Early Atari Emulation!

hamster

Hey Guys!

I never owned the original early ataris (not talking about the 16-bit ones here) - anyone here owned one? I read a bit that there were two models that were popular... namely the Atari 2600/5200/7800 and especially 400/800.

I know I could get this on Wikipedia - but I'll like to hear it from geniune owners! I'll think about getting to know these machines a bit better.

I love to hear about how you loaded these games, what you thought of them compared to the other 8-bits at the time and so on.

daedalus2097

Had an Atari 800XL myself (a couple of them actually) and liked it - it was the top of the 8-bit line from them. I found it was a nice machine, similar to the Commodore 64 in many ways but I think not quite as versatile from a programming point of view, resulting in some conversions being inferior and programming it in the built-in BASIC being a pain in the proverbials for some things. You could get Microsoft BASIC on a cartridge which would have improved things drastically (and was the updated version of the BASIC Commodore had in their 64/128) but I never saw one in the flesh.

Dr Bob

I'd an 800xl as well.
Closest thing it compares to is a C64 I guess.(similar graphics , and they both used the same controllers)
Games would load from tape (which reminds me daedalus2097, I'm going to have another look at that tape deck {been a bit busy lately:( sorry }),and if you were American , or rich , there was a disk drive as well. Tape games took aaagees to load , about 20min+ in a lot of cases, and there weren't that many multi load games.it only read one of the stereo channels for data , so the other was sometimes used for "loading music" although this wasn't done very often.
Arcade conversions tended to be a little better than the c64 versions , but due to Atari's lack of support there was bugger all decent ones made after about 86. i ended up selling mine to buy a c64 solely as I wanted to play "modern" games.
There was a decent bit of support for Atari in Ireland probably due to their corporate presence here,Also: the Atari centre in mosney , and Peats (one of the main computer shops in Dublin) selling a decent range of hardware and software.It never did as well as the C64 or (spit) speccy though.
I have one myself now , and a nice doodad called a sio2pc which lets you load up disk images on a pc and transfer them to the Atari(30 quid on ebay).
If you want to emulate one to try it out , Atari 800 win
http://atari800.sourceforge.net/
atarimania is a great place for games info etc
the forum section in http://www.atariage.com/ is a great place for info (i'm dr_bob there).
Games to try :boulderdash, montezuma's revenge, Resuce on fractalus, Miner 2049er (all native atari games ported to other systems)
Zybex, Draconus, speedace.Also have a look out for the "drunk chessboard" demo , if you want to see some awesome (for an 8 bit) effects.

Dr Bob

you mentioned the 2600/5200/7800 series .
They were actually totally independent systems.
The 2600 (or VCS) was the original wood panelled games system of the late 70's .It had games on those lovely chunky carts and had a lot of classics like combat , river raid , pitfall etc released for it .It had a massive library of games.
The original system "the VCS" was released with that famous wood panelling effect , heavy internal rf shielding , and six switches built into it .(these are referred to by collectors as heavy sixers), later ones reduced the shielding(light sixers), then went to 4 switches on top, 2 at the back, then got rid of the wood panelling(these are called "vaders").
Atari revamped the VCS so it had a smaller , more streamlined black and silver case(2600 jr)and since they were made here , there was even an all black Ireland only model released.
The 5200 was a better machine graphically (similar graphically but not compatible with the Atari 8 bit computers).It had a new keypad and button analogue controller rather than a joystick.It didn't have a great line up of games , and never got a release in Europe. It wasn't natively compatible with the 2600 unless you bought a 3rd party adaptor.
The 7800 was a later machine again , it featured built in 2600 compatibilty , and a 2 button joystick .Graphically it was looked around the same quality as a master system I guess.It did get a europe release , but failed against the sms and nes.
I have a 2600 (woody six swicth one) and about 40 odd games for it.
dont have the other two (yet!)
Stella used to be the 2600 emu of choice , havent used it in years , but there seems to be a win port here http://www.emuunlim.com/stellax/
www.atariage.com is again a great place to find info on the systems

daedalus2097

Hehe, take your time with the tape deck Ooh, Montezuma's Revenge! Ah, the memories... To me that's Atari XL all over...

hamster

Thanks for the info luas and Daedalus - looking at Wiki - the 2600 console had one of the longest lifespans for a console starting as far back as 1978 - that's pretty good! Wasn't the atari pacman version on the 2600 so bad it was iconic to the US home gaming slump in 1983? I had the VC4000 console (not atari but something similar to the 2600) and after that I went the vic-20 and then c64 route.
I'll try Stella tonight and see what classics I should try out. Any particular faves of yours you remember?

The Atari 400/800 series - I'm reading about and see how expensive they were (especially the 800) in the early adverts of the 8-bits mags (cvg and so on). Read the bit about the atari basic was one of the slowest running - but that one of the 3rd party ones ended up being one of the fastest running a 6502 cpu for that speed 1.79Mhz. You didn't need to poke and peek to place characters or graphics into position on screen? The 800XL machine looks very interesting I must try it out.

hamster

luas_dublin wrote:

the forum section in http://www.atariage.com/ is a great place for info (i'm dr_bob there).
Games to try :boulderdash, montezuma's revenge, Resuce on fractalus, Miner 2049er (all native atari games ported to other systems)

Missed out on your comments on which games to try - will do

That forum is fantastic! 16K posts on the 2600 alone. Wow! Thanks.

Dr Bob

2600 games really play a bit better with a TV and a "real" controller but on stella some ones to try would be:
Pitfall*
Pitfall 2*
Atlantis
River Raid*
Cosmic Arc
HERO
Chopper command
Battlezone (nothing like the arcade , but still an achievement for the 2600)
Night driver (which really needs the proper paddle controllers to get the full experience)
star raiders*
Pole Position*
Berzerk*
Miner 2049er*
Adventure
Double Dragon (yeah really!!)
centipede*
Combat , and Warlords both need at least one other player too , but are worth checking out if you can.
If I get a chance I'll have a root through my collection at home and see if there's any other good ones I've missed.


__________________________________________________________
I've marked games which have decent atari 8 bit conversions with *

Tom Dunne

Oh, how I loved my Atari 800XL, and it's matching cassette player, the 1050 disc drive and the 1029 dot-matrix printer. All in a rather 70's cream/brown.

I taught myself to program on it and even got some of my programs published in Page 6 magazine.

Some of the cassics include Boulderdash, Ballblazer and the Spy vs. Spy series.

I now have an emulator on my O2 XDA, so I can play all the old classics on the train when I am feeling nostalgic.

Dr Bob

hamster wrote:

Wasn't the atari pacman version on the 2600 so bad it was iconic to the US home gaming slump in 1983?

It is pretty bad.supposedly it was knocked out in a very VERY short time.Also
it was apparently one* of the contributing factors to "the crash", supposedly there were more copies of it made than there were Atari 2600's in existence at the time.
"Ms. Pacman" on the VCS is actually quite good though , by the way (add it to my list!)



______________________
* of many

hamster

tom dunne wrote:

..... and it's matching cassette player, the 1050 disc drive and the 1029 dot-matrix printer.

Tell me more... With the c64 90% of early days I used tape... I loved the novaload with the loading music and background picture while loading. Was that there with the Atari 800 or 400?
Later on the c64 I used the disk drive for any single load copy using the Action Replay cart. A fast but unexciting load in comparison.

Tom Dunne

hamster wrote:

Was that there with the Atari 800 or 400?

As far as I remember, there were loading screens with scrolly messages. Unfortunately, the only music was the sound of the tape loading, which took on average 10 minutes.

Dr Bob

Yup , normally as games loaded you'd get nice scrolly message (usually ads for other games - I remember "beer belly burts brew biz" being one ), and generally the data loading noises being pumped through the TV's speaker.There was rarely a graphic loading screen ala the c64.Compared to the c64 the games took an age to load (no speedloaders on the atari if I recall)
I've a 800xl and a 1010 tape deck (the 1010 is the brown and beige one , with a seperate SIO cable , and a seperate power supply.Later models like the xc12 had a single built in cable and no need for a power supply , a bit like a c64's deck).
Also <nostalgia> I remember page 6 - first computer magazine I ever bought!</nostalgia>

hamster

Actually when I went to the AtariAge forums - they had a link there for some old atari mags - Atari Age - about 11 mags in around 240Mb. Flicking through it gives a good feel for what was happening under atari at the time. Nice

Tom Dunne

hamster wrote:

Actually when I went to the AtariAge forums - they had a link there for some old atari mags - Atari Age - about 11 mags in around 240Mb. Flicking through it gives a good feel for what was happening under atari at the time. Nice

If you want to get a feel for what was happening this side of the pond, check out the Page 6 magazine link I posted above (Page6.org). It hasn't been updated in a while (my programs aren't up there yet ), but there is still some great info there.

hamster

tom dunne wrote:

If you want to get a feel for what was happening this side of the pond, check out the Page 6 magazine link I posted above (Page6.org). It hasn't been updated in a while (my programs aren't up there yet ), but there is still some great info there.

Will do.