There is something special about playing Atari 2600 on a summer night

[Sonic Boomer]

And guys, it's not just nostalgia.

I really wanted to share this with as many people who love retro gaming as possbible, especially since at the time of this posting it's still summer here.
I feel there's something very special about playing Atari 2600 on a hot summer night, you're all hazy from the summer heat and these games just hit different then, it's like you're tripping on life and experiencing something surreal and amazing from just the season itself being right for those games. The Atari 2600 and its games just feel amazingly surreal in general, but when it's summer and it's nighttime that feeling is even more amplified in my experience.

So to illustrate just what made Atari 2600 so unique and strange I put together a video on the subject while it's still summer, no I don't make money off of this, we talked about this in my main topic about the channel in the submissions forum. I genuinely just want to share this amazing feeling with other fans of the system so don't see this as self promotion or anything, just a way for me to share and give to this community as well as over at AtariAge where I feel people would "get it" too.

It's definitely not just nostalgia when I found the Atari 2600 downright fascinating as a kid too even tho at the time I was already very familiar with far more advanced arcade games and such, we're talking back in the 80's and that feeling stuck with me to this day.

Atari 2600 always felt alien, surreal. I mean the Commodore 64 did too but that's a different topic since that gives off similar but different vibes. The beauty about these early systems they all had their own, unique vibe to them due to the hardware limitations and that's what made them so unforgettable and fascinating.

It's not just the games tho, if you guys had bootleg games where you live, like we did here in my country you know just how amazingly weird those cards could get
they had seemingly infinite games on them and the games that often came on these carts would sometimes be distorted or weird versions of other original or single cart versions

There is so much about the Atari 2600 that just feels so unreal somehow

 

[Dr.Kisaragi]

Yep even the simple pixel gives us joy and sometimes the gameplay is still strong, I love adventure on atari maybe I play pitfall someday

So what is your favorite atari 2600 game so far.

 

[KenShjIN]

Good read.Had one as a kid.Good times...

 

[qw90700]

Well when you mentioned it the summer heat draining your energy and night time making you sleepy + lack of visual details in Atari 2600 games would push your imagination and "randomly" generated aspect of reality by your "lack of energy sleepy brain" so hard it would be like using drugs!!!!! lolol

 

[Sonic Boomer]

Yep even the simple pixel gives us joy and sometimes the gameplay is still strong, I love adventure on atari maybe I play pitfall someday

So what is your favorite atari 2600 game so far.

Some of my favorite games are the ones I showed in the video
- X'Mission/UFO Patrol - the one with where you have to enter the mothership on the left side of the screen
- Beamrider
- Suberrenia
- Vanguard
- Wizard of Wor
- Yars' Revenge
- Spacemaster X-7
- Tac Scan
- Cosmic Ark
- Dolphin
- Fathom (wow I just realized I recorded this and did not include it in the video, now I feel bad)
- Phoenix Attack
- Demon Attack
- Defender II/Stargate - sadly my cart is dead/messed up
- Kung Fu Master - another dead cart I need to replace
- Beany Bopper - just a chill game that changes colors all the time
- Solaris
- Moonsweeper

and lots more, many I don't even know the names of :)

 

[petran79]

I have fond memories of the Atari. Favourite games are :

Dig Dug
Spiderman
Superman
F1 Grand Prix or similar
World End
Lily Adventure
some games with uboats and jetplanes I can't remember

Even till 1990 new games were released at the stores

 

[ThunderBoy]

 

[Sonic Boomer]

I have fond memories of the Atari. Favourite games are :

Dig Dug
Spiderman
Superman
F1 Grand Prix or similar
World End
Lily Adventure
some games with uboats and jetplanes I can't remember

Even till 1990 new games were released at the stores

Very interesting choice of games, especially Lily Adventure since to me that's Bobby Goes Home :)
Superman I never understood how to play tho
World End is an interesting one but I think it's a paddle only game like Solar Storm if I remember correctly, I really need to get me a new paddle controller because the one I had died...in fact I'm doing to one 2600 controller which I also use on my C64 and have been since the 80's lol
I need to look into this.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Absolutely.

There's nothing quite like seeing nostalgia through the right lens -- not bright enough to blind, but still beautifully colorful.

 

[bjork]

My family's 2600 went to live at my grandmother's house, so we'd have something to play when my cousins and I would spend the night. She didn't like the noise during the evening, so we were made to play it out on the porch, with the TV on a milk crate. We weren't far from the door since the cords still needed to be plugged in, but it was cool to just play a game outside. Also, since we knew she didn't like the noise and we were little shithead kids, we'd play Maze Craze with the noise all the way up until she threatened to hit us with wooden spoons. Good memories.

 

[petran79]

Very interesting choice of games, especially Lily Adventure since to me that's Bobby Goes Home :)
Superman I never understood how to play tho
World End is an interesting one but I think it's a paddle only game like Solar Storm if I remember correctly, I really need to get me a new paddle controller because the one I had died...in fact I'm doing to one 2600 controller which I also use on my C64 and have been since the 80's lol
I need to look into this.

Lily Adventure is a different platform game, far longer and more difficult than Bobby Goes Home. I played the German version titled Alice's Adventure and featuring one of the coolest covers

 

[Isegrim]

In my country, everyday (except for February and March) is summer.

I haven't played an Atari 2600 game for decades.

Sadly, my most wanted games as a kid on the 2600 were arcade games and I was frequently disappointed by the 2600 ports. Donkey Kong and Pac Man in particular. Wizard of Wor was an ok port if it didn't flicker so much.

There were still some games I loved. Superman and Adventure were my favorites. I remember when Superman 3 (Christopher Reeve) the movie came out, I wished my Atari 2600 game looked as good as that scene where the villains were shooting missiles at Superman through a videogame interface.

Adventure was loved because my brothers and I were in the thick of Dungeons and Dragons fascination back then and it was one of the first games that dealt with the same themes.

Many tears were spilled with Warlords (we had 4 paddles). My brothers, sister and uncle would play this a lot and my sister was usually the one who was eliminated first. And she...well as I said...many tears...

The Atari 2600 games that came with comics were also much loved. Atari actually hired DC comics to produce those comics that came with the game and we ended up collecting the Atari Force comic series and not just the ones that came with the games. Phoenix and Centipede (my favorite comic) were a good read and it enhanced my liking the games even with their graphical shortcomings.

Activision used to be one of our favorite game developers and they produced amazing 2600 games at the start, a far cry from the villain the gaming community regards today. I broke the high scores in several of their games (Laser Blast, Kaboom and Starmaster), high enough to send for a clothing patch. At the back of the manual in their 2600 games, Activision (when they were still cool) promises they'd send you a decorated cloth patch you can sew on your clothing recognizing your videogame mastery if you could send a photo of your high score. Sadly, since we lived so far from the U.S. and we as kids didn't have a camera, we couldn't send for any of it.

Imagic was just...well...magical. In that era, the games looked and played so amazing (Demon Attack in particular), we were wondering if the cartridges were magical. Riddle of the Sphinx was my personal favorite Imagic game.

 

[Sonic Boomer]

Lily Adventure is a different platform game, far longer and more difficult than Bobby Goes Home. I played the German version titled Alice's Adventure and featuring one of the coolest covers

I've seen the cover before it's gorgeous
I always assumed they were the same game, it's good to know they're not
I might have alice on a bootleg cart somewhere not sure

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 10:37 AM

View attachment 99178

My family's 2600 went to live at my grandmother's house, so we'd have something to play when my cousins and I would spend the night. She didn't like the noise during the evening, so we were made to play it out on the porch, with the TV on a milk crate. We weren't far from the door since the cords still needed to be plugged in, but it was cool to just play a game outside. Also, since we knew she didn't like the noise and we were little shithead kids, we'd play Maze Craze with the noise all the way up until she threatened to hit us with wooden spoons. Good memories.

Playing out on the porch in the evening sounds incredible
I actually wanted to film part of my video on the balcony but I don't feel comfortable playing games on the balcony where everyone can see and hear me lol

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 10:38 AM

In my country, everyday (except for February and March) is summer.

I haven't played an Atari 2600 game for decades.

Sadly, my most wanted games as a kid on the 2600 were arcade games and I was frequently disappointed by the 2600 ports. Donkey Kong and Pac Man in particular. Wizard of Wor was an ok port if it didn't flicker so much.

There were still some games I loved. Superman and Adventure were my favorites. I remember when Superman 3 (Christopher Reeve) the movie came out, I wished my Atari 2600 game looked as good as that scene where the villains were shooting missiles at Superman through a videogame interface.

Adventure was loved because my brothers and I were in the thick of Dungeons and Dragons fascination back then and it was one of the first games that dealt with the same themes.

Many tears were spilled with Warlords (we had 4 paddles). My brothers, sister and uncle would play this a lot and my sister was usually the one who was eliminated first. And she...well as I said...many tears...

The Atari 2600 games that came with comics were also much loved. Atari actually hired DC comics to produce those comics that came with the game and we ended up collecting the Atari Force comic series and not just the ones that came with the games. Phoenix and Centipede (my favorite comic) were a good read and it enhanced my liking the games even with their graphical shortcomings.

Activision used to be one of our favorite game developers and they produced amazing 2600 games at the start, a far cry from the villain the gaming community regards today. I broke the high scores in several of their games (Laser Blast, Kaboom and Starmaster), high enough to send for a clothing patch. At the back of the manual in their 2600 games, Activision (when they were still cool) promises they'd send you a decorated cloth patch you can sew on your clothing recognizing your videogame mastery if you could send a photo of your high score. Sadly, since we lived so far from the U.S. and we as kids didn't have a camera, we couldn't send for any of it.

Imagic was just...well...magical. In that era, the games looked and played so amazing (Demon Attack in particular), we were wondering if the cartridges were magical. Riddle of the Sphinx was my personal favorite Imagic game.

dude, this is legit awesome