What Games Defined The Atari 2600?

Talk about just about anything else that is non-gaming here, but keep it clean
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marurun
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Post by marurun »

Well, I don't think Combat needs my vote to guarantee a place on the list, if everyone else's posts mean anything. ET sucked (I owned it, I should know) but it definitely defined the system. Pacman, too, for being really sucky.
Yackom
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Post by Yackom »

I think E.T. Should be considered it was what killed the system and therefore almost all of the video game industry, and left the door cracked open for Nintendo.
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Post by Yackom »

But now that I look at the list again I see no one mentioned Adventure yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(Atari_2600)

awesome (as awesome as Atari can be anyway) game.

Also Qbert I dont think that was mentioned, either was Pac Man
The Apprentice
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Post by The Apprentice »

Dude, Battlezone NEEDS to be on the list. It was possibly the most advanced game on the 2600, or maybe the Tomcat F14 Simulator. Both those games were technological marvels.
Gamerforlife
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Post by Gamerforlife »

Oh, I just LOVE this topic. I had an atari 2600 when I was young, but I wasn't really a serious gamer until I got an NES, so this topic will be educational for me.
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executioner
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Post by executioner »

I'll vote for

Combat (best multiplayer)
Chopper command
Frogger
H.E.R.O. (my favorite)
Megamania
Enduro
Asteroids
Space invaders
RadarScope1
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Post by RadarScope1 »

lordofduct wrote:
RadarScope1 wrote: Pong - the true roots of the hardware
roots? do you mean 'anti-pong roots'... the console was developed to actually get the hell away from pong because America was burnt out on pong.
Well again, like I said, this topic predates my actual experience at the time -- but what I guess I meant was that Atari's home hardware was rooted in those early Pong games you could hook up to your TV. Pong had been around for a LONG time -- like five or six years -- before the 2600 was released, so yeah, the console was supposed to be a way to get away from that. But it's impossible to talk about the roots of Atari without talking about home Pong consoles.
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durkada
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Post by durkada »

The Apprentice wrote:Dude, Battlezone NEEDS to be on the list. It was possibly the most advanced game on the 2600, or maybe the Tomcat F14 Simulator. Both those games were technological marvels.
I thought about mentioning Battlezone. It was an amazing adaptation -- perhaps better than the original. And how often can you say that about a 2600 port? But was it really popular, like a system defining game?
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durkada
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Post by durkada »

Yackom wrote:But now that I look at the list again I see no one mentioned Adventure yet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(Atari_2600)

awesome (as awesome as Atari can be anyway) game.

Also Qbert I dont think that was mentioned, either was Pac Man
Adventure was mentioned. Not by me, but the list I referenced from another post.

Someone recently made a sequel of Adventure for the 5200.. http://www.atariage.com/store/index.php ... cts_id=334
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Post by aaron »

yeah as far as "definitive" games i would include most of the activision classics (pitfall, kaboom, barnstorming, etc), combat if for no other reason that it is probably the most common video game find ever, and e.t. for the reasons listed above.

booyah. what a shitty system.
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