bergbros

The atari fuji is an icon and really there is no other representation of Atari, indeed there is no other representation of videogames in general. It is everywhere and even featured in movies like Blade Runner. A mascot is not Atari. There is no unifying mascot.

Also, like the rarity guide, there should be downloads of manuals, screenshots, roms, etc. Just a suggestion.

Thanks. Keep it coming. What I find interesting is that some of the best games you mentioned are puzzle games. Shanghai, Crystal Mines, Chips Challenge. Atari has never been known as a brain teaser type of company. My criteria again is the games anyone would like to play whether it is action, puzzle, etc.

Your input on the Lynx has been invaluable. I juat boughy a Lynx II with 12 games for $61.00. A good buy? Anyway, I need to know what are the five games a Lynx owner must have. I am a gamer, not a collector, and I don't care to have all the games. I just want THE best. The best combination of gameplay, graphics and sound, in that order. It looks like S.T.U.N Runner, Roadblasters, Klax, Blue Lightning and Joust are the best, but I'm sure there are others.

I said my peace about die hard collectors after the absolutely ridiculous price paid for the Lochjaw game. ($960? Even as a collector that is mad money). I have no problem with those who sell carts for cash or trade. No body is twisting your arm to buy the game and everybody has the right to engage in some legal capitalism. My philosophy is that Atari is fun and hearkens back to the more innocent time in my life. It is not a way of life and I do not want to get that Air Raid cart. Fortunately so far the good stuff can be had for cheap, the system can be found everywhere, not just on Ebay. My big worry about collectors in the future is that the prices will get skewed away from the casual gamer. Still... there are other systems, other games, other pasttimes. Colecovison? Intellivision? PC? XBox? A good book?

Pitfall 2 and it is for the different tunes like when you grab the balloon and it changes into that circus tune. Excellent for a system whose biggest drawback is its bad sound system. Mountain King when you get the flame has a real heart racing theme that is perfect as you are racing against the clock. Montezuma's Revenge has a funky theme when you reach the treasure room. BTW I don't think it is cheating to use an extra chip. THere is nothing wronf in trying to get the most out of the system.

The Did You Know? section of the Home Page said that this game was complete. After downloading and playing it on Stella, I cannot agree. The use of the Ring is absolutely worse than useless, it is downright dangerous as it attracts Ringwraiths like a bee to honey and serves no purpose. No way this game would have this. Also, there really is no way to outrun the RIngwraiths. It is not really a fun game at all. If it wasn't for the movie coming out, the game would not have generated the excitement it had.

I always thought Imagic made solid games and had slick production values and nice looking carts. Their instruction manuals were also well designed. The games were challenging and the graphics were good for the 2600, second only to Activision as a whole. The best game was Moonsweeper, the Solaris look alike. A second was Dragonfire. I like most of them, Riddle of the Sphynx, Atlantis, Laser Gates (did anyone ever complete that game) I don't remember any truly bad games. Maybe Firefighter. Heck, I thought the cover art was phenomenal.

I especially like how the expertly drawn artwork accurately describes the game and how exciting the description of the game makes me want to run out there and buy it. Will I be too fast? Too slow? I am in suspense. And the minimalist scoring system is so perfect. It makes pong look like cold fusion.

Thanks for the feedback on the Lynx. It seems that the syste has the best value of all the portables. It is a system that was truly ahead of its time. My next question is what kind of price would be reasonable for the system and its games, new and used? What would be the price if the system is slighlty scratched and so on? I want to make bid, but I do not want to substantially overpay.

A gamer, not a collector. Ahhh... a welcome respite from the $960 a cartridge boys. You can get the best games for the most part for very little. That is the beauty of the hobby, I think. For me, it ihs always been the enjoyment and the hearkening back to a more innocent time when I was a teenager in the early 80's. As others have said, what you are willing to spend is up to your budget. I think you can get the best quality games relatively cheaply as, generally, they tend to be more common. You have to say to yourself, I am willing to spend for $X dollars and stick to it and be patient. The 2600 is relatively easy to collect. Ebay is always out there and the good games can be had for cheap. They will always be there so don't get caught in a bidding war. I got good games like Gravitar and Solaris without ever getting another bid this way. You can always get good feedback on a game by sticking to this board or try an emulator to preview the game before you buy. If you just want to play, you can always get the loose cart for cheaper and just download the instructions from this site. You can always trade your doubles to get a game you want too. The bottom line is what you want and stick to it.

All right, am I the only person who believes this auction for Lochjaw is an exercise in ultimate insanity. I mean, come on, it is an Apollo game and a really crappy one at that. $600.00????!!!!!. I mean, I can buy a computer, a suit, a lynx game with all the games on Ebay, for the price of this game. And we're talking the 2600. We just got a thread talking how people got carts in the wild, you know, getting carts for .50 a pop and now you have Lochjaw. I'm going to sell my Crypts of Chaos game for $50.00. Its a bargain.

If you think BMX is a sport, then BMX Air Raider I think is tops. I don't even like BMX and I frequently play the game on Stella. I love trying to go for the ultimate half pipe trick. Te highest point total I got was I think 4100 with a couple 720's and 4 wheel bounces with 720's in between. I can't believe how addictive this game is. Other than that I really don't care for the sports games as they are none too realistic.

I usually post on the 2600 board as I have one since 1982. I am interested in obtaining a portable system and I want to know how the Lynx stacks up to others especially the Game Boy Advanced. How are the controls, batterry life, graphics, game selection etc. compared withe the others? The system looks really good. How durable is the system? Is it good value for the money? Any input is appreciated

I played this on Stella. I thought that the concept was good although the execution flawed. I thought the idea of getting clues to placing the items in the appropriate rooms to get the comic book clues was great and should have been utilized in the first two games. If Earthworld would have employed this and actually had a satisfying ending, this game would have achieved classic status, instead of being the frustrating, impossible mess it was. I thought Waterworld was challengling and had me using pen and paper to write down the combinations to get the appropriate objects. It actually had me using my brain and hunches instead of blind luck to solve the puzzle. The game wasn't too hard or too easy either. The gameplay elements were not good and basically were pale imitations of Earthworld (ice floes instead of logs for example) and really did not affect overall gameplay. I really wish that the gameplay in all the swordquest games were used so that if they were navigated successfully, an important clue would be revealed or a secret passage would be found that would lead to a clue on placing the items. In addition, again, no ending. What is it with the 2600? A game with this mind bending complexity should have mind blowing ending. How about getting an object and flying to Airworld or some climax? That was the worst part. I guess the honchos at Atari thought the chnace of winning valuable tchochkes was climax enough. Waterworld was a game in which the criticisms of the first two (too hard, no idea how to place items) were being addressed. Too bad that there was no airworld to tie everything up. The whole series was an example of a good idea that was poorly executed.

Oh, I do have some rarities, but I bought them when they first came out. My list is as follows: Star Wars Arcade (Not a bad conversion) Montezumas Revenge (Like it) Crypts of Chaos (A bad game) Laser Gates ( I like this game although I was never able to finish it) Popeye Bump n" Jump Front Line Stategy X- Konami (I know some people think this game was good. I thought it was awful with crummy graphics) Mountain King (Not sure if it is rare however the best of the bunch) Stargate-Silver label( Much Superior to Defender). The rest are the Berzerks, Robot Tanks Pac-Mans of the world.

The question basically goes to what kind of collector you are. I always felt that the game was the thing and not the plastic that housed it. I really would take a rarity or protoype if the gameplay was particularly strong. Xenophobe, Miner 2049er, Klax, BMX Air Master come to mind. I would rather pay less and get Hozervideo to burn one for me than spend the big bucks on an original. As for the rest, I really do not want to spend ridiculous prices on some truly horrible games. I won't spend $50.00 on A Custers Revenge game that is offensive as well as bad. I saw Air Raid from Menavision on Stella and I could not believe how bad this game was. Spending $100 on a 2600 game especially one that was crummy like that seems to be excessive. I would be more interested in spending $3 on a loose Kaboom without instructions than a shrink wrapped Gauntlet game.

I currently have the Darth Vader model which I had for 15 years or so. My woodgrain fried out before that. The woodgrain gets the nod for the simple reason that the black model came equipped with only one joystick an no paddles. The woody came with two joysticks and the paddles. Atari was cutting costs, but I felt that is really cheap doing that.

I played BMX Airmaster on Stella and I was floored on how good this game was. The graphics and gameplay are excellent and I was especially intrigued by the sophisticated scoring which awards new tricks and awards less repetitive tricks. It reminded me of the arcade game 720, the Skate or Die! Skateboarding game with the different moves and multiple events. I would put it up there with the best on the 2600 even better than Ms. Pac Man. And I'm not even a BMX fan. Unfortunately, the cart is extremely rare. I tried EBAY but it wasn't there. Anyone point me in the right direction?

I define an underated game as one that is really good but did not have the hype or the name recognition of other games. Using this criteria, I believe Thunderground by Sega has to be considered underated. It actually comes from an arcade game, but it had great strategy elements and it got really harder the more you got into it. It came from a mediocre game manufacturer, Sega, whose only other good game was Star Trek. Another underated game although not as good is Infiltrate by Apollo Games. Apollo was an absolutely horrible game maker with the worst game of all time, Skeet Shoot, however Infiltrate was a nice little game, a combination of Berzerk and Donkey Kong that got incredibly hard pretty fast. Any other suggestions?

Anyone have thoughts about the other two games I mentioned, Crypts of Chaos and Space Jockey? Space Jockey was a poor defender type ripoff that was repetitive with no real goal. Crypts of Chaos tried to be first person but really just had no strategy whatsoever. There was no variation to the "lairs" no variation in the treasure, no end, just boring.

I received a response from my email message from Russ Perry, Jr. The author of the article publishing the Earthworld Solution. The entirety of which is below: > I read your article on the Earthworld Solution, and I have to tell you, > I am surprised ANYONE got all the clues in the game let alone the seven. Yeah, me too! :-) To be honest, it wasn't me... I got the solution from an anonymous donor. > My question is, is there any pattern or clue in the comic books that > would give anyone an inkling on how to place the right objects in the > right rooms. I don't think so... We found a slight pattern to the first three of four clues, but we couldn't get it to continue on from there. > The last hint where you had to place fifteen objects in ten rooms is > ridiculous. How did the winners find out how to place the objects? Sheer luck, or LOTS of experimenting I imagine. I didn't get an explanation from my source. > I feel it would be impossible with trial and error. Very near, but never underestimate kids with lots of free time. > Also, did the winners found out the message by just looking at the comic > and not the game? It's possible yes, but with the first game it would still be a mighty guess, I think, to get it right. > How did you come upon the solution? As I said, someone sent it to me anonymously. > The worst part was that if you found out all the clues you were "rewarded" > with the least satisfying ending out there. I mean, there should be some > huge fanfare for solving such an impossible game. Yeah, that would have been nice... -- As you can see, he thought there was no pattern to placing the objects. The message was not too satisfying. I wish he would have got a hold of one of the winners and asked them how they solve the puzzle.

Picking the worst game for the 2600 is like picking a needle in a stack of needles, however, I would have to say Skeet Shoot by Apollo Games probably fits the bill. The morst pointless and boring game out there. I saw it, but I don't have it thank God. I have some clunkers in my pathetic 50+ collection but the ones I single out are Strategy X by Konami, Crypts of Chaos by Fox (Where's the strategy?) and Space Jockey by U.S. Games. BTW, where can I get a Xenophobe Cart? Everyone is talking up this game like it was the best out there.

Thanks for the responses. What if the winners just deduced the clue by looking at the comic book only? Maybe they found out about the prime number clue and looked through the comic book. It would have been easier than finding these impossible clues. I emailed Mr. Perry who wrote the artcle. Hopefully I will get a response from them. Also, the contest is so half baked that there was supposedly a clue meant for fireworld (the food and dagger clue) that does not correspond or help you to find any clue in fireworld. I really want people who actually liked the game to explain why they like it. The game is such an exercise in tedium. BTW, the ending in Riddle of the Sphinx is abrupt, however, I thought it was a way superior game than Swordquest. I like ROS.

I read the article concerning the Earthworld solution and I am amazed ANYONE would solve the puzzle by placing the right number of objects in the right rooms. The last clue alone is impossible to solve. You have to put 15 objects in 10 rooms. My question, is there any hint or pattern that would give one an inkling on how to place the right number of objects in the right rooms for all the clues? Is there anything in the comic books? I only was able to find two clues before I got the solution. THe worst thing is that when you somehow get all the clues in the game the ending is extremely unsatisfying. You would think that solving an impossible puzzle you would get fantastic fanfare, not the warriors sword and back to the game b.s. Was anyone able to get more than two clues? How did they find them? Even with trial and error, it would be impossible to get more than two or three cles.