I'm having the same problem with NES.

It's called evolution. It happens. :P

Though when I briefly had an Apple// emulator I found that Wings of Fury was still pretty damn good.

Not the OP, but I owned & played it back then. I don't think it was nearly as bad as people claimed. It was very much like the Indiana Jones game.

A few people already mentioned Pitfall I & II, but I don't think it can be overstated how good Pitfall II was on the 2600. In an age when most Atari titles were simply cut-rate conversions of arcade games that offered a few minutes of amusement, Pitfall II stood far above the rest as a full-fledged adventure-platformer. I can't think of many other games that offered the depth, length of play, and replayability that this game did.

There were many good games on the Atari 2600 but you shouldn't forget that they were good for their time.

Games have advanced by leaps and bounds since the early 80s. Even games in the mid 80s (NES, C64) were already a lot better than the games on the Atari 2600 and these were in turn put to shame by games from the late 80s (SNES, Amiga). And I'm not just speaking from a technological point of view. Games became a lot more complex in game mechanics as well. You simply expect games to be more complex than Pacman or Space Invaders today. Back then there were no other games.

So no matter what games will get recommended to you, unless you are willing to look at them in comparison to other games from that time they will all look and play like crap.

Here are a few that I still enjoy:

Freeway
H.E.R.O.
Pitfall
Pitfall 2
Pressure Cooker
Starmaster

*shrug* If you can't enjoy those kinds of straight-on arcade-like experiences, it's just not for you. If you're really into this idea of "games as storytelling medium" or "games are things you can finish and then move on the next," none of the games from that era will appeal (I'm not saying that's how you feel, but I see it a lot among people today). Personally I can still play a great many 2600 games and have a great time.

A lot of Activision's titles hold up. Imagic is right behind them. Some of the Parker Bros. games are still fun. Solaris, Phoenix, Solar Fox, Adventure, Fantastic Voyage, Dragon Stomper, Frankenstein's Monster, etc. Lots of good games. Then you've got some nice homebrew titles like Halo 2600 and Oystron.

Thanks for the suggestions folks, I'll take a look at all of them (and maybe the entire catalog too) next weekend.

I agree that some of the 2-player games could still be fun, Combat is one of them, that stupid game with frogs eating flies is another one that comes to mind.

One comment: Regardless of how ancient the system is, the more I play, the more I feel that game designers were lacking the skills and experience to create something special at the time. Or maybe they just didn't have the right mind set. Arcade gameplay is defined by tight controls, competitive precision, and highly-condensed fun; no time wasters, pure enjoyment. But Atari doesn't deliver.

Some examples that really bother me:

- Horrendous visual design: Yes, devs had a very limited color palette and screen estate to work with, but a small selection of games (e.g. Pitfall 2) use these resources in creative ways and present what could only be described as legit early pixel art. The vast majority of games however are undecipherable messes. It can't be that hard to create a decent stick man, but apparently Activision staff simply didn't give a damn.

- Incompetent programmers: I've lost count of shooter style games where the shots you fire keep moving with your ship. How come nobody in the dev team noticed this? Why is it impossible to have a maze game with proper collision detection, where you don't fall through stuff, or get stuck in walls?

- Interface & usability & human-computer interaction stuff: Okay, maybe these topics weren't so hot back in the 70s, but that is no excuse to torture players with 15 seconds of out of tune music (if you can call that music) before every single run.

I don't know. I am a firm believer that western game design, both technical and creative aspects, was significantly lacking behind the Japanese competition from the inception of game consoles up until the recent rise of the western indie scene. I can't help but think that Atari is yet another example showing that we western folk simply "didn't get it".

Oh shit. It's time to toss my copy of Heroes of Might & Magic (pick a number), Master of Orion 2, Descent, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Dungeon Keeper, System Shock, Thief, Doom...

=P

missing a game series here!!!

SwordQuest

"Adventure" was good too!


and Pinball!

This may not be a fair comparison. The Atari 2600 released in 1977, the NES in North America in 1985 - 8 years is a lifetime in electronic technology. It was released in 1983 in Japans (still six years - still a lifetime). The Atari 2600 actually has some very impressive and elegant design that still impresses and confounds people today.

On the game design side, Japan gave us Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Koing - but western developers gave us Defender, Q*Bert, Gauntlet, Ms. Pac-Man, Pong.

I am not sure what the recent rise of western developers is (NES North America, 1985, to PS2, released 2000) was 15 years, but since PS2 Western developers have made GTA III Battlefield, Medal of Honor, Need for Speed, Burnout, FIFA, Madden, NHL, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, Jak and Daxter, God of War, Halo, KOTOR, Fable and a many others. So more than half of modern console existence, so am I am not sure by what you mean recent.

But go back to the NES days and they were there too. One of the earliest and best success in Japan on the NES was Load Runner. Nintendo limiting developers to five titles a year under a single banner, buying all the cartrdiges from Nintendo, with minimum orders - a shortage of cartridges which led to a major lawsuit with Tengen/Namco and the Big Ns bias toward Japanese companies kept many off the NES. Dragon Quest was because of Western CRPGs. That then created Final Fantasy, so the west was doing a lot, just most on PC.

By SNES/Genesis days rare was making Donkey Kong Country, EA had Madden, FIFA, NHL, General Chaos, Road Rash, Acclaim put out Super Smash TV and Mortal Kombat. Blizzard (then called Silicon & Synapse) made Rock & Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings.

PS1. Diablo, Wipeout, Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot. But PlayStation opened up the market to all developers, so that is why you saw an increase.

But western devs have always been around and making great games - just not cobsoleexclusive, especially when Nintendo was so restrictive. Games like Ultima, Planscape, Baldurs Gate, Diablo, WarCraft, StarCraft, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Civilization, SimCity, The SIms - Oh heck, just take a look at the Good Old Games catalog!

But even before that, there's the Sega Master System (1985) and SG-1000 in 1983. But even then, you have to realize that before the 2600 it was nothing but pong close and variants. Even then, Nintendo slightly beat Atari to market.

Yar's Revenge is one I remember very well!

Yeah. Japan vs The West is a different topic, so I didn't elaborate on that argument on purpose. I am not saying all games are crap, you can hold onto your copies of Heroes 3. I was mostly talking about arcade or early console games.

"Enjoyment" is a complex thing, and is better not argued anyway. See my comment was limited to technical and artistic design, and core mechanics emphasizing control & precision. I can write a 20-page essay each on why Mortal Kombat, Smash TV, Gauntlet, Donkey Kong are sub par games, but can be elevated to something great with some perspective and a couple of simple code hacks. But let's not go there.

Have you considered that the shots moving with your ship was a design choice? It was in River Raid. The shot "steering" was placed in the lower difficulty to help beginning players. With the difficulty switches set to A, the shots go straight forward (not sure if that's a game you're talking about, but it's the most prominent example I'm aware of).

I get the impression that you somehow aren't aware of just how limited the 2600 is. I mean, homebrewers have been studying the system architecture for 40 years and although the really talented ones can do some great stuff with it, one thing the system just doesn't do is create attractive, well-animated humans and animals. The 2600 can make a beautiful rainbow or sunset, but not people. It's why many of the best games from its era tend to emphasize abstraction over "pixel art". I dunno, if you're a programmer yourself, perhaps you might consider trying to make a 2600 game; I've heard that many who have made games for it regard it as a pretty rigorous test of their skills, trying to do something technically impressive with so little to work with.

But, but, but... there are some games that are really visually pleasing, and well-animated too! Pitfall 2 is one of them, but I've stumbled on others. I wonder whether those required some clever hacks that your average programmer couldn't come up with to implement, though; you know, given that technically sound games are so few on the system.

Your comment on shot steering is interesting. It wasn't my impression that that was intentional -- it makes games harder if you ask me!