I grew up w/ a 2600 so the system has huge nostalgia for me. But nowadays I don't collect for it. I am cool w/ compilations and the Flashback 6 for now.

BTW, the current Retro Gamer special is about Atari. A little pricey but a really nice retrospective. I couldn't resist.

Well noise all your money is going into the dreamcast and Saturn which is great systems

[mas]

Just watched game over. Great documentary. Loved how Howard was emotional. He deserves the recognition to make e.t. Now I want to get all the games they dug up. Not the actual copies but just the games they dug up

[BoneSnapDeez]

So I post in this thread about once a year.

Still a big Atari fan, of course.

As far as collecting goes, I have two main Atari-related goals (mostly focused on the 2600):
- I'm trying to obtain at least one port (assuming one exists) of every Golden Age arcade game.
- I'm also trying to obtain every second-gen (proto-)RPG released on consoles.

I actually have more games for my 5200 than I do for my 7800.

Same (24 vs. 9). In contrast, my 2600 collection is 122 games (not counting label variants).

[Gunstar Green]

My 2600 jr. is the only console I have (besides the Retron 5) that is perpetually hooked up near my PC to waste ten minute chunks of time.

[Golgo 14]

I discovered yesterday that one of my Ballblazer variants very likely has a POKEY chip in it. Apparently, these are sought after by certain collectors...but I have no idea why.

Come on, you've been doing this long enough not to fall for an eBay seller's hyperbole. Your cart definitely has a POKEY chip inside, because all Ballblazer carts have a POKEY chip.

POKEY allows the 7800 to not sound like utter garbage. It should have been in the console itself, so that the full library could use it, but Atari was cheap, so the 7800 shipped with the same lame TIA sound chip as the 2600. Developers could add POKEY to carts to make them sound better, but almost no one wanted to do that. Ballblazer and Commando are the only original titles with POKEYs.

These days some people pull the chips out of Ballblazer carts to make homebrew carts for games that utilize POKEY. That's kind of too bad though, because Ballblazer is a pretty good game. Someone has been working on producing a HOKEY chip which could be used for sound just like the POKEY and hopefully save all the remaining Ballblazer carts. It's also supposed to be in the eagerly awaited Concerto flash cart.

Games that use POKEY should also be supported by the XM add-on module, but that has been a disastrous project that is already 5 years past its original ship date and the less said about that, the better.

Anyway, yeah, Atari rules!