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!