[VirtualJaguar in Debian 12 (32 bit) has no sound]

1 minute ago, UHATEIT said:

ah i thought there was something when he said 32bit that would come up. I dont know how I ended up on 64bit I dont understand that stuff at least, just whatever the Atari VCS runs on. I was happy at least to find a workaround to use BigPEmu on the VCS with the Debian usb stick!

64-bit CPUs have been common since the mid-2000s,   I'm just wondering how ancient this laptop is if he can only do 32-bit

 

[VirtualJaguar in Debian 12 (32 bit) has no sound]

5 minutes ago, UHATEIT said:

On my Atari VCS I have one of Atari's Debian USB sticks and when in PC mode it's Linux/Debian. I downloaded the BigPEmu and even tho it's on Debian/Linux and there is no build for it, you can use Wine and it opens Windows programs and then runs them on Debian/Linux. I have had no issues using that and running everything in BigPEmu at all even without a Debian/Linux build of it. Id say scrap Virtual Jaguar and use BigPEmu

I suggested that too.   But problem is he's on a 32-bit system and BigPemu is a 64-bit build 😕

 

[If Atari should make a new Adventure, what would you like it to be like?]

48 minutes ago, Zonie said:

I think this adds too much complexity and reduces the ability to act quickly. No twitch factor at all here.

Is a traditional inventory any better at this?    Can't tell you how many times I accidentally triggered a parachute when I really needed to use the whip in a bind in Raiders of the Lost Ark for example.

 

At least the sack system gives you a choice to play the traditional way, or carry the sack for convenience.

 

53 minutes ago, Zonie said:

Well, this WON'T run on a 2600 or a 7800. Did I miss something? I thought the intent was to expand the game but still playable on original hardware...

The original question was about a modern version like the other games Atari has been releasing.   But some people are making a wishlist for the older hardware.

 

46 minutes ago, leech said:

I skipped over a lot of this, as it seems there's a lot of back and forth between keeping it old school and not.  But why not both?  Check out games like the remake of Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, where you can instantly switch between graphics of the old and new, and the music as well.

I've been toying with a game idea that starts with ancient looking graphics (early 1970s B&W arcade), but you can find upgrade items along the way that upgrade the graphics (2600, C64, NES, Amiga, SVGA and so on...)   Not sure Adventure is the right game for that though.     

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

13 minutes ago, leech said:

For sure; there is also the 'lowest common denominator' factor.  Like when the Amiga and ST first launched, the ST was where everyone created the games, and then they were ported to the Amiga.  When developers finally figured out how to use the Amiga, the games suddenly got far better than the ST versions.  Unfortunately that never got the translations back to the STe.

The lack of deadlines is a crazy thing.  There is a bit of 'people know all the hacks and crazy things you can do with the hardware better 30 years on down the line...' but the hardware hasn't changed, just the tools and knowledge, and being able to take your sweet ass time to release things means that you can make things bigger and better! 

Amiga is a good example too.   It also had HAM and half-bright modes that might make for pretty pictures but not ideal for game use

 

Another example, on the Atari 8-bit,  if I browse screen shots on Atarimania from 82 or 83-  so many of the games had these  muddy-looking unappealing color palettes.  But now we get homebrews like "Albert" that are extremely colorful and show what could have been accomplished.    But I'm not going to judge a system by the 21st century exceptional homebrews,   I'm going to judge it by the average experience during the system's commercial life when it mattered.   It could have used those exceptional techniques to get a leg up on the C64 or Colecovision, but too few programmers of the time had the skills or time to pull it off.

 

There's a tendency in the fan bases of older hardware to be enamored with the potential of the system (real or imagined), and make excuses for mediocre actual results.

 

26 minutes ago, leech said:

A great example of this would be something like Ultima IV, where we know full well the A8 is more  capable than what we got, but it was an Apple II port, and used artifacting for colors.  Looking at what was done for the C64 version, makes me want to learn how to code and do the same thing for the A8!

Atari's hi-res scheme is closer to Apples.    Only problem is Apple II sacrificed resolution for two extra artifact colors (on Apple II for every 8-bits of graphic data,  one bit determines if the artifact colors for that byte are orange and blue or green and purple,    The Atari 8-bit doesn't have that,  there's only two artifact colors, usually orange and blue but it varies, creating an additional headache for developers trying to use that mode.

 

C64 took a different approach.   Their high-res 320x200 mode is still a two color mode technically,  but it allows each 8x8 cell to have a different set of two colors.   While this might be a tough scheme to use for many games,  it's perfect for a tile-based game like Ultima.   So C64 got the most colorful versions while sticking to palettes true to the original look,  (unlike the ST/Amiga versions of U3/U4 where I can't stand the color choices).   I suppose the Atari-8bit versions could have resorted to PMG overlays to color individual tiles,  but that might look funny.   Or it could have gone to a lower res like the Ultima V port that's being worked on

[Can you convert ST programs from the net back to floppy disc?]

19 hours ago, larrylaffer said:

BTW... I believe that if you format a disk on the Atari, you can use your USB drive to move files from your PC to the disk. But that means you will have to extract them from the .st format. Also I think there might be some tricky situations where file permissions might mess things up...

It's the other way around.    If you format on the PC, the ST should have no trouble reading it.    If you format on the ST, chances are the PC won't recognized the disk,  but this depends on the TOS version too, as higher TOS versions improve the PC compatibility. 

 

You might also see phantom files with lower TOS levels on PC formatted disks, but otherwise they work.

 

37 minutes ago, larrylaffer said:

BTW, does anyone know where is Paranoid Little Man, the writer of floimg? He used to be very active in this forum but haven't seen him for months...

I think he got banned...

[Excluding Pac-Man and ET, which is the worst game?]

14 hours ago, Mr Oni said:

That is your experience and fine. So revenue dropped ok several factors could be behind that including the fact that with a computer you could rip and share software.  Even with a big loss it does not mean gaming was dead.  Which is what they always claim about the Nes saving video gaming.  That did not happen gaming was alive and well. All you got was a monopolistic business model used by a company that produced junk hardware.

Nobody is saying that crash meant gaming was dead.  Just like the Dot Com crash wasn't the end of the internet.    It was a time when the videogame market dramatically and unexpectiedly shrunk.     Many arcades closed, most videogame magazines folded,  many stores reduced the size of their videogame sections or removed them completely.

 

What Nintendo did was revive the console market.   The US videogame industry thought that was dead.   When people say NES saved gaming, they are talking consoles specifically 

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

50 minutes ago, Jetboot Jack said:

"The reason for that is on the other systems it's easier to get better results." - its that other platforms/systems generated more income and therefore in those markets there was more competition which means games had to be made well to stand out is the more correct reading to that Rampage etc comparison..

Eventually the NES was a cash cow, but that wasn't true when it first released.   When launching a new console you have to invest in games to make the system shine and give people a reason to buy it.   This often means spending more on those games than you might recoop..   The payoffs come later if/when the system is successful.   One of the problems was the Tramiels didn't seem willing to make this kind of investment in their game libraries until it was too late.

 

I think there was a better chance that Warner would have made such an investment if they weren't crashing and burning.   Assuming Warner could have righted the ship without selling Atari,  I think the 7800 would have been in a better place and they would have made life harder for Nintendo at the very least.

 

1 hour ago, Jetboot Jack said:

My opinion, 'cos there are few absolutes, there were games developed for the original release - and they are of their time in terms of visuals and complexity. Early games on any system are rarely using the hardware to it's max - they we're also developed by solo developers or very very small teams, unlike the Japanese products where even in 1984 they were quite large teams of people making one game.

 

Yes, and most of the those 7800 launch titles titles were already dated in 1984.   They were EXTREMELY dated when the system finally launched in 86

 

1984 was an innovative year in games,  but then here comes this console offering up mostly games from 1982 and older, like Ms-Pacman, Centipede, Joust, Asteroids, Dig Dug..   These are games that had been out on other systems for a year or more and most people weren't going to buy a new console to play rehashes (this was one of the 5200's problems too),  it needed something new and unique.    But Tramiel seemed to think all you needed to do was sell anything cheaper than the competition and you can make it a hit

 

1 hour ago, Jetboot Jack said:

Then there are later developed games that are highly variable in terms of overall quality - but in my opinion mostly lacklustre, because they were made with low budgets - the impetus to make the best games possible is a market driven, you are competing for an audience - Atari had a tiny audience, fewer sales than other platforms and combine that with the fact they ALWAYS wanted the smallest ROM size possible means that games had to be compromised. Later in my career (around 2001) I worked at what was once called Sculptured Software and anecdotally I am aware that the games developed by them were done VERY quickly, by a couple of people, and had to fit into small ROM's because Atari did not want to spend much money on the games...

The sad thing is Atari went from the undisputed king of videogames to a side player in just a few short years.    Unfortunately you can't cost cut your way to success,  you have to have game budgets that are competitive with the others if you want to remain one of the big boys.   Atari Corp wanted to be a computer company and videogames were just something they inherited.   They didn't invest enough in the gaming side until it was too late.

 

 

 

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

14 hours ago, RevEng said:

It's not difficult, you just have to follow the rules of the mode. It doesn't take some exceptional elite coder guru to follow those rules. As I already pointed out, we have a non-programmer non-hardware guru regularly demonstrating a perfect understanding of them. Every console has rules and constraints you need to adhere to, and this one is no different.

There's a huge difference between making static images that follow the rules and making a moving game.    When you move objects around,  they'll move to zones where they can't use the colors they had been using if you aren't careful.  Sometimes even when you understand the rules, you will find they are too restrictive for your project.   If the 320 modes were easy to use, there'd be more games using them and not so many threads around from coders struggling with them.   

 

The more complex the rules. the fewer coders are going to understand and master them, and the worse the results are going to be,  and the more fans are going to complain about untapped potential.   You might not think the rules are complex, but if there's only a few people around that understand them and/or they aren't documented well..   well that's pretty much the definition of specialized/elite knowledge.

 

14 hours ago, RevEng said:

I'm likely gonna blow your mind here, but NES coders also have to understand their hardware and follow the rules.

Of course, but the fact that they consistently got better results on NES says a lot about the complexities. 

 

15 hours ago, RevEng said:

There's too much noise in your data (other factors like lack of funding, lack of dev support) and too few data points (game titles) for you to soundly come to the conclusion that the tech was lacking. That's why I'm saying your pet theory is the result of confirmation bias. Well, that and the fact that I've actually used the 320 modes before.

That's hilarious!    I hated the NES, wanted Atari to succeed, and I thought the 7800 looked amazing at first.    If I had confirmation bias,  then it would be that the 7800 is superb and I'd have a blind spot to its issues.    Problem is, every time I play a 7800 game, its shortcomings are just too apparent.   And I'm talking mostly about the commercial titles that would make or break the system, not the homebrews that some 7800 wizard came up with decades later.   Looking at the situation objectively, I came to the conclusion that the 7800 as it exists was not worth killing the 5200 over in 84,   it should have been sent back tand refined a bit more as the eventual 5200 successor and it could have been an amazing console.

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

11 minutes ago, RevEng said:

It's a mistake to make up your mind about a technology based on it's worst implementations, and you've done again and again here. We've provided examples of 320 mode used well, both during the commercial console life, and after. Pointing at the worst as evidence for your pet theory - when there were so many non-technical challenges going on - is misguided.

I agree that you can't judge the hardware by a bad implementation or two.    I'm judging it by its overall commercial library (the stuff that makes or breaks it) and its place in history.   It was supposed to be the successor to the 5200 and carry Atari through the late 80s,  And as such, it falls short,   Compared to the 5200 it's two steps forward, and two steps back.   Better sprites, worse sound, it should be better in every way.   There shouldn't be 5200/Atari 8bit games that look or play better than the 7800 version, but there are a few.   And its games should be able go toe to toe with the competition without showing obvious inferiorities. 

 

17 minutes ago, RevEng said:

Here's the thing. There are certain, very clear, rules about using color in 320 modes. 160 mode is simpler, but not in some "oh my god, 320 mode is impossible!!1!" kind of way. It just takes a little bit of understanding and planning. And yes, creatively working within those rules. Rules which have been laid out since 1984.

I never said it was impossible, just that it was difficult and hence the tendency to avoid it.   Yes there are some homebrewers that have done amazing work.   I really like the homebrew Frogger for instance that's nearly arcade quality.    But the problem is you need to be a hardware expert to achieve that quality and that means the vast majority of coders won't be able to do it.    Every system has elite coders that can make it do wonders,  so I wouldn't judge the system by the exceptions, I judge it by the norm.

 

[It's probably easier to convince a brick wall to try out Atari's games than most modern gamer's]

6 minutes ago, ledzep said:

Modern games are trying too hard to be TV series or movies.  I've played a few, they're not bad but nothing that makes me think older games suck.  I'm finding less and less reason to believe that Gen-X/Zers are worth dealing with given their insistence that anything before they were born is garbage.

We're the Gen-Xer's.   

 

14 minutes ago, ledzep said:

Once we got good at simply beating Adventure we started upping the stakes to the point that we said that the only way to win was to end up with everything in the Gold Castle.  That was a strobey, color-cycling mess, hahaha, we'd back into the castle so that the chalice was the last thing in so we could see the big room inside full of every object/creature from the game.  Even that got easy after a time.

Yup, did that one too.

 

Adventure was a game that we tried to fry alot (turning power off/on until it glitches)  it created some interesting mazes that way.

 

 

 

[Excluding Pac-Man and ET, which is the worst game?]

1 hour ago, Laner said:

The Commodore 64/128 alone sold ~22M units. You also had the Atari 8-bits, the CoCo line, the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Ti 99-4/a, etc. that account for many million more.  In very broad strokes, you have roughly (+/- 10%) the same number of 8-bit home computers and pre-NES consoles sold. 

That number is disputed,  Wikipedia says between 12.5M and 17M.   This page https://commodore.international/2021/07/05/how-many-c64-and-c128-were-actually-sold/ says that only 3 million were sold by mid-1984 (that's during the crash).    By comparison, There were 2 million Colecovisions and 1 Million 5200s sold during that same timeframe.

 

Also the crash was North America only,  so ZX Spectrum was not a factor.   TI99-4/a was killed around this time.   CoCo was a minor player, and many Apple II's were put into classroom use.

 

1 hour ago, Laner said:

Anyway - did everyone who owned a pre-crash console move to a home computer? No. But I think there is enough evidence to indicate that more than a "small percentage" made the jump from consoles to home computers as their primary gaming devices prior to the NES.

The revenue from computer gaming sales didn't come close to making up from the lost console gaming sales.    Videogame revenue fell from $3.2 Billion in sales in 1982 to $100 million in 1985 according to wikipedia.  

 

in my experience, most of my peers dropped out of gaming altogether and moved onto other things and didn't come back until NES became popular. 

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

54 minutes ago, RevEng said:

3 hours ago, zzip said:

 

We have a handful of commercial carts to actually point at, and at least three of them are using 320 modes. (One on One, Jinks, and Tower Toppler) The difference in usage bitd is just a preference for high color (which matches my own taste) vs the lower color 320 modes.

The fact that there's only a handful proves my point.   If it's just a design choice, then why were even low0color games like Galaga implemented in 160 rather than 320?    Look at the extra detail in the NES screenshot on the right to see that increasing the resolution does make a difference.  The detail on the player's ship especially.

 

 

Rampage looks horrible on the 7800 and the NES and SMS versions to the right even managed to pull off extra color-shading at a higher resolution

 

 

High colors are nice, but there are times more resolution is needed to bring out the details,  and the 7800 ports fail to do this more often than not.

I can go through the library and I see this time and again, yet I'm told the 7800 is better than NES,  and it's just as easy to program for, and high-res is not a problem

 

But I've read developer descriptions of the pitfalls in 320 modes and know it has several limitations that make it challenging to work with, and that's why it's infrequently used.   It's unfortunate but that's the way it is..

[I wonder, how many of you STILL play the OG 1981 2600 Asteroids - even 42 years later???]

Never.   I wasn't a huge fan of the 2600 version back then.   These days if I get in the mood for Asteroids,  I'll play the arcade version rather than any home port.

[Excluding Pac-Man and ET, which is the worst game?]

12 hours ago, Mr Oni said:

Video games didnt go anywhere people were just playing them on Commodore 64s and Atari computers. The nes is a pos in terms of quality and if it had never come around you just would have had people playing games on computers no big deal.

Only a small percentage of the players made the jump to computers, that's why it was a crash.   It didn't help that computers facilitated piracy.    Many of the people who picked up NES never owned a computer.

 

[If you could change one thing about the 520ST/STM/STFM......]

12 hours ago, DarkLord said:

Can you imagine how different things would have been if Atari had just included

1 more video mode... 320x200, 256 colors, from the start, in the ST?   

 

 

Might have a bit much for the original ST, but a mode like that should have been added to STe (along with 640x200x16 color)

[If Atari should make a new Adventure, what would you like it to be like?]

12 hours ago, Zonie said:

And what's the difference between several items or several in a sack? You trippin' on the peyote?

Because you'd have to find the sack..   And then lets say you need the sword, but it's in the sack.   You'd have to drop the sack, open it, get the sword out.   By then the dragon might have eaten you.    So using the sace is a trade-off and risk.

 

 

[It's probably easier to convince a brick wall to try out Atari's games than most modern gamer's]

16 hours ago, ledzep said:

I was thinking more Minecraft but that's not a bad idea.  Except I can't stand the mixing together of different resolutions, some stuff looks like giant 8-bit recreations in 3D, others look like modern buildings and cars, too detailed.  Keep everything blocky and it might work.  I watched a trailer for Roblox and it seems the point is that you need to fight something somewhere, but it's not here, so you have to run or drive/fly a lot.

Someone tried making Adventure in Dreams on Playstation 4, and the results are kind of odd, like you describe:

 

16 hours ago, ledzep said:

Boo hoo, so what does these wannabe adventurers do with something like checkers or Battleship?  Where's my story? 

16 hours ago, ledzep said:

True, but other games have a similar gameplay style or set of rules.  Early board games like Snakes & Ladders or tic-tac-toe don't lend themselves to long gameplay or stories, it's just get to the end first and win.

There's been a board game renaissance, and there was a debate in another thread about how modern board games are "amazing" and old board games have "terrible" design.   I wonder how many of the younger people still play the old board games and which ones?

 

16 hours ago, ledzep said:

I remember when those "story" type PC and console games started becoming popular, a common thing that my friends would talk about (I never got into those games) was how they got that new game that everybody is playing, spent 6-8 hours playing it... and completed it.  They rarely ever played that particular game again because what for?  They would just move on to the next "story" game and beat that one.  I don't see an advantage there, that's like reading a book.  You're not going to start reading the book again right after you finish reading it.

That's still how it is today, except gamers will act like they got ripped off if the game is 'only' 6-8 hours (unless it's cheap).   I've seen it suggested by gamers that a game should cost no more than $1 per hour of gameplay it provides.   If you want something with replayability, you'd get a "sandbox" game like Minecraft or a City builder or something.

 

I've seen people get confused by sandbox games because there's no storyline telling them what to do.    The idea of "make your own story" is alien to them.   That's weird to me because as kids we'd have Lego or Star Wars action figures we'd improvise our own adventures and stories and have fun doing it.   One reason Adventure was so fun is we'd create our own quests and challenges.   "Ok this time let's get all the dragon carcasses in the secret room",  "The bat is frozen in place, can we keep him that way the entire game?"

 

16 hours ago, ledzep said:

Original Doom is basically a 1st-person Berzerk or Gauntlet, just kill everything you see while running around in different rooms.  Seemed pretty popular back then.

But Doom also had an objective and ending that was achievable, you die, and respawn on the same level without your inventory (or just reload your last save)

 

I have no idea if there's an ending in Berzerk or Gauntlet, it would take too many quarters to get that far

 

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

15 hours ago, RevEng said:

Maybe that's true of the 5200, I don't know. It doesn't match any of my experience on the 7800. Many of the impressive looking games coming out on the 7800 are using 7800basic, which manages the display in a very generic way. There is no arcane months-long tinkering involved, just a small bit of system knowledge, some great game mechanic coding, and some kick-ass art.

There was no 7800basic BITD.   Developers had to deal with whatever dev system and documentation Atari provided, and those often weren't the greatest.

 

15 hours ago, RevEng said:

mksmith got the 7800 Petscii Robots port up and running in petscii character mode, and it was my job to juice up the display for the 7800. That uplift work on the tile engine - which is most of the visual impact - took me less than a week of dev time. The rest of the dev time we spent on more mundane stuff - hooking up the rest of engine fully, adding controls, creating menus, QA and fixes, etc - all very pedestrian stuff and totally comparable to what you'd do on any non-Atari systems.

PETSCII robots appears to be running in 160 mode except for the text at the bottom of the screen.    I'm specifically talking about the 320 mode being difficult to work with except for developers with a special skillset.   That's why the majority of games used 160 mode back then, which looked outdated compared to the competition.

 

5 hours ago, DavidD said:

Dumb question... not to sidetrack things too much, but if Atari had gone ahead and released Nintendo's Famicom in the USA... based on the timeframes we know about, wouldn't that have been AFTER the 7800?

 

That is, we'd have 2600 -> 5200 -> 7800 -> "Atari/Nintendo Famicom"

 

I believe they wee talking to Nintendo around the same time they were evaluating the 7800.   I think they were planning to go with one or the other, not both.    Also the fact that Atari snubbed Nintendo is why the NES launch in North America was delayed until 85

[Why was 7800 discontinued]

1 hour ago, leech said:

This post makes me think that my 7800 is very much underused....

I think it's like so many Atari systems where if you have the time and skills you can make it do amazing things.   But the average programmer hired to do a port BITD didn't necessarily have those skills and had a deadline, so you got games that looked inferior to the competition.   The reason for that is on the other systems it's easier to get better results.

[Amiga Newbie looking for information and advice]

I'm not an Amiga expert, but I know just enough to be dangerous

 

I believe the most popular model was the Amiga 500,  so if you want the authentic Amiga experience that would be a good way to go.

 

If you go the emulation route, you would need to find the kickstart rom images,  and it would be useful to have some workbench disk images.    Kickstart is like TOS roms, it comes in different version with the newer ones are more suited to emulating newer hardware.   Workbench is the part of the AmigaOS that is not in rom,  you don't need it for games that autoboot, for instance.

 

Amiga disk images usually have an .adf extension,  unlike ST images, they are not MS-DOS compatible.  

 

Here's an Amiga games database similar to Atarimania:  https://amiga.abime.net/

 

You will come across refernces to OCS, ECS,  AGA.     These are chipset revisions kind of like ST, STe and Falcon in the ST world.      OCS is the original, ECS is enhanced,  AGA is the final "Falcon-level"  chipset.  If using emulation, set your emulation level and rom accordingly

 

Not sure what else to say?   The Amiga GUI is kind of a GUI/CLI hybrid and the user interface is a bit clunky to use compared to GEM (especially on a floppy system), but it's self explanitory enoough for basic tasks and does have some more advanced features including multitasking.

 

[VirtualJaguar in Debian 12 (32 bit) has no sound]

Also in case you missed it,   a new Jaguar emulator came out earlier this year with almost perfect compatibility:   BigPEmu:  https://www.richwhitehouse.com/jaguar/index.php?content=download

 

There's no native Linux build for now (supposedly on the TODO list),  but the Windows build runs perfectly under Wine on Linux

[VirtualJaguar in Debian 12 (32 bit) has no sound]

Check your mixer settings.   Sometimes if multiple audio devices are present, some apps will send their audio to the wrong one, and you will hear nothing.    There's usually controls to set the active audio device, and the per-app controls to change where they send their audio.

 

Also it could be a pulseaudio vs jack vs ALSA vs SDL issue.  It's been awhile since I messed with virtual jaguar, but if it gives you an option of which audio backend to use,  it might have chosen a default that doesn't work, and you can try different backends until you get sound.

[If Atari should make a new Adventure, what would you like it to be like?]

I don't really want a square as a protagonist or the dragon to look too much like a duck..   But I do like @ledzep idea of actual ducks in a pond that attack you as a throwback easter egg.

 

I think the graphics should at least be in a pixel art style or better so that things like like they are supposed to rather than staying true to the 2600 graphics.   But if we advance the graphics, then we should keep the gameplay elements so that it still feels like Adventure.

 

So every item from the original should be present (plus new items),  every location from the original should be present plus new locations.

 

I'd also say no inventory to keep the formula,  but maybe there could be a new "sack" item that lets you store several items inside and you can carry that as your one object.   Sack should be limited to 4-6 inventory slots so you can't simply carry everything in it.    And the bat can't steal items from the sack, but it can steal the whole sack!

 

And the magnet-   should we keep the weird physics where only one item is attracted to it at a time?   or have it pull every metallic object in the area at once?

 

[Excluding Pac-Man and ET, which is the worst game?]

1 hour ago, davyK said:

Many of their games look good because of this - the game designs avoid having to multiplex sprites on the same scanlines for example and their better games , when you look at them, have their game display "banded" to avoid that type of requirement. Look at Pitfall - the action is really only happening in two bands of the screen on the non-rope screens for example.

 

And their early titles especially had very simplistic and repetitive gameplay,  simplistic even by 2600 standards.   Skyjinks-  just a slalom game..   Barnstorming, just fly through the barns and avoid the windmills.   I don't think we noticed at the time because they consistently wowed us with the visuals.    But when I bought the Activision Anthology for Windows in the 90s it struck me "I don't remember these games being so boring!"        Of course the later titles got more complex-   Pitfall / Pitfall II and so on.

 

1 hour ago, davyK said:

I quite liked Vanguard though I didn't play the arcade game. The boss was a let down until I realised the longer you wait until you fire the more points you get. It was 8K but was more to do with the number of levels it had I'm guessing. But that port was clever at restricting where the action happened on-screen with screen boundaries/landscapes on the hori levels. The 2600 is better at vertical games because of the scanline limitations of the hardware.

I'd put 2600 Vanguard in the Defender category-  pretty good use of the 2600 hardware with some annoying alterations.   Although Vanguard is probably closer to the arcade in spirit than Defender is.    I don't remember how difficult the boss fight is on the 2600,  but in the arcade you had to wait until the holes in the two gates that guarded the boss aligned while you were constantly being fired upon and laughed it (the game had extensive speech synthesis).   It was quite nerve wracking!

[It's probably easier to convince a brick wall to try out Atari's games than most modern gamer's]

6 hours ago, Stephen Moss said:

I doubt there are many new games for PC/modern consoles that are coming out in a flat 2D 80's style any more even though they may look better/more details due to higher resolution graphics.

 

Actually there's quite a few games that come out with retro-80s pixel art styling, and some are quite popular, especially with younger people.   Off the top of my head-  Delta Rune, Escapists series, Stardew Valley, but there are many others.

 

It's not the graphics that put them off.   Gamers today expect some kind of story, or sandbox, or simulator that will keep them busy for awhile.   A lot of younger people don't know what to do with the arcade style of short-gameplay, impossible to progress until you "git gud".   They expect you go back to a checkpoint and not "game over" if you fail.

 

If you think about it, the only reason arcade-style exists is because games first appeared in arcades and needed to keep the coins flowing in.   A game where you fail frequently but have strong urge to replay is the most profitable for an arcade.

So it's probably not the most natural gameplay style,  but it feels natural to Gen-Xers because that was our first videogame experiences.