Nah, tried many games, difficulty selection doesn't affect shot steering. I say bad programming, or bad design if intentional.

I really enjoyed Seaquest btw. Everything done right within the constraints of the system.

I played Turmoil recently and was really impressed by it. I can't think of a similar game on other platforms. Berzerk is a really good game too.

Phaser Patrol on the 2600 Supercharger (cassette game) is excellent, especially for the time.

I enjoy reading Retro Gamer magazine, just for the trip. They very recently (the Tomb Raider issue, I think #163) did a story on this very topic, listing what their readers thought the top 10 (or so) Atari 2600 game was. Somebody else already mentioned the game above, and I'd never heard of it before seeing it in RG. It was called "Solaris", and very definitely sounds like something I would like. Although they didn't mention it in the the review, I got a kind of "No Man's Sky" and "Elite" vibe in a very very very general way (afterall, we're talking about the 2600!) It sounds like there were 3 different kinds of gameplay, all revolving around piloting your space ship through the stars and then flying down to planets to blow stuff up.

Anyway, that's all I got. Solaris was very "late" to the Atari party... I think RG said it came out in 1986, meaning it was a couple years past the E.T. debacle and possibly benefited from learning some tricks from many earlier games. There are probably LPs on YT for it... I would check it out myself if I was interested in looking into old 2600 games.

Here's a fun one... Solaris

  ▪     ⁞   [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/frogger]Frogger
  ▪     ⁞   [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/keystone-kapers]Keystone Kapers
  ▪     ⁞   [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/pitfall]Pitfall
  ▪     ⁞   [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/pitfall-ii-lost-caverns]Pitfall II: Lost Caverns
  ▪     ⁞   [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/space-invaders________]Space Invaders
  ▪     ⁞   [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/qbert]Q*bert
  ▪     ⁞   [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/hero]H.E.R.O.
  ▪     ⁞   [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/frostbite]Frostbite
  ▪     ⁞   [url=http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/riddle-of-the-sphinx]Riddle of the Sphinx

It's true that there are very few enjoyable games on the Atari VCS/2600. There are decent ports of early arcade titles - Space Invaders, Galaxian, Moon Patrol - along with a few serviceable ones like Centipede, Vanguard and Asteroids - but most are just appallingly bad.

I think you have to remember that arcade-grade hardware was prohibitively expensive back in 1979-1980, so the console was essentially designed to merely evoke a sense of being in an amusement arcade and cash in on the popularity of contemporary movies like ET and Raiders of the Lost Ark - it wasn't designed to accommodate fine-tuned gameplay design, and the actual quality and playability of the games was fairly secondary. The 2600's hardware was not designed to push more than 4-5 sprites around at a time - most games like Space Invaders got around this with blitting tricks such as handling rows of aliens as a single entity.

Most of the good stuff is games actually designed to accommodate the hardware's limitations. Atari themselves produced perhaps a handful of good original games: Midnight Magic was probably the best, Solaris was at least an interesting example of how far the hardware could be pushed, although not a particularly fun game.

Believe it or not, Activision was the knight in shining armour as far as quality was concerned. They were essentially the "indie developer" challenging the might of the mainstream fluff that Atari was pumping out on a regular basis, and most of the best stuff on the 2600 is from them - Keystone Kapers, Pitfall 1 & 2, River Raid, Enduro, Frostbite. Most of the latter-day ports of games that were designed to be run on more advanced hardware such as the Commodore 64 or Sega Master System (Double Dragon, Commando, Winter Games) were nothing short of appalling.

Tried Solaris a few days ago, I too thought of No Man's Sky! Not much gameplay, but it sure pushes the limits of the hardware (and probably also programmers).

I'm not 100% convinced that the ability to save games, or more generally, longer games that follow a complex narrative are key to advancing the-state-of-the-art in video games. I mean, that certainly brought games up to par with other more complex (at the time) forms of media, but I don't consider more "arcade-y" games lesser forms of entertainment, expression, or technical prowess on the developer's side.

I mainly play shmups and fighters these days, and I think those are excellent examples of complex design and deep gameplay, while still keeping it a ~30min affair. And they too have evolved and innovated in game mechanics, presentation, and narrative in their own ways.

Similar thoughts on Pac-Man and other arcade classics...

Of course, this is my point of view today. When I first turned on my Master System and played 10 mins of "Alex Kid in Miracle World", I did feel like it was a world of miracles :)

The inability to save progress restricts (and restricted) what kind of games could be made, though. You can make only the kind of games where the player is usually expected to replay it from the very beginning each time he starts playing it. It is ok for e.g. arena fighting games, generic sports games (which have no team managing involved, just pure head-to-head competition) etc.

Coin op arcade games were generally like this, hence the games for those early gaming systems were usually arcade ports. Particulary for coin op games, they also needed to be easy to learn, but hard to master (with a steep difficulty curve). Ie. you wanted new players to get the game fast, but didn't want good players to easily finish the whole game with one quarter.

If you think of longer games that may take even dozens of hours to complete, and might involve first using over half an hour to create a party of adventurers (RPG games), obviously those have to have some sort of way to save your progress.

I recall some games used alternatives to "save" your progress, like The Lemmings, I recall it gave you a level code whenever you finished a level (so that you could skip all the previous levels later on). I am wondering if any arcade coin op games used a similar system? Maybe not, then people would have just used codes from their friends to see the end game with one coin...

Best game on the Atari...

PHOENIX!!! ( :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ILULkcBRG0

Am I the only one who still succumbs to the bottomless pit EVERY TIME I play PitFall 2?

I heard there was a trick to that but I'll be damned if I've found it.

Bottomless?

Shit, wait, nevermind.
I must have been thinking of something else.

Oh, okay. As long as you're finding something pleasing to the eye :) I think Keystone Kapers is a pretty charming game. Pitfall 2, incidentally, was able to have music by the inclusion of an extra chip in the cartridge. Solaris is another game that was helped by this. Konami used the same trick for their later NES games like Castlevania 3.

I briefly played Spider Fighter this morning and found that it's another game in which you can toggle shot steering. Maybe this was an Activision thing?

One game I like that never gets talked about much is No Escape, which was made by Imagic. It's sort of an odd Space Invaders/Breakout combination inspired by Jason and the Argonauts. You control Jason, who is imprisoned in a temple. There's a row of monsters above your head trying to shoot you but you can't shoot them directly because doing so will actually spawn an extra monster, so what you have to do is throw a rock at the ceiling and cause bricks to fall on the monsters' heads. It gets tough because the little bastards move really erratically. Maybe part of the reason I liked it is that I bought it for only $1 during the post-Crash clearances, but I've always had a soft spot for it, and I like Imagic's output in general. A nice touch about their games is that they sometimes include what passes for a "cutscene" after the game ends; e.g., when you die in Atlantis, you see a spaceship take off from the ruins, which is the lead-in to the sequel, Cosmic Ark.

Thanks for the recommendations everyone! I went through the entire rom set today, and played all of the games mentioned; they were indeed some of the better ones the system has to offer.

In general, my impression was that the system and games came out at a time when the home console market was in a very immature state, both due to weak hardware, and inexperienced developers. As a result, quality suffered overall, and creativity was hindered. At least I found a handful of games worth going back to (River Raid, some interesting pac-man variations), and my best utilization of limited resources award goes to Seaquest.

With that, my quest to find a "truly great" title ends on a low note, but it was a fun ride nevertheless.

yeah!!! it came to apoint where I could be this pretty easily but I still liked playing it to beat it through! great game!!!