The Atari 2600 games library vs The ZX Spectrum's
Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2022 1:32 pm
It's a bit of a fool's errand to bring up a rival system's games and pit them against the system favoured by almost everybody on the forum. Especially if that rival system is objectively lower in nearly every specification. A bit like putting a seaside donkey into the Grand National. Alright, not as bad as that, because I do admire some of the Atari 2600 games.
Atari 2600 overview
The Atari 2600 has a longevity that beats the Speccy, it began life as the Atari VCS way back in 1977 (reaching Europe in 1978) and you could still buy it brand new from Argos in 1992 for a cool £75. It's part of the 'Second Generation' of games consoles (1976-1992). Yeah, the Speccy ain't a console but if it was, it'd fit there.
Games were produced on cartridge, so on loading times it obviously beats the Speccy but they're certainly not cheaper than a cassette! The majority tended to be just 4K in size, going up to 8K for the better ones. I guess this is where the Speccy has an obvious advantage, you can do more in 16K than 8K, and of course, I could throw in 48K and 128K, but that's rubbing their faces in it.
I've never been a fan of fat chunky pixels (which is why I never became a C64 owner!), which is the obvious visual detraction here. The colour palette can vary from soft pastels to retina-scarring neons. The 2600 sound chip has more range than the 16K/48K BEEP and homebrew programmers can get it to perform almost at AY-chip levels.
A game where the Speccy beats the Atari 2600: Pac Man
Although the Atari 2600 version sold immensely well (come on, it's 1981, not many options for playing Pac Man away from an arcade and this has direct Atari endorsement!) and I shouldn't really be sneering at the primitive videogaming market, the enormous weakness here is the flickering enemy sprites. The flickering is such that many game captures make it look like only two ghosts exist in this version (especially in the YouTube video I include here) when in fact there are four. Plus, Pac Man himself only ever faces left or right, and the landscape orientation means fatter pills and the warp tunnel is at north/south rather than east/west. Aside from that, it does an alright job of mimicking the arcade classic's gameplay. If you can't be arsed firing up an emulator or the real thing, here's a way to play Atari 2600 Pac Man in your browser - arrow keys and SPACE. Apparently this was released unfinished.
ZX Spectrum: Although I really should pit Atarisoft's official licensed Speccy version against it, I'm going for a low blow by choosing Pac-Man Emulator on the 128K Spectrum, which utilises the actual coin-op game data and does a really decent job of getting the Speccy as close as damn it to the real thing. Yeah, I'm being cruel here. This would beat pretty much most official Pac Man games on other systems.
Of course, to be truly even-handed, I should at least bring in a homebrew equivalent for the Atari 2600. Yep, their homebrew community came up with an objectively better improvement - Pac-Man 8K, which, while still in landscape, the visuals are loads better and the flickering is minimised to an acceptable level. Sounds really faithful too. Although the Speccy version I picked still beats it, I think Atari 2600 Pac-Man 8K beats the Atarisoft 1984 Pac Man on the Speccy.
A game where the Atari 2600 beats the Speccy: Yar's Revenge
My favourite game on the 2600, the weird shoot 'em up Yar's Revenge is just absolutely nuts and is rather confusing for a first timer. That flickering shimmering 'river' of garbled graphics gives you the feel that the game has slightly crashed, but no, it's incredibly addictive, even if it feels like you're battling Teletext enemies and squares. To explain it would take up so much time, but you will suss it out in your first five minutes of messing about with it. Javascript emulator to play Yar's Revenge in your browser - arrows and SPACE bar.
There's no official version of Yar's Revenge on the ZX Spectrum, so we'll have to look to the homebrew scene, and it goes under the nudge-nudge-wink-wink name of Ray's Reprisal. It's good, a fan of the original won't be massively disappointed by it, there's a nice thunder of white noise when your enemy is blown up and the shimmering 'safe zone' is more pleasing to your eye. Alas, it does feel a tad slower than the 2600. There are some nice touches in Ray's Reprisal that excels over the original, but overall, I'm going with the Atari 2600 here.
Over to you...
Of course, the above is just my opinion. Can you come up with a couple of games where the Speccy triumphs and also fails against Atari's first post-Pong console? Here's a list of practically every Atari 2600 game ever commercially released.
Atari 2600 overview
The Atari 2600 has a longevity that beats the Speccy, it began life as the Atari VCS way back in 1977 (reaching Europe in 1978) and you could still buy it brand new from Argos in 1992 for a cool £75. It's part of the 'Second Generation' of games consoles (1976-1992). Yeah, the Speccy ain't a console but if it was, it'd fit there.
Games were produced on cartridge, so on loading times it obviously beats the Speccy but they're certainly not cheaper than a cassette! The majority tended to be just 4K in size, going up to 8K for the better ones. I guess this is where the Speccy has an obvious advantage, you can do more in 16K than 8K, and of course, I could throw in 48K and 128K, but that's rubbing their faces in it.
I've never been a fan of fat chunky pixels (which is why I never became a C64 owner!), which is the obvious visual detraction here. The colour palette can vary from soft pastels to retina-scarring neons. The 2600 sound chip has more range than the 16K/48K BEEP and homebrew programmers can get it to perform almost at AY-chip levels.
A game where the Speccy beats the Atari 2600: Pac Man
Although the Atari 2600 version sold immensely well (come on, it's 1981, not many options for playing Pac Man away from an arcade and this has direct Atari endorsement!) and I shouldn't really be sneering at the primitive videogaming market, the enormous weakness here is the flickering enemy sprites. The flickering is such that many game captures make it look like only two ghosts exist in this version (especially in the YouTube video I include here) when in fact there are four. Plus, Pac Man himself only ever faces left or right, and the landscape orientation means fatter pills and the warp tunnel is at north/south rather than east/west. Aside from that, it does an alright job of mimicking the arcade classic's gameplay. If you can't be arsed firing up an emulator or the real thing, here's a way to play Atari 2600 Pac Man in your browser - arrow keys and SPACE. Apparently this was released unfinished.
ZX Spectrum: Although I really should pit Atarisoft's official licensed Speccy version against it, I'm going for a low blow by choosing Pac-Man Emulator on the 128K Spectrum, which utilises the actual coin-op game data and does a really decent job of getting the Speccy as close as damn it to the real thing. Yeah, I'm being cruel here. This would beat pretty much most official Pac Man games on other systems.
Of course, to be truly even-handed, I should at least bring in a homebrew equivalent for the Atari 2600. Yep, their homebrew community came up with an objectively better improvement - Pac-Man 8K, which, while still in landscape, the visuals are loads better and the flickering is minimised to an acceptable level. Sounds really faithful too. Although the Speccy version I picked still beats it, I think Atari 2600 Pac-Man 8K beats the Atarisoft 1984 Pac Man on the Speccy.
A game where the Atari 2600 beats the Speccy: Yar's Revenge
My favourite game on the 2600, the weird shoot 'em up Yar's Revenge is just absolutely nuts and is rather confusing for a first timer. That flickering shimmering 'river' of garbled graphics gives you the feel that the game has slightly crashed, but no, it's incredibly addictive, even if it feels like you're battling Teletext enemies and squares. To explain it would take up so much time, but you will suss it out in your first five minutes of messing about with it. Javascript emulator to play Yar's Revenge in your browser - arrows and SPACE bar.
There's no official version of Yar's Revenge on the ZX Spectrum, so we'll have to look to the homebrew scene, and it goes under the nudge-nudge-wink-wink name of Ray's Reprisal. It's good, a fan of the original won't be massively disappointed by it, there's a nice thunder of white noise when your enemy is blown up and the shimmering 'safe zone' is more pleasing to your eye. Alas, it does feel a tad slower than the 2600. There are some nice touches in Ray's Reprisal that excels over the original, but overall, I'm going with the Atari 2600 here.
Over to you...
Of course, the above is just my opinion. Can you come up with a couple of games where the Speccy triumphs and also fails against Atari's first post-Pong console? Here's a list of practically every Atari 2600 game ever commercially released.