Racing the Beam : the Atari Video Computer System - Index of

It gives computer users the ability to play VCS games, once the ROM
images for those games have been acquired. (These are fi les that are generally
2K, 4K, or 8K in size and that contain all the data that was stored in
the original cartridges.) Downloading Stella does not provide the user
with authentic controllers, of course, or supply one’s computer with a
wood-grain fi nish.
A commercial emulator is provided in the Atari Anthology, which collects
many coin-op games along with its VCS titles. 2 Among these are the
arcade game Asteroids. Modern plasma and LCD high-defi nition televisions
(HDTVs) have no electron beam and thus are not capable of drawing
a picture in the same way as it would have been seen on an early VCS
display—and certainly not on the XY graphics display of a game such as
Asteroids. However, they can display pictures at very high resolution. The
Atari Anthology port was able to capture some of the high-resolution nature
of Asteroids by converting it to HD. As of this writing, Atari Anthology is the
only title for the original Xbox that supports 1080i HD resolution.
The toy company Jakks Pacifi c has produced a “television game” joystick
and a set of paddles that plug directly into a TV and contain a selection
of games. The Jakks units recreate the physical interfaces to the Atari
VCS, which the Atari Anthology does not do, but they offer reimplemented
rather than emulated games.
A good combination of controllers and authentic game function is
provided in Atari’s Flashback 2, released in 2005 with forty built-in games
and two detachable joysticks. This is the most recent hardware implementation
of the Atari VCS to be mass-manufactured. The system was
designed by Curt Vendel, who also runs the Atari History Museum. It lacks
a cartridge port, although it is possible (if not extremely practical) to
undertake a hardware modifi cation and add one. The Flashback 2 mimics
the appearance of the fi rst model of the Atari VCS and includes a faithful
implementation of the original VCS board, all on a single low-cost chip.
Another way that VCS games live on is through lower-powered, lowerresolution
devices. In the recent past this has meant platforms such as the
Nintendo Game Boy Color; today, the more desirable targets are mobile
phones. The outcomes of cell phone ports are usually poor. Incompatible
interfaces are one reason—users control mobile devices differently than
arcade cabinets or home consoles. But the difference in graphics systems
is an even more severe problem.
The element of the Atari VCS that stands out when the system is held
up to other platforms is the TIA. Even if the machine had been built with
a different processor, or had been shipped with controls of some different
design, the constraints of the TIA—two sound channels, the line-by-line
8 After the Crash [141]