The 7800 was originally planned to be released in 1984, but the great video game crash and Atari’s sale to Jack Tramiel, held up the release until 1986.  Some games that were in development were shelved at that time and others when Atari stopped making the 7800 in early 1992.  As it turns out, there were some great games, that were nearly complete, that were never released.

Over the years, the code for some of these games has been located and a few of these games have been made playable and released by 7800 enthusiasts.  Some of these games were able to be complied and released on carts to the 7800 community.  Three outstanding games that have been made available are: Klax, Plutos, and Sirius.

Klax was a 1989 Atari coin op game that was released for the 2600, the NES, and the Sega Genesis, but not for the 7800.  Klax is a computer puzzle game along the lines of Tetris. Klax for the 7800 was, apparently, completed but never released.  Almost a decade ago, Klax was rescued and can now be played on the 7800. I don’t have a copy of Klax for the 7800 yet, but it is on my wish list and it should be on yours as well.

Plutos and Sirus were games in development by the British company Tynesoft.  The source code for these games was found in 2008 by Curt Vendel and three talented programmers (Bob DeCrescenzo, Mitchell Orman, and Eckhard Stolberg) were able to compile stable versions.  A couple of other enthusiasts have made carts available to the 7800 community. Theses games are very similar; Plutos is a vertical scrolling space ‘shoot um up’ and Sirius is a horizontal scroller. I was recently able to get my hands on carts of these games and they are amazing. The graphics in these games set the bar for what the 7800 is capable of and they are fun to play as well!  Had they been released back in 1990, they probably would have been big sellers.

Other games that have been found in various states of completion are: Gato, Pit Fighter, Missing in Action, Rampart, and Rescue on Fractalus.  Games that were announced for the 7800, but are still missing are: Electrocop, Millipede, Sky Fox, and Steel Talons. One day, the source code for one or more of these missing games may be located and released to the 7800 community.

For more info on the games in this blog check out Atari Protos.

A few months ago, when this adventure began, I had no idea what a homebrew game was. Although Atari stopped development of games for the 7800 and 2600 twenty years ago, some dedicated and creative folks have continued to develop games. In fact, in the past few years, more than fifteen new 7800 games have been released and several more are in development. Guys like Mark Ball, Ken Siders, and Robert (Bob) DeCrescenzo (aka PacManPlus) have developed games like Wasp, Beef Drop, and Pacman for the 7800. Bob alone has developed more than a dozen games for the 2600 and 7800!

Others have developed label and box art for the games and many homebrew games are available with professional looking manuals and boxes. One key individual who develops the art and has boxes printed is Marc Oberhäuser (Freelancer Games) from Germany. Many of these games can be purchased at AtariAge, run by a fantastic guy by the name of Albert Yarusso.

What’s even more amazing is that these guys don’t do this to make money, they just do it because they love the hobby.  It is a lot of work to put together a cart for one of these games. First they have to buy up old carts, remove the labels, clean the cart, shell, and unsolder the existing eproms. They then have to program the new eprom, solder it in, reassemble the cart, and apply the labels. They also have to arrange for the manuals and boxes to be printed. All of this is time consuming work on top of the actual development of the game.

And…if you think that these homebrew games might not be that great, think again! Most of them are really amazing and are better games than the ones that Atari released for the 7800. They also help to fill in gaps in the 7800 library. For example, the ‘Pac-man Collection’ (the cart is pictured in my blog header) by Bob DeCrescenzo offers Pac-man, Ms. Pac-man, and six other variations. Pac-man and Ms. Pac-man are nearly perfect translations of these arcade classics and show both Bob’s talent and the 7800’s capabilities as a home arcade system. If you have a 7800, or have now decided to get one because of this blog, be sure to plan to include some homebrews in your collection!

The 7800 was released in 1986…over 25 years ago! Atari released about fifty games for the 7800 and there were also several 3^rd party releases.  One of the things that has amazed me is that it is still possible to buy brand new games for the 7800.  Atari sold about four million 7800 systems and they must have also made millions of games.  Many of these can be had, inexpensively, still shrink wrapped, as they just came from the factory.  In fact, I paid no more than $15 each for my first few games, but some were as inexpensive as $5.  I was also able to pick up some used games on ebay.  I have learned to buy games in lots of six or more; large lots often go for as little as $1-2 per cartridge.  Of course, at that price, you are just getting cart without the box or manual.

Games like Alien Brigade, Commando, Ikari Warriors, and Midnight Mutants were released toward the end of the 7800’s life cycle and were manufactured in smaller quantities.  These command higher prices all the way up to $100 for a shrink wrapped copy.  While collectors may want to have complete games with boxes and manuals, all you need to have fun is the cart itself.  There are several sites where you can find the manuals for the games, so it is easy to build up a good collection of 7800 games without spending a lot of $$$.

Also, don’t forget that the 7800 plays almost all of the 2600 games. Loose 2600 carts often sell for less than $1 and there were some great games made for the 2600!  Games like Demon Attack, Missile Command, Pitfall, and Warlords play great on the 7800 and are as much fun now as they were 30 years ago!

A few days after I ordered my 7800, I received a notice from my post office that a package had arrived for me.  I managed to get there just before they closed and picked up my 7800. I had ordered one with an AV mod.  Originally, these came with RF modulators that you could set to either channel 3 or 4.  A better solution for today’s TV’s is to have the system modified to do either S-video or composite output; mine was modified for composite output.  Even with an AV mod, these are not the greatest with modern HD TV’s as they have many less lines of resolution.  Fortunately, I still had a non HD LCD TV to use with my 7800.

With my 7800, was the four or five games that I had ordered with it.  After hooking up the 7800 to my TV, I put in Donkey Kong and was amazed.  Sound is a weak point on the 7800 (I will explain why in the future), but the graphics are amazing (for a machine designed in the mid eighties).  In fact, one of the strong points of the 7800 is that it was designed to bring the arcade experience home.  There are some amazing ports of arcade classics such as Centipede, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Joust, and Ms. Pac-man.  The experience was all that I hoped for…all you need to do is put a cartridge in and start playing.  Even for the games where you need the manual, they usually only take a few minutes to read.  The 7800 definitely looked like it was a good choice and more great games were still in the mail!