The Atari 2600+ is live for preorders!

[+jgkspsx]

10 hours ago, donjn said:

It is less useful than Stella on your PC
It is less useful than Retron 77 (which can take multicarts AND SD cards)

It is less useful than Gamestaiton Pro (which can take SD cards)
It is less useful than an Atari Flashback (which again has an SD card)
It is less useful than the Atari 50th Anniversary Collection
It is more expensive than all of the above by a long shot because you have to buy games

Stella on the PC isn't in my living room and doesn't feel like playing an Atari 2600. It also doesn't play 7800 games. It also doesn't play my cartridges. It does work with original controllers if you spend $20 on an adapter. This is the best solution, but not wholly satisfying. (The 2600+ is not yet wholly satisfying either, which is why I don't have one, but am considering getting one after the firmware update.)

 

Retron 77 runs an ancient version of Stella and has terrible cart compatibility. Also no 7800. Also controller issues.

 

GameStation Pro is fun but the controllers are very bad, the legal game selection is very limited, and the paddles only work on a few included games. Also not my carts.

 

Flashbacks have spotty compatibility and bad controller support.

 

Atari 50 is amazing but it is a terrible overview of the Atari 2600's library because it has no third party games. It also has a very limited selection of games.

 

I do not have to buy any games. I have them. Hundreds of them.

[+MrZarniwoop]

11 hours ago, donjn said:

But lets call this thing what it is, a ROM dumper, not unlike Retron 77 or the Atari Flashback.

Yup. That's pretty much it! You plug in a physical cartridge (way more cartridges today than a RetroN 77 supports, even before the 2600+ gets its first update) and it works. That's pretty much the whole experience!

 

You're wishing for a vinyl record player that is mostly about playing FLAC files, because hey, they're both audio, right? It'd be very cool to be a generic ROM player, but a niche limited market and they're trying for a (near-)mainstream hit with an inexpensive price point.

 

And don't count out what the community might do. They've clearly left plenty of footprints in the snow to allow "hackers" to add functionality.

[Brad_from_the_80s]

Crazy talk maybe, but imagine if next year they came out with special editions.  Telegames.  Vader.... Junior?  Lol

[MarcinJ]

8 hours ago, dancero said:

Can someone tell me if the sprites of the PAL version of Space Invaders look red?

I have PAL version and it looks fine. 

[DEANJIMMY]

9 hours ago, dancero said:

Can someone tell me if the sprites of the PAL version of Space Invaders look red?

I did not test my own card yet but I have seen on other threads, for a few PAL games the colors are a bit off, actually too dark.

Together with your TV settings they might look like red.

The SW update will lighten them up but you could also turn contrast down, brightnes up to see if it improves.

Also use game mode on your TV as all this dynamic improvements might have an impact too!

As said, need to find my cart, I rather played the 7800 homebrew instead, which hopefully works after the SW update...

Edited November 30, 2023 by DEANJIMMY

[Thomas Jentzsch]

4 hours ago, jgkspsx said:

Retron 77 runs an ancient version of Stella...

The community build runs (almost) the latest Stella.

[Ben from Plaion]

A quick update from me on PAL NTSC cartridge testing on a Beta build. This build has been made to auto detect and play at the according Hz, generally this is 50hz for PAL and 60hz for NTSC

 

AA poster @Dr Karnov kindly offered his time to check this Beta build with his 84 cartridges. His carts are a even mix between 2600 7800 PAL and NTSC.

 

The good news is that they all switched and played at the correct refresh rates. There was Frostbite 2600 which ran at 60hz, but Dr Karnov is unsure whether its actually a NTSC cart, and there is there is a possibility that some PAL carts are 60hz (like my Galaga 7800 PAL seems to be)

 

He's reported that the 50Hz games run smoothly, so that should deal with any hitching thats been reported with PAL carts. He also has said that sprite movement ghosting seems to be reduced as witnessed on Berzerk.

 

Additionally though hes stated there seems to be some intermittant missing sprites on bullets for PAL Battlezone and Wizards of War - need to check that.

 

In an unexpected twist apparently BattleZone and Bezerk PAL colours seem improved. I dont know why this would be. 

 

@Dr Karnov have I missed anything, please feel free to post your thoughts and any images or videos of your testing.....and thanks a bunch for testing all your carts.

 

So in my mind I'm going to leave the 50 / 60 hz auto detect code in the beta as it seems to be working fine. Now I will be looking into configuring the PAL colour palette some more, I'm going to try a couple of different builds such as a stock z26 palette along with some standard and z26 palettes with adjusted brightness and gamma. I'll post here with some images once I have the builds to test, hopefully next week sometime.

 

In other news the 7800 emulation is being currently being updated, there is now a plan in place and again I'll post an update when we get a bit further.

 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2023 by Ben from Plaion

[Dr Karnov]

This is PAL Battlezone running on the new build, in 50hz

[SparkleFork]

51 minutes ago, Ben from Plaion said:

Additionally though hes stated there seems to be some intermittant missing sprites on bullets for PAL Battlezone and Wizards of War - need to check that.

I had the same issue with missing bullets on Battlezone (which i thought was a PAL cart but it displays in it's proper colours which suggests it isn't!) but that got rectified by turning off Motion Plus on my Samsung TV. Not sure if that helps.

[Dr Karnov]

33 minutes ago, SparkleFork said:

I had the same issue with missing bullets on Battlezone (which i thought was a PAL cart but it displays in it's proper colours which suggests it isn't!) but that got rectified by turning off Motion Plus on my Samsung TV. Not sure if that helps.

I'm pretty sure I've got all processing switched off on my monitor, but I'll double check this evening 

[Ben from Plaion]

1 hour ago, Dr Karnov said:

This is PAL Battlezone running on the new build, in 50hz

Is this considered the right colours for Battlezone PAL?

 

[DEANJIMMY]

6 hours ago, DEANJIMMY said:

I did not test my own card yet but I have seen on other threads, for a few PAL games the colors are a bit off, actually too dark.

Together with your TV settings they might look like red.

The SW update will lighten them up but you could also turn contrast down, brightnes up to see if it improves.

Also use game mode on your TV as all this dynamic improvements might have an impact too!

As said, need to find my cart, I rather played the 7800 homebrew instead, which hopefully works after the SW update...

Now I tested it and it is actually NTSC and the colors on the 2600+ are correct but were wrong all the years on my PAL Jr...

So I can't tell anything about the PAL cart....

[Ben from Plaion]

Here are all the posters that were made on Posterspy for the launch of the 2600+

[+swlovinist]

I am looking forward to the update, and I appreciate Ben the details that Atari is working on to make this good product even better.   

[Electric-Dreams]

1 hour ago, Ben from Plaion said:

Is this considered the right colours for Battlezone PAL?

 

It's quite challenging to comment on color accuracy when dealing with a photo of a television screen viewed on a smartphone or computer. I lack information about the applied image settings on the original TV, so nothing is certain... but it seems that the colors are somewhat accurate. Whether on my CRT TV with my PAL Atari 2600 or on my LCD monitor with the Retron 77(with updated stella), the colors for the tracks and the tank are a little more contrasting. Still, making a direct comparison is truly difficult because my screens and monitors are set to my liking. Overall, the color rendering for PAL appears to be better, less dark. But that's just my opinion. Can we get screenshots of PAL games like Space Invaders or Pole Position with the new firmware?

[+Intellivision Master]

2 hours ago, Ben from Plaion said:

In other news the 7800 emulation is being currently being updated, there is now a plan in place and again I'll post an update when we get a bit further.

This is great to hear.

[Dr Karnov]

8 minutes ago, Electric-Dreams said:

It's quite challenging to comment on color accuracy when dealing with a photo of a television screen viewed on a smartphone or computer. I lack information about the applied image settings on the original TV, so nothing is certain... but it seems that the colors are somewhat accurate. Whether on my CRT TV with my PAL Atari 2600 or on my LCD monitor with the Retron 77(with updated stella), the colors for the tracks and the tank are a little more contrasting. Still, making a direct comparison is truly difficult because my screens and monitors are set to my liking. Overall, the color rendering for PAL appears to be better, less dark. But that's just my opinion. Can we get screenshots of PAL games like Space Invaders or Pole Position with the new firmware?

I'll post some more pics of PAL carts on new firmware tonight. I'm afraid I don't have Space Invaders or Pole Position though

[Beatley82]

3 hours ago, Ben from Plaion said:

A quick update from me on PAL NTSC cartridge testing on a Beta build. This build has been made to auto detect and play at the according Hz, generally this is 50hz for PAL and 60hz for NTSC

 

AA poster @Dr Karnov kindly offered his time to check this Beta build with his 84 cartridges. His carts are a even mix between 2600 7800 PAL and NTSC.

 

The good news is that they all switched and played at the correct refresh rates. There was Frostbite 2600 which ran at 60hz, but Dr Karnov is unsure whether its actually a NTSC cart, and there is there is a possibility that some PAL carts are 60hz (like my Galaga 7800 PAL seems to be)

 

He's reported that the 50Hz games run smoothly, so that should deal with any hitching thats been reported with PAL carts. He also has said that sprite movement ghosting seems to be reduced as witnessed on Berzerk.

 

Additionally though hes stated there seems to be some intermittant missing sprites on bullets for PAL Battlezone and Wizards of War - need to check that.

 

In an unexpected twist apparently BattleZone and Bezerk PAL colours seem improved. I dont know why this would be. 

 

@Dr Karnov have I missed anything, please feel free to post your thoughts and any images or videos of your testing.....and thanks a bunch for testing all your carts.

 

So in my mind I'm going to leave the 50 / 60 hz auto detect code in the beta as it seems to be working fine. Now I will be looking into configuring the PAL colour palette some more, I'm going to try a couple of different builds such as a stock z26 palette along with some standard and z26 palettes with adjusted brightness and gamma. I'll post here with some images once I have the builds to test, hopefully next week sometime.

 

In other news the 7800 emulation is being currently being updated, there is now a plan in place and again I'll post an update when we get a bit further.

 

 

 

This is great, thanks Ben.

[PacManPlus]

...and Ben, if I can help in any way by testing every one of my games with an update, by all means let me know.  Still waiting for Atari to ship mine, but I imagine I'll have it soon.

[+jgkspsx]

5 minutes ago, PacManPlus said:

...and Ben, if I can help in any way by testing every one of my games with an update, by all means let me know.  Still waiting for Atari to ship mine, but I imagine I'll have it soon.

Get this man a console stat!

[Dr Karnov]

Here is PAL Berzerk, stock firmware, running at 60hz

[Dr Karnov]

Here is the same cart, beta firmware, running at 50hz

[Mockduck]

It could be my TV, but curious: Are other folks seeing missing bullets in NTSC Atari Space Invaders? They shoot and register but are not displaying on my 4k TV. I've checked things like Game Mode and such, but it seems consistent.

[+Stephen]

1 minute ago, Mockduck said:

It could be my TV, but curious: Are other folks seeing missing bullets in NTSC Atari Space Invaders? They shoot and register but are not displaying on my 4k TV. I've checked things like Game Mode and such, but it seems consistent.

The game uses 30Hz flicker - each bullet is only displayed every other frame.  Hopefully there is a setting on your TV that can correct this.

[Ben from Plaion]

1 hour ago, PacManPlus said:

...and Ben, if I can help in any way by testing every one of my games with an update, by all means let me know.  Still waiting for Atari to ship mine, but I imagine I'll have it soon.

Nice one. Thanks