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"Thrilling" is definitely an apt word. I felt like I was on a rollercoaster or skydiving or something when i first played Lead a couple years ago, I couldn't believe it. There are lots of amazing 2600 games out there, but I do think Lead might be the most "thrilling" I've played -- a finely honed blade of a game.

My town had a thing called "Junk Day" where everyone put unwanted but not-completely-useless household items (chairs, tricycles, shoes, old TVs, encyclopedias) out by the curb. Anyone could take anything they wanted, otherwise it would all be collected and thrown in the dump I guess. Us kids would wander around town and grab anything that caught our eye. Wearing lampshades on our heads, battling with old brooms, etc. Pretty fun times. At some point in the late 80s/early 90s (my memory is hazy) someone tossed out their old 2600 and i snatched it up. My first console. I slowly built a collection of games mostly from garage sales or toy stores going out of business (I remember getting Commando and Kung Fu Master on discount at Kiddie City... along with a Boglin).

This seems to explain what you're talking about: http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/articles/vcs_label_variations/vcs_label_variations.html There are Home Run and Canyon Bomber carts pictured that look like yours, with no "use with joystick controller" text under the title. There's no picture like your Circus Atari... but if you scroll down to "2b. Controller type omitted re-releases (1986-1988)" on the page, that seems to match your carts. And Circus Atari is listed among them.

I love this game.

Oh, I thought of another one that almost-but-not-really fits your description: Dark Chambers. It’s two player co-op… but if one player dies they just wait for the other player to complete the level and then they rejoin on the next level. Again, not exactly what you’re describing with taking turns and whatnot… but close. And its definitely another one that doesnt require a long wait time and is good for pairs of players who have uneven game-playing experience.

@roadrunner @Prizrak --- Oh that's interesting! What a neat idea to make a full virtual 2600 experience, selecting cartridges, 80s radio, etc. @keithbk --- I've never seen Chuck, but just watched that Missile Command sequence on youtube and i think i'm convinced to give it a shot, haha.

Hmm... well, it's a little different, but there's Entombed. Two players play at the same time, and if one player dies then you both stop and restart the level. The player who died loses a life, and if either player loses all three of their lives then the game ends. So it's cooperative if both of you trying to help each other survive as long as possible... or its competitive if you're trying to be the last survivor. And this isn't exactly what you're looking for either.. but my son and I like playing Mines of Minos because it has the option for the second player to control the enemy monsters. It's a pretty neat feature which ensures that both players are always playing.

Hah! Right, of course.

So excited for this! I stumbled on the first Sword of Surtr on the PlusCart late one stormy night and was really taken with how deep and absorbing it was. Can't wait for a sequel.

Since there aren't a ton of 2600 games that have music, I'd be curious to hear if anyone listens to music when they play Atari... Is there any music that feels connected to your 2600 experience? Any music you used to listen to while playing back when you were younger? The two Yes albums "Fragile" and "Close to the Edge" are pretty perfect for me.

I bought it last year! One of the first homebrews I ever bought! Wonderful, challenging game.

these are beautiful! wow!

I've got my 2600 set up near my work area at home, so I can play during breaks. I rotate which games I keep out, so its always changing, but here's what's in the mix these days.

Congrats! Looking forward to checking out this pretty-much-completed version soon, and looking forward to the physical release too!

Thanks! Sure, feel free to share. Hmm. Well, might be nice to have the color values listed on the side, like playerpal - or a way to eyedrop select a color previously used - so you can easily match a color you’ve used before.

this is really fun! the color UI made sense to me.

Well thank you for that clarification (and, uh, for this entire site by the way). Apparently i have a poor understanding of this stuff and probably shouldnt be talking about it!

Oh yes, for sure (which is wonderful). I meant paying royalties to Atari, like third-party developers did back in the day when the 2600 was still being produced.

Yeah! An original game with that kind of gameplay, and depth, and those graphics! With story aspects as well. Gives me a similar feeling to the first time i played Keystone Kapers and realized every level had more and more stuff, or in Pitfall 2 when i first realized you could go dooooown. Excited to see how they’ll build on the character mythology from one game to the next too. They also figured out a fun, clever way of exploring the nostalgia of the old games without solely relying on that.

I'm not really an expert, but I'm up late at night avoiding the work i should be doing so I'll give this a shot! Yes, that's right. Yes, Pitfall 2 had a custom chip called the DPC so it could do fancier audio. Not sure about NES, but yeah, the 2600 can do different tones (pure tone, square wave, white noise etc). I think there are 16 of them... though some of them may be duplicates? Uh... maybe someone else can step in and explain that in more detail. I'm still learning this stuff. Anyway, you can also change the volume. So it's... two channels, each with registers for volume (values 0-15), pitch (values 0-31), and tone (values 0-15). That's basically what you're working with, audio wise. The available pitches just don't perfectly align with the notes on a keyboard. So people do the best they can with what they have (except for Pitfall 2, which can do more).

Hopefully Audacity's existence leads to more people discovering the mind-blowing modern 2600 homebrew scene... in turn leading to more people making more games, and on and on. These message boards kept me sane through the pandemic. I remember when I discovered this scene, and started telling my friends "it's incredible! people are making the best games ever made for the system RIGHT NOW! on cartridges and everything!"... i was personally hesitant to use the word "homebrew" myself because it just didn't feel like it illustrated the high quality level of games that are being made. So although I've come to really like the word -- almost carries an "artisan/hand-crafted" kind of connotation to me now -- and although any game that's released for a system without paying royalties is probably technically "homebrew"... I definitely understand their aversion to the word.

Don’t know if this counts, but in “The Adventures of Willy Beamish” on Sega CD, Willy has a “Nintari” in his room where you can play a game called Monster Squad Super Space K’noidtrix... which is basically a mashup of a few older games (breakout/arkanoid/tetris/etc).

I sometimes feel like 2600 games are more like poems -- like haikus even. Very specific limitations, and within those limitations people find amazing ways to surprise you and to push the creative boundaries beyond the expectations of the form... and certain players/readers can appreciate that, and sometimes even find their own meaning in the simplicity of it all. While a lot of modern games are more like novels. More story, more character, more words. Which can be great too. But there's this beautiful elegance to the actual code of early games, which you can feel on the screen, just as there is weight and meaning in every word chosen, every punctuation mark, and every bit of negative space on the page of a poem. You can sit for an entire afternoon -- sometimes a lifetime -- pondering, revisiting, and finding deeper meaning in a single poem... just as you can spend an entire afternoon -- or an entire lifetime -- playing Mr. Do! again and again, discovering new strategies, attempting higher scores, and then someday finally realizing after 30+ years that his name is obviously pronounced "mr. doh" not "mr. doo" because "do re mi fa so la ti do" ugh so stupid why didn't anyone ever correct me? Anyway, I love a lot of modern games, but I've never talked to / shouted at / laughed with an AI opponent as much as the one in Alan Miller's Basketball. I think its a more personal experience to be interacting directly with the code and hardware like that.

I always played Pac-Man in black-and-white mode. The graphics looked crisper on my TV, and the ghosts just looked more... ghostly... rather than flickery. I remember sometimes switching it to color mode for fun and being like "whoa! look at all those colors!" -- I was pretty young so in my memory I can almost TASTE those colors -- but I'd switch back to black-and-white mode when it was time to get serious.

Just wanted to say i love this game, and its been fascinating to follow the progress here. Can’t wait for it to be all smoothed out!