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[Agent X]

The Atari Times has a new section up showing screens of arcade games, along with screens of the Atari 2600 conversions of them. A few of the 2600 games are prototypes (Xevious is one example), homebrews (such as Seawolf), or clones (such as Activision's Dragster for the 2600 being a clone of Atari's arcade game Drag Race), and those are noted as such. Most are the "official" home versions, though.

Click here to check it out. It's 5 pages of fun!

Here are a few examples to arouse your curiosity.

Asteroids

Commando

Joust

Pac-Man

Warlords

 

[Mejilan]

Ha! This is awesome. Thanks for the link.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

Klax!? Wow. I knew there were some official 2600 games in the late 80s, but I wouldn't have guessed a game associated with the phrase "It is the 90s and there is time for Klax." would've legitimately shown up on 2600.

I'd also forgotten how vertical a lot of old arcade games were; I feel like I'm looking at N-Gage or combined-screen DS games. Was there a particular reason they did that?

 

[midnightguy]

heh, even the far more powerful 7800 with its MARIE or MARIA graphics chip was not able to completely reproduce arcade games of the early 80s

 

[Agent X]

Klax!? Wow. I knew there were some official 2600 games in the late 80s, but I wouldn't have guessed a game associated with the phrase "It is the 90s and there is time for Klax." would've legitimately shown up on 2600.

It sure did. If I'm not mistaken, the 2600 version of Klax came out in 1991, and was Atari's last official 2600 cartridge released. It was released in PAL format in Europe, but not in NTSC format in North America (although NTSC prototypes exist).

Here's a side-by-side comparison:

I'd also forgotten how vertical a lot of old arcade games were; I feel like I'm looking at N-Gage or combined-screen DS games. Was there a particular reason they did that?

I don't know, but they did that a lot back in those days. After around 1990, you rarely saw an arcade game with a vertically-oriented monitor, except for vertically scrolling shoot-em-up games.

 

[Kobun Heat]

Here's something I haven't been able to figure out. Although the anthologies released for PS2/Xbox/GC usually don't include games that were licensed from other publishers (i.e. 2600 Pac-Man or Intellivision Donkey Kong), Commando -- created by Data East and Capcom and licensed to Activision for the 2600 -- did appear on Activision Anthology.

Did the license really extend into perpetuity? Or did Activision actually go back to Data East and Capcom and get permission to include the game? Either way, you can play the worst version of Commando ever on Activision Anthology.

 

[DarkCloud]

Wow...I never knew that Double Dragon got a 2600 release.


..and after seeing the screens of it I'm kind of glad.

-edit-

Ikari Warriors. Jesus my eyes burn.

 

[Agent X]

Here's something I haven't been able to figure out. Although the anthologies released for PS2/Xbox/GC usually don't include games that were licensed from other publishers (i.e. 2600 Pac-Man or Intellivision Donkey Kong), Commando -- created by Data East and Capcom and licensed to Activision for the 2600 -- did appear on Activision Anthology.

Did the license really extend into perpetuity? Or did Activision actually go back to Data East and Capcom and get permission to include the game? Either way, you can play the worst version of Commando ever on Activision Anthology.

I think Activision had to relicense it so that it could be included. They also did the conversions of Rampage and Double Dragon, but Activision was unable to relicense those (I think the companies that own those games wanted too much money to justify it).

 

[Kobun Heat]

Or they were afraid that the games were so bad it would tarnish their image. (Fortunately, this is something Capcom's never been particularly worried about. And 2600 Commando is still better than Outbreak File 2.)

 

[levious]

Here's something I haven't been able to figure out. Although the anthologies released for PS2/Xbox/GC usually don't include games that were licensed from other publishers (i.e. 2600 Pac-Man or Intellivision Donkey Kong), Commando -- created by Data East and Capcom and licensed to Activision for the 2600 -- did appear on Activision Anthology.

Did the license really extend into perpetuity? Or did Activision actually go back to Data East and Capcom and get permission to include the game? Either way, you can play the worst version of Commando ever on Activision Anthology.

What is Data East now? Last I saw of thier logo was on Sega's Winter Heat.

 

[Hellraizah]

I like how "Tapper" went from having Budweiser on the wall in the arcades and Mountain Dew in the 2600 version.