47 replies to this topic

[Albert]

http://www.atari7800.com/new/Atari7800.com has announced the availability of five new titles in their Atari 7800 store. The titles are Klax, Sentinel, Shooting Arcade, Save Mary!, and a fully functional NTSC version of Impossible Mission. Shooting Arcade and Save Mary! are 2600 titles that have been revamped to work in 2600 mode on the 7800, allowing for clearer graphics, brighter colors and more intense gameplay. These titles, which will include a manual and box, will be available in limited quantities starting September 22nd, and you can reserve them now from Atari7800.com.

[Mayhem]

And curious how they've managed to give "Shooting Arcade" and "Sentinel" the same product number heh...

[Tempest]

So exactly what did they change on Save Mary and Shooting Arcade? Can you explain this a bit further?

Tempest

[Cap5750]

I must not be a serious collector. I thought I might be, but when I choked at seeing the price of these games ($44.95), I figure that mustn't be the case.

Out of all the Atari games I've ever owned, I don't recall ever paying that much for a game except for Waterworld.

I'm sure they'd be worth it, and I'm sure they are "limited quantities", but I just can't seem to shake the thoughts of what else you can buy for that much money....

Cap

[Propane13]

To be honest, well.... this kind of disturbs me. A lot.

For about 8 months now, I knew that Lance at Video 61 was creating 3 Atari 2600 SuperCart titles. Problem was, that a suitable 2600 board and hardware could not be found, so they were placed on a 7800 board. The "extra graphics" I don't think are anything at all. Lance had mentioned that if you put the ROMs on a 7800 board, the graphics "cleaned themselves up automatically". Being a programmer, this didn't make any sense whatsoever to me. Todd Frye's genius for Save Mary (very redeeming after Pac-Man) in my opinion should not be tampered with by people wishing to "clean up" his work, and my guess is that no one did. Anyhoo, the 3 titles were Save Mary, Shootin Arcade, and Klax 2600. It looks like Klax 2600 isn't out yet.

Why re-release *New* Klax and Sentinel 7800? This is taking away from those who have already put in gobs of effort to do this. I know that Tizoc and Lee Kreuger worked really really hard to make these. Lee's price = $40 (http://home.earthlin...ft/products.htm) There was a lot of effort and love for the 7800 demosntrated in these productions. And, they're cheaper than the $45. My advice is to buy from them.

The prices on Atari7800.com have always been astronomical, and I don't think are a deal. They look to be ripping off people who don't know that they could do any better with a little bit of extra looking, as they can get the same thing for 1/4 the price.

A mindlink game? Who's going to play that? AFAIK, the mindlink sucked as a peripheral.

In my mind, keeping everything a secret until now has been detrimental. I'm just glad that I didn't produce any carts of my Impossible Mission bugfix, as I'd probably be screwed in selling them now. And why didn't you inform me? That's just gonna piss me off. Jindroush, have you created any copies? If so, you're probably pissed as well. Of course, since no one bothered to check with me, there's no reason I can't release the same thing independently for 5 dollars less (hell, I envision it could be done for $30 or even $20, depending on HW costs) just because I love the hobby and want people to experience the 7800 for what it is. I'm not a business.

Sorry for the negative attitude, but this information looks like a lot of people are getting screwed, both out of money and out of their efforts because of some secret stuff done "in the background".

Note that I will be posting my Impossible Mission bugfix ROM info later today, so people can play it on emulators. I was planning to save it until I did some publishing, but now... what's the point?

Thanks,
-John K. Harvey

[cx2k]

John,

I find it disturbing as well. The only reason I can see for re-releasing titles is to put the 7800.com name on them. What I find really funny is that in Neo-Geo circles, the collectors are ready to "string up" a company called Neo-Geo Freak for destroying the original inserts on games and substituting their own, yet no one seems to mind 7800.com doing this.

I recently got a look at some COMMON 7800 carts they sent to Joe Santulli and they have removed the labels and replaced them with their own 7800.com label which is nothing more than an advertisement for their site.

Here's some more things to consider...

Propane13 said:

For about 8 months now, I knew that Lance at Video 61 was creating 3 Atari 2600 SuperCart titles.  Problem was, that a suitable 2600 board and hardware could not be found, so they were placed on a 7800 board.  The "extra graphics" I don't think are anything at all.  Lance had mentioned that if you put the ROMs on a 7800 board, the graphics "cleaned themselves up automatically".  Being a programmer, this didn't make any sense whatsoever to me.

Wouldn't be the first time Lance was found out to be full of it.

Propane13 said:

Why re-release *New* Klax and Sentinel 7800?  This is taking away from those who have already put in gobs of effort to do this.  I know that Tizoc and Lee Kreuger worked really really hard to make these.  Lee's price = $40 (http://home.earthlin...ft/products.htm)  There was a lot of effort and love for the 7800 demosntrated in these productions.  And, they're cheaper than the $45.  My advice is to buy from them.

I agree, but did anyone here actually think these guys cared about the hobby???

Propane13 said:

A mindlink game?  Who's going to play that?  AFAIK, the mindlink sucked as a peripheral.

It did. There's currently only 2 games that support it and they are horrible. So unless 7800.com is going to program new 7800 games that support the unit, they'll just end up re-packaging the 2600 games which anyone can currently get for free.

Propane13 said:

In my mind, keeping everything a secret until now has been detrimental.  I'm just glad that I didn't produce any carts of my Impossible Mission bugfix, as I'd probably be screwed in selling them now.  And why didn't you inform me?  That's just gonna piss me off.  Jindroush, have you created any copies?  If so, you're probably pissed as well.  Of course, since no one bothered to check with me, there's no reason I can't release the same thing independently for 5 dollars less (hell, I envision it could be done for $30 or even $20, depending on HW costs) just because I love the hobby and want people to experience the 7800 for what it is.  I'm not a business.

Honestly, they probably don't even know you guys exist. When have you seen them post here other than when they're hawking their site, their products, or asking what products people want to see (ie. What will you pay for?)? I think you should release them anyway at your own price point.

Propane13 said:

Note that I will be posting my Impossible Mission bugfix ROM info later today, so people can play it on emulators.  I was planning to save it until I did some publishing, but now... what's the point?

Sorry to hear that. I know you guys worked hard on it and had hoped to do a nice release like the Klax project Lee and his team did a superb job with.

John

[Ze_ro]

I don't understand... what's with Save Mary for the 7800? Is this just the same 2600 game, except put on a 7800 board or something? If I snapped off the sides of the connector, would it work on a 2600? Something about this doesn't sound right.

--Zero

[cschell]

Ze_ro said:

I don't understand... what's with Save Mary for the 7800? Is this just the same 2600 game, except put on a 7800 board or something? If I snapped off the sides of the connector, would it work on a 2600? Something about this doesn't sound right.

The 7800 has a full 6502 with all 16 address lines and brings those and the read/write line and clock line to the cartridge through the side edge connectors. With these you can access more RAM/ROM without the need for bankswitching and extra RAM logic. Thus it's possible to take bankswitched 2600 games and modify them to use a linear map on the 7800, no longer requiring additional bankswitching hardware.

Eckhard demonstrated this ability on a few games (including Save Mary.) I would guess this release is just the same (or similarly) modified ROM installed on a 7800 board.

Chad

[Tempest]

I hope they don't run into any 7800 incompatibility problems like I did. My Save Mary prototype doesn't like my 7800 at all. It would paly weird tricks on it like making Mary invincible. Of course prototypes are normally a little more finicky than regular carts...

Tempest

[Atari 7800.com]

We are having some sort of error with our forms right now on Atari 7800.com, I'm not quite sure what happened but it appears as if all of our forms aren't working appropriately. If anybody is having trouble placing an order, asking a question, or requesting assistance, you can always email us at new@atari7800.com, or call us at 941.598.1862.

As for all of the questions addressed above, we will answer those as best we can later today when Jon and I have the time to sit down and answer them (I'm at work right now)

To answer a few of the common questions, Save Mary! and Shooting Arcade are games that were designed for the 2600 system, utilizing a special chip to give the game better resolution. We found that by bypassing this propriotory chip and using a new 7800 cartridge board, the game would play with brighter colors and a clearer screen than what we could ever get on the 2600, and at a viable cost for production. This is why we have 2600 games on the 7800 boards. We advertise them as 7800 games because they WILL NOT play on the 2600 series systems. They will ONLY play on the 7800, even though they do not take advantage of the maria chip.

For those of you who don't want to shell out 45.00 for a new game, we are still working on bringing the price of the games down as best as we can. They are expensive to manufacture (brand new PCB's, brand new cartridge shells, brand new high-rez labels, high-rez instructions, boxes, etc.) and we will consider releasing less expensive "cart only" versions later on once supply catches up.

Hope this helps guys! Any other questions can be emailed directly to me if you wish.

Cya!

[Tempest]

Got any side by side screenshot comparisons? I would find that very interesting.

Tempest

[Eckhard Stolberg]

Tempest said:

So exactly what did they change on Save Mary and Shooting Arcade?  Can you explain this a bit further?

Tempest

Most of the later 2600 games, including Save Mary and Shooting Arcade, were developed on Atari's 7800 RAM cart. Since the 2600 can only address 8K of ROM, while the 7800 can handle 64K, you can compile the 4K ROM banks of a 2600 game to be located in steps of 8K, and then run the game in the linear memory of the 7800. So to make these games work on the 7800 you only need to double each 4K bank and then put the resulting binary on a linear (as in not bankswitched) 32K EPROM.

Both games use the 128 bytes Superchip RAM though. 2600 games have to read the data from different addresses, than they can write to, to make it work. To get Save Mary and Shooting Arcade working on my homebrew 7800 RAM cart, I disassembled the games and changed the write accesses to use the same addresses as the read accesses. But if you are going to build a special board for this, you can probably just add some more decoding logic for accesses to the RAM chip. Since the 7800 has the read, write and clock signal on the cartridge connector, this is easier to build than for the 2600.

The expanded graphics capabilities just refers to the fact that Save Mary and Shooting Arcade have twice as much RAM available than a normal 2600 game due to the Superchip, which can be used to write better display routines. So the games will just play on the 7800 like they would on a 2600, if the binary was put on a Superchip board.

BTW Tempest, is your 7800 console one of those that works with Decathlon or Robot Tank? The incompatibility with these games that some of the later 7800 consoles have stems from a fix that Atari made to increase compatibility with 2600 Superchip games. The timing for accessing these chips is quite tricky, so some of the Superchip games might work on a 7800, while others, like your Save Mary prototype, would fail. The problems you describe sound like there is a problem with RAM access.


Ciao, Eckhard Stolberg

[Atari 7800.com]

Okay, now that I am home and have the time to address all of these curiousities, I will try to answer all of the above questions.

Ze_ro said:

I don't understand... what's with Save Mary for the 7800? Is this just the same 2600 game, except put on a 7800 board or something? If I snapped off the sides of the connector, would it work on a 2600? Something about this doesn't sound right.

--Zero

Save Mary! is a 2600 game, simply put. However, there were problems getting it to run on a regular 2600 PCB, and it didnt seem to like the 7800 very much at all. There were flickering problems, invincibility problems, etc, so we found that if you put it on the 7800 board, and run the game on a 7800 operating in 2600 mode (not accessing the maria chip) the game works beautifully. There is no flickering, the colors look nice, and its just an all-around better game on the 7800 board. We haven't run into any serious problems playing the game on the 7800. However, since it is on a 7800 cartridge, we cannot sell it as a 2600 game, because well it wont fit in a 2600 series system. So this is why we say it is a "game for use on the Atari 7800 operating in 2600 mode." The same applies to Shooting Arcade.

Tempest said:

I hope they don't run into any 7800 incompatibility problems like I did.  My Save Mary prototype doesn't like my 7800 at all.  It would paly weird tricks on it like making Mary invincible.  Of course prototypes are normally a little more finicky than regular carts...

Tempest

Nope! Not when you put the game on a 7800 PCB! The game is fully compatable with the 7800 working in 2600 mode.

Propane13 said:

A mindlink game?  Who's going to play that?  AFAIK, the mindlink sucked as a peripheral.

Well... then dont buy it. We want to bring something new out for the Atari home systems so that everybody may enjoy something that was not readilly available before. We dont expect everybody to like every game we put out, but we want to make new items available nevertheless.

Propane13 said:

Note that I will be posting my Impossible Mission bugfix ROM info later today, so people can play it on emulators.  I was planning to save it until I did some publishing, but now... what's the point?

Feel free to post this ROM so that everybody may enjoy it. It's your work and you should be damn proud of it. If you guys can get an eprom made of your fix, the trick is to use the same style board as found in Jinks cartridges. If you dont mind hacking it appart, it can be a fun project. For people who want to purchase one on a brand new board (not from a Jinks) with a box and instructions, that is what we intend to put out. The boards are costing us an arm and a leg right now, not to mention that we spend about $7.00 to $10.00 on full-color packaging and manuals, so the cartridges aren't very cheap. If there is an interest, we will make available a cartridge only package of Impossible Mission, and all of the other games, for a lower price. Sorry John if you feel like we crowded your space man. It's a hobby and it is supposed to be fun, we're not trying to put the kibosh on anybody's work. We just wan't to help bring out things that werent available previously.

Tempest said:

Got any side by side screenshot comparisons?  I would find that very interesting.

Tempest

We will have some screenshots available fairly soon. They will be available on the same webpage as the rest of the information regarding these games. www.atari7800.com/new

Propane13 said:

For about 8 months now, I knew that Lance at Video 61 was creating 3 Atari 2600 SuperCart titles.

Lance knows we have these games available. How so? Because Lance and I were working on similiar projects at the same time, and we had decided to collaborate our efforts to get out a decent product. Every new 7800 title that we have available on our site will also be available from Video 61. If you like Lance better than you do us, then by all means, buy from Lance. They will be the same games with the same artwork and packaging that I did.

CX2K said:

I recently got a look at some COMMON 7800 carts they sent to Joe Santulli and they have removed the labels and replaced them with their own 7800.com label which is nothing more than an advertisement for their site.

Actually this is very misleading of what our intensions were. I believe if you had looked into this, you wouldnt be quite so critical.

Yes, Joe Santulli has common cartridges with new labels on them, produced exclusively by Atari 7800.com. No, it is not just an advertisement for our site.

These cartridges are from our "refurbished cartridge" collection. Instead of just selling the same old dusty used cartridges with torn and sticky labels and bad contacts, we have begun a process of taking apart every used cartridge (which requires the removal of the label) and completely refurbishing them. This means the entire cartridge shell is taken appart, sanitized, rinsed, and the board is completely cleaned as well, including maticulously cleaning the contacts and testing the cartridge.

Once the cartridges are reassembled, we have to put on new labels obviously, and instead of just making copies of the original black and grey 7800 labels which were featured on the common cartridges, we tried to go above and beyond. I personally created 10 high-resolution (600dpi) labels for the common cartridges featuring full-color prints of what should be on the respective game label. Lastly, they are shrinkwrapped and given a 2-year limited warranty with 24-hr customer service should you need it for whatever reason. (seriously, I have had calls at 4 am asking which way the cartridges go into the system... it was kinda funny ) So in the end, instead of getting a dusty used cartridge with the same ole', same ole' for the label, we tried to think out of the box and do something new and creative. Why? We thought you guys might like it. Does it say "Atari 7800.com" on the labels? Yes, at the bottom it has our logo. Why? Im damn proud of our work, both the physical cartridge, and the artwork. It's a cartridge label, a nice, full color, cartridge label at that. It's not an advertisement for our site. What's more, is that its not as if we try to doop people into purchasing these common titles from us, and then pulling the ole' switcheroo on them by sending them one of these color cartridges. We fully state on our used 7800 cartridge webpage, that these common cartridges have been refurbished and feature our new labels on them. We even show pictures of what these cartridges will look like, so that people dont get confused or mislead along the way. If people dont want them, then they just dont have to purchase them and they can get one with an original label at almost every other place that sells 7800 games. Guys, it's not a big deal. Why get all up in arms because we put something out thats creative, interesting and new? Anyways, if you guys want to know more about what these color cartridges are, or why we make them, we have a webpage for them at http://www.atari7800...talogue/pg8.htm Hopefully that should clear things up a bit.

A final note about Klax and Sentinel... I am well aware of Lee's cartridges being available and I commend him on his work. He has a nice product, and if you like Lee better than us, then buy from Lee. I don't know how Lee makes his cartridges, but I can tell you that both Lance and myself have been working for quite a long time on these two titles, trying to get them made brand new on new 7800 PCBs, getting the packaging together, etc. It's a hobby, not a war. We are not trying to "shut Lee down" or anything of the sort. Lee has his games priced at 40.00 which is a fair and decent price... if we can get the price at that, or lower, then we will. But between the new boards, the new cartridge shells, and the packaging, this has gotten VERY expensive for us to do, and the price refelcts that. Sorry guys, I cant wave my wand and change the rules of economics. We're just trying to have fun and bring out some stuff on our site that we didn't have available.


Anyway, I hope this clears up some of your questions. If you have any more, feel free to email me directly at AtariSuperhero@aol.com or call us at 941.598.1862, even if you just want to bitch about how great Lee's Klax's are and how much we suck for trying to make a mindlink game. We like to hear from ya. For those of you who like what we are doing and have an interest in our work, well all I can ask for is just a bit of encouragement and excitement to keep us going. We promise to bring out some really cool stuff as soon as we can get it done.

Thanx guys,

[Mitch]

Justin, just out of curiosity. Are you going to make your new 7800 PCB boards available for 7800 homebrew titles, if someone wanted to purchase a small quanity of them? And if so how much would they run?

Mitch
http://atari7800.atari.org

[GrizzLee]

Quote

A final note about Klax and Sentinel... I am well aware of Lee's cartridges being available and I commend him on his work. He has a nice product, ...... It's a hobby, not a war.... if we can get the price at that, or lower, then we will. But between the new boards, the new cartridge shells, and the packaging, this has gotten VERY expensive for us to do, and the price refelcts that..... We're just trying to have fun and bring out some stuff on our site that we didn't have available.

Just thought I'd chime in here....

First of all, I am glad to hear that everyone is happy with ResQsoft products. While I usually head up these efforts, they are usually more than a couple of NWCGE members involved.

I support 7800.coms efforts. I am glad someone is paying attention to the 7800 finally!! If and when they get their site up and working, I'll order a cart or 2 I can vouch for this being a time intensive and expensive venture to do. I hope they will stay around and deliver.

Regarding Klax and Sentinel, all I can say, is that I wish there was some more coordination on this effort between everyone. I orginally made a few for folks at the 2002 NWCGE meet and had an overwelming response for these, especially Klax. I was excited that John Harvey was able to locate the programmer, David Dentt, and get his blessing on our project. I think John, David and myself would have gladly helped 7800.com with their efforts. I know I would have.

Yes... if you know what you are doing, you can certainly make a cart for yourself, but... I don't think you can do it much less than a $40 effort, unless you like working for free. Finding the proper boards, eproms, eprom burner, some sodering skills, graphics package, printing, etc.... If you have all these, then great. Most of us don't .. and that is why Hozer, CGE services, Atari Age, Songbird, et al. are doing what they do. I think it is great. I think everyone that makes carts can tell you there isn't a whole lot of money being made.. if any. All of the proceeds from our efforts go back into the hobby like supporting NWCGE (a non-profit organization http://NWCGE.org), the annual Atari 2600 Atari Championships and soon a permanent meeting place for NW Classic gamers to meet on a more regular basis.

With that being said, I have checked with the other members of my ResQsoft team and we've all decided to sell the few copies of Klax we left for $30 (as we'd like to clean out closets). I think there is a Sentinel or 2 left as well. These are all boxed, with manuals and include a special insert from David Dentt himself revealing secret levels and tricks from Klax and his other games (Ninja Golf for the 7800). After these few games we have are gone though, we will not be making any more and you will be reffered to 7800.com

BTW: I have one or two of the signed copies from David Dentt left. These will probably go first :wink:

No hard feelings from my side.. other than dissapointment in the lack of coordination of effort. I hope as they get organized, they will do more planning and coordination. And for God's sake.. get your website working soon. I want Impossible Mission when it comes out.. I can trade you a Klax for it

Take care,
-Lee

[Atari 7800.com]

Mitch said:

Justin, just out of curiosity. Are you going to make your new 7800 PCB boards available for 7800 homebrew titles, if someone wanted to purchase a small quanity of them? And if so how much would they run?

Mitchhttp://atari7800.atari.org

Mitch -

Ya know, that's not a bad idea. I will ask the other guys involved about this and see if this is feasable. I have a feeling the boards might be rather expensive. The only problem is that there is a handfull of different boards made for the 7800 cartridges. The ones we had made up were not the same boards that might be required by homebrewers... but if they are made available to homebrewers, then that's just one more step closer to more new 7800 games being released. I will certainly look into this and get back to ya on it! Another GREAT source for boards for simple homebrew games (Senso DX?) would obviously be the Pole Position II cartridge. It's the Combat of 7800 games. There's an abundance of them out there, and all you need is a screwdriver, a soldering iron, and a bit of initiatiave!


Best,

[Mitch]

Atari 7800.com said:

Mitch -

Ya know, that's not a bad idea. I will ask the other guys involved about this and see if this is feasable. I have a feeling the boards might be rather expensive. The only problem is that there is a handfull of different boards made for the 7800 cartridges. The ones we had made up were not the same boards that might be required by homebrewers... but if they are made available to homebrewers, then that's just one more step closer to more new 7800 games being released. I will certainly look into this and get back to ya on it! Another GREAT source for boards for simple homebrew games (Senso DX?)  would obviously be the Pole Position II cartridge. It's the Combat of 7800 games. There's an abundance of them out there, and all you need is a screwdriver, a soldering iron, and a bit of initiatiave!    


Best,

Yes, there are several different board variations out there. I don't know which one exactly you've used as your model, but either of the supercart boards (C300565 and C100339) will play all but three of the 7800 games (plus two missing Pokey sound). Having a clone of one of these boards available, I think, would be a great thing for 7800 homebrewing.

Incidentally, Senso DX is 48K, too big for a Pole Position II (32K) board.

By the way, I'm curious, which EPROM does your board use: 27C100 or 27C010?

Mitch
http://atari7800.atari.org

[ubersaurus]

I'm wondering if you would have a service like they do with Sentinel (replace the PAL rom with an NTSC one) for Impossible Mission...I wouldn't mind sending mine for that.

[Atari 7800.com]

ubersaurus said:

I'm wondering if you would have a service like they do with Sentinel (replace the PAL rom with an NTSC one) for Impossible Mission...I wouldn't mind sending mine for that.

Honestly, I have my fingers in so many different pies right now, I don't know if we would have time to do that... but that's another thing I will look into if there is an interest in it. One thing that we will have for sure is a "collectors edition" verson of Impossible Mission... I have about 20 Impossible Missions, brand new and shrinkwrapped in the box. It took a bit of effort to collect these, but I'd like to think I have a nice stockpile of them at this point. We will most likely open them up, heat the labels, switch out the boards, seal it back up, and sell it in its original packaging, brand new, with original box, instructions, etc. But that is a bridge we will cross when we get to it.

Any other interesting ideas anybody would like to contribute?

[Tizoc]

Atari 7800.com said:

Another GREAT source for boards for simple homebrew games (Senso DX?)  would obviously be the Pole Position II cartridge. It's the Combat of 7800 games. There's an abundance of them out there, and all you need is a screwdriver, a soldering iron, and a bit of initiatiave!    


Best,

PPII will not make a suitable donor for senso DX. This is know for a fact, I have put senso on cart. Yes, there are many PPII carts out there, unfortunately, those won't convert into anything else without A LOT of modifications. A LOT meanns even more work than making Klax or sentinel. It wiould be so much easier to just use a supercart, there are lots of those too.

As far as the new 7800 titles, Save Mary, etc, it's just a matter of time before somebody puts these on cart for the 2600. Someone will do it. What will become of your games then? The 2600 community has a lot more momentum than the 7800's' it's just a matter of time. I just don't see how you can put the 7800 label on a game that doesn't use the Maria chip. I'm dissapointed.

Another thing, I never gave you permission to use my klax graphics or 7800 box graphics for your website or PROFIT. I hope you are not using my 7800 Style instructions for your games (KLAX & Sentinel) either.

Don't tell me you made those graphics, because the graphics on your site overly perfectly scaled onto my original photoshop and illustrator documents. Now I feel betrayed. Thank you.


P.S. Cutting and Pasting other people's work doesn't make it your own original work.

[Atari 7800.com]

Tizoc -

Why all the hate man?

1.) If someone can fit save mary on a 2600 cartridge.. go for it.

2.) I can do my own graphics, thanks. I did Klax very very simply. Much easier than what I had to do for Save Mary, Shooting Arcade. Need instructions to make your own? Its a sinch... step one, scan a PAL 2600 Klax box, ...step two, scan a standard 7800 box of your choice. Voila! Believe me, I dont plagerise art work.

3.) We have made our own instructions from the PAL 2600 instructions.


Why must everybody be so damn hostile about this? I'm not forcing you to buy any games, or to even like them. Do as you wish. Just stop flaming us for working hard, on our own, to get some new stuff out for the system we like. That's what its all about.

[MegaManFan]

.. when it comes right down to it the only difference for me is that I will order whichever one is more affordable.

As a side note, I hinted at this in one of my other 7800 posts, but since the subject's been kicked around in this thread I might as well just come out and say it: who is going to pay $50-$70 for two common 7800 games on Atari7800.com when you can spend the same amount of money and get TWELVE from O'Sheas Limited? The exact same games, except they cost you $5 apiece instead of $25 and up. I'm not knocking Atari7800.com or the site's owner(s) per se, because I think it can and will be a valuable resource for the community, but the pricing on boxed 7800 games seems WAY out of line with the status quo. Every single thing sold on the site can be had on eBay, and at much cheaper prices even by eBay's highly inflated standards. Just my two cents.

[tyranthraxus]

I think the 7800 labels on common games look pretty cool based on the
pics. Not the price I'd pay mind you, but a nice change of the bland
black and white labels.

While the prices are high, they are reasonable. However having
said that, I have to admit I'd have to think twice about buying any of
them. Klax is the one I most like, and I already got it from Lee, next
up is Mission Impossible. However paying $45 for I game I already have
and can't get close to beating makes me think twice. I've pined for
this version for a long time and now that its here suddenly I'd rather
not go for it. Perhaps because I'd rather hold out for a rom swap
service.

The 2600 converts don't really interest me. Although I think the
mindlink might be a wacky curiousity in my collection. Even if
the games for it suck, no matter, all the collectable 2600 games are
dogs anyway!

So that leaves just Sentinel on the new game list. I had been holding out
to get PAL original. Is the box a copy of the original or will it be customized
one?

And Lee will you still be offering your rom swapping service for much
longer? Or is it when you sell out of these last copies they are gone
forever? Also Lee is your Sentinel box similar to your Klax box?

John

[Mayhem]

It isn't. In the case of Sentinel, it's merely a case of replacing the ROM in the cartridge, the rest of the package is the same. From the ones that were on sale at CGE at least. Klax has its own box made because there was never one for it to begin with...

[Scott Stilphen]

This bit in the ad blurb is preposterous, as far as a marketing ploys go:

"...allowing for clearer graphics, brighter colors and more intense gameplay."

I'm sure the 7800 hardware display output is sharper by nature, if you compared any 2600 game running on both the 2600 and 7800. I still don't see how "reshuffling" the bank-switching routines would affect the display in any way (meaningful or otherwise), but I know it certainly does not result in more intense gameplay. At $45 (!) each, I'll stick with playing them on a real 2600 (via a Cutle Cart).