Atari rose like a legend, bringing arcade games home with the 2600 - then fell just as fast. This is the story of a console that shaped...
ms.lane
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1311d

Circus Atari was fun, I don’t care what the GenZ ‘journalist’ says.

The 2600 was so underpowered that it couldn’t even hold a full game screen in memory. Developers had to draw the screen line by line, in real time, as it was being sent to the TV.

ugh, that’s how every console up through the 5th gen worked… It was only in the 6th gen we had an idea of a ‘frame buffer’

P03 Locke
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411d

Wow, this “journalist” had no idea what games programming was like back then. Yars Revenge even used its own code to display the neutral zone. There were a lot of creative tricks like that to save on memory and CPU.

@[email protected]
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110d

And is only ONE of the reasons Yar’s Revenge is awesome!

Flamekebab
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211d

I’ve yet to encounter a single Atari 2600 game that was worth more than 30 seconds of my time.

P03 Locke
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111d

Tanks!

Had a ton of fun with that one when I was a kid.

@[email protected]
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511d

My uncle gave me one with about 10 games back in the early 90s. He just didn’t want it sitting around anymore. Problem was, i had a regular and super Nintendo by that point… I honestly had more fun setting it up than i did playing it.

Flamekebab
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111d

Oh! Ewaste! So kind of you…

@[email protected]
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211d

“E waste?” In the early 90s?!? LMAO!

I’m not sure exactly what happened to it, but death by firing squad, followed by incineration, and then repurposed into lead paint or used as seasoning at an elementary cafeteria would be par for the course back in those days.

Flamekebab
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111d

Or sitting in a cupboard off-gassing, oozing, and generally making the home a safer environment.

It does remind me of the Acts of Gord’s use for an N64 - as a doorstop with a note saying “This is all I am good for.”

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311d

rrod Xbox 360 has entered the chat

Flamekebab
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011d

smothers it with a towel and stuffs it into an oven

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211d

I paid rent for a while in 2010 by getting people to pay me to make their 360 work again. Those were the days.

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