Atari 2600

[gizmo]

hi we found some roms and trying to play them we have looked at the video in the Tutorial section and added retroarch we have added stella for the core but the games still will not play all we get is a black screen when the game plays any advice would be great thanks

[Lordmonkus]

Is it some games or all games ?

[gizmo]

thanks for your reply i have not checked all games but i just looked at the first 30 roms and all that i looked as was black screen when trying to play them thanks again for your help and advice

[Lordmonkus]

Are your roms in zip file or extracted into their bin files ?

[Zombeaver]

So I noticed something in your screenshot... why does the rom file name say "2600 1.00 Files.log"? That seems wrong... I'd have to double check when I get home but I'm fairly certain all my 2600 roms are zipped.

[SentaiBrad]

They should be .a26 files or in a zip / 7zip, but zipping these will not save you any decent amount of space, so unless you find them pre-zipped and don't feel like taking them all out (which is easy anyways), you don't need to make them zipped. .log is not a propre file extension for any emulator.

[gizmo]

many thanks for your replys the roms seem to be in 7zip format if it makes any difference i have taken out the log files

[gizmo]

hi what i have noticed is that when i found the games there was 570 if i unzip them then i will get 2,500 but they will play if i unzip them but not if i keep them zipped , the problem is that after i unzip the games i seem to get around 4 of each game is there a reason for this thanks

[DOS76]

Yeah thats why the archive doesn't work. I had Sega Master System games like that I believe it may have been from a good set and it contained everything including multiple hacks bad dumps revisions it was a mess.

[gizmo]

thanks for your reply is there any way i can tell if a rom set is good or not , thanks

[DOS76]

Good sets are just a name like no intro or TOSEC they just include all of the junk rom dumps and endless duplicates I would just not download any Good Sets I know I never will again.

[Zombeaver]

Aaaand this is why I curate all of my stuff. Beyond the fact that I don't need Mary Kate and Ashley games clogging up my library, I'd just as soon not deal with all this mess. I take the same approach with my physical game library - I've never understood the "I need them all!" collecting mentality. I have a fairly sizable collection, but I want every inch of my finite amount of shelf space to be occupied by games that I actually want to play. They're self-contained nuggets of entertainment, not Pokemon. I see no reason not to take that same approach to an emulated library - the fact that the shelf is significantly larger doesn't make Mary Kate and Ashley games any more appealing. You're also placing greater strain on LB/BB for content that you're never going to touch. /non-helpful rant To each their own, but I'm a big proponent of a hand-picked (curated) library. It's generally more time consuming (though you don't have to deal with the deluge of duplicates like you have now) and requires more effort, but I think it's worth it in the long run. I know that I can pick literally anything at random and it'll be worth playing. I'm probably in the minority in this view though...

[DOS76]

I'm hoping to preserve my archive for my entire life so I view data storage as an infinite and growing thing that I'll be investing in forever hopeful some of the futuristic storage methods @Cadet Stimpy posted about will become affordable in the near future.

[SentaiBrad]

Zombeaver Curating your games is a very good idea, and I do it too, but the No-Intro set doesn't give you bad dumps, hacked dumps, trainer dumps and all those extra duplicates. It at least gives you a cleaner starting point for a curated library. Gizmo, if you grab an Atari 2600 No-Intro Set, you'll have far less copies of a game. You'll still want to delete games you don't want but you'll be better off.

[Zombeaver]

@DOS76 I understand that to a point. I think that emulation in general is important from the perspective of the preservation of all games (even the bad ones) for future generations - eventually all our physical copies will fail, without exception, so emulation is the only reliable/feasible way to preserve that data for the future. I've tried to explain this to people on r/gamecollecting which I frequent quite a bit, and, perhaps predictably, people typically just jump on the "PIRACY. YOU JUST WANT FREE GAMES. HISS." bandwagon. Anyone who took even a brief look at my shelf would be fully aware that it's not about "wanting free games" for me. To me it's just being responsible and practical, given that I'm aware enough to know that everything on that shelf will eventually break down, even if it's after my lifetime. There's actually a really interesting article I read on this topic a while back that's worth checking out if you get the time. With that said, I view all of that as a separate issue/entity from my personal collection, both physical and emulated. To me, those are purely for my own entertainment and there's nothing entertaining about sifting through a gigantic pile of crap to find something worthwhile. I just recently hit 250 PSX titles in my physical collection - it's my favorite console of all time and I think it has an amazing library, but even if I had literally everything that I would ever want, the final tally would be about 350 titles... out of a library of 2000+ games. And again...that's for a system that I think has a particularly good library. There's a ton of utter garbage/shovelware out there for every console (even the better ones) and I just have no desire to have any of those occupying any of my space, whether physical or digital. Basically, I think it's good to preserve all of this data for the future (and if I actually had storage space that was effectively unlimited, I would already be doing it), but that perspective doesn't have any impact on my personal game library, because that's just for me. Sorry, wasn't trying to derail the thread... DOS, we should probably continue this elsewhere haha. I think it's a pretty interesting topic. EDIT: @SentaiBrad That's fair, though even then I'd still end up with more stuff being deleted than kept haha

[SentaiBrad]

I covered emulation preserveration on RSS previously too. I did a story on this: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/how-the-demonization-of-emulation-devalues-gamings-heritage/

[Zombeaver]

SentaiBrad said I covered emulation preserveration on RSS previously too. I did a story on this: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/how-the-demonization-of-emulation-devalues-gamings-heritage/

Cool! I'll definitely check it out. I think it's a shame how it's developed this stigma of just being about "free stuff!" If you talk to the developers of any number of different emulators and even peripheral applications like Launchbox, people who spend hours and months and years on these projects, I doubt even one of them is going to tell you "I did this cause I wanted to play games for free!" People need to realize that this stuff is vital for the preservation of the art that all of us love and are so passionate about, even if that only comes to fruition years after we're all gone.

[DOS76]

Absolutely right it is vital for preservation since the industry basically is unwilling to make sure the games are preserved because that goes against their bottom line. Nintendo excluded because they seem to be the only one with vision enough to see retro games as a market unless you count Steam who from what I read here offers a myriad of older games for various platforms.

[gizmo]

many thanks for your replys so is it best to find No-Intro Sets all the time across the board thanks

[SentaiBrad]

Yes, No-Intro sets win every single time. Get them every single time if it's available. If a No-Intro set doesn't exist I use Tosec Set's as my second go to. I never try to get Full Sets anymore, ever.