Posts Tagged ‘2600’

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Space Invaders Laser Base

November 4, 2012

When does an Atari 2600 arcade port have better graphics than the original?  Is such a thing even possible?  It was with Space Invaders.  If you’ve read Arcadian, you know that I wasn’t happy with the Space Invaders laser base.  I thought it looked like  a bracket put on its side.  I still think that today.

Well, when Atari ported the game to the 2600, they refined the laser base a little.  Here’s how it came out on the Atari.

Is that better?  I think it is.  And so it is a time, perhaps the only and only time, when the Atari 2600 had better graphics than an arcade game.

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Activision Anthology App

September 17, 2012

Well, I complained that there were no Activision games on the Atari Greatest Hits Android App,  but I didn’t have to wait that long to get them.  I just found out about and bought the Activision Anthology Android App.  Here’s some thoughts about it.

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Atari Greatest Hits App for Android

September 7, 2012

Still rocking the Android apps.  Here’s the Atari Greatest Hits app.  I’ve had this installed for a while, but just got around to fooling with it.  When I saw you could get all the games (99 total) for $10, I pulled the trigger.  Another example of my portable nostalgia, and a pretty good one at that.

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Activision Patches – The Original Achievements

August 14, 2012

I didn’t log hour after hour on Valve’s Left 4 Dead just because I love shooting zombies.  I also did it for the achievements.  Earning something for playing a video game was even more motivation to keep playing that game.

Valve didn’t invent achievements, however.  Activision, one of the leading makers of Atari 2600 games, did.  They offered patches for players who could get a high score in their games.  Not software patches.  Fabric patches, patches you could sew on your jean jacket and proudly display in school.  Here are a few of them:

 

 

 

You can find several more, as well as the points required to get them, here.

Which one was my favorite?  This one:

This was the patch for SeaQuest (which had nothing to do with the NBC action series of the same name).  This one was my favorite because I earned enough points to get it.  I also had Dad take a picture of the TV screen showing my qualifying score.  Unfortunatley, i never sent that picture in and so never got my patch.  I earned it, though!

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Retroist Video Game Podcasts

July 26, 2012

I’ve mentioned the Retroist, his podcast, and his blog several times here on authordougmccoy.com.   What I haven’t told you is how I first found the Retroist.  I was searching Itunes for podcasts on classic video games.  He had done several, so I listened to them and then to all his other episodes.

 

 

I count 21 video game-related Retroist podcasts covering everything from the NES, the Master System, the Atari 2600 & 5200, the Colecovision, Donkey Kong, Centipede, Missile Command, and  Mr. Do.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Nintendo Missteps


Pitfall


Dragon’s Lair

Download: retroist-podcast-episode-081-dragons-lair

You can find all these podcasts here.

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ANESthetized and Arcadian on Amazon.com

June 8, 2012

Well, it looks like it will take Amazon.com and Smashwords awhile to work out their differences, so even though I didn’t want to do it this way, I uploaded ANESthetized and Arcadian onto Amazon.com myself.  If you’re a Kindle fan (as I am), check them out.  Please don’t forget to give me a [good] review.

To celebrate, here’s an old Atari 2600 Jr. commercial.  Why celebrate with this commercial?  Well, because I remember it and love it but don’t plan on doing a book on the 2600, so I have to fit it in somewhere.

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Atari Strikes Back

June 5, 2012

Here’s a commercial Atari aired for their XE system.  I was not familiar with the XE.  I knew the 5200 and the 7800, but not the XE.  I’ll allow you to just the legitimacy of Atari’s arguments against the NES for yourself.

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Atari 2600

May 21, 2012

I make several references to the Atari 2600 in ANESthetized. Most of those references were negative, and I can imagine that anybody reading them might think I hated the 2600. Nothing could be further from the truth. I loved it tremendously. Unfortunately, I experienced it too early in life, so early that I’m not able wax eloquent about it the way I do the NES. Thus, there will be no book on the 2600 from me. Still, the console had a significant effect on me, and I still have fond memories of it today. Here’s a few videos that show just a little of the love I still have for my first real home video game console.

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