Adventure II and Return to Haunted House

[BONEMAN]

I see they are on the Flashback 4 but what the hell are they?

[yell0w_lantern]

If I understand correctly,they were homebrews originally on the Flashback 2.

[+Gemintronic]

I thought the maker of Adventure II for the Atari 5200 was given permission in exchange for working on the Flashback version. I could be tottaly or partially wrong on this. It's been awhile.

[BONEMAN]

I thought they might be homebrews. How do homebrews get on there?

[lucifershalo]

sequels made by Curt Vendel

[BONEMAN]

I don't know who that is.

[+Gemintronic]

I thought the maker of Adventure II for the Atari 5200 was given permission in exchange for working on the Flashback version. I could be totally or partially wrong on this. It's been awhile.

 

Confirmed here:

http://cafeman.www9.50megs.com/atari/5200dev/Adv2Archives.html

In the fall of 2004, that's when Atari's legal folks put the hammer down on homebrewers. Although the word "Adventure" isn't something I ever worried about concerning copyright issues, we were clearly doing an homage to an intellectual property of the original Atari. So I temporarily changed the title to "Quest for the Golden Chalice" until June of 2005, when Kristen at Atari gave us the official OK to use the name, in exchange for lending some of the design to the Flashback 2 2600 version of Adventure II. However, I gotta say, the whole thing left such a bad taste in my mouth that I did very little from October 2004 to spring of 2005. My PC crashed .. twice ... and I lost some data around this time, too. All this made me step away from the project until I felt like working on it some more.

 

[+FujiSkunk]

I don't know who that is.

 

Curt Vendel is about as big an Atari enthusiast as you can get. He has a huge collection of Atari hardware and memorabilia, much of which can be seen on his website, The Atari Museum. He and Marty Goldberg compiled one of the most complete histories of the original Atari Incorporated into a very thick book now available at Amazon, among other places.

 

Vendel also runs his own hardware shop, Legacy Engineering Group. His company put out the Flashback and Flashback 2. Vendel posts regularly on AtariAge and is tight with the homebrew community, which is how several homebrews came to be included on the Flashback 2.

 

Atari has since gone with another company for the Flashback 3 and Flashback 4. It's interesting that the Flashback 4 has homebrews when Atari in all likelihood did not consult anyone here for their inclusion. However, I imagine the contracts for including homebrews on the Flashback 2 gave Atari permission to include the games on future products like the Flashback 4 as well.

[Hikkikomori]

Somewhat related to this topic, I noticed that the Flashback 4 (76 game version) had two previously unreleased games, "Saboteur" and "Save Mary". It also has the homebrews mentioned in this thread, but I simply thought they were obscure sequels when I saw them on the listing of games.