Retro: Playing My Old Atari 2600 Games and the Atari 50th Celebration Compilation!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2024
- Find the 50th Celebration at Amazon: lon.tv/xmj2f (compensated affilate link) - I recently picked up an AV modded Atari 2600 and the Atari 50th Celebration compilation on Switch! In this video we'll look at the compilation and then look at some of the games in my personal library that were not on there. Some of these games haven't been played in decades! See more retro: lon.tv/retro and subscribe! lon.tv/s
Find the Art of the Atari book here: lon.tv/5zqmp
I bought the Atari from this WhatNot Seller: lon.tv/apgames
Use my WhatNot affiliate link to get $15 off your first purchase! - lon.tv/whatnot (compensated affiliate link)
Harmony cart: lon.tv/up8xi (not an affiliate link)
VIDEO INDEX:
00:00 - Intro
01:29 - Atari 50th Overview
03:46 - Game Library
04:24 - VCTR-SCTR
06:38 - Atari 50th Conclusion
06:52 - AV Modded Atari 2600 Intro
07:50 - My Atari Games
09:40 - Art of Atari Book
10:25 - Harmony Flash Cartridge
10:49 - Space Invaders
11:06 - Console Switches
13:35 - Lazer Blast
14:33 - Pitfall
16:21 - The Empire Strikes Back
18:28 - Harmony Cart Test
18:53 - Bowling
20:15 - River Raid
22:22 - Hero
23:20 - Pitfall 2
24:02 - Return of the Jed
25:06 - Pacman
26:02 - E.T.
27:50 - Conclusion
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My parents were so good to me, thanks Mom and Dad. Long ago I was lucky enough to have a 2600. Merry Christmas everyone.
How long ago? If they gave you a 2600 in the 80s then yeah. If you got one of those in the 90s instead of a super Nintendo...
It's really wonderful to see Lon dive into a subject he has a lot of personal nostalgia for. His excitement is contagious, and really makes me reflect and appreciate that generation of gaming more. I and a ton of fun as a kid playing the Atari at summer camp. It was very quirky compared to the Sega Entertainment (original) system and the NES. However, it was gaming distilled down to its purest elemental form and even in that form, it provided countless hours of fun and nostalgia. Bravo!
Atari was a lot of fun. I played Pole Position, Centipede , Yar’s revenge. I still have my original 2600, Timex Sinclare
My first gaming console! I loved that thing so much.
Talk about memory lane. I was in high school when this came out. Loved it!!! My friend got one for his birthday and we played Kaboom forever
My favorite was always Yars Revenge - Was glad to see they did a re-imagining of it on the collection! I’ll definitely have to give it a buy.
I loved playing Activisions Enduro. Especially with the visual transitions from day to night, fog and snow.
Also if you managed to play well enough to get a trophy symbol you could send a screenshot to them and win a prize.
Indy 500 was one of my favorites. It came with the two special driving paddles in the box because the paddles for tennis were different. The driving paddles had “stops” to the right and left where you couldn’t spin it further where the regular paddles could turn continuously. I really loved the ice race option. It took a lot of practice and skill.
I also loved M-Network baseball and Football. They were very simple but so much fun to play against other people.
You have it backwards. The paddle controllers stop, the driving controllers do not.
My brother and I loved playing the bowling game together. We had so much fun playing this game. Thank you for taking me back in time and bringing back the great memories of my childhood.
Awesome video! We got a 2600 in 1981 with Combat and Missile Command at a little TV shop. We had about 40 games eventually and even got the Starpath Supercharger with its cassette games. Great stuff and I LOVE the 50th anniversary Switch collection.
Great video you took us down memory lane. The Atari 8 bit computers are good to have the graphics are more like the 5200, You can also get sd card cartridges for everything as you said. Yars Revenge was one of the first games I ever played on the 2600
I help a friend every year at RetroWorld Expo run the ET Challenge on the 2600. It's so much fun watching peoples reactions, new and old alike.
Caldor, man, the memories. Bradlees too!
I think Coleco was so big in CT because of it being a CT company. They made sure their product was available for sure.
GREAT show! There are a TON of new homebrew games coming out for the Atari 2600, 5200, Colecovison & Intellivision. I'd love to see you do an episode on the retro console homebrew scene.
The 2600 was before my time (I grew up with the Super Nintendo) but I've always been into retrogaming and gaming history, and three weeks ago I bought my Atari 2600 Jr. It was a revelation and I can't stop playing. Enduro, River Raid, Q-Bert, Frostbite, Ms. Pac Man, and Fast Food are my favorite so far. The fact that most of these games don't have an ending is actually a positive, since this means you can potentially play them forever. Also, some games like Enduro have some kind of hypnotic element to them, it's almost like meditation. I love the simplicity and addictiveness of 2600 games. I never thought I'd be hooked like that. However, I play with a Master System controller, since I don't feel confortable with a joystick (especially if I must use it with my right hand)
Enjoy the time off, you earned it for sure. Nothing beats Atari, especially for us who grew up with it. To me even though the graphics are so simple, the gameplay is approachable for anyone of any age.
Atari was great ...after its console existence was over, many jumped to C64 ... some to Amiga ... some to ZX Spectrum
I loved the Supercharger that allows loading games from tape cassettes. I even have some Supercharger games that never made it to stores but were sold in bags by mail. Also the Imagic Arlantis contest cartridge is a neat collectible. My 7800 plays 2600 and 7800 cartridges which is really great.
My favorite cartridges from a technology point of view had more memory inside than the 2600. I think they were branded CBS. The games had much more detail because of the added memory. The game actuality played inside the cartridge rather than the console if my memory is accurate.
Yup, I picked one up a few years ago, loaded a bunch of game audio files onto a cheap MP3 player and loaded the games using that setup before buying a Harmony Encore flash cart. The harmony cart will play supercharger games.
I love my Atari 2600. Millipede, Centipede, Rampage, River raid and the list goes on and on and on.
I feel your take on Atari ET was spot on. I enjoyed playing this game and kept me engaged in the difficulty of the game.
Subbed great stuff, I was so lucky to have older brothers, I was born in 79 with a joystick in my hand. Thanks Mom and Dad and Bros.
This is way better than your usual infomercial style delivery.
I never had an Atari VCS in our house growing up but my neighbors did and Pitfall was my favorite game to play along with the old standby Combat. My father was an electrical engineer so we built a Sinclair 1000 as a kit as our first type of home computer. After that (and more for me playing games) was the VIC=20 - Omega Race was my favorite for that along with a game on cassette called Galactic Attack. The first ever (true/dedicated) console I ever had was an Xbox (original) and for that the most played game for me was Pitfall - it's one of the few console games I ever finished.
Moon patrol was my all time favorite!
A worthy choice
Still got mine and my games. I had to open and repair the switches a few years back when it started to get wonky. The bomb catching game is fun.
@@videostash413 yeah that’s the game. It gets so fast as you go.
I don't feel any nostalgia for Atari because I am too young. But I am interested in gaming history so I own all Atari consoles. I love the 2600 for all those simple but clever ideas. I also bought the Atari 50 compilation for my Switch. I think it is the best compilation ever made. A perfect mix of historical content, original games and new version of those games. Thank you Atari for this great compilation
Happy Christmas from a new subscriber. I only found your cool channel 2 days ago. I've been watching loads of your cool videos in the last two days. The video game crash never effected the UK. My Atria story started with the Atria ST 16 bit desktop computer (still own that machine) so I've never played an Atria 2600 as I was born in 84 but had I been alive in the late 70's early 80's I bet I would of loved playing one.
*Atari
Yar's Revenge was my favorite, then probably River Raid, Pitfall, Kaboom, Carnival, Atlantis and Demon Attack
Thanks for the blast from the past, Lon
I remember on Christmas, must have been 79 or 80. I ripped open the paper to reveal the Atari 2600 inside. It changed my life.
Wonderful to reminisce with you! I had a 2600 as well and most remember Pac-Man and a firetruck game (which may be the one on the anniversary collection)
I played Empire Strikes Back earlier today. I remember early November 1982 i come home from school and my dad and brothers were playing combat on the 2600. it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Month after that we got space invaders on sale. We got a LOT of games after the crash when you could walk into nearly any store and they had a huge bin of beat up games for $2. Now I just have a rasberry pi with every game from the 80's right at my fingertips.
I wonder if the crash actually did more for video games in the long term - I too remember picking up these games super cheap every where I went for a few bucks. People certainly didn't stop playing games!
Caldor was great, other than the 2600 , you brought back memories. I grew up in southwestern CT, so Bradlees had a larger presence. Great video!
I gotta get me the Atari art book. Those box/cartridge covers were amazing. Atari made different cartridge versions. Space Invaders for example would either have the art cartridges or just the cartridge title written on it with the modes. Same with Adventure and Missile Command.
Good video sir I had a 2600 with about 10 games I sold it in 1982 when I brought an Atari 400 went onto 800xl and finally an ST way back in 1989 😁
Even though some games weren't graphically that great back then. Comparing alot of 2600 games to Pong is a huge step up, with games like River raid, Pitfall, along with some decent arcade ports like Galaxian, Ms. Pacman, and Defender, it was a pretty big upgrade. Especially considering what the system itself started with was very little Rom, and much less Ram.
Love this!
Quite amazing that the homebrew community keeps making games for these old systems (I absolutely love it), and additional hardware (flash carts, Atarivox+ voice synthesis and save key/memory card, stand alone save key/memory card, a wifi enabled cart to upload high scores and download demos and such, arcade style joysticks). A few remakes (4k and 8k Pac-Man remake, Donkey Kong remakes, and so on), champ games make really great looking and sounding games on the 2600 (mappy, Galagon are a few).
The homebrew scene and demoscene have pushed the 2600 further and further past what people thought the 2600 was capable of.
I no longer have my childhood VCS/2600 (it along with many other of my game systems and games was stolen during a move). I ended up finding a 4 switch VCS/2600 and 34 games for $20 at a yard sale a few years ago, I put new caps and a voltage regulator, and installed an AV mod into it and bought a Harmony Encore for it.
A few days ago I picked up a 7800, replaced the caps and voltage regulator, and bought a Concerto flash cart for it, been checking out all the 7800 homebrew demos and Work in progress games, many of which has support for an additional sound chip (pokey sound chip, and a few has support for multi sound chips Pokey and an FM sound chip).
There are far far worse games on the 2600 than Pac-Man and ET (I can think of the few adult themed games that are far far worse), not to mention the games made by companies that shouldn't have ever made games (a pet food company) and quite a few 3rd party devs that had absolutely no direction in making a game, quite a lot of shovelware games with absolutely no quality control, a lot of low effort clones of games, Sears and Tele-Games taking an existing game and changing the name of it which make people think it was a new game, plus the many companies trying to make their own consoles, the market was just completely flooded.
I love the Atari 2600. It's true many games haven't aged well but there's still dozens of fantastic games even in 2023. Joust, Jr Pacman, Millipede, Enduro, Pitfall 2, Solaris, Hero, Kaboom, Space Invaders, River Raid, ect....
Empire was a great example of creating convincing graphics using very few pixels. The snowspeeders are unmistakable to anyone familiar with the film.
When my brother got the Atari for Christmas and the 2 games my parents gifted us with the system were Pac-Man and ET lol. We loved playing ET though we didn’t know what to do in the game. The Pac-Man we would play from time to time but didn’t love much. When Ms. Pac-Man was released for the Atari, my parents bought a copy. My parents, brother and I would played it everyday to pass each others high score.
One of my favorite games was Adventure. Always on the lookout for that bat so it didn't steal my key or weapon.
That’s a great book 📚 I have that one I love ❤️ that book 👍I take a look 👀 at it once awhile as well
Oh man! I had about 40 games. Was so much fun trading.
I loved Star Wars Empire Strikes Back. Another favorite of mine was Superman.
file this one under different controller styles but I never gripped it like that. navigated by placing thumb on top of the stick. endless hours wandering the mazes of 'Adventure' avoiding the dragon, searching for the chalice.
I think Atari definitely learned their lesson from Pac-Man because Ms. Pac-Man on the Atari 7800 was a near perfect arcade port.
Heck Ms. Pac-Man on the 2600 was a vast improvement over the first Pac-Man on the 2600.
Man, do I miss the simplicity of those games, something I cannot find today, for years! The fact is the games were incredibly hard to develop back then (especially for the 2600), so pretty much anything that has been created was a magical experience. Nowadays I don't know, with all the engines, helper libraries, no hardware limitations, and simplicity of language making a (crappy) game is something even a kid could do in a few hours and it just does not do anything for me anymore.
I remember playing River Raid, it was the very first vertical schmup, and it's still addicting to play even today!
Can you imagine having 160x192 resolution, with only 4 different colors allowed on a single line (all info from Wikipedia) and making something that actually works?
Speaking about the VR, I have Quest2 but don't find the games to be any fun. Its just not for me.
Adventure was my favorite 2600 game. Still play it today under emulation. Go find that magic dot!
i love the 2600 it was better than waiting for youre tv program to show.
If you want to preserve your games, it would behoove you to use a cotton swab to apply 99% isopropyl alcohol to the contacts on your games. If the buildup is dramatic, you can use an emery board (soft nail file) to score the contacts in an effort to remove the buildup. But, regular contact maintenance is vital.
I had the Atari 2600 back in the day. But the big one for me was also Colecovison. Do a video on it. I would love to see it again.
Pretty sure those Pitfall barrels are actually logs.
For Space Invaders to get double fire turn on and hit game reset at the same time :) Of course it's only for the one person game. Found it out by accident as a kid.
Heya Lon, I am 48 y/o myself so I grew up with the Atari around the same time as you. Got mine for the Christmas of 1982 Fantastic "episode" here, great rundown of Atari 50, and I will certainly pick up a copy. I played or owned almost all of the games you showed. E.T. was actually a pretty good game and I managed to complete it a few times. That rendition (the be polite) of Pac-Man was absolutely abhorrent. I think they mangled the original Pac-Man on purpose as to compete with the arcade version. The Atari version of Ms. Pac-Man was how it was supposed to be done.
Fun story for you.. Around the time my mother got the 2600 for me during the Christmas shopping season that year, we were at a store where it was sold and I pointed out that some kid got an Atari for Christmas even though I could only see a portion of the box in their cart. My mom asked me how I knew and I told her I recognized it because of it's shape. So she came up with an epic method of obscuring what it was Christmas day. After wrapping it, she stood the box up so it was tall like a monolith, used small bows to form the face of a dog, and taped the two wrapped games she bought (Asteroids and Missile Command) to each side to look like ears. I was completely fooled. She says that morning when I saw it for the first time I explained "Look, there's a dog under the tree!". One of my best Christmas's ever.
That's an awesome story! One year my mother did something similar to me. I really wanted Phantasy Star for the Sega Master system. I got to the last gift which was clearly a clothing box - but she put the game in the box! Quite a surprise.
@@LonSeidman Hehe cool. Loved those kinds of surprises. :-)
Hope you had a merry one. Cheers.
0:48 - "Memory lane"? Well, I'm about a year older than you and I don't remember ever connecting my Atari 2600 to a glorified calculator screen. For that matter, I don't remember anyone else ever doing that either.
The shelving unit.. so much oak veneer.. ahh 87-94..
Moonsweeper was my favorite Atari game for this system. No one ever talks about it, so I must be in the minority. Pitfall was also fun.
10:36 - Play homebrew games. Well, unless said homebrew game was released on a physical cartridge, in which case you MAY be able to play a limited demo of it, but you will NEVER be able to find the final game ROM anywhere. Even if the game is out of print and the only way to obtain a copy is to pay an outrageous price on eBay, there will still be a world-wide ban on ever dumping the ROM.
You sold me on the Atari 50 collection. I was hymming and hewing on it. I have the flashback collections, I'm just worried about getting games I already have. I did look into a it bit and there is some but not enough for me to feel slighted in value. Now I wait for it to drop to $20.
Quick questions, how are the other Atari systems emulated? It does the full gambit of Atari consoles right?
Yes it has a selection of everything including the Jaguar and Lynx! Feels pretty good overall.
I am feeling the same way. I’m wondering why the PC version is $39 where the switch and other versions are $19.99.
Technically the gold in pitfall is to find all the treasures within 20 min .... There are a few instructional videos and Post online but yeah you actually have to go to certain screens above-ground and certain ones underground to get to certain other screens were these treasures would be there a walkthrough online where you can find this but yeah they give you barely enough time to find all the stuff
If youre ever in south carolina..go to a town called Rockhill..friends of mine( who are also brothers) Joe and Ronnie Lyons own a video game store there called Joe's Classic video games..they sell alot of retro games like Atari on cartridge..they also have a TH-cam channel:)..if you do decide to visit them tell em I sent ya:)
Yo from New London!
you should have enabled double firing on space invaders! @ 11:40
Question: Would you be able to review the games that you play as a Family?
Anyone remember that 2600 commercial where that kid was rapping ?
After what, four decades, you still haven't lost the instinct to give it the "cartridge puff" :) 14:35 Nobody can explain why it works, but it does!
It doesn’t work. The same would be achieved simply by reseating the cartridge. All you accomplish is adding moisture (and who knows what else?) to the circuit board.
My favorite game was defender
My favorite is Robot Tank (1983) By Activision
My parents bought me the Atari VCS in 1980, and I was never the same. THANKS MOM AND DAD!@#$%?" 🤑
Would you mind me asking.... Was that a TV or a monitor you hooked up your Atari? I also just ordered an AV moded Atari 2600. Thanks
It was a monitor - I was running it through a retrotink 5x upscaler
I literally just bought an Atari 2600 the past week. Same CX version too, with the difficulty buttons on the back. Do you know if any HDMI mods are available for this, or if composite is the best upgrade option?
I think the best option would be an RGB mod, RetroRGB has some details on that here: www.retrorgb.com/atari.html
@@LonSeidman Thank you!
When the programmers left Atari and made Activision, we were amazed at what they could do.
Atari 2600? No no Lon... it's the 2600, from A-tar-i.
Colecovision was far superior
E.T. suuuuucks!!! I just played a little last night after watching someone beat it in a live stream, and I do understand how the game works and the strategies necessary to beat it. I STILL got extremely frustrated and rage quit. There is no other game that comes to mind that can elicit such a continuous flow of profanity. It’s so inherently frustrating and unfair. Awful game! If HSW had had another month to work on it, the outcome might have been a lot different.
Lon, you didn't explain the 50th compilation. Is it a DVD that you load onto a Windows PC? Is it an authorization number for a download and installation via the internet? Is it macOS compatible? What is the cost? What type of controller is required? You showed us the package and then you were playing it. Please give us some details. Secondly you didn't explain the video mod to your console and the how / cost to do so? And, what is the Harmony cartridge you briefly mentioned at the end?
As I stated the Atari 50th is on all modern platforms, PC and console. Not on the Mac, Amazon link in the description and a link to the seller I bought the console from is there too. I did not do the mod myself. Harmony cart is available at atariage.com link in the description too
i didn't have a 2600 ever, but i think not to have paddles with it, is totally embarassing !!! 😊
You obviously have to get a Nintendo Switch to play this compilation....
Not even close to an homage to a 2600