Sunday, July 18, 2010

Atari 2600 games

The Atari emulator called "Stella" brings the old Atari 2600 games back to life. Honestly these games are sometimes terrible by modern standards. :) Though, they do have an interesting primitive appeal, and I wanted screen shots of them. Maybe I will make them into a desktop background.

I think my favorite was H.E.R.O, where you could explore caverns (across multiple screens) and rescue trapped minors.

Here are more or less all the games I purchased back in the day...











































6 comments:

KW said...

Was Yar's Revenge the one where we chanted "Mi-chal-Jack-Son..Mi-chal-Jack-Son..Mi-chal-Jack-Son..: to the tune of the background music?

Kevin said...

Yeah, I remember that :)

I just checked and Yar's Revenge has a pulsating swarm sound. Omega Race is the one with that hypnotic "Mi-cheal Jack-son' music.

It also took me a while to figure out the one that had a wave that looked like it was shooting big pieces of flying popcorn... MegaMania.

KW said...

Does Omega Race exist somewhere online? I'd like to hear that music again.

Kevin said...

I found this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zgELUpRmTc

What's kinda cool is now that there is an emulator Stella, it's a platform in itself. Some hobbyists are making new, home-grown games for the Atari 2600 platform. Or taking the old roms and mixing them together to make new games.

Bob Canada said...

I had just about all of these games. Although their graphics were crude (sometimes even by 1980s standards), I think I'd still prefer to play them rather than modern games.

Sure, the modern stuff looks amazing and lifelike, but sometimes you just want to shoot something, not make your guy walk ten miles (literally) through some catacomb trying to find a tiny secret switch.

Kevin said...

Hi Bob :)

Yeah, a lot of the newer games are mostly just fancy graphics. On the old Atari games, I also remember pulling the cartridges out halfway, and making it anywhere between random graphics and blips, to being half-way playable -- but really weird -- game. :)