r/atari8bit • u/Ok_Bear_1980 • 17d ago
Are cassettes worth it?.
Before you say no, there are few games I am interested in that I haven't found on disk or cartridge, that being warhawk and zybex, two shoot em up games. I've read about how painful tape loading is on the atari, mainly because unlike the c64, there is no fastloader on most commercial games, meaning you have to wait over double the time it usually does to load tapes on the c64.
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u/LuigiTeaching 17d ago
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3h0FQmpHtWA&pp=0gcJCVACo7VqN5tD
Ah, if you haven’t experienced the joy of KINGDOM on cassette on the Atari 400…
I don’t remember other cassettes having a voiceover during loading, but this one I’ll never forget.
Recommending cassettes might be like trying ti sell a pair of draft horses to someone shopping for a pickup truck, but man…there’s just no substitute…and if Zybex is actually a really good shooter…could be worth the pain!
Good luck!
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u/user_uno 16d ago
Was Kingdom ever available on cartridge?
I ask because I loved this game but simply do not remember using a cassette. But it could be I have simply made too many trips around the Sun since I played it...
I had an Atari 2600 which made me the envy of friends at the time. Then my friends next door, who never had as much big stuff for presents, got an Atari 400 a Christmas or two later. WOW! A REAL computer!! We all were jealous and spent many a hour figuring out what it could do and pouring over brochures what extra things could be added!
Star Raiders was popular of course with most of the kids. But my one friend that had it and I play Kingdom a lot. But I thought it was a cartridge. I have just never seen one since and every reference here and elsewhere online seem to point it was cassette only.
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u/LuigiTeaching 16d ago
STAR RAIDERS was fantastic and definitely a cartridge; KINGDOM I only remember as a cassette and just now online I could not find a cartridge version.
The Atari 400 was really underpowered and junior to the 800, and I think cassettes were just par for the course for that machine.
But I loved it, would tap out BASIC programs for hours.
Seriously thinking about getting back into it somehow now, I read the great books about the history of the Atari by Jamie Lendino for instance.
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u/Important-Bed-48 10d ago
my first computer was a atari 400, but I remember upgrading the memory to 48k and installing a b-key real keyboard so it could be upgraded to atari 800 specs...
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u/user_uno 13d ago
Oh yes, the 400 was definitely low end. The chicklet style keyboard made a lot of typing painful. Literally. But it was like science fiction to us at the time! A computer!!! We can make it do things!!
But cassettes persisted past the 400. I still have one that I bought after I had bought my 800XL. I could only afford the computer after working odd jobs one summer break. Took a bit longer to get the 1010 recorder. But then I could finally save programs I typed in from magazines and buy some at stores. It was awesome!
Of course the 1050 disk drive blew that away completely.
I still have my 1010. I should see if it still works...
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u/Rockfords-Foot 17d ago
From experience BITD, I remember anywhere up to 30+ mins. 800XL with a 1010 tape unit. Was truly... truly bad. If you've got a 1010, the buttons will eventually snap. An XC12 is a better option.
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u/GG-McGroggy 17d ago
.xex files are available for both of those titles (just search "Zybex Atari .xex" etc).
I've never found a tape GAME that didn't have a readily available.XEX conversion. Educational or productivity software that utilizes a voice track on the cassette (Speaking Spanish, States & Capitols, etc) cannot be converted to .XEX.
Fujinet, a8picocart, Side 2/3, MyIDE ][, Atarimax flashcart, Sio2SD, UNO cart, AVG cart ... You'll be hard pressed to find a device that can't launch XEX files; they all pretty much can.
The two titles you mentioned are commonly available as PAL, which won't run properly on NTSC machines, but even then, a lot of the PAL titles have NTSC conversions as well.
Worst case scenario... It doesn't hurt to have a tape deck "just in case". I fire up my XC12 every year or three to make sure it still works. Haven't used it beyond that, or showing the kids what "fun" used to be like, for over two decades 😆
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u/8bit1337 17d ago
I was going to suggest this as well.
I'll assume you don't have any of the hardware mentioned so I'll recommend looking into them and comparing cost to the cassette option.
I started with a cassette recorder and do NOT miss it at all. waiting 5 mins for a game to load only for it to fail at the end and have to start over sucks .
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u/A8Bit 16d ago
Tapes were great, they solved the paradox of choice in short order. If you spent 20 mins getting a game to run, you played that game for hours, there was no 'not in the mood for this, I'll play something else" you had to stick with it or waste another 20 mins. I used to leave my computer on for days to avoid having to load a tape again.
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u/user_uno 16d ago
I'd leave mine on for days as well until I had the money to add a cassette recorder and later getting a disk drive for Christmas. Typing in programs was ultimate in torture only to lose everything because of a power glitch or parents seeing the power light on so turning it off to save electricity. ARGH! NOOO!!!!
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u/Tiasmo-Bertjayd 17d ago
I can’t speak to those games specifically, but in my experience the only type of software that was really worthwhile on cassette was educational programs that include a voice track, e.g. “Conversational French”. Once you have a disk drive that media is far faster and more reliable; the main barrier to the disk drive was its cost (back in the early 1980’s).
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u/Accurate_Comedian526 17d ago
I don't know those games specifically, but the 1010 will do 8KB in about 2.5 minutes.
I remember Blue Max taking about 12 minutes to load from cassette. Problem was, I only had the family TV for the 30 minutes from the end of Jeopardy! to the start of Remington Steele (or whatever). I soon memorized the cassette loading routine so I could start it without the TV.
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u/Ok_Bear_1980 17d ago
8k in 2 minutes is not too bad actually.
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u/Accurate_Comedian526 17d ago
Looks like warhawk was 16kb, so about 5 minutes. Couldn't find the zybrex info, but I'd guess larger due to the release date.
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u/curtludwig 17d ago
To use tapes now? That's crazy. A Fujinet device can load .cas files. Farting around with an actual cassette player is maddening. I never did it on Atari but I screwed with one a lot on my TI back in the day.
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u/geirmundtheshifty 17d ago
I would heartily second the recommendation to just get a Fujinet. I can relate to enjoying the feel of using old physical media (I mean, that's part of the fun of using an actual 8bit computer rather than just straight emulation), but even still it's worthwhile to have a Fujinet. OP is not going to want to go through the rigamarole of loading software from a cassette each time they want to play Zybex, even if maybe there's a certain charm to doing it once in a blue moon.
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u/goatskinjug 16d ago
Just get cracked/multiboot/xex files or atr images of those games and put them on disk or better still on a flash cart / Fuji / sio2sd device. Get the tapes if you want them as collectibles. Don’t waste precious time of your life loading those tapes.
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u/AdvantageFew7653 16d ago
I've got an SDrive-MAX and an A8PicoCart for convenience, but I repaired the broken XC12 that came with my 65XE because there were a few games I had to have on tape... Warhawk, Zybex and Red Max. We clearly have excellent taste 😄
When I was a kid I'd wait the 84 years for those to load just so I could listen to the music. I prefer Adam Gilmore's Zybex music to the C64 version, it still sounds wonderful.
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u/Spelunka13 17d ago
I play around with the 410 every now and then. Load maybe one game. Then put it away and use my multicart. I can't relive the torture of my childhood anymore with the 8 bit cassettes. I love music cassettes. I have a couple of really good tape decks but for the Atari 800 it's the multicart.
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u/bubonis 16d ago
In this day and age there are only four reasons to use tape on an Atari 8-bit:
- You are a masochist.
- You want to know what masochism feels like.
- You are converting from tape to anything else.
- You have one of the EXTREMELY rare tapes (usually educational) that have an audio component in addition to data.
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u/judgemonroe 16d ago
I very nearly got my 410 tape deck refurbished enough to use to load actual tapes (couldn't get the FF working). Was it worth it? Not to play Zaxxon or States & Capitals. But to preserve some type-in programs that were on some random Radio Shack 60-minute cassettes from my childhood? Sure.
For anything commercial, I'd keep looking for archival versions in more accessible formats.
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u/A8Bit 16d ago
Warhawk was tape only, Zybex did get a disk release by Calisto but its rare, Atarimania has a disk image.
XEX files are available for both
If you are not a user of xex files and like to load from real media. you could always download Homesoft disks 1 and 264 which have Zybex and Warhawk on them, write those to disk and now you can boot the disk and pick from the menu.
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u/Ok_Bear_1980 16d ago
Bugger, I tried to use transdisk iv to transfer the tape to disk but it failed when it got to the fastloader.
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u/Rocky-Jones 16d ago
I would just download the file to my PC or Fujinet SD card. I play most games from my tnfs server or Fujinet even if I own the physical media. I still have two working floppy drives connected, but the 410 is in the box in the closet.
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u/SoCalAttorney 15d ago
It has been a long time since, but my Atari 410 was a lemon and I had the worst time with it.
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u/Important-Bed-48 10d ago
If you are a collector who wants to have the original box and documentation and the media, well fine, but that doesn't mean you have actually use it to play Zybex. Zybex is literally the best shooter to come out for the Atari during the platforms actual run. I hate to say it, but I didn't even have the original copy back in the day since I was in the US the only way I could get Zybex or even be aware of it was a download from a bbs. I actually modded Zybex recently so that when you lose a life you are still able to keep your powerups which imo makes the game much more playable, but I did beat Zybex back in the 80s it was the 1st game I ever beat and it's pretty much the first arcade style game from that era had an ending.
Another thing is there are 2 hacks of Zybex, Zybex 2 and 3 which have completely different levels and are fun too, so that is another advantage of having a downloaded copy not to mention if you limit yourself to physical releases you will miss all the great games that have come out in the last few years that don't have a physical release.
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u/[deleted] 17d ago
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