BassGuitari

1989-90 - Commodore 64 1990-91 - PC (some kind of 386 running DOS) 1992 - NES, Game Boy 1993 - Genesis 1994-95 - Game Gear 1995 - PC (Packard Bell 486), PC (an old 286 my mom got me from a rummage sale) 1996 - Playstation 1997 - R-Zone (yep) 1998 - Odyssey 2, Intellivision 1999 - Game Boy Color, Atari 2600 2000 - PC (Gateway WinME system) After that, it's a whirlwind. It would be easier to ballpark my acquisitions by decade, but there are frankly too many to try to list from memory anyway.

How can you not be? Nothing about it looks right, from the square-cut corners, to the fonts being wrong/too bold and with the lettering spaced too far apart, to the sub/title being incorrectly justified, to the inkjet-quality printing, to the end label cut glaringly short (and with the print and Activision logo smooshed vertically to fit), to the blue background being closer to cornflower than to navy, to its use of the box/manual artwork (which is stretched horizontally, to boot). It's a repro.

Everything about that label screams repro. And not a particularly good one at that.

There are too many other games that I gravitate toward more, so I don't play Asteroids as much as it deserves, but I do like it. It's definitely one of those games that you have to dig through the variations (and set Difficulty to "A") to get the most enjoyment out of, though.

I don't know if I've ever seen Marine Wars come up in conversations about the worst 2600 games. It's been a while, but I remember it being pretty decent and liking it the most of the Konami titles. If I had only seen the box art, though, I would have expected something completely different!

Ah, Space War. The only Atari game that's actually better in black and white. 😜 IIRC the optimum display with Space War is to dial the color saturation on the TV all the way off (or use a B/W TV), but leave the Color-B/W switch on the game system set to "Color." "B/W" mode yields a light gray background that (IMO) doesn't make much more sense than the astroturf green, but I suppose it's easier to just accept the green (or light gray) as a quirky design choice than fiddle with settings on the TV.

Probably SNES, by a hair. They both have things they do well, or better than the other. Cross-platform ports usually fare a little better on the SNES, but the Genesis also has Sega CD and 32X. Do do prefer Super Mario World to Sonic The Hedgehog, though. Never owned a PC Engine/TG16 or NeoGeo.

Original. A big reason I got into classic gaming in the first place (as it was in the '90s) was to see what gaming was like "before my time," and what the systems were like in their time and place has always been what's interested me about them. Homebrews don't really fit into that. I do have a few, though, and there are some coming up that I'll have to grab at some point as well. 😁

Depends on which console I use. I'm a purist (and probably borderline obsessive-compulsive) so I like to use the original controllers that "match" the console. Heavies = CX10 or ringed CX40, Woodies = ringed CX40, Vader and Junior = All-black CX40, Gemini = Gemini Controller, Video Arcade II = Video Arcade II controller, Columbia Home Arcade = Columbia Controller, 7800 = ProLine. I voted for CX10/40, though, since I usually play on an Atari VCS/2600 or Sears Video Arcade console. I collect peripherals and third-party controllers, so I like to mix it up with those once in a while. Even if some of the more bizarre designs aren't particularly conducive to gameplay (looking at you, Faster Blaster and LeStick)!

Quasi-related, but I'm a little surprised nobody has homebrewed an analog joystick for the 2600 yet. It would basically just be two paddles stuffed into one box with the pots manipulated by a stick. It wouldn't have much use with the legacy library, but with full 360-degree movement and two buttons, there's a ton of homebrew potential there.

Kraft would like a word.

Q: What's your favorite version of the Atari 2600? A: Yes.

[/pedantic] 😜

If you say so.

I've seen this a lot, and I can't help but feel like this is kind of a dumb thing to be mad about. The 2600+ plays all most 2600 titles but nobody is mad that there are no new Driving Controllers or Keyboard Controllers or Light Guns. I think of the 2600+ as a 2600 compatible first and foremost, with any 7800 functionality as a bonus. And enough 7800 games are playable with one button that the lack of a pack-in 2-button controller isn't that big of an issue to me. Especially since, as I had speculated in a previous post, Atari will probably release a two-button 7800 controller, and this has now been all but confirmed by @Ben from Plaion.