kimchipenguin

My website AtariUpToDate keeps track of all releases (not just games) and the start page shows all releases of the last 12 months: https://atariuptodate.de/en/ And there's also my magazine ST-Computer (German only): https://www.st-computer.org/en

That's welcome news Have they been tested on PAL 7800 as well? My game request would be a combo Asteroids / Asteroids Deluxe cartridge.

Looking forward to the expert, and more Atari-licensed retro stuff that us Europeans can actually buy One odd decision is to go with that - in my opinion - silly "The" prefix. Unlike with the C64 and Amiga mini, they obviously licensed the Atari logo, so why not print "Atari 400" on the device instead of ruining the look by putting "The 400" on there? If there's ever going to be a 400 maxi or any other Atari-licensed mini made by Retro, Atari should speak to Retro, to keep the mini case more authentic. Or just offer an Atari sticker in the Atari store 😉

I tested two original three-button Genesis (Mega Drive) pads. 7800 game (Planet Smasher): D-pad works, buttons don't 2600 game (Demon Attack): Neither d-pad nor buttons do anything. With the Mega 7800 adapter, the pad works with both games.

I had no luck with two Mega Drive (Genesis) three button pads.

Basically any productivity software that didn't use GEM windows was mono-only. Many German public domain games were mono-only as well.

Incorrect, both are there. Protext is listed as a word processor and Steve as an office suite (like Atari Works)

Atari certainly didn't care about showing off the STE hardware with an STE exclusive game or else they would've paid a developer for an exclusive. In Germany the computer was advertised (together with the STFM!) with a screenshot of Test Drive. I also assume that cost was important for inclusion in a bundle. As an "Amiga killer", the STE was always doomed to fail, but at least it was (mostly) compatible with the older models, unlike the Plus/4

Interesting, I have a Dutch magazine in tabloid format (I own only one issue though)

Magazines still used line numbers for any language that didn't have any. Never missed them when I switched from C64 BASIC V2 to GFA-Basic. But magazines frequently had to publish bugfixes in the next issue, because lines (or sometimes even a whole page) was missing from the print. It always seemed convoluted and made for a system with a higher screen res. Writing GEM programs was quite complicated in ST-Basic, or do you expect compiled programs to run in a GEM window that's magically supplied by the runtime library? GEM was long associated with being slow and both ST-Basic and Logo contributed to this impression. Some of the listings showed how to do solve certain problems in a programming language. There were also more languages that mattered on the ST. Forth listings were rare though, as were listings written in APL The third image shows a program written in machine language. It requires a program to type it in - the magazines frequently adjusted their font size.

Most ST specific magazines published their first issue in 1987 or even later. By that time, ST-Basic was very much dead. One of the earliest (the earliest?) ST-only magazine, ST-Computer from Germany, did print listings in ST-Basic: https://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1986/07/dateiverwaltung Both GFA-Basic and Omikron Basic were released in 1986. ST-Computer magazine either didn't receive good submissions or they banned ST-Basic later. There were many type-in listings written in GFA, Pascal, C, Assembler, Modula-2 though. Here's another example for the "popularity" of ST-Basic: https://atariuptodate.de/en/proglang/ST-Basic/ No, there was plenty Basic code or other programming language published in printed form. There were fewer games as type-in listings though. Most German magazines didn't have cover disks and offered a "service disk" instead. Sometimes these would feature some games. I managed to get a few of these disks and the games were not great Back in the day, one service disk would cost as much as three public domain disks! Happy Computer (German, multi platform mag) would publish type-in listings for the ST and other computers until 1990. For GFA-Basic they would usually switch from a two to a four column layout and a smaller font (GFA programs were "longer"). They also had these hex type listings for which you needed a helper application. Many of these games aren't available online.

qed was the one I used. https://www.atariuptodate.de/en/office/edit

Even in an alternate history, it might take too long for Sega and Atari to break the exclusivity contracts through lawsuit. The contracts only worked because of the Master System's poor performance in Japan and NA. Nintendo obviously had very strong first-party titles, system sellers, which in turn attracted other companies to develop for the NES. - Let Sega have a strong mascot early in the Master System's life. Sonic 1985! - Both Sega and Atari should realise much sooner that gaming has moved on from early 80's arcade ports. If they can't innovate, let them have faster copy machines! - Nintendo were actually quite hesitant to fully invest into the video game market - and they licensed their arcade games to other companies. Maybe the people at Atari were big fans of the toy company from Kyoto and made a much more general deal that allows to port any Nintendo game to any Atari video game system for the next ten years! So no more Nintendo exclusives. Whatever Miyamoto-san comes up with will appear a couple of months later on the 7800 and in an awfully mutilated form on the 2600. Fortunately for Nintendo, the deal will run out by 1989. Unfortunately for Nintendo, Miyamoto-san left the company for Sega years before then.

So why ask for sales numbers if you believe in your made up ones? Millions of home computers were sold in Europe, it was by no means a small market. STs and TTs were doing quite well in the business market in Germany - thousands of STs were used as terminals or in self-service machines for printing business cards. But business machines aren't usually kept for nostalgia afterwards. What you see in museums, collections or on eBay are just the survivors. BITD the TT wasn't a rare machine. Now it's rare to see one on eBay.

Apple is doing very fine and they sell approx. the same number of Macs each year. Doesn't matter if they lose market share as long as they keep their very healthy margin. Atari chose the mass market though, with slim margins. This would never have worked out against an army of PC clones. More innovation would've bought Atari a few more years, not more.