2600 difficulty settings on the 7800

[Final Theory]

Sometimes I try and set scores at Twin Galaxies for games, but what has always confused me was knowing and understanding how the difficulty settings for the 2600 games worked on the 7800. I am using a 7800 I just don't know what's the difference between:

 

Game 1: Difficulty A

Game 1 Difficulty B

 

Game 2

Game 3

.

.

.

ect

 

How do you even know what difficulty you are on? This has always bothered me since I believe that difficulty settings should take place in the software of the game and not in hardware of the system.

 

The first game console that I had and saw and played was the NES. When I got to play Atari games for the first time, the whole idea that difficulty settings where done within the hardware totally perplexed me.

Edited January 5, 2018 by Final Theory

[+slx]

Sometimes I try and set scores at Twin Galaxies for games, but what has always confused me was knowing and understanding how the difficulty settings for the 2600 games worked on the 7800. I am using a 7800 I just don't know what's the difference between:

 

 

How do you even know what difficulty you are on? This has always bothered me since I believe that difficulty settings should take place in the software of the game and not in hardware of the system.

 

The first game console that I had and saw and played was the NES. When I got to play Atari games for the first time, the whole idea that difficulty settings where done within the hardware totally perplexed me.

 

 

What the switches do depends a lot on the type of game you play. On the early two-player games they would usually allow some kind of handicap for the better player, by giving him a smaller bat, spaceship, etc. to allow equalizing of gameplay. Unless you notice a difference on moving the switch you really have to read up in the manual.

 

Some games use the switches for entirely different in-game purposes, like extra buttons for specific actions.

 

The difference to settings via software only, like you might be used from the NES, is that some games allow you to perform changes in mid-game. The NES is considerably younger than the VCS which was built at a time when people were used to "appliances" rather than computers. Having switches for functions made the VCS more easy to adapt to for buyers, who were used to stuff like that from Pong-type games (and their ranges, TVs, etc. which still had knobs and dials for every function). One of the main reasons to omit buttons and relegate functions to menus in appliances is cost of production rather than user convenience. For games you can argue that it allows you to better show what's changing but you could still do that via dedicated switches and give a switch legend as well as the setting on-screen. The NES also has more buttons on the controller allowing changes without reaching for the console.

[+SmittyB]

The NES also has more buttons on the controller allowing changes without reaching for the console.

 

The origins of the NES' start and select buttons can also be directly traced to the same game select / serve switches on Pong machines that the 2600 kept as the select / reset switches. Most of the Pong machines also had switches for ball speed and paddle size so it would make sense for something built as a programmable Pong machine to do the same in the form of the difficulty switches. Then of course the 7800 kept these selections on the console for compatibility even though the 5200 had select and reset buttons on the controller. Fast forward a couple of decades and the original Xbox drops the select button in favour of a back button, and now the Xbox One has dropped both start and select for 'Menu' and 'View' to better represent what the buttons actually do on modern games.

[+xucaen]

I believe the position of the difficulty switches as described in the 7800 owner's manual is opposite of how the switches were actually wired.

 

http://videogameconsolelibrary.com/images/Manuals/86_Atari_7800-Manual.pdf

[fiddlepaddle]

On the 7800, the switches are GENERALLY:

 

Left ("position A") = easy,

Right ("position B") = hard.

 

This is merely by convention, as the software can read the position of those switches and do whatever the programmer wanted, so some games do other things, which are normally described in the instruction manuals. Sometimes it's not at all obvious what they do.

[Trebor]

Left ("position A") = easy,

Right ("position B") = hard.

 

For the 2600, the above is correct.

 

Under the 7800, the above is incorrect. It is reversed.

 

Difficulty switch positioned to the Right = A.

Difficulty switch positioned to the Left = B.

[fiddlepaddle]

On the 7800, the switches are GENERALLY:

 

Left ("position A") = easy,

Right ("position B") = hard.

 

This is merely by convention, as the software can read the position of those switches and do whatever the programmer wanted, so some games do other things, which are normally described in the instruction manuals. Sometimes it's not at all obvious what they do.

 

OOPS (thanks Trebor)...I can no longer edit my original post. I even have a 20 year old post-it over the switches "(easy) B <=> A (hard)"...

 

Here is the comment I MEANT to type:

-------------

In the 7800, the switches are GENERALLY:

 

Left ("position B") = easy,

Right ("position A") = hard.

 

This is merely by convention, as the software can read the position of those switches and do whatever the programmer wanted, so some games do other things, which are normally described in the instruction manuals. Sometimes it's not at all obvious what they do.