Atari 800 Games (1979-1985)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ต.ค. 2020
- Ever wondered what the world was like before Super Mario Bros and Zelda? Here are 25 games from this period...
CHAPTERS
00:00 Title
00:11 Star Raiders (1979)
02:18 Fort Apocalypse (1982)
04:19 Journey to the Planets (1982)
06:33 Miner 2049er (1982)
08:30 Wayout (1982)
10:07 Captain Beeble (1983)
11:45 Castle Hassle (1983)
14:01 Gateway to Apshai (1983)
15:59 Jet Boot Jack (1983)
17:40 Mr. Robot and His Robot Factory (1983)
18:58 Pharaoh's Curse (1983)
20:28 Spelunker (1983)
22:44 Boulder Dash (1984)
24:48 Bruce Lee (1984)
26:45 Ghost Chaser (1984)
28:40 Matterhorn (1984)
30:40 Maxwell Manor (1984)
32:37 Montezuma's Revenge (1984)
34:45 Run For It (1984)
37:00 Whistler's Brother (1984)
38:25 Zenji (1984)
40:15 Karateka (1985)
42:02 Starquake (1985)
43:34 The Goonies (1985)
45:48 Zorro (1985)
Q1) How can I play these games?
Download Altirra (Atari 8-bit Emulator)
Download Game Roms from Atarimania
Configure Altirra: Input → Port 1 → Arrow Keys = Joystick
Controls:
[ ↑ ][←][ ↓ ][→] Joystick
[Ctrl] Joystick Button
[F2] START
[F3] SELECT
[F4] OPTION
[F5] RESET
Q2) What settings did you use to record this?
System → Configure System → Video → Artifacting: None
View → Filter Mode → Point
View → Stretch Mode → Square Pixels (fixed multiples only)
Record Video:
- Format: ZMBV (AVI)
- Frame rate: 60 fps
- Encode duplicate frames as full frames: Yes
- Aspect Ratio: Pixel double
- Resampling: Nearest
- Frame scaling: No
Q3) Why 4K?
Altirra uses a resolution of 336x224 (3:2), but games of this time were displayed at 4:3 on CRT TVs. These CRTs would STRETCH the pixels to achieve this aspect ratio - something modern LED/LCD TVs cannot do...
But we CAN create the illusion of stretched pixels by stretching the resolution at fixed multiples... And so, after losslessly exporting my project at 336x224, I scaled the width by 8x and the height by 9x to create 4:3 footage (2688x2016) with equal-sized pixels (8x9).
The upscale took 2.5 hours (on my laptop), but the output filesize was very reasonable (~500MB).
Below is the ffmpeg command I used to upscale the video:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -sws_flags neighbor -vf scale=2688x2016,setsar=1:1 -c:v libx264rgb -crf 0 output.mp4
Q4) What other obsessive details went into this video?
Duration of Titles Cards = (Total Syllables / 4) (Rounded Up)
Font: Courier New → Best aliased font (for upscaling)
Q5) Why 1979 to 1985?
I wanted to get an idea of what gaming was like before Super Mario Bros (September 1985) and Zelda (February 1986). The Atari 8-bit computer line had a major production run between late 1979 and mid-1985. I also tried out hundreds of arcade games and a few dozen Atari 2600 games for comparison.
Q6) Where are the arcade-style Atari 800 games?
I wanted to focus on games with a clear sense of level progression (and an ending).
Q7) Where is Pitfall?
I didn't include Pitfall, Pitfall 2, and HERO because the Atari 2600 versions of these games are just as good. Considering that more Atari 2600s have been sold than GameCubes or original Xboxes, I think most would assciate these three games with the Atari 2600 rather than the Atari 800.
Q8) Where is Game X?
I tried out hundreds of games for this video. There is a good chance that I already played it, but let me know anyway.
Q9) What are some other interesting games from this period?
Alien Garden (1982) ~ First Art Game (debatable)
Murder on the Zinderneuf (1983) ~ Mystery Game
New York City: The Big Apple (1984) ~ Primitive GTA
Master of the Lamps (1985) ~ Trippy Magic Carpet Ride
Air Support (1984) ~ Action RTS
Hacker (1985) ~ Hacking Sim
Alley Cat (1983) ~ Arcade Fun
Q10) Any games you wish you had included?
Pondering About Max's (1989) ~ I might make a video on this one
Beer Belly Burt's Brew Biz (1986) ~ Just missed the cut-off
Hard Hat Willy (1983) ~ Prototype
Crossfire (1981) ~ Arcade Fun
I thought as a little kid that Star Raiders was the ultimate immersive experience. The stars on the screen, the beeps, and just the sounds in general. I was transported into that universe. I can't even describe it. It shows how important expectation is.
My first computer as a kid was a 600XL, followed later by a 130XE I bought with paper-route money. These are all my childhood favorites! Still playing most of them today.
Bruce Lee was excellent on this machine, the Atari's Pokey chip was mental 😉
Wayout is just downright eerie for an 8-bit'er in 1982. Made me get off the couch :)
I know graphics aren't everything, but Journey to the Planets seems impressive for 1970's hardware... Until you see it next to Star Raiders and Wayout on the same system and they are doing a fully 3D space shooter and an FPS. Absolutely bonkers amounts of skill went into getting the most of those little machines.
Something I've always felt is that restriction breeds innovation. The machines had little in the way of actual processing power, but man, these programmers used every trick in the book to utilize them to the max. Today, with nearly unlimited tools at their disposal, game developers can make things look like actual reality. So real you can't tell it's a video game. Is it impressive? A little. It's just the expected evolution of things. It's easy to do that when your resources are basically unlimited. But back then? Yeah, it WAS impressive what they could accomplish.
One of the reasons I liked these games, you always wanted get to the next screen. That's what brought you back.
I really appreciate that you show enough play time for each game (with competent playing) to get a real sense of game objective and mechanics. Well done!
You all probably dont give a shit but does anybody know a way to get back into an instagram account?
I was stupid lost my password. I would love any help you can give me.
@Isaiah Preston instablaster =)
I had an Atari 400 for a while back in the day ... Star Raiders was my absolute favourite game on the system, along with a fun selection of other games like Bruce Lee, Zaxxon and Shamus.
Bruce Lee, Montezuma's Revenge, Karateka, Boulder Dash are some of my favourites. I like and miss the sound of programs loading. I still have my 800 and 1050 but lost 300+ disks full of good stuff during a move. Good video!
800xl + 1050 owner here too... but I've had to re-buy over the last couple of years after giving away a massive collection ~1993 to make way for Amiga and PC stuff :(
Great days. IK+ and Fractalus were great too.
Yeah, me and my 1050 Happy drive were busy back then
@@ContractCAD Similar to me here. I first got an Atari 400, then sold it to get an 800XL, and later a 1050 Disk drive, then a C64 and an Atari ST (then decided to sell the 8 bits when I got an Amiga) Later sold the ST and Amiga when I got a PC. I think that my reasoning was that emulators negated the need for the original hardware. I had a huge collection of disks, carts and cassettes and sold them for peanuts. I regret it, but time moves on!
Don't worry... Get a hacked psp and slap an emulator on it and all the roms... Works a treat!
I like Jet Boot Jack on Atari the most! Boulder Dash, Hero, Pole Position, Pop Eye and Submission are also my favorite games all times. Cheers!
Lots of good stuff here, but Star Raiders is THE killer app for the 8-bits... amazing stuff for 1979.
To hear the music from journey to the planets...amazing! So many wonderful memories of a wonderful time ...
The most astonishing thing about Star Raiders: 8 kilobytes. The entire thing was created on 8,000 BYTES. It seems almost inconceivable that such feats were possible.
Still got my 800 from 1982, accessories, and games, in mint condition.
I've loved Star Raiders since I was a kid, and it still stands out as an amazing game to play today. What still boggles my mind as a developer is how Doug Neubauer pulled this off in 1979 on this hardware.
Not only that. I think it also runs on a 400 with 4k or so. Amazing.
@@arnetrautmann9783 sure does, I still play it on mine when I get the machine out 😁
how many hours did i spend playing that game. tremendous!
Star Commander Class 1 here. It took many playing hours to get it. I'm a proud geek.
Star Raiders was an obsession of mine and my friends. Forty years later it's the only game I have for my Atari 800 emulator.
Wow, I remember playing so many of these games on my Atari 800 and 800XL back then! It's fun to take a walk down memory lane, but I honestly don't miss any of it. lol
Stumbled upon your video and had a memory from being a young kid playing games. I remember playing a game back then, and losing the disk or something, and I couldn't remember the name, and didnt even really know how to describe it properly. I looked and asked around for what seemed like months as a kid. Watching this I think it was Gateway to Apshai, funny at such a young age I enjoyed rpg / dungeon games even though I didnt know what they were!
I played tons of boulderdash with my mom back in the day. I also think there was a level editor or something in Mr Robot, spent so much time making crazy levels.
Ah man and bruce lee. You could have the second player play as the opponent I think, and so my sister and I would help eachother out just killing the ninja repeatedly so bruce lee could have an easier job, or just annoying the other person making tons of "moo" noises
When I was little ghost chaser was my game! I would love to play that again
Really impressive how they managed to achieve fun games with so simple technology sometimes.
Not so simple. The Atari 8bit line set standards and protocols followed by the industry for years to come.
It was the first home platform to introduce:
-Screen Saver
-USB like peripheral connection
-Distinct custom circuits (ICs) for large color palette, hardware and sprites scrolling, multichannel sound etc.
-Monitor SVIDEO connection
Giving my 80's Flash Backs..I love Bolder Dash, and Bruce lee....l.
Wayout in '82 must have been like VR compared to what else was available on home computers and consoles.
I know right! It's amazing, considering the rendering and smooth animation. Many years before iD software's Hovertank and Wolfenstein 3D. Wonder if John Carmack was inspired by this (and other early 3d games)
Hi I know it's been awhile since you posted this but I have to tell you that you've unlocked a ton of core memories for me as kid. My favorite game you had in there was Gateway to Apshai. That was the OG of RPG's lol. Thanks again!
WHAT??? Why, in 30-odd years of Atari 8-bit fandom, has no one ever told me about Wayout?!! One step away from a Wolfenstein / Doom game from 1982!
I'm off to find out more :)
if you liked that, look up it's sequel "capture the flag"
Never owned an Atari (anything) and that puzzled me to bits also! Looked amazing!
You should check out MIDI Maze on Atari XE (same hardware as the Atari 800 only with extra RAM). A Wolfenstein clone would be possible here. There's an impressive Wolf 3D homebrew demo.
This is the kind of secret game like Jeff Minters Hi Res Space Invaders on the ZX81 which for 30 years seems to have been a secret too.
I don't know how you and I managed to have such similar taste in Atari 8-bit games, but your list there could have been taken from my game collection in the early 80s. Thus, quite a trip down memory lane for me. Also much, much thanks for the details regarding the emulator.
Atari 800XL, with an Indus GT floppy drive. Two of the games I played that I don't see mentioned were Buck Rogers and Ballblazer, which I didn't know was a Lucasfilm game at the time. Choplifter was a bunch of fun too.
Edit: Looks like someone else remembers Ballblazer too. Mustn't forget Gauntlet.
Star raider is my childhood memories
Star Raiders was one of my first three games that I ever played. I played it in 1987 and it took seven years until I was impressed by a game again... That game was X-Wing.
So many great memories here….my first computer was the 800xl, and I played most of these games. ❤
The smooth scrolling was a surprise to me.
This was my first game console😂 great to remind some of those games
Keep it up! Nice presentation and your video has a good feel. There are a lot of these kind of videos so look for those obscure games. Text adventures too! Even those stir up some teary eyed nostalgia in some. More please! I was looking for more to watch right now and saw you didn't have many. I was ready for more!
All of these games look very cool even today. Thanks for sharing this.
Geile Mukke Alter!
THANK YOU! so many games I'd never remembered without your video!
Nice, early games for Atari
star raiders was my fav, never played a game like it since. i got so good that i could destroy the enemy with shields down.
It is crazy how many game concepts were pioneered back then. I had an 800XL and played some the games on this list, great times.
Fantastic!!! This Atari 800 stuff looks great@!!
Missing all te good games
Though it wasn't my first 8 but computer. Seeing Altima
II on the Atari 800 was my best. I got really into basic programming. Wish it wasn't a thing to now.
Subbed and liked to support another great Retro Channel👍
Amazing, thank you for making this.
I recently acquired an Atari 800 and was wondering what games to get for it.
Gateway to Apshai!!! This is a geat video!
Lol that's what I came looking for. Lol. As I was reading, I all the sudden hear a familiar warp.
Wow man excellent
Muy útiles las descripciones al principio de cada juego!
Se agradece la información de calidad!
Goonies!!! i love this game )
very good games nostalgia
Interesting video. Would be interesting to see if anyone could hack Wayout to see it it could have done a Wolfenstein kind of game back then.
i still have our atari 800XL with the 800s cassette tape drive and a few games but cant remember how to boot them. :)
I saved my paper round money to buy Zorro from Boots for £14.99 back in the day, waited the fifteen minutes to load and finished it in my first attempt...
I for some reason convinced my parents to buy me an Atari XE to replace my Atari 800XL, and we had the great idea to leave it at my grandmother's house so I could have something to play while visiting. Some unnamed cousin stole it before the next time I visited. I am still mad
I remember a lot of those games. Played a lot of them either on Atari or C64. I understand people bought Atari 800s just for Star Raiders.
Nice, if possible SPY HUNTER Game :)
thanks for the nice nostalgia.
This is great stuff.
few of them looked pretty advanced for its time.
Fort apocalypse all the way!
Fort apacolypse damn
I loved Journey to the Planets
These look better than the 2600
Oh man miner 49er. I believe it gets faster and faster as u turn the score over. I did at least a 1000 times. Lol
How are playing these! Also do you have access to save states?
Edit: I just read your description but I am still curious if you know of a way to emulate on an Android based system like Retroarch? It can easily do 7800 and 2600 but the 8 bit systems (400/800) seem to be much more complicated.
What a great system for the time it was released.
As a comment, it seems the Atari computer, was at the top.
No Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Pac Man, Dig Dug or any of the other games that were made for this AND the Atari 5200 huh?
10,000th view! Woo!
Can these be emulated on Android? I have tried and tried....
HELP please!
i have a completed rom list of all the atari computer systems
8:50 well so... is Paul Edelstein the father of the 3D games like Doom or Wolfenstein coming a decade later ?
🤘😁🤘
How could you leave out Frogger?
These games really need to be viewed on a CRT. On TFTs they look like blocky garbage.
wayout is wayimpressive
Sadly not every game is at the level of Star Raiders.
Would Atari have bested Commodore if the 1400XL had been released instead of the 1200XL?
I loved ths single screen platfomers of the 80s, and I never could understand the hype when that crap game called 'Mario Bros' was released, where you could only run to the right all the time. Perfected voredom in it's silly linearity instead of enjoying the freedom of arbitrary movement we where used to before. These games with a mini maze on screen, with all the switches, secrets, enemies in sight, thinking on more complex patterns just offered so much more on any relevant aspect, besides maybe the technical aspect, as they didn't feature scrolling. So I guess the reason why Mario becamse so unjustified popular is jus that in truth it was a casual game for the masses. So the true sucessors to the classic single screen platformers exclusively are 'Metroidvania' style games, like Turrican, Metroid, Castlevania and such, where you had to explore a way more interesting and compley 'real' 2D world instead of just following a hose.
rapidus runs zx spectrum software
The miner 49er cheat code is a phone number in the U.S possibly the phone number of the publisher 🤔
Looks in between the quality of an Atari 2600 and a Colecovision
90% of the titles do...then there are a few that look like they are running 3D the way a 16-bit console would. Lynx was like that in a way, it could push 3D but with a low resolution output.
Yep, that was 1979 for you.
Dh2d
Love to shut up pro C-64 fans when they say the 64 is better than the ATARI 800 . All I have to do is say two words : STAR RAIDERS .
Es obra de una mente privilegiada
Yes C64 was the good choice
"Ever wondered what the world was like before Super Mario Bros"Maybe it's because I was born in '88 - but I've never been able to get into anything pre-NES - and not for lack of trying. My life is basically dedicated to video game archival but... god help me pre-NES games just are so god awful lol
They really aren't, too bad I can't show you and prove it 😜
People born in 1998 likely say the same thing about the NES era you experienced.
But here's what made the pre-NES early eighties interval so special; it produced the _first_ real computer games. Nolan Bushnell (the founder of Atari) once said that every video game after Pong was in some sense a derivative concept. I wouldn't go that far, but it's interesting that practically every gaming concept around now was already present in the market by 1985.
I was born in 1969 and witnessed the whole saga of video game development from its inception. People get excited about _new_ games now, but that feeling can never compare to the revelation of the video game concept itself.
@@Daniel-Six I'm sure they do, which is why I prefaced my comment with that statement. I'm sure people born in 2008 feel the same way about the mid-90's systems as well. I can only imagine kids born in 2018, who are now turning 5 will view anything non-vr as archaic by the time they are teenagers as well.
My point with the preface though was that I've certainly given it a fair shake as part of the medium's history as a whole - and it's not to say there's NOTHING I like pre-NES. Console games. I absolutely adore Asteroids from the arcades, and I used to play my dad's old Coleco Telestar Alpha on the Jai-Alai setting for absurd amounts of time. AstroSmash on Intellivision is another one I sunk stupid amounts of time into.
From my perspective though, it's easy to see how the market crashed in that era. I find it exceptionally hard to find individual games that are enthralling. They are out there, but you have to dig pretty deep I feel by comparison to the licensed libraries that followed.
@@retropulse03 Thank you for the comprehensive and articulate response--a rare phenomenon on YT now.
Two observations, if I may.
First, the "crash" of 1983 was mostly an accounting phenomenon that never entered the zeitgeist of actual game players from that era. It was unknown to me personally until AVGN did an episode on the effort to recover all those unsold ET games from a landfill. The crash was not really an indictment of game development competence at top companies like Atari and Activision--it was more the result of maneuvers by hardened businessmen in the space like Jack Tramiel, who were rapidly popularizing home computers which could displace demand for consoles. That is more obvious in distant retrospection of the era.
Second... it is not clear to me that a steadfast correlation exists between better hardware and better games. I've spent most of my adult life working in professional 3D animation, so I once took it for granted that this is true, but over the decades I've come to genuinely appreciate the role of abstraction in art. Less really is more a lot of the time. For all the hoopla about visual verisimilitude in modern games, it's the _writing_ in titles like The Last of Us that really stands out... and writing is purely abstract, situated beyond the concept of visual resolution.
@@Daniel-Six Well thanks, yeah I 'try' to at least have something to say sometimes haha.
That's an interesting take, and not one I'd heard before. I actually first heard about the crash from an episode of "Modern Marvels" about video games on the History Channel way back in about 2001/2 when I was in the 8th grade haha. Funny enough that was sort of the genesis (no pun intended) on me getting deeply into video games as more than just a pass-time - so in the entirety I've been aware of it I don't think I've been able to get perspective from anyone who actually lived through it AND was interested in it at the time.
The obsession with hardware for actual game quality I agree needs to die out a bit. I think Indie game devs have done some good work in dispelling that idea but I'm not sure the average consumer will ever come around on it. My wife's a 'little' bit of a gamer and enjoys games like Halo and Division and some of the new Nintendo stuff... but her disdain for pixels and low polygon counts really blocks her off from experiencing what I would call the best 20 years of gaming. (~1985-2005).
Personally, while I appreciate good writing in games like the last of us, it's always games that focus on environmental storytelling that get to me. In that light, I would say that it's at least one aspect of writing that has benefited from increased graphics, but only to a point. I love when a game world just shuts up and let's me see what is going on instead of telling me lol One of the reasons I probably don't care about this concept of "lore" being a big feature these days.
wow the graphics suck
This is really garbage compared to the C64 at the time.
C64 came out after
I had the atari 400 i could,nt afford the 800 it was great but looking back now the games were rubbish
If you couldn't master them, just say that lol