110 posts tagged with atari.
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Each of these finds is a minor miracle
The North American Crash, the Atari Shock, or whatever else you want to call it, was an incredibly traumatic event for game development in the US. Most of the companies that had been making games just years prior closed their doors, laying off hundreds or thousands of people in the process. These were designers, programmers, artists, marketers, assembly workers, and more who found themselves out of work and trying to pick up the pieces. Some were able to pivot to the home computer space, find work at the surviving developers and publishers, or form new game companies. Others left video games behind entirely. In many of these cases, the projects they were working on were simply and quietly canceled, regardless of how close they were to completion, never intended to be seen again – just a failed product that didn’t make it to market. Like Tarzan. from The Long-Lost Tarzan Atari Game, Preserved [The Video Game History Foundation]
No waka waka to be heard
Atari Archive, an excellent game-by-game video retrospective of the library of the Atari VCS (aka the Atari 2600) covers its infamous port of Pac-Man. (38 minutes)
How Pitfall Builds its World
Jack Evoniuk reverse-engineers and explains, "I'm surprised that, as far as I can tell, I'm the first to detail how exactly Pitfall! rendered its world, but I'm also kind of disappointed. If you haven't seen this GDC talk about preserving the history of games you absolutely should. Unlike many other disciplines the history of software is not being well preserved, even though it should be the easiest to preserve. We have the original source code for basically zero games for the Atari, NES, SNES, ColecoVision, you name it. Disassemblies are invaluable, don't get me wrong, but they're not the original. And they show nothing about the original comments."
Union is strength.
The rise of the video game union: [Polygon] is an all-in-one explainer on why game workers are unionizing and the specific steps that future organizers may take. We encourage you to share the link, and we’ve also prepared a zine version that you can print and distribute in your community. In legal speak, the zine is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US), which permits distribution of the zine provided that it is not altered or modified, or used commercially. Learn how to print it in your town. [more inside]
Not 4-Bit, Just $%@& For RAM
The recently-released Atari 50 100+ game collection/90's-CD-ROM-style multimedia thingy from retro championers Digital Eclipse has been out for about a week, receiving not a single review below 8/10, making things look good for possible DLC. But why wait for more? There's already two entire podcasts aiming to cover every single Atari 2600 game made within the console's lifespan: 2600 Game By Game and Atari Bytes (the latter including bespoke game-related short stories). [more inside]
P.S. THIS IS THE MOST FUN WE'VE HAD ON JUNK MAIL IN A LONG TIME! THANKS!
What was it like working at Atari between 1983 and 1992? I dunno, but if you want to know what sort of emails employees sent each other you should browse atariemailarchive.org
PING
PONG This is a simulation of the 1972 Atari game Pong at a circuit level. The original Pong did not have any code or even a microprocessor. It was a circuit, implemented mostly using digital logic chips, with a few timers and other analog components.
"It really is a great feat ... that any of the games ... worked at all"
Kids today, with their multi-gigabyte graphics cards and CPUs capable of billions of operations per second. In my day, the Atari Video Computer System (later known as the 2600) had 128 bytes of memory and a single 1.19Mhz processor responsible for both executing game code and manipulating and drawing graphics. How, you may ask? Well, it was a little tricky. (SLYT, 38 min). [more inside]
Ready Player One Was Wrong: The First Easter Eggs In Video Games
While it may have been the first to be described as such, the well-known "easter egg" hidden in Atari's Adventure is not only not the first example of hidden content in a game, but is also not the first time a programmer hid their name in a game. Video game historian “Critical Kate” Willært of A Critical Hit hunts down the earliest examples in her Hardboiled History essay and video. [more inside]
Deconstring Blip, A Fully Mechanical Version of Pong
Paper models of older computers
"Construct the computer from your childhood or build an entire computer museum at home with these paper models, free to download and share." via Ian Visits.
SAVE? ● YES ○ NO
Saved, But Not Forgotten: The evolution of saving in video games, from the password to the cloud, and nearly every obscure memory card format in-between. [Tedium] “Earlier this year, a Twitter user named Paul Hubans shared a screenshot from his 87-year-old grandmother’s long-running Animal Crossing session; after four years of daily play, she had logged 3,580 hours—nearly 150 days—of total playtime. Being able to save progress in a game and return to it later has enabled some amazingly deep experiences. It wasn’t always like this, so how did we get here? Let’s find out by taking a look back at the history of saved games.” [more inside]
Off-White Game Boy with the Planet Hollywood logo printed on it
Console Variations collects pictures and information about limited-edition versions of video game consoles.
“Don't hug me. Go play with it!”
The gift of gaming: the joys of getting a console for Christmas [The Guardian] “We all remember that one Christmas present we got as a kid. The one we’d begged our parents for all year, the one we’d looked up 100 times in the Argos catalogue or on Amazon, depending on our age … For many of us, that present was a games machine. Whether it was a ZX Spectrum or a PlayStation 2, the process of unpacking these technological marvels, getting our mums and dads to set them up, then finally playing with the whole family, was magical.” [more inside]
Atari co-founder Ted Dabney dies at 81
Dabney had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer in late 2017, and, according to friends, decided against treatment after being told he had eight months to live. [more inside]
Who are the true Ur-Quan Masters?
In 2013, software developer Stardock announced they were making a new Star Control game, the first in nearly two decades, after they purchased the rights to the Star Control games from Atari (previously)
Or so they thought. [more inside]
PRESS ANY KEY WHEN READY
It's the 1980s, and under your tree is the hottest gift of the decade, the home PC! Why not fire it up and run a Christmas demo to get in the holiday spirit? [more inside]
“Nestlé knew exactly what it was doing.”
Bad break? KitKat maker accused of copying Atari Breakout game in ad. [The Guardian] “Nestlé has been accused of copying Atari’s classic 1970s video game Breakout [wiki] for a KitKat marketing campaign. In a complaint filed on Thursday in a federal court in San Francisco, Atari said Nestlé knowingly exploited the Breakout name, look and feel through social media and a video, hoping to leverage “the special place it holds among nostalgic baby boomers, Generation X, and even today’s millennial and post-millennial gamers”. Atari cited an ad titled KitKat: Breakout [Vimeo], in which adults and children sitting on a sofa used paddles to knock down KitKat bars.”
HI RON!
Retired Microsoftie and video game nerd Ed Fries [previously] tells the tale of how he and former Atari engineers Ron Milner and Michael Albaugh chased down a forgotten Easter Egg in Atari arcade game Starship 1, programmed by Ron and released in 1977, making it a contender for the title of the oldest known video game Easter Egg.
ACT 1: THEY MEET
"Eventually Atari came to us and said, 'What do you guys really want out of this?'" On the thirty-fifth anniversary of the popular arcade game, Benj Edwards chronicles the rise of Ms. Pac-Man and how a few MIT students created the next big thing off the back of the previous big thing in 1980s arcade history. [more inside]
Block by block
An Atari 2600 Emulator in Minecraft built by Youtube user SethBling. After the initial 'wow' response this is actually a fascinating under-the-hood model/demo/explanation of how video game cartridges and displays functioned.
The Quest For The Real-Life Treasures of Atari’s Swordquest
Color my world
The iBookGuy explains how graphics worked within the memory constraints of the Commodore 64 and NES, and the Apple II and Atari 2600
Atari Retrospectives: myths and legends from first-hand participants
Why read lengthy articles on the history of Atari when you can hear stories first-hand? Hear Nolan Bushnell (and a few others) tell all about how a little company named Syzygy became Atari, in clips both new(ish) and old; tune in for four episodes of Once Upon Atari, featuring Atari staff reminiscing about the good times and bad; and visit Alamogordo, New Mexico, home of rocket sled land-speed records and the grave of Ham, the first chimp in space, with Zak Penn as he digs for the truth behind the legend of the buried E.T. cartridges in Atari: Game Over with fans and Howard Scott Warshaw, the man who made the Atari E.T. game in five weeks. [more inside]
It’s about ethics in video game parenting
ATARI JAGUAR INFOMERCIAL
Alien Found Buried in New Mexico Desert
The dig for the Atari dump in the Alamagordo, New Mexico desert started today. It didn't take long to find what they were looking for. Previously
Video games are for boys
Despite a customer base that crosses many demographics, a large part of the video game industry has remained resolutely focused on appealing and marketing to male players in the 18-24 age group. It wasn't always this way. Although early coin-op and console game development was male-dominated, titles in the 1970s were either marketed for entire families or for adults in bars and later arcades. What changed? Polygon investigates.
The dawn of an era, available and emulated in your browser to play.
A few months ago there was a list of links to classic video game emulators posted. Very recently, I'm pleased to report, those links all came true. The Internet Archive bespoke upon aforementioned consoles, computers, and mileposts on our way to the tech utopia of today, (seriously, where's my flying car?) and they asked us to do something: Imagine every computer that ever existed, literally, in your browser. And it was so.
I have absolutely no affiliation with jscott, btw. Thought I should disclose that.
You weren’t just a paddle, you were an astronaut gripping a paddle.
Atari cartridge art and artists "The original Atari featured a wealth of games with box art that was quite a bit more imaginative than the “grizzled man holding a gun” template that’s so popular today."
JAWS: The Text Adventure
In 1975, the blockbuster movie Jaws was released. The series culminated in 1987 with a fourth movie, Jaws: The Revenge. The NES game Jaws (online) was released that same year, incorporating elements of both the original and fourth movie. But you probably don't know about the game that Mirrorsoft commissioned in 1984 from the husband-and-wife coding team, Dave & Sara Crud. They made a ZX Spectrum movie tie-in for the original film, only for rights holders to back out and leave it unreleased for nearly three decades ... UNTIL NOW! Or at least that's the backstory MeFite malevolent wrote. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
Hello extremely! I hope you like to *play*.
Stardock buys rights to Star Control from Atari and plans a reboot! In 1992, Accolade released one of the most greatestest, or at least silliest, space adventure games of totally forever: Star Control II. [more inside]
From Pong to Pizza Entertainment: Nolan Bushnell and Chuck E. Cheese
Nolan Bushnell was a co-creator of Pong and Atari, and he also sold Atari arcade machines. When he noticed that he sold the arcade machines for $1,500 to $2,000 but the new owners would earn twice that much in the life of the machines, he started thinking of how to make an arcade destination that wouldn't compete with his arcade machine clients. His solution: a pizza parlor, with an arcade for the kids and an pneumatic-powered animatronic coyote mascot to fool the parents it was restaurant with free entertainment. The coyote became a rat named Chuck, and what was code-named Coyote Pizza was briefly renamed Rick Rat's Pizza, but the marketing department thought the name wasn't such a great idea, and instead we got Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theater. [more inside]
Atari Archaeology Allowed
Some claim it is the worst video game ever. What is certain is that five million of them were dumped by Atari in a New Mexico landfill. Now, Fuel Industries, a Canadian film production company, has received permission from the city of Alamagordo, to unearth E.T.
37 years of Breakout
Not a Doodle, but an Easter egg Google has a fun way to celebrate Atari Breakout's 37th anniversary.
Fixing E.T. / Rehabilitating E.T.
We all know that E.T. for the Atari 2600 was a terrible no-good awful game (previously, previously-er). But could it be that our received wisdom about the cartridge is just wrong?
Yeah, probably not ... But to be fair, follow this in-depth guide to hacking the ET ROM and you, too, can transform the game into something far more play-worthy (and don't worry, you can still turn ET into its ninja form).
Atari VCS (2600) Demo 2012
Atari VCS Demo 2012 - Liquid Candy by Noice [slyt] VCS or 2600? Ah, who cares about nomenclature, just enjoy. If anyone knows how the heck this is done on a VCS, please comment.
For Amusement Only: The life and death of the American arcade.
But the golden age was destined to be a very short one. Walter Day told writer Tristan Donovan, author of the book Replay: The History of Video Games, that the industry was "off the rails by" 1981, opening more arcades and ordering more machines than its players could ever support. By early 1982, cracks were already starting to show in the newly flourishing industry: that $400 a day machine, Time Magazine reported, was often "sucker bait, dangled to obscure the dreary truths that markets are becoming saturated and that dud games... bring in no money at all."
The Inside Story of Pong
The Inside Story Of Pong - On Nov. 29, 1972, a crude table-tennis arcade game in a garish orange cabinet was delivered to bars and pizza parlors around California, and a multi-billion-dollar industry was born. Here's how that happened, direct from the freaks and geeks who invented a culture and paved the way for today's tech moguls.
A Debilitating Case of Pac-Man Fever
"The original Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 was quite the disaster and though it did sell a few million copies many would argue it was the beginning of Atari's end. And rightly so.
Dennis Debro's brand new and properly indie Pac-Man 4k, on the other hand, hopes to make things right by cramming a way more faithful post of the original pill-chomper arcade game to the very same and now very retro machine."
(via IndieGames)
Super VCS Bros.
Over at the AtariAge forums, user Sprybug has been coding an Atari 2600 Super Mario Bros. clone to run on the Harmony Cartridge. Some screenshots. The game running on the cartridge. The game running in an emulator. And some previous discussion on the difficulty of programming for the Atari 2600.
Classic Video Game Ads
This great Flickr album of classic video game advertisements is a nostalgia overdose for those of us who read video-game magazines in the 80s and 90s. From classic ads like the "Genesis Does What Nintendon't" ad to ads for Pac Man, The Simpsons, Super Mario Brothers 2 and ye olde Atari Lynx, this helps you relive the glory days of the medium, when even the ads were entertaining. And for those of you who never got to experience gaming magazines in their heyday, check out this entire copy of the first issue on Nintendo Power (PDF) from way back in 1988. And then get off my lawn.
40 years of arcade gaming
Atari, the first successful arcade video game company, would have been 40 years old today. The blog Arcade Heroes takes the opportunity to look back over 40 years of arcade gaming (from Atari and other companies) with flyers and video. Part 1 (1970s & 80s) - Part 2 (1990s to present). (WARNING: huge pages ahead with lots of flash videos.)
Head like I/O
Pretty Eight Machine - an 8-Bit rendition of the Nine Inch Nails album.
Awesome! Now Do "Mappy".
Porting a 30 year-old vector arcade game to an obsolete 33 year-old home game platform: "Star Castle 2600". In 1981 a young Howard Scott Warshaw, left his first programming job at HP for a more interesting job at Atari. His first assignment was to create an Atari 2600 conversion of the vector coin op game Star Castle... After evaluating the arcade game and the console hardware he came to the conclusion "that a decent version couldn’t be done".
Thirty-one years later, former Atari employee D. Scott Williamson has finally ported Star Castle to the 2600. (via MAKE)
RIP Jack Tramiel
You got Atari in my geetar!
Behold the gAtari 2600. An Australian musician performing under the pseudonym cTrix specializes in creating chiptunes using a combination of games consoles from 1977 - 1992, including a Commodore 64, Amiga 500, a clear-cased Gameboy, and an Atari 2600. The latter is possibly the most striking setup, incorporating the Atari (running custom-written sequencing software) into an oversized guitar body, with a fretboard packed with Boss stompboxes and a great pun as a name — gAtari.
"Diane, I’m holding in my hand an Atari game program called Black Lodge"
"A day in the FBI was never like this before! You are Special Agent Dale Cooper and you’ve found yourself trapped inside of the Black Lodge, a surreal and dangerous place between worlds." Black Lodge is an Atari 2600-style action game for PC and Mac, created by Jak Locke as a love letter to both retro gaming and Twin Peaks. [more inside]
AtariPadGasm
Atari Brings 100 Retro Titles to iOS in "Atari's Greatest Hits". Designed for the iCade. Toucharcade review. ArsTecnica review. Does it break the iTunes App rules?.
Notes: Level 6-3 made entirely out of pentagrams
What do you mean you don't remember Olegco Gaming? They were like the best developer for the Atari! They had classics, like Cool Beens, and Ghost Garden Man. Don't tell me you never played Baron of the SkeleBone Zone! Well, you take a look at all of their games on their archive site. Now try to be a little more knowledgeable before we talk about video games again... thanks.