Secret Agent

Prototype ROM
Unreleased Commercially
Reproductions sold at CGE 2001
Owner and dumper unknown.

Here's a good example of why ROM dumping is not harmful to future "sales" of a cart. Secret Agent is (well, seems to be) a completed game from Data Age that never got to the store shelves. The ROM dump was made available on the internet long ago, and has been on almost every single Atari 2600 ROM site ever since. In 2001, Atari2600.com made up reproduction copies of this game to put up for sale at the Classic Gaming Expo 2001. Guess what ROM hoarders - every single copy of this game sold. No matter what you think, sharing a game with the public will not "de-value" your original cartridge, it's still the only original in existence. And in fact, if you're never planning on selling the game, why would you be so concerned about value anyway?
Secret Agent is a simple game that uses the paddle controllers. It works kind of like a reverse Breakout - instead of using the character on the bottom to riccocet the falling objects back up to the top, you collect them instead, while avoiding the dangerous objects like falling hand grenades and the like. When the audible tone sounds, you dump your collected goodies into one of the waiting speedboats and then continue. A note to anyone using Stella for the Macintosh on this one - you have to update your stella.pro file in order to get the controls on this game working.
Not a bad little game by any stretch of the imagination. While it's not the most exciting game in the world, it's still a fun game to play. It's easy to see why Atari2600.com picked this game to reproduce copies of - it's complete, it's easy to play, and it's fun to boot! Give it a shot, but remember to update your stella.pro file if you haven't done that recently...

Please see our Legal Notice regarding the downloading of roms