Miner_1979er

It's unplayable for some of us, but not for others. The hardware of the 2600 is very, very primitive; it was not designed to display so many complex objects on the screen at once. It provides two 8-pixel bitmapped sprites, two 1-pixel "missile" sprites, a 1-pixel "ball", and a 40-pixel "playfield" (I had to check Wikipedia since I wasn't sure I remembered correctly). However, throughout the years we've learned more and more about how to get the most out of the hardware. Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac Man are both much better and more playable (although there is still some flicker). Even better, some newer modern homebrew versions do a much better job. Here's a good place to start looking for a good version: https://atariage.com/forums/topic/277992-pac-man-4k-old-vs-new-clarification-2600/

I know this is a problem for people who copy files using File Explorer, but I use 2-pane file managers which just copy files in the same order they're shown (which means the order of whatever column you sorted by - name, size, or date, either ascending or descending). This is the one I use for Windows (there's a little nag screen for the free version, but I've paid for a license): https://www.ghisler.com/ This is the one I use for Mac, but it's also available for Windows, and is completely free: https://doublecmd.sourceforge.io/ There are many other alternatives. File Explorer is pretty much the worst file manager imaginable; there's no reason to settle for it, other than familiarity.

I bought the 2017 model, and downloaded the "Arenafoot ROMset updated December 6, 2017". I didn't like the way the filenames looked when browsing them on the device, so I wrote a small Python script to pad the filenames with spaces, making them 17 characters long, so you never see the ".bin" extension. I should have taken a "before" picture and an "after" picture to show the difference. Some people will agree with me it makes browsing the files nicer and cleaner; others won't care. So just use this image as the "before" and imagine the ".b" and ".bi" and ".bin" stuff gone for the "after". Should I just upload an updated ROMset zip file, for people who don't already have Python installed and don't want to install it? Oh, and regarding the AFP itself, the controls are bad. Pressing down on the d-pad sometimes registers as pressing left. This isn't just my unit; Another one purchased elsewhere by a friend had the same issue, although it was more severe and he ended up returning it. Here's the script. It runs on all '.bin' files in the current directory. It seems I can't attach it, so here it is as text: rename-atari-flashback-portable-roms.py import os SCREEN_WIDTH_CHARS = 17 for filename in os.listdir("."): (basename, ext) = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(filename)) new_ext = ext.lower() if (new_ext==".bin" and (len(basename) < SCREEN_WIDTH_CHARS or ext !=".bin")): if (len(basename) < SCREEN_WIDTH_CHARS): new_basename = basename + " " * (SCREEN_WIDTH_CHARS - len(basename)) else: new_basename = basename os.rename(basename + ext, new_basename + new_ext)