After 30 Years, You Can Now Pause Atari 2600 Games
by Stephen Kelley, posted on 04 July 2010 / 1,567 Views
For those old enough to have played the Atari 2600 in its heyday know one of its biggest limitations – the lack of a pause feature. Any sort of marathon session of gaming required actual endurance, stamina, and even a pair of soiled pants to complete as most games did not have any sort of voluntary rest period. 30 years later this fact has changed as some kind home brewers have developed a “pause kit” of sorts:
“AtariAge offers their fully assembled pause kit for a mere $20. You have to do just a little soldering yourself for final installation, but the reward is that you can pause practically any 2600 game. The screen will go blank, or maybe show video garbage, but your game is in a sort of electronic cryo until you unpause.”
The project was based off of a Brazilian Atari 2600 knock off called Onyx Jr. Victor Trucco, the head of the project, basically ripped one of them apart and reverse engineered the pause feature to work on all Atari 2600 games. No word on its workings with later Atari consoles, but I bet it will be addressed.
Click here to see the Atari Age page for this item
Click here for the creator's website
