OMG, you have
killed my productivity for the day!
There are some gems in here that you would never have had the chance to play back in the day. For example,
Halo 2600, which didn't exist back then!
Tip for anyone trying to play any of the Atari games that originally required a paddle controller. You are not going to be able to do it, since the emulator seems to only have functionality for joystick emulation.
Some of these games I have played so much that I can still hear the sounds in my head while playing them in the emulator.
A few personal favorites:
2600 version of Dark Chambers was a great puzzle game. While the
7800 version had better graphics, the fact you had a more bird's eye view of the layout made it easier to play. You were less likely to get lost in the maze, less likely to end up going in circles, and much easier to figure out where all the items are. That made it much less challenging than the original. I still regret trading my copy of the original for baby sitting services, before having had the chance to really play the 7800 version and find this all out.
Tip: There was a bug, I believe on Level S, that was a game stopper. There was one of the dead ends that you entered but couldn't exit if you had full energy, due to an energy bottle being placed in the doorway, after you entered. Really sucked to make it all the way to that level, get stuck in that room with no monsters to take any of your energy, and not being able to get back out. It meant starting all over again.
Galaga - The whole reason why I bought a 7800. It was just so I could play this game.
7800 version of
Ms Pacman, complete with intermissions.
Tip: Make it past the arrival of Jr, and the layout of board stops changing and just keeps repeating the final layout. Play it enough and you'll figure out the pattern needed to easily clear every board. I stopped playing this when I succeeded in figuring out all the boards.
Midnight Magic - This was so much better than the original
Video Pinball. This one actually looked and acted a lot more like a real pinball machine. It was one of my husband's favorites, but he took the game a bit too seriously (broke 2 controllers and a table in fits of rage over losing balls, and was the primary motivator against ever letting him play any sort of pinball game on any of my PCs, out of fear of what kind of abuse my PC and desk might be subjected to). In the emulator, it's actually easier to play with the arrow keys than it was with a joystick. To play it with a joystick and have the same sort of control of the flippers that one would have on a real pinball machine, one had to hold the controller with both thumbs crossed and hooked around the stick, so that when you moved the left thumb against the stick, it controlled the left flipper, and the right thumb for the right flipper. Merely holding the joystick the way one normally would, using one hand to control the direction, really didn't work out very well.
Crystal Castles was always a favorite of mine, but I wouldn't attempt to play it on a PC. It's one of those games best played with an expensive deluxe 8 direction joystick, which 4 arrow keys on a keyboard really can not emulate.
The review says the controls were sluggish, even when using a trackball. I never tried it with my trackball, but found that with the 8 direction joystick, it wasn't sluggish at all.
