Actually inserting the carts backwards won't damage it. I know because as a young kid I did it on purpose several times to see what crazy stuff it would produce on the screen. And even Tailchao stated in the AA forums that during the development of Rikki & Vikki, he was guilty of inserting the PCB in backwards and it never caused an issue on the console. Now, I can see that trying to insert the game backwards could possibly damage the cartridge of the cartridge PCB, But I would also think that a person would figure that out pretty quickly before it got to that point.
The Pegs only exist on 7800 cartridges because Atari Corp was using the exact same cartridge shell for both 2600 and 7800 games at the time. And they had to include the holes in the cartridge slots to make sure that old original Atari 2600 games could still be used in both the Jr 2600 and 7800 consoles.
What I wonder about more, is why the spring dust covers with small pegs were included on the older 7800 games in the first place when Atari would have known it wasn't needed. But again, they were doing the same on some 2600 releases around that same time, so again, single cartridge design and shell for two different systems saves you lots of money in design, tooling, and manufacture.
In fact I'm guessing the reason why some of the Atari corp carts you find today have broken pegs on them is likely due to people trying to insert them backwards and snapping them off in the process.
I didn't realise this until the other day, but my copy of Joust also has a shutter door! Funny how I never noticed that. I wonder if I have missed any other 7800 games.
I’d like to share something very special with you guys. This is an Atari Strategy Guide I began writing in 6th Grade. It's all true. Atari I/O started on paper!
I was 11 years old when I made this. If you flip through the pages of the Strategy Guide and squint hard enough, you’ll recognize similarities with our Atari I/O Blog posts, particularly the game reviews that I do with BTB.
I thought you guys might think this is cool to see. I’ve been talking with @btbfilms76, @Atari Creep and @Gianna about my days collecting Atari games in the early '90s, how some of the most interesting stuff in my collection are documents from Atari, and what it was like trying to do all this before the internet. My conversations with them inspired me to share this as a PDF for all of you to enjoy. It’s more of a sentimental curiosity than anything really useful, but if you read closely you’ll find a helpful tip or two in there.
It's also a bit of an artifact from a pre-internet Justin who way back then was just as fascinated and enthralled with the World of Atari as I am today. This little Strategy Guide was absolutely the beginning of what would become my Atari website and would evolve in time to become Atari I/O. It really did start on paper.
I scanned the original documents and compiled them in a PDF file as a digital recreation of the real thing. I also added a Table of Contents to help you find your way around, and a Preface which you see above.
I didn't get very far with the guide, but the games covered include these 7800 titles:
FATAL RUN
JINKS
ACE OF ACES
SCRAPYARD DOG
CENTIPEDE
The Strategy Guide also contains 2600/7800 cartridge price lists and customer service ordering forms from Atari Corp. from 1993.
If you manage to make out my sloppy 6th Grade handwriting, you'll notice that I get some details wrong. I began writing this Strategy Guide before the internet was available to me. Digging up historical info on Atari, we had to get resourceful. Whatever I knew I learned from my own experience of piecing together historical details from Atari catalogs and game boxes, checking out books from the school library, talking with @Video 61 for hours at a time, or calling Atari directly and speaking with Geraldine at the front desk. "Hi, is Jack there?"
In a way it’s sad that Jack Tramiel’s Atari didn’t give us nice things like expansive Strategy Guides, big beautiful fold-out maps, a magazine as cool as Nintendo Power, or the type of immersive games that would’ve created a huge demand for things like this. Little 6th Grade me took it upon myself to make this, because what else was I supposed to do? I was still excited about Atari, I wanted to share Atari with as many people as I could. I don’t know who I was writing this for at the time, friends I guess, but apparently I was writing it for you guys. It just had to sit in a time capsule first.
⬇️ The PDF is attached below. ⬇️ I hope you guys enjoy this glimpse into the beginning of Atari I/O!
While on a technical level it's one of the best looking games on the system, the 3D tower effect is very cool, I simply don't care much for the gameplay itself. But hey, if someone thinks it's great, I have no problem with that. 🙂
