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Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

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Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

#21

Post by jmount »

flashman wrote: post #7

> Speaking of game loading, it is surprisingly slow. You plug in a cartridge and turn on the 7800+, which takes a moment, and then there is a “Loading game” screen that takes 15 to 20 seconds to actually load the game. This would have been nearly instantaneous on the original console. You could hit reset and be back at the title screen basically before you'd leaned back from pushing the button. It is very funny that…

Prior to the Internet/Web any sort of pause in software was anathema. Now AppleOS spins for 20 or 30 seconds on file security checks.

Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

#22

Post by guidedlight »

Whilst the Atari 2600+ and Atari 7800+ are faithful reproductions, the controller’s of this era are all kinds of horrible.

They don’t even come close to a modern game controller, and these new systems would benefit from a modern interpretation rather than being a faithful rerelease.

Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

#23

Post by cardanome »

flashman wrote: post #7

> Speaking of game loading, it is surprisingly slow. You plug in a cartridge and turn on the 7800+, which takes a moment, and then there is a “Loading game” screen that takes 15 to 20 seconds to actually load the game. This would have been nearly instantaneous on the original console. You could hit reset and be back at the title screen basically before you'd leaned back from pushing the button. It is very funny that…

It is not funny but completely insulting to the customer.

The people selling those consoles should feel ashamed about this. It shows complete lack of care for the customer.

Any emulator can load those cartridges near instantaneous. This does not show lack of optimization but lack of complete care. It probably boots up the whole operating system or something similarly insane.

This is plastic rubbish preying on nostalgia. They can't even get the basic function of playing the games right.

You will have a better time just playing the games on a cheap laptop. It is one of the easiest systems to emulate anyway.

Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

#24

Post by UltraSane »

raspyberr wrote: post #3
UltraSane wrote: post #2

What Atari games are actually worth playing?

I think that's not far off the same as asking what 1890s films are worth watching. You could watch a couple for a bit of novelty and an idea of what technology was like but none of them are "good".

I would have to agree. About the only Atari games that are actually fun are Missile Command and Space Invaders, and then not for very long.

Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

#25

Post by bitwize »

flashman wrote: post #7

> Speaking of game loading, it is surprisingly slow. You plug in a cartridge and turn on the 7800+, which takes a moment, and then there is a “Loading game” screen that takes 15 to 20 seconds to actually load the game. This would have been nearly instantaneous on the original console. You could hit reset and be back at the title screen basically before you'd leaned back from pushing the button. It is very funny that…

It's a fair bit of engineering to design an interface to the original ROMs that can map them into the memory space of whatever modern hardware they're using. It's much easier to design an interface that allows you to bit-bang the data out of the ROM and snarf it into RAM. The loading game screen might've been the only way to keep costs below a certain threshold.

And I have a 2600+. Games usually take ~2-3s to load on it.

Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

#26

Post by ryandrake »

jmount wrote: post #21
flashman wrote: post #7

> Speaking of game loading, it is surprisingly slow. You plug in a cartridge and turn on the 7800+, which takes a moment, and then there is a “Loading game” screen that takes 15 to 20 seconds to actually load the game. This would have been nearly instantaneous on the original console. You could hit reset and be back at the title screen basically before you'd leaned back from pushing the button. It is very funny that…

Prior to the Internet/Web any sort of pause in software was anathema. Now AppleOS spins for 20 or 30 seconds on file security checks.

I seem to remember my old Commodore 64 being fully booted and READY at its BASIC REPL in about a second. Shorter than it took for the CRT to warm up. A computer from 40 years ago. How we have fallen!

Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

#27

Post by bitwize »

rbanffy wrote: post #15
nlarion wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yars' revenge is pretty good. I'm guessing these don't boot homebrew, but synthcart allows you to play music.

I think they can run from cartridges, so if you have one loaded with homebrew games, they should work. Most Atari 2600 games had no copy protection.

Flashcarts don't work unless you devote the entire flash to a single ROM (some of them can do this). This is because the console snarfs the entire contents of the ROM into RAM first, rather than mapping the ROM directly into the CPU's memory space like the original consoles did. So the bank-switching tricks that flashcarts use to provide multiple ROM options on original hardware don't work on these. This is also why the 2600+'s pack-in multicart has a janky, DIP-switch solution to select a game.

Many large carts (8K and larger) also don't work, at least not without the firmware knowing how to bankswitch to read the whole ROM, so a fw update may be required.

Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

#28

Post by dylan604 »

cardanome wrote: post #23
flashman wrote: post #7

> Speaking of game loading, it is surprisingly slow. You plug in a cartridge and turn on the 7800+, which takes a moment, and then there is a “Loading game” screen that takes 15 to 20 seconds to actually load the game. This would have been nearly instantaneous on the original console. You could hit reset and be back at the title screen basically before you'd leaned back from pushing the button. It is very funny that…

It is not funny but completely insulting to the customer. The people selling those consoles should feel ashamed about this. It shows complete lack of care for the customer. Any emulator can load those cartridges near instantaneous. This does not show lack of optimization but lack of complete care. It probably boots up the whole operating system or something similarly insane. This is plastic rubbish preying on nostalg…

and yet they sell them like hot cakes. so either the customers don't care, or the customers don't even notice. younger players that are used to waiting for loading probably don't notice at all. only older people might even remember, but the younger kids won't believe them because the olds memory is probably not right.

Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?

#29

Post by dylan604 »

jmount wrote: post #21
flashman wrote: post #7

> Speaking of game loading, it is surprisingly slow. You plug in a cartridge and turn on the 7800+, which takes a moment, and then there is a “Loading game” screen that takes 15 to 20 seconds to actually load the game. This would have been nearly instantaneous on the original console. You could hit reset and be back at the title screen basically before you'd leaned back from pushing the button. It is very funny that…

Prior to the Internet/Web any sort of pause in software was anathema. Now AppleOS spins for 20 or 30 seconds on file security checks.

um, what? how many times would a game get to a point that would require you to remove the disk from the drive to replace with a different disk because all of the data didn't fit on one disk?

pausing was not unusual.

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