Just curious if you used an old model television or if you had to do some crazy ass hotrodding to even hook the stuff up. Remember we used to have to buy some thing called, I believe, and RF MODULATOR which connected to the TV and you then hooked the console up to. This had the TV/GAME toggle switch, and then you selected either channel 2 or channel 3 on the console depending on where you had it set to.
I was just reading up (thanks, Wiki) on the Atari and when it came out it first retailed for $199 (later innovations to lessen production costs got it down to about $125). Holy crap, though! That would be like spending $600 or something now. No wonder (they wouldn’t have anyway) my parents never bought me a game system.
Just curious if you used an old model television or if you had to do some crazy ass hotrodding to even hook the stuff up. Remember we used to have to buy some thing called, I believe, and RF MODULATOR which connected to the TV and you then hooked the console up to. This had the TV/GAME toggle switch, and then you selected either channel 2 or channel 3 on the console depending on where you had it set to.
I had to use something like that for my SNES and put the tv on channel 4 (the tv itself, not the cable box).
Before the SNES we had a later version of Atari. My parents used to play epic games of Joust. I remember being hooked on Pole Position. I don’t know why, that game fucking sucked. You could never beat the computer. I later had an emulator on my computer called MAME. It had hella games on it, including Burger Time which I believe only came out on the Calico Vision. Calico Vision was before my time so I think I had the arcade version of Burger Time.
Just curious if you used an old model television or if you had to do some crazy ass hotrodding to even hook the stuff up. Remember we used to have to buy some thing called, I believe, and RF MODULATOR which connected to the TV and you then hooked the console up to. This had the TV/GAME toggle switch, and then you selected either channel 2 or channel 3 on the console depending on where you had it set to.
I was just reading up (thanks, Wiki) on the Atari and when it came out it first retailed for $199 (later innovations to lessen production costs got it down to about $125). Holy crap, though! That would be like spending $600 or something now. No wonder (they wouldn’t have anyway) my parents never bought me a game system.
Gunnar when was the last time you choked on a dick?
Just curious if you used an old model television or if you had to do some crazy ass hotrodding to even hook the stuff up. Remember we used to have to buy some thing called, I believe, and RF MODULATOR which connected to the TV and you then hooked the console up to. This had the TV/GAME toggle switch, and then you selected either channel 2 or channel 3 on the console depending on where you had it set to.
I was just reading up (thanks, Wiki) on the Atari and when it came out it first retailed for $199 (later innovations to lessen production costs got it down to about $125). Holy crap, though! That would be like spending $600 or something now. No wonder (they wouldn’t have anyway) my parents never bought me a game system.
I tried to hook it up to my plasma…too much of a pain. I’m using an old 27" with an add on that bypasses the switch.
Colecovision. I wanted one of those so bad but they were 200 bucks and we already had the atari and there was no way my parents were forking over 200 bucks on a game system especially when we already had one. But the graphics were great for the time. some of the games looked and played pretty damn close to the actual arcade games. I still look for colecovision on ebay every now and again.
Late,
grmpysmrf
Coleco Vision. Yeah, it’s what EVERY kid wanted. And if you had it, you were insanely envied and/or hated.
There was this one stupid cry baby rich kid, Blaine Edwards, in our neighborhood. His family wasn’t just rich. They were like ghetto rich. Like they got a bunch of money and didn’t know what to do with it, so they watched “The Toy” (starring Richard Pryor) and “Silver Spoons” just to get ideas of stupid crap to buy.
No, seriously, they ACTUALLY had one of the mini-trains (it went around their backyard) and an ACTUAL arcade of some pinball machines and video games. And (of course) Blaine Edwards got Coleco Vision when it came out.
ALL of us HATED Blaine and only hung out with him so we could play with all his cool ass toys which he totally took for granted . . . and he still cried all the time as if he was being tortured because he’d sometimes have to wait a day or so before they’d buy him some new go-cart or something.
Anyway, Coleco, yeah, it was the bomb-biggity. It played Atari AND Coleco games. The problem, though, was that it didn’t hold that long and there weren’t many games developed specifically for it. I remember a sweet shooting gallery/ carnival game and Burger Time, and if I’m remembering right, I think there was also a BETTER version of Donkey Kong than the Atari one with the big stupid GINGERBREAD MAN GORILLA on top.
if I’m remembering right, I think there was also a BETTER version of Donkey Kong than the Atari one with the big stupid GINGERBREAD MAN GORILLA on top.
It had a better version of EVERYTHING over the atari 2600.
"Coleco licensed Nintendo’s Donkey Kong as the official pack-in cartridge for all ColecoVision consoles, and this version of the game was well received as a [b]near-perfect arcade port"[/b]
I never got to play one because the only person that I knew had it was a mean teenager from up the street and he wouldn’t let me or his little brother play it we could only watch him.
I’ve played some coleco games since on the emulators but I don’t think it’s the same since using the keyboard sucks as a controller… I really want to play that old army game “front Line”
Late,
grmpysmrf
What is that, DJ? It looks dope!
My neighbors later got a VECTREX, by the way, which was totally BADASS!!! Vector graphics in it’s own sorta-Mac-style stand-alone body with screen.
Because there were just line graphics like the old classic arcade games (i.e. Tempest, Battlezone, Asteroids, etc.) each game came with it’s own screen overlay that you put on the screen.
My dad scored this for free at some seminar or something back in the day and he gave it to me. We spent hours day after day writing BASIC line code that came with the manual. If you wanted to save anything you had to connect a TAPE recorder (an actual tape recorder) to the thing.
Anyway, after working dilligently non-stop for like two weeks we finally finished our program which was supposed to be a game. It was. The. Worst. Game. Ever. Basically a big squarish “bug” would go across the top of the screen and you’d launch a gigantic square bullet at it . . . which would then take about 30 seconds to travel up the screen. It was HORRIBLE. We wasted a large chunk of our lives on that thing.
Joust and defender were fucking awesome, but aside from those two games, i’m not sure many of the atari games hiold up to modern playthroughs. i will still bust out some emulators and play some NES/Master system games now and again and play for a long time, but i think the lack of good controls combined wit the primitive nature of the games at the time made it so you really needed something “special” to last the test of time. I can’t think of more than a few games that were specifically developed for the atari that were good. (Pitfall?) (that adventure one) Otherwise the only good ones (generally) were the arcade ports.
When i was young, a friend of mine had a magnavox odyssey (i think). it had the plastic overlays that you hung on the screen. it was…something. I really love that old school tech.
My dad scored this for free at some seminar or something back in the day and he gave it to me. We spent hours day after day writing BASIC line code that came with the manual. If you wanted to save anything you had to connect a TAPE recorder (an actual tape recorder) to the thing.
Anyway, after working dilligently non-stop for like two weeks we finally finished our program which was supposed to be a game. It was. The. Worst. Game. Ever. Basically a big squarish “bug” would go across the top of the screen and you’d launch a gigantic square bullet at it . . . which would then take about 30 seconds to travel up the screen. It was HORRIBLE. We wasted a large chunk of our lives on that thing.
HAHA I programmed that same game for a texas instruments computer we had!! if you hit your target you would get a little message like “good job” or “you got him” or something like that. I figured out where that line of code was and would program it to say profane things. I could never save it though because we didn’t have the attachment required for saving. I still have that book that has those code lines somewhere.
Late,
grmpysmrf
Joust and defender were fucking awesome, but aside from those two games, i’m not sure many of the atari games hiold up to modern playthroughs. i will still bust out some emulators and play some NES/Master system games now and again and play for a long time, but i think the lack of good controls combined wit the primitive nature of the games at the time made it so you really needed something “special” to last the test of time. I can’t think of more than a few games that were specifically developed for the atari that were good. (Pitfall?) (that adventure one) Otherwise the only good ones (generally) were the arcade ports.
Venture and Haunted house still hold up today! Pitfall was ok but it got too repetitive after a while since it was like the same 5 screens over and over again.
I have a 2600 emulator with something like 1000 games on it. I gotta bust that thing back out!
Late,
grmpysmrf
I kind of remember Tutankam being pretty playable too.
And COMBAT! was actually kind of fun. There were many different variations of the tank battle that were cool.
But what a joke that one game where you could either be three small jets shooting three independent streams of fast firing bullets or ONE REALLY BIG JUMBO JET that shot one giant square slow moving bullet. You could only convince a dumbass kid to be the big jumbo jet one time. One time was all you got and then everyone learned that that was crap.
Both Kangaroo and Donkey Kong were okay (I think) even though (like EVERY Atari game) they were a billion times inferior to the Arcade.
HAHA I programmed that same game for a texas instruments computer we had!! if you hit your target you would get a little message like “good job” or “you got him” or something like that. I figured out where that line of code was and would program it to say profane things. I could never save it though because we didn’t have the attachment required for saving. I still have that book that has those code lines somewhere.
Late,
grmpysmrf
HAHAHA!!! Yeah, that was it, I believe. We should file a class action suit or something. God only knows how many innocent 10 year olds had 200 hours or more of time stolen from them. You know how many ants I could have burned in that time? How many MAD Magazines I could have re-read? How many porno mags I would have found along the wooded equestrian trail? Just sayin . . .
But, yeah, BASIC code was the bomb. My buddy and I would spend ages writing little questionnaire programs. It was usually something super amazingly awesome like . . . .
10 Print: “ARE YOU GAY Y/N?”
20 INPUT 20
30 IF 20 = Y, THEN GOTO 50
40 IF 20 = N, THEN GOTO 60
50 PRINT “HAHA YOU ARE A FAG!!”
60 PRINT “LIAR! YOU ARE TOTALLY A FAG!!”
We’d literally spend hours at a time over and over making awesome question and answer programs that almost always told the survey taker to eat crap or go die or informed them that they were fags.
