80's Colecovision/Atari nostalgia

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Somewhere in a box at my Mom's house is the Colecovision that I adored as a child.

In my colecovision career, I had the following:

Donkey Kong
Zaxxon
Cosmic Avenger
Defender
The Smurfs
Popeye

I honestly cannot pick a favorite, as I played them all so much that the only reason I switched one cartrige for another was sheer boredome.

I fondly recall the buggy behavior when the console got too hot, and how you had to have the "magic" touch with the reset button if you wanted to coax the game out of it's coma. Ah the good old days...

[garius]

i was too young to properly appreciate the colecovision properly first time round (my elder sister had one), but i picked one up at a jumble sale recently and was surprised at how much i remembered and how warm and fuzzy it made me feel playing on it again.

I did have an Atari, but i soon lost interest when i discovered the Amiga.

now there was a computer.

[Ferret Herder]

At a local computer game store, I saw a packaged classic Atari 2600 controller - and apparently it was set up such that if you hooked it up to a TV, inside the base of the controller was the 'OS' for the game machine and 10 pre-loaded classic games! Pity there's no way to add more, but that looked like a great and inexpensive shot of nostalgia.

[gvsantos]

Ferret, I bought one of those for my dad at Christmas. For years he had been telling me that he missed my Atari 2600 that I had as a kid. He had one favorite game (Atlantis) that he became so good at that at one point I hid the game from him because he would play the same game for hours and I couldn't get my turn. He really enjoys playing Atlantis again with that controller. It has several other games, I can't remember all of them but Pitfall was one that was pretty cool. It is a pretty cheap way to get a little nostagia fill as you suggested.

I really loved my Colecovision and I can remember that my absolute favorite game was Miner 2049er followed closely by Donkey Kong. I wish I still had it but I do have Nintendo 64 and my current favorite game was a flea market find for $2.00. Namco Museum has Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Dig Dug, and Galaga among others. What a deal! Well... then again... If I had all those quarters that I spent in the 80's back... :)

[World Eater]

Well theres always Ebay, they have it all.

[Badtz Maru]

When you get to Smurfette, turn around and start to head the other way. She will do a striptease.

[Bunnylady]

I have a working Atari 2600 (Actually, a Sears Telegames(tm) which is the same thing....) and at least 30-40 game cartridges. I take it out and play Pitfall every couple of years, but if anyone wants to make an offer on the some of the other games, send me your email and I'll make a list.

[Larry Mudd]

Or take two steps up the first intact ladder in Donkey Kong, back down, take one step back, and then jump forward. A freak wormhole takes you to the top.

My favourite games tended to be the third party carts, like Epyx's racing game-- I forget the title, but it had a 3D-ish look and a pitstop. And the Chuck Norris Karate game.. And Miner 2049'er. And Sewer Sam! And Antarctic Adventure! Wheeee!

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru:
[b]When you get to Smurfette, turn around and start to head the other way. She will do a striptease.[b]

Now that I've gotta see...

[JohnT]

Star Raiders! :D

Who here had an ET cart?

[Skeezix]

Lessee here...

Star Raiders came with the keypad controller, right? That was nifty, back when.


There were either four or five games that came with an Atari Force mini-comic book. I'm pretty sure Raiders was one of them, but I can't recall the rest, and my own mini-comics are packed away at the moment. Anyone remember what the games were?

And I can recall discovering that DC put out an Atari Force comic, picking up the storyline from the earlier series, years later. Got all of them, packed away, too, someplace.


ET? I was the only one in my crowd who could actually beat the damn thing, and get the little rubber geek back home. After he leaves, the grand finale of the game is Elliot walking back and forth through his "house" tallying up your score. You got more points for giving the Reese's Pieces to him, instead of eating them yourself.

The Magic Dot, in Adventure. The very first video game "easter egg" I ever saw, I think. Geeky good fun!

And let us not foget the Intellivision, complete with Voice Module. Despite the Colecovision's better graphics, I always thought the Intellivision had the best games.

Bee-Seventeen Bowmer! That was not the tar-gait!

[Zenster]

The only Atari gear I collect is their completely awesome music controlled pattern generator. I find them for $10.00 in the thrift shops. I have about five of them. They produce these really cool Navajo-rug style video color patterns in time to your stereo's music.

Anyone else ever see one of these? In attempting to repair one of them, I opened it up only to find that I had worked for the company that built the silicon ICs inside. American Microsystems Inc. was one of the biggest chip contractors for Atari. This also helped lead to their demise. I have copies of an advanced three chip WWII game card that was never introduced on the market.

BTW, the game chips were produced for around a dollar. The chip was die attached directly to the small PCB and then "blob sealed" with a dallop of black epoxy after the wire bonding. The profits on these things were enormous.

[mouthbreather]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru
When you get to Smurfette, turn around and start to head the other way. She will do a striptease.


You're kidding, right?

[lno]

As I write this, I am looking in the closet four feet away and I see some containers which hold 93 Atari 2600 cartridges, the console, the adapters, and a plastic bag full of controllers.

There are the joysticks, ruined from game after game of Decathalon.

There are the circular pads (what did they call them, again?) ruined from game after game of Kaboom!, Canyon Bomber, and (I'm ashamed to admit it) Blackjack.

There is one single keypad, ruined from nonstop games of Star Raiders.

And there is now an immeasurable amount of nostalgia. If I only had working controllers . . .

[Skeezix]

lno my friend, I have one word for you.

Emulator.

Without providing a direct link (and the spotty legality that goes along with this) seek ye out the terms "Atari, Emulator, 2600, Stella" and enjoy.

Yeah, honest, Stella.

[lno]

Oh, can't you hear me yell-a
You're putting me through Hell-a
Stella, STELLA!

You do realize I'm humming the cheesy music that accompanied Decathalon now.

[Skeezix]

:D

(I was astonished to learn that there were three or four game carts released to the genereal public that we'd never owned, or even heard of.)

Those Epyx Olympic style games were awfully damned rough on joysticks, weren't they?

[lno]

Ohyeah. My parents actually took away and hid those cartridges because we kids ruined at least one joystick a week. :)

doooooo dee doo doo dah dee dah, doot doo doo-doo...

[scotandrsn]

You all need to check this (http://www.atari-history.com) out...

[MsRobyn]

I got Airman an Atari 2600 for Christmas, along with some games.

It should come as no surprise that I sucked at it when I had one as a child, and I still suck at it.

It's still remarkably addictive, though.

Robin

[FaerieBeth]

LADYBUG!!!!!!!

*bwahahahahaha*

My husband put a Colecovision emulator on our PC, and now, once again, I am the QUEEN of Ladybug!!!!!

DIE BUGS!

FB

[Dragwyr]

I had a ColecoVision as a kid. I was good at all the games I had, but my favorite was Venture. I scored 5,000,000 points on that game, I was that good. I also had Donkey Kong, Cosmic Avenger, Ladybug, Zaxxon, Mousetrap and Centepede.

We also had the Atari Cartridge adapter which allowed us to enjoy games like Pitfall, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Riddle of the Sphinx.

Oh for those days!

[Osbie]

My brother begged for a Colecovision for Christmas and his wish was answered. Unfortunately, the first unit we got didn't work. I think we had to drive 2 hours to St. Louis to exchange it. The second unit worked for a little while and then something went wrong with it (which may have necessitated a second trip to St. Louis - I don't remember). Luckily the third one worked and (as far as I know) still does.

My best game was Subroc - not because I was good - but because it was an extremely easy game to play.

My favorite was Heist - a fairly relaxing game in which one navigated a museum to steal paintings.

Besides those two, we had several other games:

Venture - my brother likes to tell the story of how he and Dad started a 2-player game one evening and got really, really far. Then Dad said it was time for my brother to go to bed. After my brother left, Dad stayed up till 5am (the amount of time increases with each telling) and racked up a bazillion points. I believe the record still stands - as does the resentment.

Zaxxon - this game never did much for me - I always struggled to kill the robot at the end of the level and it always freaked me out when it shot those howling droids at me.

Donkey Kong - I don't think I ever got past level 3 - the elevator screen (I think). I had heard there was a really cool level at some point further up in the game, but I never got to see it.

War Games - a very creepy game in which the USSR nuked your cities while the game emitted a creepy electronic air raid siren and flashed messages saying things like "Chicago is lost."

Centipede - we had the roller attachment that made it nearly impossible to do any more than just swerve your "guy" across the screen in a blur.

Omega Race - who could forget the little white triangle that shot at those shape-thingies?

Q*bert - @!#!?@!

Ladybug - My mom's favorite game. I liked winning the Vegetable Round-up (or whatever the heck it was called).

I think we also had Miner 2049'r but I don't remember too much about it.

We didn't own Smurf, but we rented it once. My smurf kept tripping over daisies and buttercups and died.

Special honorary mention must go to Ken Uston's Blackjack Poker which my brother, for reasons that are unclear, dubbed Ken Uston's Cheatinest Blackjack Poker.

My best friend had an Atari and I loved to go visit and play Pitfall and SuperBreakout.

*sigh!* I really could go for a game of Heist right now.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Originally posted by Ferret Herder
At a local computer game store, I saw a packaged classic Atari 2600 controller - and apparently it was set up such that if you hooked it up to a TV, inside the base of the controller was the 'OS' for the game machine and 10 pre-loaded classic games! Pity there's no way to add more, but that looked like a great and inexpensive shot of nostalgia.

It WAS available from Avon (yes Avon). It was produced by www.jakkspacific.com whick seems to have gone walkabout.

We got one for xmas.

[zweisamkeit]

Growing up, we had an Atari 400 and then an Atari 2600. I was about 3 or 4 when we got it (my brother is 5.5 years older than me), but I loved attempting to play those games! My favourites were Joust!, Pit Fall, Crystal Castles, Food Fight, Pole Position, and Q*bert. Of course, I wasn't too good, being that young, but I had so much fun! I still remember how the muscles in your hand would cramp up terribly on the joystick you needed for Pole Position.

Oddly enough, after having other advanced gaming systems, we sold our Playstation (our most recent new acquisition) and now, sitting in its place................


an Atari 800, bought on e-Bay for $30. All of our games still work as well as our joysticks. :D

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Bwahaha...you realize what we sound like?

<begin western drawl>

"Yep." *spit* ping! "Those young whipper-snappers like to shoot with dem dere semee-auto dealybobbers...but I'll take the cold weight of a Colt 45 in my hands any day of the week...when the shit hits the fan?...yesiree bobcat..."

[Skeezix]

Gaaahh!

Wargames for the Colecovision!

I remember that now that you mention it. It was a weird sort of next-generation Missile Command. You had to direct interceptors, anti-ballistic missiles and... destroyers, perhaps, to knock down incoming missiles, bombers, and missile subs. Had the map of the US broken up into six sectors you had to switch to as threats came in.

Damn. Nostalgia.

Oh mighty Google, I do beseech thee, find me an emulator...

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by JohnT
Star Raiders! :D

Who here had an ET cart?

I had both. I actually LIKED E.T. On the harder difficulty levels it was quite a challenge, and was more varied than most 2600 games of the time.

[NameAlreadyTaken]

How about old and obscure consoles? When I was a kid, we were on the cutting edge with a used Fairchild Entertainment System (http://www.classicgaming.com/gamingmuseum/channelf.html).

It was the first step up past dedicated PONG consoles, and had really weird shift-knob joysticks. All the neighbor kids got Atari's and could play in color.

[ForgottenLore]

My best friend and I both had Intellivisions, and we used to swap cartridges. The best part was playing Auto Racing on his machine, because ever since his kid brother spilled 7-Up on the console, the games would start doing REAL interesting things once it had a chance to warm up. Roads disappeared! Trees turned into capital Hs! Chaos ensued!

[Dr_Paprika]

Star Fleet to
Star Cruiser 7
Mission Complete
New Rank Is
Garbage Scow Captain
Class 4
Congratulations. :)

[JamesCarroll]

Aside from the Atari 2600 I forget the names of the consoles. What was the one that had a gold disk instead of a joystick? It also had a key pad that looked like a telephone above it. We didn't have that one, though I remember playing baseball on it as a kid and thus began my love of baseball.

The one we had was black, had a push pad like the above unit, but it was below a short nub of a joystick that actually worked better if you put your thumb on top to push it.

My dad used to play Zaxxon on that machine for hours. He actually put some athletic tape on the top of the stick so that his thumb wouldn't slip.

Oh, and yes, we also had an IBM PC Jr. I learned to program Pascal on that when I was in 6th grade.

:)

[Skeezix]

JamesCarroll: The first system (the one you didn't have) was the Intellivision, the second, the Colecovision.

Technically, the controllers were identical, functionally. Both had a sixteen direction joystick (though the Intellivision's was that gold stickless base, precursor to the Nintendo controller) two seperate "fire" buttons (the IV actually had four buttons, but they were two linked pairs, high and low) and a 12 key keypad.

The IV games generally made use of all of that. The Colecovision, with the exception of the WarGames cart, and one or two others (Mousetrap?) ignored the added functionality of the keypad.

Now I see why higher education was wasted on me. Too many brain cells already had hardwired information taking up space.

[Lazlo]

Originally posted by JohnT
Who here had an ET cart? I have them all. They're buried in my dad's backyard. (http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.htm)

:D

[wolfman]

I had a ColecoVision as a kid. I was good at all the games I had, but my favorite was Venture. I scored 5,000,000 points on that game, I was that good.

I was a god on that game. I just never died, and could play it for hours and hours on end. Unfortunately after about 4 hours the unit would overheat and freeze-up.

I still play some of those game from time to time with an emulator.

[Captain Amazing]

Remember Colecovision's 2010? There was another game I enjoyed for it that I can't remember the name of. It was a management simulation. You had to build ski lodges, resorts, hotels, etc, and turn a profit.

[Skeezix]

Remembered another 2600 game of dubious entertainment value...

Anyone else dig on the Superman cart?

Clarkieboy had to nab Lex Luthor (in a a helicopter back pack, no less) and three or four henchmen, whilst rebuilding the three parts of the bridge they destroyed, and avoiding these Kryptonite satellites... or something like that.

[RobuSensei]

iirc, if you hit the x-ray vision button (or whatever) before Supes hit the phone booth and turned to Clark Kent in the beginning, the bridge wouldn't blow up....

[RobuSensei]

I had a lot of other 2600 carts, but only a few stick in my mind.

Bezerk -- because it was freakin' cool!
Pac-Man -- did anyone else feel ripped off after all of the hype for this one?
Raiders of the Lost Ark -- funny, I don't remember Indy jumping from the top of a mesa and trying to snag a tree branch with his parachute in the movie. . . .

I'd list more, but an insane smiley face seems to be bouncing towards me.
mustn't touch the walls. . . mustn't touch the ZAAAP

[Thunder]

Didya know as you're about to get ET in the spaceship, you can walk off that screen (IIRC), and when you walk right back in, it looks like the spaceship his crushed ET into a blob by landing on him, and then the game crashes.

:D

[Skeezix]

Gaaaahhhh, Indiana Jones! That was the other "quest" type game I was trying to remember.

(Can't play the bloody thing because the emulator I'm using doesn't run that one properly, and all my old 2600 hardware is a truckload of states away, in storage, at the moment.)

[Otto]

I was the resident God of Asteroids in my house. I ran one game up over a million before I got bored and blew myself up. My mom was a freak for the Pac-Man mostly I think because she didn't play it at the arcade and didn't realize how bad the Atari version sucked. Berserk was awesome. I loved the warp shooting out the opening to pick off robots on the other side. I liked Yar's Revenge too, although I think I was about the only person in the country who did (no one else ever seems even to remember the game much less admit to playing it).

What was the name of the game where you were trying to locate a chalice and return it to the gold castle? There were three dragons that could eat you and a bat that swooped around the game stealing things. It was always fun to get eaten while holding on to the bat which was holding on to a dragon and go zooming around the board. There was another game where you were a particle in a nuclear reactor and you had to herd other particles into a chamber or something. What was that one called?

[mouthbreather]

Otto, do not fret....I was a YARS REVENGE addict.

The castle game was simply named "Adventure". No idea about the reactor game.

[Thunder]

One word.

HSWWSH.

Get it?

[mouthbreather]

no.

[Skeezix]

Hell, I even remember that the manual for Yar's Revenge had a mini-comic in it (Atari was big on those the last year or so they were releasing 2600 stuff) describing the backstory.

Adventure was indeed, the castles and dragons game. I thought every Atari-geek has seen the magic-dot easter egg in that one, but I guess not...

The reactor game was, well, Reactor. Some of the code for it was "adapted" for the Jedi Arena game cart, a year or so later, IIRC.

Thunder: Played a bit too much Yar's Revenge, didja?
:D

Can't recall, now, was that a high-score activated egg, or did a specific in-game action trigger it?

And the buried memories keep comin':
Remember Xonox double ended cartidges?
Spike's Peak and the impenetrable Haunted... Castle?
Haunted House was a different cart, released by Atari proper... that was the one with the floating eyeballs as your character.

[mouthbreather]

"Remember Xonox double ended cartidges?"

Ha! I do now. Was there ever a good game released in that format?

Quoting Dennis Miller: "Folks, let me tell you something....two of SHIT is....SHIT."

[Dragwyr]

Originally posted by mouthbreather
"Remember Xonox double ended cartidges?"

Yes.. we had one. I don't remember the exact names, but we had the one that had the 2 tanks that blasted at each other, and the other side was "Chuck Norris" karate game that I got quite good at.

Granted the games on that were not near as good as those from activision, or any of the Colecovision games I had, but it was a gift and we played it and had fun.

[Winnowill]

I have two working Atari 2600s, and tons of carts - some of which I, personally have never played, as one system and half the carts were given to me by a former co-worker. They are not currently hooked up, but I have an urge to play them after reading this thread. My old NES, too. I bought TONS AND TONS of Atari cartridges a few years after the NES debuted. Got 'em for an average of $2. And every time I see joysticks, I buy them. I am not worried about a controller lack.

I loved Vanguard and Kaboom!, but countless others appealed to me.

[Tangent]

I absolutely LOVED my Colecovision and the Atari attachment!

Venture made me a nervous wreck! Whenever you stayed in a room too long and that skull-thingy came after you... Whoo!

I once played Donkey Kong so long that I flipped the point counter five times before I quit.

My friend had a Colecovision, too, and he had a game called something like Journey Escape. Journey! As in the band! You flew a ship on a kind of vertically scrolling screen, picking up some items and avoiding others. All while the opening bars of Don't Stop Believing played in the background.

On Atari:

Another Yar's Revenge fan here. I also liked Joust, Combat, Missile Command, and Centipede.

[Thunder]

Originally posted by Skeezix


Thunder: Played a bit too much Yar's Revenge, didja?
:D

Can't recall, now, was that a high-score activated egg, or did a specific in-game action trigger it?


If you were able to nail the woo-woo-spinny guy (not his actual name) as he took a shot at your fly, the screen exploded (not literally). If your flew your fly up the tiny vertical line continously as the explosion simmered down, sometimes the game would end with the words HSWWSH on the screen. That was the initials of the game designer (H S W) palindromed.

For my friends, the word HSWWSH became a verb to describe the action of something crashing, blowing up, or just not working right.

Sad follow-up:
Either I or my friend (it's been too long to remember) returned the game because we thought it sucked. The reason that we gave for return was... "The game doesn't work right. It says HSWWSH on the screen and stops working." They fell for it. :D

[Skeezix]

Tangent: I know there was a Journey: Escape game for the 2600, but I never heard of another console version; you sure the one you saw was a Coleco cart?

Even the arcade version of that one was horrible... But come to think of it, I seem to recall seeing a PC, or maybe a C64 (or Amiga, et al) port of that one, so maybe there was a Coleco port after all.

Or possibly someone or other had the ROMs for the arcade version, with a coin-op emulator on PC, and I'm thinking of that... it's all running together in my head, now.

Thunder, did y'all pronounce that "hisswish?"

Thanks, man, now I got it stuck in my head.

[Unintentionally Blank]

Hey! I found another link to that 10-in-1 Atari controller/game:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/toys/5d39/

Unfortunately, I'd backordered. :dubious: At least you can see what it looks like.

[Thunder]

Ack... didn't see the question until now.

It was pronounced "Hoosh-Woosh" with soft "oo" sounds as in "good".

This concludes today's lesson on "How to pronouce HSWWSH".

[Chicken Scratch]

My brother (35) and I (30) have Surround marathons! For hours! That "beep---beep---beep" sound stil gets me all worked up.

[CCYMan]

Originally posted by Chicken Scratch
My brother (35) and I (30) have Surround marathons! For hours! That "beep---beep---beep" sound stil gets me all worked up.

I am, in fact, Chicken Scratch's brother, and she's right, we CAN play this game for hours on end!

We usually start with Slot Racers (you have to have the paddle controls for that), then Circus Atari, and then the final game, Surround.

Also, Thunder, I just had to chime in that I, too, have gotten Yar's Revenge to do the HSWWSH thing.

[Skeezix]

Okay, recurring trivia time then (since I still can't remember the specifics)

Which castle, on what difficulty level, held the "magic dot" that unlocked the game's easter egg, in Adventure?

I'm thinking it was the Black Castle, on level three, but it's been a good many moons since I played with this one.