Atari logo glitch on Popeye

[Chris-in-NJ]

This has happened to me a number of times: I attempt to insert my Popeye cartridge -- which is a Parker Brothers game -- into my 5200, and I get an Atari boot-up screen with the Mount Fuji logo, with a capital "B" on the line beneath this (where the game title normally goes) and the text "COPYRIGHT 19 2 ATARI" beneath it. When the colors stop cycling on the logo, the logo turns a sort of solid mustardy yellow and the screen freezes. Has this happened to anyone else on this or any other third party games?

 

To date, since I've got my 5200 running in November, I've been able to get Popeye to work once

[jnice]

Yes, I've had similar things happen on my system, with different games. Usually this is just the result of either a dirty cartridge or dirty cartridge slot. Popeye should be easy to fix: Just get a cotton swab and some rubbing alcohol and start scrubbing away! If this doesn't fix the problem, then take the other end of the cotton swab (if not too dirty), take out the screws on the back of the system, carefully take the top of the system off, and do your best to clean the cartridge slot pins/whatever-you-call-them (although this is difficult, since there's yet ANOTHER cover over this part).

 

I had a new (sealed-in-box) Rescue on Fractalus that started doing similar things to what your Popeye cartridge is doing, and only after playing it 5 or 6 times tops. Sure enough, the cartridge was DIRTY (probably because my system wasn't super-clean to start with)...

[joeybastard]

Dirty cart. This kind of stuff always happens on my 5200 when the carts need a cleaning.

[NovaXpress]

So I take that to mean that the Atari logo is in the BIOS and is bypassed by third-party games such as Popeye, so when the cart misfires it brings up that logo?

[MrRetroGamer]

Sometimes third party carts don't seem to sit properly in the slot compared to the normal Atari carts, but I agree that a dirty cart will also cause these results as well.

[JB]

So I take that to mean that the Atari logo is in the BIOS and is bypassed by third-party games such as Popeye, so when the cart misfires it brings up that logo?

Bingo.

 

Sidenote: If you use a 5200 emulator that lets you start it without a game, you'll get almost the exact same thing. No game title at all, the date is "19 ", and it hangs after the splash screen.

[Shaggy the Atarian]

I had that sort of problem with River Raid and I cleaned it and it worked pretty well after that, but it doesn't always work perfectly. I guess that's the nature of Activision carts though