#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?

[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!

[thearcadearchives1981]

HOMEBREW SPOTLIGHT- DONKEY KONG FOR ATARI 7800!

  Hey Arcaders! The Atari 7800 Prosystem was a great machine- that never saw it’s full potential. The system was slated to come out in 1984- where it would have been promptly been a hit. With GCC ( A company we have talked about in a earlier post ) working on the system specs and most of the original lineup- the machine boasted updated graphics, as well as Atari 2600 compatibility, it could have…

[thesplintering]

#RetroGaming Flashback, #JollyJinglings Edition! “AtariAge Holiday Greetings 2005” - 2005 - #AtariAge for #Atari 2600 https://www.instagram.com/p/CmZ99NLvWt5/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[hackernewsrobot]

AtariAge and Atari

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

[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…

[gamesthatwerent]

Ice Palace - Long Lost VIC-20 game found!

At the start of December last year, yet another full #Commodore #VIC20 game was found in the form of Ice Palace thanks to Dougmanct on AtariAge. A cute 3 screen game by Xonox that has been missing for just over 40 years. Now you can play the full game!

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/2024/01/ice-palace/

[gmlocg]

131.) Boulder Dash

Release: March 1984 | GGF: Action, Arcade, Puzzle, Maze | Developer(s): First Star Software, Inc. | Publisher(s): Exidy, Incorporated, State Soft Ltd., K-Tel International (UK) Ltd., First Star Software, Inc., Micro Fun, Comptiq, Orpheus Ltd., Epoch Co., Ltd., Data East Corporation, Mirrorsoft Ltd., Prism Leisure Corporation Plc, Tynesoft Computer Software, Nintendo of Europe GmbH, JVC Musical Industries, Inc., Victor Musical Industries, Inc., Commodore Gaming, Chillingo Ltd., AtariAge, Classic Game Publishers, Inc. | Platform(s): Apple II (1984), Arcade (1984), Atari 8-bit (1984), ColecoVision (1984), Commodore 64 (1984), FM-7 (1984), PC-88 (1984), PC Booter (1984), ZX Spectrum (1984), Amstrad CPC (1985), Epoch Super Cassette Vision (1985), MSX (1985), BBC Micro (1988), Electron (1988), Game Boy (1990), NES (1990), Wii (2008), iPhone (2009), Atari 2600 (2012), Intellivision (2015), Antstream (2020)

[atariforce]

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

Based on the Kitt'N Kaboodle hack by Doctor Clu

[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?

[biglazybeez]

Turning to Channel F

Today’s detour from the vagaries of Surfing video games (still playing, but had a change of plans) involves a piece of gaming history. This fine piece of wood grain adorned set top goodness is from November 1976, released by Fairchild. This is one of the early ones, as it was renamed the “Channel F” (F is for fun) when Atari launched their Video Computer System a little less than a year later. The key is in this feature:

The Fairchild VES was the first system to use ROM cartridges (earlier consoles had enabled folks to use ‘games’ that were really just sets of jumpers inserted into the main console to change into another of the 100 versions of PONG that most of them played). This is notable, as the Chief Engineer for Fairchild at the time was Gerald Lawson (much more info at this link: https://www.google.com/doodles/gerald-jerry-lawsons-82nd-birthday ).

Fairchild only sold about 350,000 units before they called it quits and sold the IP off. Their main product was microprocessors, so this was a bit of a flyer for them. Given the way things exploded for Atari, they came very close to hitting the big time -- anyhoo, the point is not very many of these out in the wild, and most of them need to be acquired as a ‘parts only’ purchase. I suspect this is because the power supplies for most of these (which is hard wired to the console) go bad, or people have no idea how to hook it up to a modern TV to test it.

The one I bought was in such a state. Overall it looked pretty good for a 47-year old console, but of course no response when I powered it on. Checking the power block was the first thing I suspected, and sure enough, the output voltages of the power supply where no where near where they were supposed to be, Looking at the block itself - it has 2 different AC inlets....!?

The nice folks at the AtariAge forums have a few threads related to the Fairchild and it’s other worldly counterparts. Sure enough - 15VAC 200mA is one input, and the other is 10VAC 1A. Having no idea how to try and Frankenstein this coil back to life, I went in search of adequate AC-AC adapters to be able to get the unit to power on. Reading through the info out on the net, and looking through the schematics, there are rectifiers and capacitors/voltage regulators that step these two inputs down to 12V and 5 V DC. To be able to connect my new power supplies I needed to open it up - so here we go...!

The good news is, everything looked clean. Even the caps looked pretty good, which was surprising as I bet they run a bit hot with all the current being fed into the unit. Look at all that metal shielding! it looks like FCC regs were written with a severe concern over RF interference? Who knows. All I know is that there is the plastic case, and then an entire metal case under the plastic case shrouding all the electronics. Even the power supply is just a simple MOLEX connection through the shielding to another MOLEX inside. Huh. I did manage to locate 2 AC-AC adapters that looked like they would do the trick.

So I wired them up to the unit and powered on - I knew from the Atari Age geniuses that there is a small red power indicating LED on the board (under the cartridge port and also under the shielding over the cartridge port, so I have no idea who it is for) that indicates the 5V power rail is active. I verified this was active:

And was thinking I might be done! Too bad - but close - my video output was the green screen.

Before I went too much further, I wanted to chase down the power issues. I ended up just disconnecting the MOLEX outside the shielding, and just wiring power right to the wires on the board (power readings on the inlet power cord were all over the place, so I suspect there may have been some wire continuity issues there).

Once I got to this point, I just connected the video out and holy cow! we’re in business.

PONG all day and night if we want. Plus a bunch of other games, some of which are terrible but most of which are charming. In a sense, Jerry Lawson taught my sons not to hit on 16 playing black jack. Here’s one of the games (Space War) in action.

One thing that is not great, which was changed for the Channel F II was the sound. For this unit, it comes from the console, and has no volume control. Seeing that most of the videogaming that would have been done on this machine would have been early or late in the day when your parents weren’t using the TV, this one factor may have limited the success. Being able to turn the Atari down low so you could still hear the bleeps and bloops but mom and dad could keep sleeping was key to playing time back in the day.

One other item to note is the distinctive but very forward thinking design on the controllers. The knob on the top does all the work -- button presses are pulling up and pushing down. The stick movement is active in all directions, and you can also rotate right and left. It is not very intuitive, but once you play with it for a while the games feel pretty natural. Thinking about how these compare to the Atari joysticks, they have a lot more potential.

All in all not too much trouble, and a fun little project. Very cool that this old beast is now in working order. In retrospect, Fairchild had the right idea, but Atari took it and ran! One has to imagine that if the Channel F had been able to get space invaders, they would likely have done just as well. As it is, they are a bit of a footnote, but I have the footnote running in my house!

Fun Fact: The dimensions of the Channel F cartridges were set to approximate those of 8-track tapes, which were a thing at the time. They were then colored bright orange/yellow so people wouldn’t mistake Burt Bacharach for a Math Quiz Videocart.