DON'T GET RIPPED OFF: Flash Carts

This week, I humbly present to you another installment of my series, Don't Get Ripped Off!, in which I give you my best advice regarding things to spend your hard-earned money on. This week, I discuss flash carts, a range of ingenious devices that are definitely on the must-have list for any hardcore nerd.

Extreme Flash Advance, a Game Boy Advance flash cart, with a USB cable plugged in.

Flash carts are flash memory devices, similar to those USB storage devices found on keychains everywhere. Instead of plugging into your computer's USB slot, however, however, these devices plug into your vintage game console. This enables you to plug in your flash cart to your computer via a special cable, load up whatever game or program you like, then play it on a real, live, physical console. Neat, huh?

Flash carts are primarily used by programmers wishing to test their games during the development process, but they're also tremendously useful for gamers who want the authentic experience of a game console with the convenience of an emulator. There is a staggering variety of flash carts available online from online retailers like Amazon.com and eBay; most are made in China and are of poor quality. The most common ones are made for the Nintendo Game Boy Advance and DS.

Atarimax Ultimate SD, for the ColecoVision (also Atari 2600 compatible).

Generally speaking here, the more expensive units are the best. A 512mb GBA cartridge can cost as much as $200, but it's probably not necessary to spend that much, as most games are relatively small in size and need very little memory. Nevertheless, expect to pay at least $100 for a new unit; consider any price lower than this to be suspicious. Used carts are cheaper, but since flash memory has a limited number of read/write cycles, they will likely fail earlier. Some flash carts are actually memory card adapters, which are simply an adapter for a memory card (like an SD or CompactFlash card) built into a cartridge. These should be avoided like the plague. With a few exceptions that I list below, these adapters are unauthorized Chinese-made copies and are very flimsy and unreliable.

Flash carts for consoles other than the GBA and DS do exist, but are generally boutique items and not commonly offered for sale. Below are a few I've found to be well-recommended:

• The Atarimax Ultimate SD is an SD card adapter for the ColecoVision console. It includes a 32mb SD card and a high-speed bankswitching card that can handle very large games (up to 512K). Made by Steven J. Tucker and available now online.
• The Harmony Cartridge is an SD card adapter for the Atari 2600. It is currently in development, though the creator is taking orders on the product's website. It includes a 2gb SD card and a USB cable for connection to a PC or Macintosh.
• The Cuttlecart is another Atari 2600 flash cart produced by Schell Electronics. Versions were also created for the Atari 7800 and Intellivision. All are long discontinued and quite dated (Windows compatibility only, requires a serial cable). It is, however, very reliable, and occasionally pops up for sale on eBay.

If anyone finds other flash carts they'd like to recommend, please comment and let us know! Happy hunting, and remember: caveat emptor...

Halo for Atari 2600?

No, you aren't hallucinating - this really is Halo, the unbelievably successful video game series that debuted on the XBox in 2001 and has since exploded into perhaps the most successful video game franchise of the 21st century so far. But this certainly isn't Halo as you've ever seen it before. While the original Halo series is a complex, high-tech shoot-em-up with a focus on intense naturalism and realism, this version somewhat resembles Lego bricks playing field hockey on a broken computer screen. But that's part of the charm of playing the venerable old Atari 2600.

For those not born during the Kennedy administration, the Atari 2600 is the granddaddy of video game consoles, the machine that started it all. In its heyday, it was the most successful toy ever created, and its parent company, Atari, was the Apple Computer of its time. (Steve Jobs was a lowly employee there early in his career.) Yet, barely fifteen years after their meteoric rise, a changing marketplace and a series of colossal failures led Atari to bite the silicon dust. Today, the name is nothing more than a trademark, floating around the corporate world like a digital ghost.

Nevertheless, the Atari 2600 lives on. Thanks to many enterprising coders with an appreciation for finely aged bits 'n bytes, several dozen new games a year are being programmed by hobbyists. With no big corporate bosses to tell them what to do, these games are more inventive and audacious than Atari could have ever dreamed of. And, since more than 30 million Atari 2600 consoles were sold, playing one is as easy as looking around Craigslist, eBay, or your mom's attic.

The genius of the Atari 2600 is its accessibility. The controller is a single joystick with one button. The graphics make your little brother's Game Boy look like a nuclear supercomputer. But it's this stone-age simplicity that makes the Atari 2600 so beautiful. The technical limitations of this machine meant that programmers can't rely on flashy extras, like blood or cutscenes or voice actors or fancy animation. They've got to focus on gameplay - making the experience of playing quick, engaging, and rewarding. 

Which brings us to Halo 2600. This game is speedier than crack, and even more addictive. This two-dimensional shooter plays very similarly to the arcade classic Bezerk!, but with many notable twists, including several different types of enemies, upgradeable weapons, and shields which can be acquired to protect the player from shots. Although the graphics are simple, they're very effective, and it's incredible the variety and detail the programmer, Ed Fries, has packed into this tiny little 128K cartridge.

Ed Fries is the former vice-president of publishing at Microsoft, and one of the people who first brought the Halo series into existence. He's also a veteran of the late-70s/early-80s video game industry, and a former Atari programmer. In his free time, he decided to bring his programming skills back to life, and wrote a version of his XBox masterpiece for the 30-year-old Atari. The result is a  weird, surreal, and astonishingly fun mixture of past and present - a cross between primitive and cutting-edge.

If you don't have access to an Atari 2600 console, you can still play Halo 2600 online. Ed's been kind enough to create a version in JavaScript: just visit Ed's webpage to play. A warning: if you start playing, you probably won't be doing anything productive for the next hour or so.