I guess you had to grow up playing those games to get some sort of nostalgic value out of them. I've played the 2600, and basically all the games on it that I tried were pretty crappy.
I was like 5 or 6 when I had my Atari, so my standars were pretty fucking low back then. But I do remember playing my brother for hours on combat. Just two planes or tanks in a square room shooting at each other.