Best Atari System/ handheld games on Cab's

[SirStupidQuestion]

1.I was just wondering if people have had success with using Atari 5200 or 7800 emulators on their cabs? I currently have the 2600 installed but the 5200 had a joystick with so many buttons does it play well to an arcade cab? Does the 7800 work well? Does there exist lists of games that don't use the whole keypad thing?

2.Can you really play Game Boy,Game Gear, and Lynx games on your cab? Does it play well in the larger screen (my monitor is 19")?

The reason I ask is that I am using Hyperspin and it takes quite a bit of time to setup each system and would rather not waste the time if it doesn't play well nor look good?  I am a noobie looking for some veteran advice.

thank you for your responses.

[SavannahLion]

I'll vouch only for the consoles that I own(ed) and tried in an emulator. (I have never really seen the need to try the older 2600/5200/7800 games in an emulator, if anything I would rather try the XE or later series).

I found very few GG games of interest worth playing in an emulator. Largely because I feel that many of the GG games have much better counterparts in their home console or arcade versions that the effort of dealing with, what is essentially, a trimmed down version of the game not worth it. If anything, opt for the SMS or Genie versions of these games, but that brings up a different point.....

The Lynx has a few "exclusive" titles that I feel are worth playing or at least taking a look at. I wasted many hours as a kid playing games like Zarlor Mercenary, Kid Viking, Todd's Adventures in Slime World and Gauntlet: The Third Encounter (which still stands as one of my preferred iterations of the series). There are also a number of fan made games still being released, but I don't know if you can find them in ROM format. AtariAge would be the place to check for that. However, the Lynx screen is anemic at best and the games are going to look like utter ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- on a big monitor. It does, trust me. You can make it look somewhat reasonably nice but ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- is still ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- no matter how much you cover it in candy. Believe me, I'm a big fan of the handheld. But if you've got the 2600 going, the Lynx can't possibly look worse than that. So it might be worth a try for you

The B&W Gameboy games seem to play alright. I think it helps that they're B&W and they seem to scale better. I haven't really tried the color games outside of the Pokemon games and I'm not a big fan of the game series so... YMMV.

That brings me to my last point... why?

I'm a firm believer in the camp that desk games, couch games, portable games and arcade games belong squarely on the target they're created for. As much as I try to engross myself in it, I find it difficult to play console games unless I'm reclining in a big comfy couch and a controller in my sweaty hands. Something similar goes for portable gaming. Arcade games need to be wrapped in a big wood (or whatever) box surrounded by other people.

That's just me, do what you want really.

[Cynicaster]

I'm a firm believer in the camp that desk games, couch games, portable games and arcade games belong squarely on the target they're created for. As much as I try to engross myself in it, I find it difficult to play console games unless I'm reclining in a big comfy couch and a controller in my sweaty hands. Something similar goes for portable gaming. Arcade games need to be wrapped in a big wood (or whatever) box surrounded by other people.

That's just me, do what you want really.

Well said, I totally agree. 

My original plan was to set up all the old console emulators on my cabinet, but several months in I still haven't done it and now have no desire to do so.  For me, the "experience" of a game goes far beyond the game play itself; in particular, the style of controls is hugely important.  I started out playing MAME with a control pad sitting at my computer desk.  While that was cool for a quick glance at some old games, it just wasn't all that fun.  Now that I have a cabinet up and running, I can (and do) play it for hours straight no problem.  It's weird how that works.

[Vigo]

I personally would skip the 5200. There were only a handful of games that came out for it, and most all of them came out on different platforms, usually arcade games as well, so there was a better version out there anyway. 7800 should be easier to setup, but still somewhat suffers the same issue of having a small library without too many unique games. I skipped both of them, and focused on setting up the commodore 64 with the games I wanted. The c64 is a very time consuming setup, though.

You can look at the list of 7800 games and see if there are any "must have" games.

As for handhelds, they all do work and are at least watchable. I personally found that most handhelds do not have enough unique games to make it worthwhile. For Game Gear, just get the Sega Master system and Genesis roms and you are set, you won't be missing a thing. The gameboy has only a few unique games that could make it worth it, such as Metroid 2, and a handful of Zelda games. They are not games I generally want to play standing at an arcade machine, though.

I found that I do end up playing gameboy advance games. If you get used to the very large text size, the games actually often turn out looking almost near to SNES quality, and there are plenty of unique games for the GBA.

[JODY]

If I was going to do only one Atari system in a cab it would be the 8-bit computers (e.g. 400/800 1200XL, etc.).  The graphics are very similar to the 5200/7800 but there are many more games available.