Atari 2600tm

Way back in 1976, Atari had been acquired by Warner Communications. Soon, a very good thing came from this, the Atari 2600. Up until this time, Atari just had standalone systems and a few arcades, but these didn't have any more games then they came with. But now, you could go out and buy several games, and new ones could be made. It was much cheaper than an arcade, and brought the excitement home.

The Atari 2600 quickly became the most popular system ever. Within a few years, it had a ton of games and accessories. It was the most successful system Atari ever sold.

It's still worth playing today. Lots of the games still work(99% of them), as does many 2600 consoles. Very durable system. It's my humble opinion that if you're not into now but are thinking about it, get back into it. So many games, so much fun! Not to mention there are some brand spanking new games for it! Okie Dokie and This Planet Sucks are among them. I know Hoozer Video Games is selling them, but I lost the URL. Try and pick these games up if you can...

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My 2600 Games
Atari 2600 game pics!
Hardware review: Atari 2600 remote control joysticks

Latest Atari 2600 news

Garfield and Sky Patrol protos discovered!

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to pass this along. I know a lot of people are always asking for new protos to be dumped and distributed, so here they are!

At last years Classic Gaming Expo several never-before-seen protos were shown for the first time. We were able to archive these games and have received permission to distribute them.

The first title, Garfield, was written by ace programmer, Steve Woita, who also brought us Taz and Quadrun. After archiving the game, we contacted Jim Davis, the creator of the Garfield comic and received permission to distribute the ROM.

The 2nd title, Sky Patrol, was programmed by Brad Johnson. After the show, we contacted Brad who was more than happy to pass along this gem to the classic community. Be sure to check out the box and label scans as well.

All the goodies can be found at the Classic Gaming Expo website:

http://www.cgexpo.com

Be sure to mark your calendar for CGE 2000. Who knows what wonderful stuff will show up there.

And don't forget to thank Jim Davis by buying a Garfield doll for Christmas! ;)

Happy Holidays!

The CGExpo Staff John Hardie, Sean Kelly, & Keita Iida

Atari 2600 Specs N' Stats
Current cart count:1532
Joystick ports: 2
CPU: 6502
RAM: 128 bytes
ROM: 4k max.(?)
CPU clock: 1.19 mHz
Graphics clock: 1.19
Resolution: 160x102
Color depth: 256 (? someone please confirm this)
Sound: Mono
Architechture: 8-bit
Video modes: ?
Sprite capabilites: ?

About the ROM: The have been some carts with more than 4k. There has been up to 64k in one, 32k in a couple, and 16k in a few more. The carts can also have the Atari Super Chip (used in Jr. Pac-Man) which is really just another 128 bytes of RAM.
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