I was browsing a few Atari sites recently casually reading about the old hardware – yes, even after all these years I still get a geeky buzz from digesting the old hardware specs. I think it stems from those 80s days when reading about what was under the bonet of new hardware was just as exciting as reading about new games. Anyway…as I gazed through some of the 8 bit stuff I found a link to an online Atari 7800 Emulator. Now that’s not a bad idea I thought to myself, I’ve got various emulators on my PC that support 7800 but the thought of one online, playable in a web browser is awesome.
The history of the 7800 is well documented, and in recent years I’ve come to appreciate my purchase of one back in the early 1990s. I still have it complete with the original box, which was bought by chance from of all places a newsagent in the town of March, Cambridgeshire, back when Sensible had offices there. I hadn’t been working there long and was heavily into my consoles so when I happened to gaze apon a stack of them in of all places a newsagents I couldn’t resist! Back then the internet was the stuff of Sci-Fi and I had no idea what this machine was, there may of been the odd article in one of the gaming mags of the day but I don’t recall ever seeing anything about it so I took a punt and bought one. The cost? I think it was £59.99 with a few games too if I recall. I came out with the machine and good stash of games to go with it including some 2600 titles to play seeing as it was advertised as being VCS compatible. Nice!
All my excitement was soon quashed after I hooked it up to my TV, the picture was awful! When I say awful it was to my mind unusable. Given the resolution and the colours this machine was capable of why oh why was it only able to use a TV via an RF cable! Come on, I know cutting costs was a thing at Atari but really? A single composite video out would have been nice, a full RGB output via a SCART lead would have been better but RF only… Oh dear!
Thankfully these days you can mod them to kick out a decent AV signal but back then it was simply a case of like it or lump it. I had to lump it so my initial impression of the machine was very tainted to say the least.
While I think of it, CTRL+ALT+REES put up a great video showing one such modern mod you can do to these machines and it totally transforms it from being unusable to actually a nice bit of kit. Check his video out.
One of the cool things about the console is Atari included a game , not as a cartridge but actually built in to the machine itself. Handy!
The game is a version of Asteroids which ain’t ‘arf bad, it’s nice and colourful and despite the awful controllers plays pretty well too. I used to play the VCS version years back on my mate Paul’s 2600 and this was a decent enough update to the game.
If you have ever used a non-modded 7800 you will have no doubt spent time twiddling with the TV tuner in hope that the picture will improve, but more often you would have either a better picture with ear piercing interference on the sound or better sound with a display that would provide instant eye strain. What a shame eh?
I’ve gone right off at a tengent so as I was meant to be saying, there’s a cool emulator online which works well. You can’t beat real hardware but sometimes it’s nice to just see what it’s all about so why not via your web browser.
It’s not bad! And if you have some ROMS available it will permit you to load those in too. Nice!
