Check those difficulty switches before you chuck a 2600 game!

I had bought a copy of Kool-Aid Man for Atari 2600, but it stuck on a frozen screen whenever it turned on. I assumed the cart was bad.

Then I found another copy, and it had the exact same problem. So I got suspicious.

I checked the instructions on atariage, and it turns out that the left Difficulty-switch is used as a pause button. In position A, the game is freezed, and in position B, the game is run normally.

So if you boot the game up with the left difficulty in position A, the game is stuck in a frozen mode. You have to boot up with position B.

Luckily I never throw anything away, and still had the other copy as well.

On a similar note, I got Commando Raid, and thought it was frozen too. Turned out that in order to start the game, you have to press Up on the joystick. This is of course unlike every other game where you either hit the Reset button or the fire button.
 
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