James Pemberton jayfrank@juno.com on Thursday, March 2, 2000 at 10:59:16
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If you're going to go retro, forget the 2600 and find a 7800. It only has three drawbacks that might make you want a 2600. 1 - Its power supply is unique. If yours breaks, the only way to get another is to buy a whole new system, or pay the cost of a whole system just for the power supply. 2 - The controllers are awful. Unless it's a game that requires both buttons, plug in a Sega Genesis controller; they work fine on most games, but only button B works. 3 - More 2600 games don't work on it than most people will tell you. While only a few won't work because of the programming, many will not work because the cartridge slot is slightly narrower than the 2600s. This knocks out Tigervision games (Miner 2049er), and Imagic games (Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, etc.). Imagic games can be forced in, but I mean FORCED. Insert them diagonally and get one end hooked, and then push as hard as you can to get the other side to pop on. I suppose you also have the option of cracking off the casing and plugging just the chip in, but who wants to do that? Otherwise, it's a fun system. The best title is Ms. Pac-Man. It's just like the original, and they fit the whole board on the screen, so no annoying scrolling. Other neat titles to own are Apple //e ports, and some unique titles like Midnight Mutants (an RPG) and Ninja Golf (too weird to explain). But you probably shouldn't buy this only for the 7800 games, because there aren't that many and they are hard to find. What you're really buying here is a 2600 with the option of some souped-up cartridges. And beware of a little sadness, the games are cool, and make you wonder what Atari could have done if they hadn't released the 5200. All in all, of its Generation I think it looks better than the NES, and pales before the Sega Master System. It even has a Super Mario Brothers knock-off "Junkyard Dog", a must-have if you get this system.
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