Classic Game Comparison: 2600 vs. the Atari 8 bit Computer

You are way off. Keyboard controls are garbage, and have no place in comparison to arcade or ports. 8 bit computerline is junk, and always was.

excedra? ;P

I was a bbs and game pirate as a kid. I burned through at least two 800xl’s and a couple 130xe’s. I had drawers full of floppies loaded with games and custom menus that I coded to select the games. I wrote a program that would hack out calling card numbers so I could download games in the UK before they were available in stores here. The long distance charges would bill to the calling card number holder. I screwed up though and the local ATT calling card number I was dialing all day to hack out access codes was a toll call. My dad got a huge phone bill full of pages of .10c toll charges. Luckily he was clueless about my computer world so he just figured it was that damn modem. Whatever that is... his bill was far less than the hours of long distance charges I ran up on those calling cards though! At 300 baud, it took hours to download one of those games. Man I was such a criminal when I was a kid :-]

I never had a C64 and it was a battle back then between the Atari vs “Commode Door”. I have both now and I’m having fun with my SX-64 learning what that side was like but I still say the Atari is much better. More colors, good sound, A disk operating system (none of that “load $, 8” and file listing as a basic program rubbish, and a fast floppy drive! I wish the atari had a demo scene like the c64 did and does though. Booze design rulez!

Good times & great memories for sure.
Thank you John for sharing!

Pac man was garbage. I thought this when it first came out. I remember a friend GIVING me this game. I was like wow! What a cool friend. Yeah. Whatta friend.

If you buy an Atari 8-bit computer, I would suggest getting one with at least 64K, like the 800XL, XEGS, or 130XE(which has 128K). This will allow you to play a lot more of the games for the system.

Some game on the 8-bit that were better than the VCS: Donkey Kong Jr., Mario Brothers, Popeye

The must have for the Atari 800 is Star Raiders and Pitfall 2 with it's extra hidden extra level.

Why is programming 8 bit computers so fun? xD

He forgot about Kaboom

Great vid. The 8-bit family of Atari computers -- first made in 1979, was years ahead of its time, competing in graphics with the NES, as did the Commodore 64 (the single best-selling computer model, _of all time, a record that will never be broken... ).

A couple notes:

* Pac-Man was the best-selling Atari 2600 cartridge of all time, despite that everyone dissed it -- especially Colecovision owners.

* I assume that by saying the 2600 Donkey King port was the second worst port of all time, you're referring to the Sinclair ZX, but it could be that or the Intellivision port. Both sucked, and Intellivision's was a total nightmare to control.

* The 800 is actually a better buy than the 800XL -- and the XL line, in general -- because the XL line (almost, if not completely) had only RF outputs, while the original 800 had composite outputs, making for a far better picture.

* Tons of disk-based games dormthe 8-bit computer line were incredible, including the original Ultimate games and EA's first games, which were great -- along with many others. It also had Epyx's Jumpman -- sold exclusively on compact cassette, for the 410 cassette drive.

* Both Crystal Castles and Missile Command, on the 8-bits, would, like in the arcade, move differentially with the speed of the Atari trackball, as you rolled it, when in "trackball mode."

Cheers, and thanks!

That's like comparing flip-phone to a smartphone. 2600 and 8-bit series are light years apart. Still kudos to 2600 programmers for making the games really fun to play.
Fully agree with comments that Atari 8-bit family was years ahead of its competition. It strange it didn't dominate the decade of 80s having almost 3 years head start. That is probably because the game industry didn't figure out making eye-candy graphics and multi-channel music until mid 80s when they had slightly better platforms for this like Commodore 64 or NES.

I had the Atari 2600, and then later an Atari 130XE. I too had Defender on both versions, and enjoyed the game-play on both even though the graphics and sound were fantastic, only on the XE. Missile Command was great on the XE. I never owned the Atari ST 16bit, but did watch a video of it's Defender . . . (pitiful game on the ST). Can you review any of these, also on the ST one day? GREAT VIDEO!! thanks for posting

Drink pop

Man you're sexy.

Favourite game on atari 2600 ? Raiders of the lost ark, long play, nice graphics and great music as I remember !

Love my Atari 800XL, great video John

2600 was the poor man's Atari.

Atari 2600 Stargate shows that the system can do a Defender that is much closer to the arcade and 8-bit computer version.

Really enjoying learning Atari from you John. I have a Vader 2600 and about 20 games. I really want an Atari XE with keyboard and all. I think it's one of the coolest looking Atari items you can get. I enjoy seeing yours in the background of some of your videos! I hope you and the family have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

One thing I've never been able to figure out is how Atari was able to rerelease Coleco and Parker Bros. games? i.e. the versions with the maroon-colored labels? Did they buy them out at some point?

Great video, been wanting to know the difference between the two visually for a long while now, thanks.

It's amazing that the XEGS almost came out in 1979, just with less RAM and 1979 styling instead of that Miami Vice thing they did in the late 80s.
The Atari 400 almost got packaged and branded as a game console to replace the 2600, but Warner chickened out of "cannibalizing" 2600 sales. Since the 400 had a keyboard on it, was being marketed as a computer, and had the associated higher cost, very few people would have ever thought of buying it to put on their family room coffee table. The only people who bought it were those with an immediate interest in the computer aspects, while those who just wanted to play game cartridges kept buying 2600s.

Too bad - the 2600 could have been a forgotten prelude to the A8, instead of being held over so inappropriately long that it inhibited the quality of games and stigmatized the Atari brand. The 2600 is fascinating but it's so primitive that it can almost do nothing at all. The difference between it and the A8 is massive. The A8 was capable of being competitive deep into the 1980s.

Only thing I have against the consolized A8 setup is that the joystick needed more buttons. They could have resolved that, but didn't. The future 7800 would have 2 buttons using a compatible connector pinout, and really they could have done more.

I actually liked the 2600 version of Defender. It was the arcade like ports I didn't like. Each to their own I suppose. Anyway the kid me thought most Atari games were boring after a while. I would play them once and then change the cartridge. I was never a play it all day type kid.

The 400/800/XL/XE was truly a superior gaming platform. 2600 Galaxian was honestly better than it’s 8-bit counterpart, though. Serious retro gamers will rock out with both a 2600 and a 400/800.

I grew up with an Atari 8bit computer in the 1980s! It was amazing. My first was an Atari 400 with a 410 recorder. Later we got an 800XL and Indus GT.

Atari 800 is way better than the 2600..not even close 😉

Star Raiders on the Atari 8 bit computer was simply amazing and is still impressive to this day.

Hi John, Thank you for the comparison. It help. Which one is the best Atari console games? Atari 800, 700, 7800 2600 or Atari ST? Which one is close to Apple in iPhone apps call "Atari Classics Arcade". Which games today come close to that version.

I play Master Mind (emulated), the atari 8 bit is the only version I can find of that game for console or computer. There is a similar one for the 2600 but I don't think it works emulated.

Defender on the 5200 plays great with the trackball & it's the same as the Atari 8-bit computer version..

I never played the VCS (only via emulator), but I played through tons of games on my the Atari 800XL and I tend to say that the graphics & sound were definitely not the only improvements. Controls were typically much tighter and many improvements & fine tunings (even enhancements - e.g. Pitfall II) were made to the games - to illustrate - in (this video's) VCS's Crystal Castles, you could run around a gem, making it a bit annoying trying to collect them even though they all are in a straight line - on the 800XL you could not 'avoid' grabbing them; however, the home computer version was a bit more difficult. The same increase in difficulty went for multiple games, as the tighter controls & faster gameplay both enabled & required at the same time to make the game a bit more challenging to keep it interesting. For some up to the point of being almost impossible to beat or achieve any significant progress (Defender comes to my mind here).

What I would recommend for the Atari 2600 is Space Invaders and for the Atari 8-Bit is Deluxe Invaders by Roklan Corporation. These ports both represent the classic arcade game of Space Invaders (1978) in the best interpretations for their individual formats.

I had a 130XE as a kid (still have it!) and the games were MUCH better than the XL versions shown here. Seriously, though, you should have a look at the XE ports of arcade games. The difference between them and the XL versions is night and day

Enjoyed the video. Just came across it, somehow I missed this one when it released. I was a big Atari fan in the eighties and the Atari 800XL is my most fondly remembered system from that time. You aught to consider grading some of the games by company for the Atari 8-bit line.

I hated crystal castles on 2600, thought it was beyond awful

Omg and DK on 2600 was just as bad as Pac-Man on 2600, I know about the crap they pulled to nerf certain versions of the game, and did they ever do a great job of making a bigger pile of crap than anything thought possible

Millions of people bought Pac-Man 2600, and how many returned it? Lol

Thanks for saying “pop” instead of soda. We need more people like you in the world:

I recently bough the 2600 versions of both pac man & donkeykong as collection items and eventrough those conversions were meager but their artwork makes up for this and you got a cool flat crt screen there in the background ,in fact i prefer owning a flat crt tv over a 8K tv,because i don’t care about netflix and i also hate input lag,so that’s why.

I grew up on the 8bit line. 2600 was before my time.

Good info thanks

My country was behind the 'iron curtain.' Electronics, especially home, wasn't in the focus of the government, these were interested in thousands of armors, not small computer for fun and education.
State acquired few Sharp MZ 800 and Sord M5 in barter trade with Japan, and sold them in exclusive stores, but Atari were imported in grey way by happy people, who were allowed to work in West Europe.
And shortly after regime had fall, I got 800xl from one of the happy ones. About 10 years after release of the machine! But, with four channel music and sprite character in games I was a king between few friends, who had Spectrum clones of local origin.

Most 8-bit arcade conversion were spot on.

Great video!
I still have an 800xl setup on the go and have quite a few xl xe machines still working fine.
The 2600 is never going to be as good but it still holds its place in time and many peoples hearts!
The Atari 8 bit is by far my favorite computer.

Subscribed.

Thanks

thanks for pointing it out John. the Atari 8 bit > atari 2600. Like, i'm not sure why some people retro game on an atari 2600 in 2023 instead of an atari 8 bit. We need to spread the gospel to them.

Atari 8-bit Donkey Kong, Joust, and Defender were all incredible ports. I also loved Dig Dug. I had the version with the solid dirt and the multi colored sprites, and I thought it looked great.

I really wish Atari had released the XEGS in 1982 instead of the doomed 5200. They could have breathed new life into the 8-bit computer architecture and encouraged a lot more software development.

My favorite game on the Atari 600 XL was Megamania! Best game on the Atari 2600 was Phoenix!

Agree went from 2600 to Commodore 64 to NES