RickR

It's become common to see people call it "absolute trash" or "seriously flawed" (those are both actual quotes I saw on Facebook today). You get the idea. It's been labeled as "bad" or "dumb" before it's even released just because it does emulation. This kind of goes back to the bad Jaguar youtube video thread. NES/SNES classic both didn't use real hardware. Did they get labeled as "trash" because of this? No. Atari gets attacked for no reason.

Thanks so much! My memory needs an upgrade 🙂

Oh cool poster! I had "The Shadow" 3 down, 3 over. My brother had the Porsche (5 down, 4 over). We figured out pretty quickly that the Porsche was faster, even if you switched the bodies. A lesson in aerodynamics for us kids! He always won. We also had the yellow van and some other chunky one that I don't remember, and those always made for a more fair race.

SAME HERE! I got the supercharger at a store (Stereo Superstore at Mall 205) and they had 5 games. The rest (including Something Island and DragonStompter?) were mail order.

I agree completely! It seems to be the same with the 2600+ for some reason. I don't get it. Nerds love to argue, and they get vicious about it for some reason.

For sure! Same memories here. I remember too, there was an advancement in the AFX car design...they went from a rotory design to more of a spinning cylinder, and those new cars were a TON faster.

THANK YOU! I knew it was one but not the other. I also have and love the PlusCart. That is my go-to -- always plugged in to my 2600jr. Even though I have a Harmony and Uno.

It reminds me a lot of GameCube "Luigi's Mansion", which is a really good thing. I'm looking forward to this one.

And I can't remember which multi-cart solution does it, but one of them (let's assume Harmony) actually does the Supercharger loading bars and sounds when loading the ROMS, albeit at a very fast speed. I love that! It built a lot of anticipation to see and hear that as the games loaded off tape.

I'm not so sure. The 400/800 had speech games (Castle Wolfenstien, Tumble Bugs, S.A.M.) all done in software BEFORE the 5200. It is possible though! The issue with software speech on Atari or C64 was that nothing else could be going on during the speech playback. Maybe a hardware box solved that one. But in the end, they figured it wouldn't be worth the extra cost for consumers.

I remember these too! But I never did get one as a kid. Still, once I got old enough to have a few bucks in my pocket, I remember going to Radio Shack to buy all kinds of parts to make whatever and experiment. I remember I came up with a pretty simple little box that would basically flash a red LED every couple of seconds...a simple circuit with an on/off toggle stuffed into a cassette tape box spray painted black. The purpose was to put it on your car dash so thieves might think you have a fancy alarm. I ended up getting a lot of requests from friends for one of those! Ah memories. I still have room and sometimes I'll pull out old stuff like this (or train sets, or slot cars) and set them up in the garage for a while. I'm happy to host if anyone in the area ever gets bored and nostalgic.

I've had them all as well. I sold off the Colecovision adapter and the Intellivision one too, but have kept the 5200 version. My plan was to sell off all my Coleco hardware and just use the Phoenix, so that's been ok. Similar plan for Intellivision -- sell off the INTV 2 and accessories and just keep the old Tele-Games version. But I ended up keeping the Intv2 itself because it only has one working controller and franky, I like it better due to the small size. Another Colecovision came into my possession -- given to me because it is "broken". It has a composite mod, and the colors on screen kind of have a shifting rainbow effect from left to right. I figure maybe the wiring on the mod has a short, or just to replace the mod board. But I haven't had time to investigate that one. One of these days I'll make a post about it and I'm sure @CrossBow will know exactly what to do to fix it. Supercharger - I'm one of those weirdos that bought it when it was new! I don't have the box though. But it still works great. I have always been amazed at the level of upgrade the Supercharger brought to the 2600. Supercharger "Frogger" is a masterpiece.

I agree. But I can't find any mention of it anywhere else. Maybe someone else can. It would be a neat discovery!

Interesting! I'll bet it was just a misunderstanding by the writer of that article, as there are two talking 5200 games that don't need an adapter. Berzerk and Realsports Baseball (two of my favorites).

Good to know! I've been thinking about getting one, and now I know someone I can bother with questions 🙂

PiTrex is the same thing and much cheaper. http://www.ombertech.com/pitrex.php

We should have an Atari.io game session on this one.

I look at it this way...How fortunate one must be to have stuff to get rid of. And there is an incredible feeling of accomplishment and freedom when it is gone.

I've got a bunch. I have a light sixer that is probably my favorite of the bunch. But my daily driver is a Jr. with composite mod. It's small and fits in my small downstairs gaming area really well. Upstairs, I have a 7800 set up and ready. But I mostly only use that for 7800 gaming. Just going from memory, I have my original 4 switch woody from childhood (in box), a light sixer, a vader, and a jr. This is a huge downsize from the bunch I've had over the years. A few years ago, I added composite mods to a bunch and sold them. They seemed to go quickly back then with the mod. I've had several heavy sixers too, and sold them all when I realized they were worth a bit more. It is my firm belief that the 4 switch woody/vader models are probably the best of the lot. They have a single board, laid out well and are easy to repair. The six switch models with two boards seem very fragile and prone to failure. Jr's have those terrible mylar switches for select and reset. The Coleco Gemini is also a really nice design and I've never found one that was broken.

Ha ha ha. I agree. "It's been a long road, but..." LOL.

A few of us are getting into stage 3, and it is uncomfortable! LOL.

Very cool! Of all the great Atari box art that really take artistic liberty with the games...Super Breakout is probably one of the best. What's that astronaut doing exactly against the rainbow wall? Houston, we have a problem!

START helps you FART! My god, put some ads on Cocoa Puffs or go home.

I think HDMI output is going to make it a lot more accessible to many. How many times do we see that basic question "How do I hook this up to my flat panel TV??"