Theme 1 – Nostalgic affection for Atari 2600 games
- “I think that most people who once loved this game moved on from videogames a long time ago.” — glimshe
- “As a kid I found the gameplay for most Atari 2600 games so shallow I could barely stand to play a game more than a few minutes… except for Combat. Man with two players, that was fun.” — pupppet
- “Combat was great fun though because you could ‘curve’ the bullets!” — vunderba
Theme 2 – Generational divide: Atari 2600 fails to hook younger players, NES as a turning point
- “I feel like NES is pretty much the dividing line of what you can get younger people interested in.” — sixothree
- “Having introduced my younger siblings, who grew up with much later systems like the PS3 and Nintendo Switch, I would have to agree with this statement. The Atari 2600 is pretty graphically primitive.” — vunderba
- “Like almost all games on the Atari, it won't interest the younger generations for more than a few minutes.” — glimshe
Theme 3 – Distinctive feel and technical accomplishment despite hardware limits
- “I think it holds up well enough. These older games that implement their controls well have a ‘feel’ distinct to their respective console that's hard to get anywhere else.” — sublinear
- “The NES sort of cheats in a sense, because the cartridges themselves could include onboard chips like the MMC3/5 that extended the capabilities of the original NES, stretching its lifetime far further.” — vunderba
- “The cartridge rebuilt from the original ROM, one instruction at a time.” — plicerin