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The Atari 2600 is 40 years old

Ceallach

Ceallach

Smells like fresh rosebuds
I've only recently gotten a 2600. I got a Darth Vader model. I like it a lot. Im too young to have experienced it in its heyday, i can barely remember nes. But I have a small collection of games, some I adore(berserk, space invaders port, yars revenge ), some are dreadful but I kind of enjoy them for their flaws (donkey Kong and Pac man ports).
 
E

eyeball_kid

Member
Version 3.0 said:
It's pretty generous to call that thing a video game console. It's a glorified oscilloscope.
Click to expand...

I'm sure kids who were born after 2000 would say something similar about the 2600. The Odyssey went on sale in 1972; it was high-tech stuff at the time.

Dr. Zoidberg said:
They put out the 5200 the same year (1982) but it was expensive, huge, and the controllers sucked ass. Worst controller ever, if for no other reason than they are very prone to stop working. I have 3 5200 controllers and only one that I could coax into working after disassembly and cleaning. It was a nice upgrade, though. Basically Atari computer guts in a console case.
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Ah, I didn't know (or maybe forgot) the 5200 went on sale in '82. I think I got my 2600 around '80. It didn't seem much of a replacement as they were still focused on the 2600, and I think it was pretty expensive. I only ever saw one 5200 in the wild, and yeah that controller was even worse than the IntelliVision's. It was also hard to compete against systems like ColecoVision with fantastic ports of games like Donkey Kong. If they put all their focus on the 5200 and made it shine with some great games, maybe things could've turned out differently for them.

BritBloke916 said:
Happy birthday old friend. I can still enjoy playing The Empire Strikes Back to this day.
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Yeah, I put a lot of time into that one. The graphics and audio were pretty great, but I remember being disappointed that (like so many 2600 games) there was no way to win the game.
 
T

Talamius

Member
Ceallach said:
I've only recently gotten a 2600. I got a Darth Vader model. I like it a lot. Im too young to have experienced it in its heyday, i can barely remember nes. But I have a small collection of games, some I adore(berserk, space invaders port, yars revenge ), some are dreadful but I kind of enjoy them for their flaws (donkey Kong and Pac man ports).
Click to expand...

The Donkey Kong and Pacman homebrew versions are better than the official ports that were crapped out.

Vanguard, Jungle Hunt, Frogger, Joust, Congo Bongo, Warlords (fantastic 4 player paddle game!) and Mario Bros. got really servicable arcade to 2600 ports if you temper your expectations a bit.

The 2600 was my first console so it'll always have a special place in my heart.
 
C

Celine

Member
Glowsquid said:
fairchild channel f tho
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Eh eh eh but seriously IMO it's more important who brought to the mass market a new kind of product than who released first but with little impact.
For example the very first japanese console was Bandai's Super Vision 8000 in 1980 which was a big failure then in 1981 Epoch released the first moderately successful japanese console (Cassette Vision).
However the console that kickstarted the console industry in Japan was the Famicom which sold several times more than the Cassette Vision.
 
J

Jim

Member
Stinkles said:
Pitfall II was absolutely midnblowing.
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My most-played 2600 game by quite a bit. Followed by E.T. (shush, I was 7), River Raid, Yars' Revenge, Choplifter, Montezuma's Revenge... and Combat, Outlaw and all those launch window games.
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
Loved it. First console I treated as important enough to open up the main unit and controllers to get a look at the innards as well as clean regularly. Still miss those analog paddle controller games.
 
B

BDGAME

Member
Good times with my Atari. Some of my favorite games are:

enduro_1.jpg

Enduro

hqdefault.jpg

Frostbite

000675.gif

River Raid

d0.jpg

DECATHLON (the controller's destructor)


jogos-atari-05.jpg

Fishing Derby


Space Invaders
Space-Invaders.png



I even made a fanart:

12669427_1552432771738803_898084303386783154_n.jpg
 
M

MightyHedgehog

Member
BDGAME said:
Frostbite is a amazing game and what amazed me most is there is no clones of frostbite's gameplay in any game.
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Well, I think it's probably because the game seemed to have taken up the basics of Frogger and Q*bert and that puts it into a shared bucket of design. I think it's quite a bit better than either, but it is in that vein.
 
Harlock

Harlock

Member
Atari 2600 games still the king of pick and play. Put a retropie into a party with old folks, and people going crazy to play Atari.

And the beginning of AVGN video about Atari 5200 is a perfect summary about Atari 2600: playing alone at night, with the sound of crickets. There is something magic about the art and sound of 2600.
 
T

Tackleberry

Member
My 1st game system back in the early to mid 80s.

My father worked as a maintenance manager for project housing, so there was always stuff left behind.

One day he brought home this huge box and in it was a wood Atari 2600, 4 controllers, 2 paddles and about 80 games.

Played the hell out of that thing for years.

I remember the Activision games being the best ones on the system though.. Pitfall, Stampede, Chopper Command, etc.
 
T

troybilts

Neo Member
Still have mine working, amazed to be honest. Just thinking of the many years of abuse it took. Though its is probably not nearly 40 years old, since my first console around that time was an Odyssey 2. Took a few years before I could convince my parents to get another console.

Then later in the mid-80's, I got an adapter for my Colecovision to play the 2600 carts. So the actual 2600 machine probably didn't get much use after that. That is something you don't see anymore, cross platform compatibility!
 
CloudStrife_ca

CloudStrife_ca

Member
I recently rebought the Atari 2600 Jr last year, I originally had the wood panel one and then my family got a 2600 Jr later on.

I've had some fun rebuying old games as I come across them, they're pretty cheap now too $5 - $15 a game in most cases depending on what it is.

I see someone posted Frostbite, that was one of our fav's too.

My fav was Seaquest, Megamania was fun, Pressure Cooker, Plaque Attack, Joust, Battletank, Sky Jinx, Yars Revenge, Berzerker, Freeway, Frogger, Pacman, Bowling, Football, even ET.

Happy Birthday old friend!
 
E

eyeball_kid

Member
Tackleberry said:
I remember the Activision games being the best ones on the system though.. Pitfall, Stampede, Chopper Command, etc.
Click to expand...

It wouldn't be a stretch to say that without ActiVision's games on the 2600, the 2600 might not have been the success that it was. The level of quality and graphical sheen on those games (primitive as they were) was far beyond what others were doing.

Chopper Command's graphics blew me away at the time. Even now I'm surprised they got the 2600 to look and sound this good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwLuVzMMYtM
 
G

GurgleBot20

Member
I've always thought it was odd that it's always been retroactively referred to as the 2600 when it wasn't called that for the first 5 years on the market.

What does 2600 actually refer to?
 
J

Jinroh

Member
I have an Atari 2600 Jr. Rev. A stuffed in a box behind me. It's hard to believe that thing is originally 40 years old... Time flies.
 
D

davidwhangchoi

Member
do you guys remember using 2 controllers in a tray holding both controllers for spyhunter?


also some systems had more in game colors than others for the same game... why was that?
 
V

Version 3.0

Member
eyeball_kid said:
I'm sure kids who were born after 2000 would say something similar about the 2600. The Odyssey went on sale in 1972; it was high-tech stuff at the time.
Click to expand...

Nah, I don't think people of any age would have a hard time coming to a consensus about what's a "video game" and what isn't. No one's going to say the Atari didn't have games.
They'd only say they're bad games. The Odyssey is objectively borderline. I'm only kidding, saying it isn't - I would say it's the bare minimum.

I didn't say it was bad tech - at the time it was unquestionably marvelous to be able to interact with a consumer TV picture. The tech and the question of what's a game are two separate things.

sibarraz said:
What? Really?
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I'm not sure, but I believe that's correct. It doesn't use sprites; it's updating the whole screen with every frame, just like the TV itself does.
 
T

Tempy

don't ask me for codes
GurgleBot20 said:
I've always thought it was odd that it's always been retroactively referred to as the 2600 when it wasn't called that for the first 5 years on the market.

What does 2600 actually refer to?
Click to expand...

As you said, it started out as the Atari VCS (Video Computer System), but was later referred to its model number which was CX-2600. Presumably the 2600 refers to the hacking term where a 2600hz signal from a Captain Crunch whistle was used to gain access to phone systems. Atari itself is from the Go term.
 
S

senahorse

Member
My first console, I just turned 41 a couple of weeks ago, kind of fitting. So many fond memories of playing Combat with my brothers.
 
N

NeoZeedeater

Member
The 2600 is awesome, a icon that has been unfairly shit on in the past 30 years or so. Games like Pitfall II, HERO, River raid, Yars' Revenge, Frankenstein's Monster, Frostbite, Pressure Cooker, Laser Gates, and many others hold up nicely.

As big of a fan as I am of it, I did have some biases against it as a kid. My neighbourhood in the early '80s basically had three camps prior to the C64 becoming more mainstream: VCS owners, Intellivision owners, and VIC-20 owners. I had a VIC-20 and then an Intellivision. I hated how Atari hogged most of the attention. Later on I would fully appreciate all these systems for the strengths and weaknesses.
 
A

added_time

Member
Probably the worst console I ever owned. I couldn't believe how poorly the games actually played. Although Combat was very good.
As a kid, owning this almost made me not interested in video games. Luckily the NES came out and reignited everything for me.

Still love that Combat though
 
Muffdraul

Muffdraul

Member
My parents never allowed another video game console in the house after the Magnavox Odyssey, which we had for about a month when I was 3 years old. I still have yet to forgive them for this and probably never will. But thankfully virtually all of my friends had a 2600, so I still got plenty of trigger time. I remember playing Combat and Lunar Lander in 1977, all the way up to Demon Attack or H.E.R.O. or whatever circa 1983. Then I hit puberty and suddenly wasn't interested anymore. I was out of the loop for about 7-8 years, didn't get back into gaming until the SNES launched and I picked one up as part of a scheme to establish a line of credit.
 
I

I am Christina Aguilera

Member
I have an Atari 2600 that I managed to rig together to connect to a '90s SDTV. I mostly own it as a "get a load of how bad E.T. is" machine, but the 2600 versions of Space Invaders and Berserk are fun enough diversions every now and again.
 
S

Silvergun-Blue

Member
A friend had one in the late '80's when I was a young 'un and my main memories of it are; Some sort of top down racing game and me not being able to grasp moving and steering simultaneously. I'd accelerate to the corner, stop, turn on the spot, then accelerate to the next corner.
A game that I assumed was Pitfall for years but now remember was Jungle Hunt. We found the tune that plays when you have to jump over the "natives" hilarious and we'd caper around his bedroom in a, quite frankly, racist manner.
Ahh, the innocence of youth.
 
V

Vinnk

Member
I got my 2600 after I already had a NES. At that time I could go to GameStar and get atari carts fro like $1 each. They were not as nice looking as the NES games but I cold get an entire library of them for the same cost as on NES game pak.

And I played the crap out of them. Loved River Raid, Stampede, Kaboom, Pitfall II, Smurf, Megamania, Mario Bros.. My friends were baffled about why I was playing old games even when the SNES came out.

I guess I was a retro gamer before that was really a thing.
 
ranmafan

ranmafan

Member
The VCS was my first console, in fact even though I was so young and just a few years old, around 1980 or 1981, I still remember sitting down playing my very first video game, Home Run. One of the earliest memories I still remember and one that was a big influence in my life. It would be followed up by great games I loved so much then and now. Games like Centipede, Space Invaders, Pitfall and so on. It was always my favorite of the early consoles and it was my go to system until the Commodore 64 came out. Every now and then I play some of those old games and they really bring back some great memories. And many still are great games to play. Really fun system. 40 years, how time flies!
 
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