[Atari 2600 games featured in my 41 Years of Console Gaming History video]

I'm glad you're all liking my video, definitely interesting discussions here on the generation war (I guess there will always be controversy there).

 

As for the pyramid of consoles I made, it was totally a combination of me getting lazy and things just not working out properly. I wanted to have an image with all the games I played but didn't want to go to the effort of making something that would take ages (as I had spent so long making this video). I then just grabbed all the thumbnails from my videos in the series and was going to have an even amount of them in each row. I then realised I had already put too many in the bottom row so I started the next row with less thumbnails and so on until boom, unintensional pyramid that didn't look too bad so OK, I went with that

[Atari 2600 games featured in my 41 Years of Console Gaming History video]

Interesting, thanks for that info about the correct generations for those consoles. Yes, all information I got was from wikipedia.

 

What I'm now questioning however, is do these old documents hold truth or are they themselves "wrong" by todays standards. Generations from what I've seen are based on certain aspects of the consoles such as pallet size and so on. Back then it was classified a third generation console but maybe later it was decided that based on it's specs, it was a second generation console.

 

I'm not on any side here (your's or Wikipedia's), just stating my idea. I wonder why wikipedia has it wrong as well as other sources... And what makes this earlier source more notable than later ones? Either of the two could have made a mistake... (or maybe classification changed, which can happen).

 

Anyway, I'm glad you liked the video and thanks for showing me those documents, they were interesting to have a look at

[Atari 2600 games featured in my 41 Years of Console Gaming History video]

Thanks, I'm 22 but often get mistaken for being 16. It's funny, there was a 41 year old who saw this video and said it's his "lifetime" because it tracked the development of games from the year he was born to now. I'm hoping this video makes younger viewers have a greater appreciation for both modern and older games.

[Atari 2600 games featured in my 41 Years of Console Gaming History video]

It's been 11 months with over 200 hours of weekend editing but I've finally finished my 41 Years of Console Gaming History video. In this video I take a look at games year by year from 1975 to modern times. Initially this was a youtube series but this is a combined and heavily edited down version. Viewers picked different consoles and games to try each year as we moved through time. This video is the final result of our journey and I've got to say, the Atari 2600 when it first came out in 1977 really impressed us with its huge colour pallet. Atari 2600 games were popular and almost always got the most votes in this video.

 

Anyway, enough rambling... If you want to just see the Atari 2600 games skip to 5:12 and watch for about 8 minutes.

 

 

If you're interested you can keep watching the whole journey as we move to the Atari 5200, NES, Sega Genesis and so on

 

P.S. I know... you guys hate the fact I mapped all the games to a DS4 controller

[Atari 5200, 5 different emultors WON'T Work!]

You, are MAGIC! Didn't even know this emulator existed and boom, works right out of the box (well, I gotta get the input working for the controls first but all seems to be working so far)

 

I love this forum!

 

Edit: All good, works perfectly, thank-you very much!

[Atari 5200, 5 different emultors WON'T Work!]

Note: I've never had a problem with countless emulators for other systems until NOW! (6+ hours spent on trying to get ANY atari 5200 emulator working with pacman)

 

I've Tried MAME, Atari++, Jum52, Atari800Win, Kat5200 and not a single one of them could play Pacman for the Atari 5200 which I redownloaded from 3 different websites incase I just got a "bad rom". I also downloaded 5200.ROM from several different sources and tried using different variations including ZIP versions (as MAME seems to prefer) yet I can't get past the game copy right screen on pac man with the rainbow logo that has the name of the game and the year it was made.

 

Kat5200 just crashed over and over while I attempted to link up the directories for it (so I could'nt even get any rom running)

Mame got the the copyright/boot screen of pacman then just went black (same occured with Jum52)

Atari++ says "6502 cpu crashed at $0002 due to the illegal opcode at $02 atari" after the copyright/boot screen is displayed instead of just going black like MAME does.

Atari800Win displays the copyright/boot screen of pacman then says "The atari computer has crashed" and states I should try using different options (which I attempting modifing for half an hour.

 

SOME games ran without displaying that inital screen like space invaders and Kaboom (there were control issues though and I couldn't get actual gameplay, not that I really tried much though) but I specially need to play Pacman on the 5200 (emulator) for a Youtube series ASAP.

 

Stella runs perfectly for the 2600 but it feels like 5200 emulation is really difficult. Can anyone else get Pacman running on the 5200?

[Atari 2600 Space Invaders Flicker on Stella?]

Wow, thanks for all that info guys! It makes me feel even more proud that I specifically promoted this forum in a previous episode. You guys are very knowledgeable and helpful!

 

Yea, at the time of the video I knew menu's were out of the question for the Atari 2600, I was just meaning to compared to todays standards such a system for selecting options is quite ridiculous however it was 1980, things were different due to primative computer technology back then.

Overall though this series I work on is focused on "look how far we have come!". Moving year by year closer to modern times and looking at how things have evolved. It really helps you appreciate modern games more. For example 5 years ago I looked at some atari 2600 games and thought... These are absolutely terrible! But through experiencing the Fairchild Channel F before the Atari 2600 I have grown to really appreciate the Atari 2600 due to its huge colour pallet (128 to compared to 8 on the Fairchild). 128 may be bad for todays standards but for me right now... it's not 2016. I've deleted my memories of modern games (at least during the series) and graphical upgrades on new systems are ground-breaking and amazing to me. In my world it's 1982 and I'm deciding whether to upgrade my Atari 2600 to a colecovision or an Atari 5200, I'm really excited for the release of these consoles soon! Through experiencing gaming from the very early days and moving forward, what once looked terrible to me (NES) looks absolutely incredible and AMAZING! Everybody my age (21) and younger should give this a go...

 

P.S. When you said space invaders was 4K I was literally like !!!! Not even the PS4 can do 4K resolutions yet! Then I realised you were referring to storage space and I laughed at myself

[Atari 2600 Space Invaders Flicker on Stella?]

Thanks for the info guys, I guess this just reinforces the idea that emulation will never be perfect and that real hardware is the only way to go for a perfectly accurate experience. And yes, I was using Stella

[Atari 2600 Space Invaders Flicker on Stella?]

Here are my specs:

Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-5960X Processor (8-cores, 20MB Cache, Overclocked up to 4.0 GHz w/ Turbo Boost)
Memory: 32GB (4X8GB) DDR4 2133MHz SDRAM Memory
Graphics Card: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX™ Titan Z with 12GB GDDR5 – Dual GPU Card

 

So I'm doing a series for YouTube where I play a game from each year on consoles (emulated) from 1975 to 2015 in chronological order. Just reached my 1980 episode and Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 got the most votes. I've never played this game before (at least on the atari 2600) so I just assumed that the flicker in the lazer cannon and bomb shots was normal. After uploading the video however someone was surprised that there was sprite flicker.

 

Here is a link to the video, Skip to 2:30 to see the flicker (which remains constant throughout the whole time I play):

 

It just seemed like a cool effect to me so I thought it was a part of the experience. It occurs whether or not I am recording and it also happens when I use DirectX or OpenGL for rendering (no difference). I Also had major flicker in Adventure when more than 3 objects were on the screen at once but I thought, once again, that was normal.

 

Not all games have flicker, Kaboom doesn't, Street Racer doesn't. Haven't really tested any others nor do I know much about how these games are supposed to run (never experienced the Atari 2600) apart from what I am seeing through the emulator.

 

Any Idea about what's happening here?

 

Thanks in Advance for your help

[How do you change the game variation?]

Ben's just there because the majority of the early games seem to be focused on multiplayer and although some can be single player they still seem a little dull without another player around. I'm hoping by the time we reach the 1980s (Each episode moves forward one year in time) I'll be able to ditch Ben and do the series solo (which was my original plan). He's not being forced to be there though, I offered and he said yes, In fact he wants to stick around for the whole series and he finds it fun but overall he is a very monotone, dull person that doesn't really talk much. Nothing wrong with that though, we are all different and it's good to have variety in the world.

[How do you change the game variation?]

Sigh, I can't even walk into a computer store without being recognized these days... Is my voice really that distinct? Yes, one of my 20+ online identities is OSFirstTimer. I can't believe you recognized me! Now I know what it feels like to be typecast...

[How do you change the game variation?]

You guys are fast and awesome helpers. I'll be sure to mention this site in my next episode. Here's the previous episode (Since it was 1976 in this episode the Atari 2600 wasn't released yet):

 

Thanks for your help, this site is awesome!

[How do you change the game variation?]

Sorry to revive this thread but I was wondering if there is somewhere that I can read more about what the differences in the variations are. For example 7-12 is slalom but how does 7 differ to 8 and 8 differ to 9 and so on. I'm about to make episode 3 (1977) of gaming through the ages for YouTube and I want to explain the differences between the versions correctly.

 

Thanks in advance for your help

[How do you change the game variation?]

Button Select on the real hardware, F1 is the default key for Select in Stella (F2 is Reset). You can go into options/input settings to view/change the key bindings.

Note that these buttons let you cycle through all variations, you can't type a variation number directly.

Awesome, Thanks so much for your information!

[How do you change the game variation?]

A game like Street Racer has many game variations:

 

"Street Racer was one of the two launch titles programmed by Kaplan; Air-Sea Battle was the other. Street Racer offered 27 game variations, grouped into the following sub-games:^[3]

• 1–6: Street racer
• 7–12: Slalom
• 13–16: Dodgem
• 17–20: Jet shooter
• 21–24: Number cruncher
• 25–27: Scoop ball

Each of the sub-games has roughly the same gameplay: the player controls a vehicle that must avoid or collect certain objects as they scroll down the screen. Between one and four players can compete simultaneously by using the paddle controllers, which allow the vehicle to move left and right along the bottom of the screen. If a one-player game is selected, the player competes with a static computer opponent that allows objects to collide with it or pass by.^[4]"

 

How exactly would one access these different game modes on both the original atari 2600 and on a current emulator such as stella? (where do you type the numbers to choose the game)

 

Thanks in advance for the help