|
|
 |
AtariAge News archive for July 2001:
ClassicGaming.com has posted an interview with Leonard Tramiel, who served as Vice President of Software Development and later as Vice President of Advanced Technology at Atari from 1984 - 1996. This interview is an excerpt from a larger interview that Martin Goldberg conducted with Leonard Tramiel while researching an upcoming book on the history of Atari. Here's Leonard's response when asked about Atari's advertising policy:Leonard: My dad's general rule was to spend 10% of the previous periods profit on advertising. There was lots of variations but that was the baseline. Lawsuits are best avoided, if not then settle if you can. This is true for almost everyone that is sued. Atari didn't sue very often, as a result they won a significant percentage of the time.
Many thanks to Mitch Orman, Peter Perpetua III, and Kevin Ondre for providing us with loads of new scans for AtariAge. We've put online one new 7800 manual (Fatal Run), two new 2600 box scans (Raft Rider and Gopher), and eight new catalogs (one for the 7800 and seven for the 2600!) And more Atari poster-style catalogs are already in the pipeline.
For all the details, have a look at our Change Log page. And as always, if you'd like to contribute to AtariAge and send us scans we're missing, please contact us! Thanks!
Version 0.5.4 of Jum52/MacOS has been released by Richard Bannister. Jum52 is an Atari 5200 emulator that has been ported from its 32-bit DOS roots to MacOS and BeOS. This version runs on Macintosh computers using MacOS 8.6 and 9.x with the Carbon library and natively on MacOS X. According to the Jum52/MacOS site, "Jum52 supports reasonable compatibility with Atari 5200 titles. At the present collision detection is a bit hit and miss (no pun intended) but otherwise the emulator is solid enough. Full sound emulation is included." You'll also want Richard Bannister's Blitter Plugin (available here).Update: A new version of the Lynx emulator Handy/MacOS, v0.8.2, is also available.
The latest edition of MyAtari magazine is now online at www.MyAtari.net. The site has been given a facelift aimed at making navigation easier as well as several other improvements. The latest issue of MyAtari magazine features information about the Atari XL Parallel Bus Interface, an article about Atari musician Tim Conrardy, and lots of other great Atari information. Check it out!
A new version of the Atari 2600 emulator z26, 1.46, is now available. Changes to this version include improved emulation of undocumented TIA reads, correct frame rate display on fast computers, fixed scroll bar positioning in help screens, and documentation on how to z26 to work properly on motherboards with poor built in legacy sound support. You can download the latest version of z26 here. Enjoy!
We've just added a new feature to AtariAge that we're sure everyone will enjoy: Each game in our database can now have one or more Tips, Cheats and Easter Eggs associated with it! When you look at a game's Profile page, any Tips associated with that game will be listed. We've tracked down Tips for the 2600, 5200, and 7800. As we add new systems to AtariAge we'll add Tips for them as well. Certainly we didn't catch 'em all, so if you see some we missed, please drop us a line and we'll add them!
Thanks to Peter Perpetua III and Mitch Orman we now have eight new catalogs online at AtariAge. Peter supplied us with scans of seven Atari 2600 catalogs (one each from 20th Century Fox, M Network, Parker Brothers and Spectravideo, and three from Tigervision) and Mitch was kind enough to send us an Atari Advantage 7800 catalog in the mail. The Atari 2600 catalogs can be viewed here, and the Atari Advantage 7800 catalog here (it's the only 7800 catalog we're aware of!)Update: Peter has sent us a few new catalogs since I posted this news yesterday: Two Imagic Catalogs we were missing as well as another Spectravision catalog. Thanks!
Atari/Infogrames will be sponsoring French soccer team Olympique Lyonnais, according to this press release (in French) from the team. For an English translation, use the form at Babelfish. It appears that Infogrames is going ahead with the Atari name and Fuji logo for branding. Of the three shirst that OL will be wearing, one of them features the Fuji as the most prominent image on the front. So where can I buy a replica kit??
You may recall the Cuttle Cart was put on hiatus for licensing issues, but Chad Schell has overcome that hurdle and it's now in production. "The Cuttle Cart is an Atari 2600 cartridge that can imitate other cartridges. It allows one to load ROM images (games) into an Atari 2600 using an audio interface such as a CD player. It makes a great development tool and distribution medium for new games, which can be created using freely available development tools. Finally you can play all those prototypes, homebrew games, and extremely rare titles on the real 2600 just like they're intended to be be played." Price is $100, pre-orders are being taken now.
Issue 47 of the on-line classic gaming zine is out at Tomorrow's Heroes. This issue features:
-More information on the Devastator joystick! -Recap of the CCAG show! -Info on the Twin Galaxies and CGE shows! -Games to play at the flea market! -A whole lot more!
Ben Heckendorn (VCSp) and Kevin Horton (Puma) are teaming up to bring you a new version of a portable 2600 - the Phoenix. This will basically be a 2600 on a custom PCB that sits inside a Sega Nomad case. The benefit is that it will allow for (relatively) mass production, and may also bring the price down. You can even pre-order now without depositing money.
The Atari Historical Society has added four new commercials to their archive. In addition to the 48 existing commercials at the site, you can now watch an MTV Centipede commercial, a Club Centipede commercial, a 5200 Pole Position music video commercial, and a 5200 Joust commercial. All commercials are in .avi format.
Wow, you guys are great! We'd better hurry up and get the Jaguar and Lynx sections online before all the gaps in the 2600, 5200, and 7800 sections are filled! Thanks go out to MattW, Dennis Drew, and Peter Perpetua III for our latest additions. We've added three new Atari 2600 catalogs, a new 5200 manual, box scans for the 2600 and 7800, and more. To view all the details of just what's been added, please visit our Change Log page. And as always, if you'd like to contribute scans to AtariAge, please drop us a line! Thanks!
With the recent videogame turned movie Tomb Raider, somebody has created movie previews of some familiar classics that might make it to the big screen one day. Okay, probably not. But they're amusing anyway, and you can watch the previews of Ken Burns' Frogger, Pong: The Movie, and Ms. Pac-Man's Diaries at Moviefone.
We've just put a slew of new Atari 2600 and 5200 catalogs online for your browsing pleasure. Of the six catalogs, one is from Activision and the other five are from Atari. You can view all the 2600 catalogs here, and the 5200 catalogs may be viewed here (these links are accessible in the navigation bar as well). Thanks to the miracle of modern image stitching software, we were able to scan and format coherent images of the Atari Stars and Atari Advantage catalogs.
Now that we've exhausted our supply of catalogs, any additional catalogs that find their way to AtariAge will be a result of our faithful audience being kind enough to scan or loan them to us. If you have catalogs we're missing, please drop us a line!
Many thanks to those of you who've taken time from your busy schedule to send us scans for items we're missing here on AtariAge! We just finished adding a wide variety of items for the 2600, 5200, and 7800. Some of the highlights include the Music Machine manual, Vidco Copy Cart box, Swordquest Waterworld box, and the manual for the hard-to-find 5200 game Frogger II.
You can view all the details of what we've added on our Change Log page. As always, if you have items in your collection that we're missing images of and you can scan them, please drop us a line!
Dutchman has undertaken the ambitious goal of finishing the Swordquest series by programming Swordquest: Airworld. He's created a page about the project and is seeking help for various parts of the project. He is also seeking any available information that was created for Airworld before the project was cancelled. He's programming the game first for the 5200, and then plans to take it to the 2600. At least that's my understanding from his page.
Ben Heckendorn has announced the VCSp Gold. This is a special single issue edition of the VCSp that will future a relatively huge 4" screen and these additional features:
4 inch screen, MUCH larger than the 2.5 inch screen on a Rev 5. In fact, the largest full-color screen on any portable system ever (to the best of my knowledge) Joy pad and paddle control on the right-hand side of unit (like the old days) Cartridges slide in the back, like a Gameboy. TV / GAME switch. Just like the old systems had, but in this case it allows you to watch TV on the unit. The antenna pops out the top of the unit. Classic black, aluminum & wood grain coloring. Headphone jack. More features & a bigger screen, but still the same size as a Rev 5. Full-size RCA video out jacks for play on your television, no need for a special cable. Totally new look with Real Gold Leaf all over the thing.
Cowering has updated his Good5200 to version 0.999.4. You can download it from the Good Utilities section of Zophar's Domain. Here's what's new:
Some previously [b] dumps are actually good (will work in next MESS) the usual additions
Jagulator V1.5.0 has been released. According to the site, "As I mentioned previously, I was having problems with the JoyPad emulation. This is now working and is demonstrated well with the 'Team Tap Tester' Jaguar Demo written by Matthias Domin. I also managed to fix a bug in the transparency code which now means that only the images requiring transparency have them (unlike all images before the bug - DOH!)."
Version 2.8 of Atari 800 Win PLus, the Atari 8-bit emulator for windows, has been released. According to the site, "Unfortunately, the release is still based on the kernel version 1.0.6. It means that the Daniel Noguerol's extensions and the Diamond, Sparta Dos X and XEGS cartridges support have not been implemented yet."
So you think you have a complete Activision patch collection? Think again! Some of you may know that Dave Giarusso created a manual for Kabobber, the unreleased prototype by Rex Bradford. Well, in addition to the manual he also created a patch in the classic style. Anyone else make any patches that Activision never got around to?
For all you lucky Minnesotans and anyone else within driving range, enjoy the following: "To celebrate its 20th Anniversary, The Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard has gone to the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota to create a major party for the electronic gaming hobby: Twin Galaxies' Video Games Festival, which is a three-day celebration of the greatest games and gaming systems produced in the last twenty years." There will be game tournaments, contests, videogame celebrities, videotape exhibitions of past high-score achievements, and more.
SwapMeet has interviewed ex-Activision game designer Chris Crawford. I don't know when this interview was first published, but I just happened to run across it. Also, have a look at Erazmatazz, one of Crawford's projects.
AtariLabs has been sent a letter by Infogrames lawyers claiming trademark infringement and asking them to give up their domain name. AtariLabs has posted the original letter from Infogrames, and AtariLabs' response. Hmm...
Thanks go out to Philip Frey, Mitch Orman, and Matt Reichert for providing us with more images to fill out the (many) holes in our 2600 and 7800 sections. These include several 7800 box and manual scans, some snapshots of the unreleased 2600 Crack'ed prototype and scans of the unusual, orange label Breakout cart (pictured to the right). For complete details on the new scans available for your browsing pleasure, please visit our Change Log page. If you have items we're missing scans of and you have a scanner (or know a friend who won't notice his missing!), we'd love to hear from you!
Salon has posted a new article to their site, Atari lives!, written by Howard Wen (who has written previous articles revolving around the game industry). In the article Wen talks about why the Atari 2600 is still popular to this day, going over recent developments in the Atari world such as the VCSp, modern-day 2600 game development, and Infogrames' move to bring Atari classics to PDAs and cellphones. He also talks about the ongoing hunt for those elusive prototypes. Wen quotes several people involved in today's classic gaming scene, some of whom you might recognize from AtariAge.
MissingMatter has interviewed Tom Sloper, classic and current videogame designer. Tom has designed games for the Vectrex, 7800, NES, SNES, Genesis, Gameboy, and more. Find out about his involvement with 7800 GATO, what happened to Kaboom 2 for the SNES, and what game finally made him leave Atari.
Update: Check out Tom Sloper's personal web site for more classic gaming insights.
|
 |