Games of Atari - (Almost) All Atari 2600 Captures Complete!

Entry posted by FujiSkunk January 2, 2015

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I had a goal for 2014: to create screen captures and audio clips for every physical Atari 2600 cartridge in my collection. Sadly, I didn't achieve that goal. I missed it by a single day. I plead extenuating circumstances. In the week before Christmas, my collection suddenly increased by three: Stay Frosty 2, Three.s and Stella's Stocking, which of course is five different games by itself! But now those seven games, along with the rest of my collection, are all captured, cleaned up, archived and uploaded! Games by Mattel, U.S. Games, Data Age, and several third parties are now represented, along with several more hacks, homebrews and prototcypes, including Seaweed Assault, Saboteur, Chetiry, Ixion, Thrust, Princess Rescue, and of course, Boulder Dash.

I set aside writing to concentrate on the captures, so I've fallen way behind on my planned reviews and histories. I'll get to those Real Soon Now, promise! In the meantime, I haven't yet finished all the Atari 2600 games I plan on doing. Next up is a set of hacks, homebrews and prototypes that I don't have as physical cartridges. I don't plan on doing every last hack and homebrew out there. If I tried, I'd never finish! I want to get the highlights though, and I've put together a list of worthy titles I'm going to work on:

Aquaventure
Berzerk Voice Enhanced
Bugs Bunny
Cracked
Frog Pond
Galaxian Expanded
Millipede (GCC)
RealSports Basketball
Save Mary
Space Invaders Arcade
Space Invaders Deluxe

A couple of other titles I will work on when the developers declare them complete, or when known newer prototypes are made available. This includes Star Castle Arcade, Wizard of Wor Arcade, Frenzy, Draconian and Xevious. A few prototypes I'm skipping because they are incomplete, and I want to redesign the site to distinguish between playable and unplayable games before I work on those. The list of skips includes Elevator Action and Tempest. If there are any other playable games people feel should be given the spotlight, ping me and I'll consider them.

Once I'm through with all Atari 2600 work, I will move to the Intellivision. My Intellivision collection is a lot smaller than my 2600 collection, and of course not every Intellivision title is a "game of Atari" so that system should go much more quickly. However, I don't have an A/V modded Intellivision, so the captures may not be very high-quality. From what I've read, there doesn't seem to be any consensus on whether modding an Intellivision is worth it, or what the best procedure is to do so. Any thoughts here? If RF is as good as it gets, I'll run with RF.