#atariage

[atariforce]

2600 Defender Arcade Art no2 by Atariboy2600

[darker-than-darkstorm]

Dammit.

One of my favorite sites, Atari Age, has just been bought out by Atari SA itself. One of the last bastions of the Old Internet (it's been around since 1998, and I've been signed up with them since 2005), a site made by fans for fans, is now just another part of a faceless corporate entity. There's already an Atari employee there as an admin and moderator, and the site's founder's replies all stink of corporate double-speak already.

And what really galls me is that there only seems to be a tiny handful of people on the site who feel the same way I do. The rest of them are "Congratulations on selling out! Yay, corporate overlords!"

On Reddit, when I try to voice my concerns, I just get "no sweaty,you don't understand why it's the best thing ever for the site :) :) :) :) :)" as a response, and when I ask them *how* it's a good thing, they just keep ":)"-ing at me instead of explaining.

Am I just Old Man Yelling At Cloud here?

[viciogame]

🎮 Princess Rescue (Atari 2600)

Complete Gameplay: https://youtu.be/gfHX8sH5IYE

#PrincessRescue #Atari2600 #Sprybug #AtariAge #Mario #Atari #SuperMario #SuperMarioBros #ChrisSpry #MarioBros #VCS #SuperMarioWorld #homebrew #Nintendo #Viciogame #Gameplay #Walkthrough #Playthrough #Longplay #LetsPlay #Game #Videogames #Games

[lavisiondefranjogutierrez]

KOF98 - AtariAge by FranjoGutierrez

Hi, if you want to see the full image, please visit the Neo Geo thread in the great AtariAge Community. Below the link.

[ultimacodex]

Boxed Copies of "Penult" Are Now Available via AtariAge

Boxed Copies of "Penult" Are Now Available via AtariAge Boxed copies of "Penult", an "Ultima"-inspired game for the Atari 2600, are now available.

As mentioned a couple months ago, Penult — Karl Garrison’s Ultima-inspired RPT for the Atari 2600 — made its debut at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo with a limited collection of boxed copies of the game. Happily, if you didn’t manage to grab one in Portland, additional physical copies of the game are now available for pre-order from AtariAge. It should be noted that it may take a while for your…

[mrmegamanfan]

Atari VCS becomes Linux PC!

[vintage-tech]

The big announcement of the day is

that a couple days ago someone was searching through a VMS/VAX tape backup from 1983 of a computer that had been in Atari's coin-op division, when they found...

...a previously unknown Atari 2600 game named 'Fish'.

No one knows for sure who the programmer was, or whether this was something official or just a fun project someone was working on (since this was not found in the home console division).

But I'm here to tell you it is freaking amazing. I've thrown the ROM at every emulator I have (Stella 7 on the PC, StellaDS on the Nintendo DS, Dingux Stella on the Dingoo A-320 handheld, and of course the Atari Flashback Portable) and it plays in all of them.

Where to get the ROM as a .bin [AtariAge] A review and instructions thus figured out [AtariProtos]

[postgamecontent]

‘Atari 50: The First Console War’ DLC Switch Review

The second paid DLC has arrived for Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration. The First Console War adds a new timeline to the story, along with nineteen additional games. It tells the tale of what Atari suggests is the first console war, when Mattel's Intellivision came at the Atari 2600 very aggressively. There was competition in the space before, but I suppose the case can be made that the position of this particular battle makes it feel more like a "war" than what came before. As usual, there are some interviews with various people including developers from the era, along with a bunch of other materials to look at.

The interview content is quite good, as we have come to expect from these Digital Eclipse offerings. There are a few people from Intellivision, David Crane and Gary Kitchen of ex-Activision fame chime in, and a few other familiar faces like Mike Mika and AtariAge Albert pop up as well. It feels more than a little tilted in favor of making Atari look good and it gives the impression of a look from the outside, but this is Atari 50 after all. In general, there isn't quite as much behind-the-scenes material to enjoy here as we saw in previous timelines, and in the end it comes off a little thin. I wasn't as satisfied with the story here as I was with those of the previous timelines.

I think the biggest issue here is that for all the talking about Intellivision that this timeline does, no actual Intellivision games are playable here. I suspect Atari might be saving that content for a separate Intellivision-themed collection, but how much more interesting would it be if we could directly jump in and compare those football games after seeing George Plimpton talk about them? This is a good, if one-sided, overview of this console war, but the interactive element that was so strong in previous timelines feels a bit lacking due to the omission of one half of the topic. It's also a little odd that a number of the newly added games don't pop up in any timelines at all.

As for the games, we're going to do the usual thing. That’s right: it’s quick thoughts time!

Air Raiders (2600): A fully original Atari 2600 game from M-Network, and I believe the only one of that nature released back in the day. This is a very simple combat flight simulator, and it's actually quite good for what it is. You take off, try to shoot down as many enemy craft as you can, then land and refuel before heading out again. You only get as much ammo back as hits you've made, and when you run out of ammo completely the game is over. You also lose if you take too many hits. It's worth checking out.

Antbear (2600): A previously unreleased Atari 2600 port of Stern's arcade game, Anteater. As the titular antbear, you have to snake your tongue through an anthill, trying to eat all of the larva before time runs out. You can eat tasty ants and worms along the way, but you have to approach them with the tip of your tongue. The longer you've snaked your tongue out, the higher the chance you'll get bit. It's up to you to decide when to retract it. This is a solid adaptation of a really enjoyable game.

Armor Ambush (2600): Based on Armor Battle for the Intellivision. A two-player tank game, essentially serving as Mattel's spin on Atari Combat. You get varied terrain here, plus the ability to drop mines. You also have two tanks you can swap between as you like during each round. If you have a second player that doesn't mind diving into games of this vintage, this is fun. If you don't? It's amusing for a minute or two, I suppose. With no CPU opponent, there isn't much to the game if you're flying solo.

Astroblast (2600): Based on Astrosmash for the Intellivision. The original game was one of the biggest original games on the Intellivision, exciting players with its blend of Asteroids and Missile Command. It's no less enjoyable in its 2600 form, and might even be better due to speedier gameplay and a higher level of challenge.

Frogs & Flies (2600): Based on Frog Bog for the Intellivision. You've got your frogs, you've got your flies, and you've got a day that shifts to night. Jump between the two lily pads and try to eat more flies than your opponent. Most enjoyable in hard mode, where you have greater control over your frog's jumps. The original game was good simple fun, and so is this. You can play alone against the CPU, or with another player.

International Soccer (2600): Based on NASL Soccer for the Intellivision. Very loosely, in this case. Instead of the 3/4 side view of the original, this game uses a vertically scrolling field. You need two people to play, though you'll each only control a single player. It's reasonably entertaining for what it is.

Dark Cavern (2600): Based on Night Stalker for the Intellivision. Night Stalker is one of the more cherished original games in the Intellivision's library. Dark Cavern sacrifices a lot of that game's atmosphere, along with some of its enemy types. At the same time, it's a much faster game. Because it doesn't keep you quite as tight on ammo, it's more action-packed overall. Is that good or bad? I'm not sure, but it's definitely different from the original game in terms of feel.

Star Strike (2600): Based on, er, Star Strike for the Intellivision. The inspiration for this game isn't even remotely obscured. You're doing a Death Star trench run, and you need to bomb eight vents on the super weapon to destroy it. You'll be aggressively pursued during the course of this run by enemy ships and lasers. Should you fail, you get to watch your home planet get blown up. This adapts the original game almost to a tee. I found this game to get old pretty quickly, but it's certainly cinematic for its time and place.

Super Challenge Baseball (2600): Based on Major League Baseball for the Intellivision. It's for two players only, so you won't be able to do much on your own. A relatively deep take on the sport for the hardware, and decent fun if you have someone else willing to play a sports game this old with you.

Super Challenge Football (2600): Based on NFL Football for the Intellivision. This two-player only game delivers a fairly impressive take on the sport given the hardware. It looks the way it should, and there's some depth in terms of how you make plays. Not bad, but you will need a second player to do pretty much anything.

Swordfight (2600): An original game for the Atari 2600 that didn't get released back in the day, Swordfight is a two-player fighting game of sorts that is clearly inspired by Star Wars. The characters are large and you have a few different attacks you can use. This game finally saw a limited release in the year 2000, and has been included in a few collections as well. Cheap thrills, but the requirement for a second player limits the appeal.

Sea Battle (2600): Based on Sea Battle for the Intellivision. This was developed back in the day but wasn't released due to concerns about its market viability. It was eventually issued in limited quantities in 2000 and has seen a number of releases since. A simplified yet still strategic take on one of the more popular Intellivision titles, Sea Battle is quite a good time if you find the right person to play with. No CPU opponent here, so you'll need to rope someone else in.

Tower of Mystery (2600): Based on Tower of Doom for the Intellivision. One of the real prizes of this bunch as it has never before been released. This is quite different from the original game, but still a very interesting game. You have to escape the Tower of Mystery, a process which involves exploring floors, gathering and using items, and dealing with monsters. It's a solid game, and it's fantastic to see that it wasn't lost.

Video Pinball (2600): Given the capabilities of the Atari 2600, the quirky nature of this attempt at recreating the feel of a pinball table isn't that surprising. Give it some time and learn how to use the nudge to your advantage and you might find it holding your attention longer than you would expect.

Basketball (2600): Keeping in mind that this game was released in 1978, Basketball is at least recognizable as basketball and a decent bit of fun. It's too straightforward and offers too few defensive options to spend too much time with at a time, but as an early example of a sports game on a console, it has merit.

Hardball (Atari 8-Bit): Atari recently reacquired a number of its assets, including a bunch of Accolade games. This is the first game released from that bunch, I think. I remember this more as a Commodore 64 game, but this Atari 8-bit port is pretty good too. Do people want to play a quarter-century-old attempt at a baseball sim? I don't know, but if you do this is one of the better choices you could make.

Final Legacy (5200): This was originally an Atari 8-bit game, but a 5200 port was found in 1998 and is the version we see here. At first it comes off like it's going to be a complex game of grand strategy, but once you figure out how it all works it's really just a handful of simple shooting games stitched together with a fancy-looking map. Fun enough in short bursts.

Xari Arena (5200): A prototype that has been in circulation for a while in various collections, this is a variant on Breakout where you need to protect the bricks on the sides of the screen while eliminating aliens called Xari. Collect fireballs with your paddle and use them to destroy the Xari while fending off attacks. Clear the Xari and you're on to the next stage, lose all of your bricks and you're out. It's good once you know how it works.

Desert Falcon (7800): When the last DLC arrived, I asked why the Atari 2600 version was included and not the Atari 7800 version. Well, here's my answer. This isometric shooter is better than the 2600 version in its 7800 form in every single way. Not the best game in the world by any means, but it's amusing enough and has some interesting ideas.

The First Console War isn't quite as interesting as the previous DLC in terms of the documentary side of things. It doesn't go quite as in-depth as I would have preferred, and talking so much about Intellivision without letting people play those games feels a little hollow. That said, the games alone make this worth the meager asking price. There are a few games here you probably won't play that often and a number of them require two players, but the best of the bunch are very good indeed. I think it's worth biting on the DLC bundle if you enjoyed what the base Atari 50 offered.

Score: 4/5

[billloguidice]

THE400 Mini Complete Game List - All 25 Games!

THE400 Mini Complete Game List - All 25 Games! #the400 #the400mini #atari #atari8bit #gamelist

Thanks to this AtariAge thread, we now have the complete list of 25 games found on the THE400 Mini, which is just $199.99 on Amazon. Here’s the list of 25 games with links to screenshots: Airball Asteroids Basketball Battlezone Berzerk Boulder Dash Bristles Capture the Flag Centipede Crystal Castles Elektraglide Encounter! Flip and Flop Henry’s House Hover Bovver Lee (aka, Bruce…

[hackernewsrobot]

AtariAge and Atari

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354609-atariage-atari/

[atariforce]

Bubsy: Kitt'N Kaboodle fan art by Wacky the Bobcat

Based on the Kitt'N Kaboodle hack by Doctor Clu

[thereasonsimbroke]

More than three decades after #BatmanReturns hit theaters, a fan-made #Atari 2600 game based on #TimBurton's 1992 film is now in development.

Although the original movie never saw a 2600 release due to the console's discontinuation that same year, a homebrew developer is bringing the Caped Crusader's sequel to retro hardware. The growing scene of retro #Gaming enthusiasts showcases a unique blend of nostalgia and creativity, as developers breathe new life into classic consoles.

A playable demo is currently available on the AtariAge forum, reviving the Burton-era #Batman in 8-bit form.

[jedwardsmedia1970]

Halo 2600 is a 2010 action-adventure game developed by Ed Fries and published by AtariAge for the Atari 2600, a video game console released in 1977 that ended production in 1992. Inspired by the Halo video game series, the game sees players control Master Chief and fight through 64 screens with varied enemies. Completing the game once unlocks a tougher "Legendary" mode.

[atariaction]

Kay's 2024 Wrapped

It’s time for my annual letter summarizing my computer history work in the past year. It’s an opportunity to take stock, reflect on accomplishments, and make a plan for the new year.

My headline for 2024 was discovering and digitizing 53 episodes of The Famous Computer Cafe, a radio program that aired from 1983 through early 1986. It included computer news, product reviews, and interviews. Except for one episode, the recordings were entirely lost — until some of the tapes showed up on eBay. I bought them, launched a GoFundMe to have them professionally digitized, and uploaded them to Internet Archive with the blessing of the show’s creators. I got very lucky along the way — in discovering that the tapes existed in the first place, and that they hadn’t been erased in the past 40 years. The whole experience was amazing. I was interviewed along with Ellen Fields, one of the show’s creators, about the project on the Radio Survivor podcast. It was a super interesting conversation, worth listening to if you want the backstory.

The bad news — or perhaps the to-be-continued part? — is that hundreds of episodes of The Famous Computer Cafe are still lost. I hope with all my heart that they too will turn up, but I fear that they’re gone forever.

My goal for 2024 was to publish 15 interviews in ANTIC: The Atari 8-Bit Podcast. Success! Around October I noticed that I hadn’t published any interviews yet, so buckled down and met the goal. Some of the interviews I recorded recently; some were older interviews that I hadn’t yet managed to edit and publish. I’m happy to say that I’m almost caught up on getting those older interviews out the door. I expect to get through the backlog, and record plenty of new interviews, in 2025.

Highlights for me included interviews with Robert Leyland, programmer of Murder on the Zinderneuf, AtariArtist, KoalaPainter, and other Atari software; Nick Kennedy, creator of SIO2PC; and Mary Eisenhart, editor of MicroTimes magazine.

I finished shepherding the digitization of MicroTimes magazine at Internet Archive. Now that we’ve digitized 276 issues totaling 59,103 pages, the project is complete! (At least for now. A dozen  issues from December 1985 to January 1987 are missing. When those are found, we’ll scan those too.) My interview with Mary was the capstone of the project. She jokingly called the magazine “fish wrap,” but in reality, the California-based magazine did vital work reporting on the burgeoning computer industry from the state of Silicon Valley.

After years of my gentle reminding/nagging/harassing, Lee Pappas of A.N.A.L.O.G. Computing magazine sent me a box of Atari floppy disks to image. Some of them were nothing exciting — programs and files that have been available in the Atari scene for ages. But as I hoped, there were some treasures in the box. One was a semi-playable prototype of a game called Titan. It was to be published by A.N.A.L.O.G. Software, but was apparently never completed. It’s very pretty, but it has no collision detection or sound. Members of the Atari community have begun reverse engineering the game with the goal of making a completed version.  The box also included a game called Sunday Driver — also unfinished. I couldn’t get it to run, but hopefully someone else in the Atari community will have luck with it.

Those were the most obvious cool things in Lee’s disk collection — but there were 50+ more disks, which I imaged using the Applesauce Floppy Disk Controller and uploaded to the AtariAge forum. On December 31, I invited the community to search the files to find what other treasures might be hidden. They’ve already found several previously unknown or unarchived programs, such as Outpost, an arcade-style game.

Valerie (Atkinson) Manfull, who was a member of Atari's Game Research Group, sent me a U-Matic format videotape titled “Atari Demo Compilation”, which I had professionally digitized. It’s a rare record of Atari Research’s work in computer animation and character design. Dated March 1984 (four months before Jack Tramiel fired everyone), this videotape was exhibited at the SIGGraph Computer Aided Design show. It includes video of Fish Tank and “Artificially Motivated Objects” demonstrations, both done using an Atari 8-bit computer. I’d heard about both demos in interviews, but the code has never been found.

I was also able to share a few documents from the estate of Larry A. Summers, sent to me by his family. Larry worked at Atari in the early 1980s in the Games Design Research Group. The documents include “Atari 81” v1n4, an internal Atari publication that I was previously unaware of; Chris Crawford’s recommendation letter for Larry Summers; and the Functional Specification for a game called The Arabian Adventures. After Atari, Larry went to work at Packet Technologies, a company that was building interactive software for cable TV. This is the spec for what would have been the company’s first game. It is unclear if the graphical adventure actually made its way to customers’ TV sets.

I donated the originals of Larry’s documents and Valerie’s videotape to The Strong National Museum of Play, where the physical objects will be preserved and made available to researchers. 

It took three years of persistence with the Securities and Exchange Commission, but it finally happened in 2024: I got Atari Corporation’s Prospectus and Form S-1. Those are the documents that the company filed when Jack Tramiel took Atari public in September 1986. The 400-plus- pages are filled with detailed insider information about the company, including balance sheets, legal settlement agreements, and a list of Atari’s subsidiary companies. Thanks, Freedom of Information Act! (The S.E.C. said they took three years to produce the files because of a mandatory work-from-home policy after COVID-19 — then their microfiche machine was broken.)

I also received and archived the business plan for Superboots, an educational software development effort sponsored by Atari with an office at the Capital Children's Museum in Washington, D.C. The company's first program was PAINT!, a drawing program for the Atari 8-bits.

Dan Kramer, who worked at Atari designing trackballs and joysticks and other things, sent me another trove of documents which I uploaded to Internet Archive, including a 1981 report titled “A Qualitative Investigation Of Programmable Videogame Controllers”, a humorous (but real) Management Recognition Award that Dan received in 1984, and the schematics for Atari Cindy. "Cindy" was the code name for the Atari CX2800 (sold in the Japanese market), and the design was re-used for the Sears Video Arcade II home game console. 

I was able to archive every issue of “Quick Strokes” and “Dvorak D(e)velopments” — newsletters about using the Dvorak keyboard that were published from 1973 to 1990. They were provided to the Internet Archive by my friend Randy Cassingham. And, I scanned and archived every issue of Verbatim: The Language Quarterly. Verbatim was a literary magazine aimed at reporting language and linguistic issues for non-specialist readers, published from 1974 through 2008. The final editor, Erin McKean, even released them under a Creative Commons license. For my Scantastix project, I scanned a few hundred pages of newsletters and manuals related to the Texas Instruments 99/4A, Apple II, and early Macintosh software. 

My buddy Ken Gagne found a pile of interesting cassette tapes on the giveaway table at the annual Apple II convention KansasFest, and sent them to me to digitize. On them were ten ComputerLand radio commercials that aired from 1985-1989. Some were local spots for ComputerLand of San Bernardino, California; others appear to be national spots. Also, 14 ComputerLand Micro Minutes commercials — short radio spots meant to educate about technology topics like computers in movie making, telecomputing, and even communicating with animals through technology. Another tape was a 1991 recording of Tom Milks giving a KansasFest talk titled “Applied Engineering's View of the Apple II.”  In it he tells "the truth behind the wild rumors and accusations regarding one of the oldest Apple II third-party companies."

My work at Internet Archive as the curator of the Digital Library of Amateur Radio and Communications continues apace. In 2024 the project scanned more than 1.1 million pages of radio-related manuals, newsletters, documents, catalogs, and other material. (Sometimes DLARC intersects with my computer history work. For instance, here’s the CP/M source code for the AMRAD Packet Repeater.)

There we have it, that’s my 2024 wrapped. If you want to support my computer history work, please support my Patreon. Or, donate to Internet Archive.

My goal for 2025 is to publish a dozen interviews — preferably at a more regular, sustainable monthly pace rather than squishing all of them into the last quarter like I did this year. It’s impossible to know what else might transpire. After all, when 2024 started, I didn’t know that several of these projects (like The Famous Computer Cafe tapes) would be coming my way. Other projects I tried to make happen in 2024, just didn’t. 2025 is going to be a challenging year for a couple of reasons: politically for sure, plus my younger kid will be going off to college, leaving the nest empty. This year I’ll be keeping my eyes open for new computer history opportunities, pacing myself, and focusing on staying grounded and optimistic through the changes ahead.

[ultimacodex]

"Penult" is Getting a Physical Release at PRGE This Year

"#Penult" is Getting a Physical Release at #PRGE This Year Karl Garrison will be presenting a physical, boxed version of his "Ultima"-inspired Atari 2600 RPG, "Penult", at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo next month!

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in on Karl Garrison’s Penult, an Ultima-inspired RPG he built for the Atari 2600. However, according to both the Penult thread at AtariAge and the game’s official website, this is a timely point at which to take another look at it…since it would appear that Karl has arranged for a limited run of physical (that is: boxed) copies of the game to be available at…

[mrmegamanfan]

AtariAge has been sold! What does this mean?