What Atari games are actually worth playing?
It's not the most complex game, but my favourite of all time is Frostbite.
Same!
Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
31–40 of 77 posts
Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
#32miSTer all the way.
miSTer is a technical marvel, but from all the YouTube videos I've seen it seems the gains from miSTer over the latest emulators is not noticeable.
I love my MiSTer, and I don't regret buying it, but I'd be lying if I said it was "worth" it; software emulators for every system that the MiSTer runs already exist and have gotten very good.
I bought my MiSTer mostly as a "how neat is that?" purchase. I think it's kind of cool to not only be able to run the games, but have a direct recreation of the hardware to do it. I wish I could regale you with tales of lower latency and how it has made me better at Donkey Kong Country, but I feel like most of the differences I see are probably placebo, especially since I just plug it into an LCD TV, not some fancy low-latency OLED or a period-accurate CRT.
If your goal is to play SNES games, you're likely to have a comparable (or even better) experience downloading Higan or something, but even if it's placebo, something about it feels more accurate to me.
Plus FPGAs are just cool.
Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
#33Whilst 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.
There is a more standard controller: https://atari.com/products/cx78-gamepad
They released this in the 80s with the 7800, and they make it for the Atari 7800+, including a wireless version
Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
#34What Atari games are actually worth playing?
I'd say my favorite 2600 game is Super Breakout in progressive mode. Warlords is also pretty fun with four people and two sets of paddles.
There's a lot of games out there with really tight gameplay loops. Much fewer with deep gameplay, though. So it kind of depends on what you're looking for.
Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
#35Whilst 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.
Luckily most home computers of the era plus the Sega Master System and Genesis/Mega Drive used the same joystick port and wiring so many better controllers have been made and some are still being made.
Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
#36What Atari games are actually worth playing?
My all-time favorites would be Missile Command, Megamania (2600), Galaga (7800), Centipede (7800), Ms Pac Man (7800). I don't have a 7800 on hand, and haven't started up my XEGS in some time, so I might remember more titles.
Playing home arcade ports doesn’t have much appeal to me except for nostalgia when you can just as easily emulate the “real thing”. Activision and Imagic titles at least have some originality. River Raid(s), Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, Demon Attack, Alien Brigade, etc.
Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
miSTer is a technical marvel, but from all the YouTube videos I've seen it seems the gains from miSTer over the latest emulators is not noticeable.
I love my MiSTer, and I don't regret buying it, but I'd be lying if I said it was "worth" it; software emulators for every system that the MiSTer runs already exist and have gotten very good. I bought my MiSTer mostly as a "how neat is that?" purchase. I think it's kind of cool to not only be able to run the games, but have a direct recreation of the hardware to do it. I wish I could regale you with tales of lower la…
Have a MiSTER but for Super Nintendo games I picked up the Analogue SuperNT.
Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
#38Whilst 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.
Paddle controllers and trackballs are ideal for games that were designed for them. Analog joysticks are a different experience.
Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
#39> 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…
> 15 to 20 seconds to actually load the game
Hmm, this is disappointing and something that they should really fix.
As I understand it, the whole advantage of ROM cartridges on Atari-like systems is that no loading is required - the games run directly off the cartridge ROM. Enthusiast emulation systems can boot in a couple of seconds.
The Nintendo Switch cartridges are more like a read-only file system, but games still load quickly without a lengthy installation process and can usually run without an internet connection.
Re: Atari 2600+ vs. Atari 7800+ – Which Should You Get?
#40> 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.
> Prior to the Internet/Web any sort of pause in software was anathema
We should really go back to the blazing speed of cassette tapes, floppy disks, and optical media.
> Now AppleOS spins for 20 or 30 seconds on file security checks.
Trying to recreate the experience of loading a program from floppy or optical drives.
I feel your pain though: syspolicyd is my sworn enemy. Not only does it cause apps to hang on startup (ugh) while it tries to phone home (no thanks), it also periodically decides it needs to rescan all huge files it can find (like game updates that I've downloaded over the years) in case they might have suddenly turned into known malware. Whenever my laptop heats up for no obvious reason, it's usually some infernal combination of evil macOS demons (not a typo), (syspolicyd, mdworker, photoanalysisd).
It's a shame that in the current malware environment syspolicyd seems to serve enough of a useful purpose (for some subset of Mac users) to be turned on by default.