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AtariAge News Archive

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Air Raid Box Discovered
April 1, 2010
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Air Raid Box DiscoveredAtariAge user Tanman has recently discovered he owns a previously unseen box for the extremely rare Atari 2600 game Air Raid, produced by a company called "Men-A-Vision". Less than 20 copies of the game are known to be in hands of collectors, and until now, a box for the game has never surfaced (although existence of such a box has been claimed in the past). Air Raid is a hacked version of Space Jockey and appears to have been produced in Taiwan. Tanman was the original owner of this copy of Air Raid, having purchased it in a Tuesday Morning store in Arlington, Texas in the mid 1980s. We had a chance to view the box in person and have no reason to doubt its authenticity. Scans of the box will be added to the AtariAge database soon, but you can view this thread (already up to 18 pages), which includes pictures of the box in the first post.

Tanman is selling this boxed copy of Air Raid on eBay and bidding for this Atari 2600 "holy grail" is already over $4,000 as I write this. You can view the auction here.

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David Crane's Technical Wizardry iPhone Apps
February 11, 2010
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

David Crane's Technical Wizardry iPhone AppsFormer Atari 2600 Activision programmer David Crane has published his second 2600-related iPhone app, Dragster Magic, volume two of his Technical Wizardry Series. David Crane has been developing games for over 30 years, getting his start writing games for Atari and later going on to found Activision where he created the venerable classic Pitfall! David Crane's Technical Wizardry Series beings with the 2600 Magic app, explaining the internal video circuitry of the Atari 2600 and how that hardware is used by programmers to write Atari 2600 games. Dragster Magic continues along these lines, detailing the obscure tricks invented to create Activision's first game, Dragster. If you're curious at all as to how the Atari 2600 ticks and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, these apps are a great way to learn what's going on behind the scenes when you fire up your favorite Atari 2600 game. You can learn more about 2600 Magic and Dragster Magic in the iTunes Store.

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AtariAge/Digital Press "Retro Rumble" at CGE 2010
February 5, 2010
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

AtariAge/Digital Press AtariAge and Digital Press are proud to announce Retro Rumble, a joint venture aimed at joining retrogaming communities in a little spirited competition as well as co-op play. Retro Rumble will debut in Las Vegas at the Classic Gaming Expo 2010 on July 31st. The AtariAge and Digital Press exhibit areas will be mirror images with plenty of the great products you'd expect, but between the two booths will be a gaming area where various tournaments and challenges will be hosted throughout the 2-day event.

Are you the king of the road in Indy 500? Can you fend off the competition in a round robin Warlords tournament? Are you a better Mario in Mario Bros? Prepare to test your skills in an unforgettable union of gaming communities. Watch all THREE sites for more info and hints of what's to come: AtariAge, Digital Press, and Classic Gaming Expo in the days that lead up to the event.

Naturally, we'll see YOU there!

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Clear Classic USB Joystick
February 4, 2010
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Clear Classic USB JoystickAtariAge Forum member Gulag Picture Radio is better known as Bohuš Blahut, co-editor of retrothing.com. The madmen behind Retro Thing have teamed up with Legacy Engineering to come up with a limited edition product that's cool enough for serious collectors, but affordable and fun enough for anyone who remembers classic video gaming.

The Clear Classic USB Joystick is modeled after the iconic joystick from the 70's and 80's, but the similarity ends there. This joystick plugs into a USB port to play retro games on a modern PC or Mac. The stick is transparent plastic with a blue circuit board and a blue LED that illuminates the stick from within for a slick retro-futuristic look. The Clear Classic stick works with almost any emulator, so now you can play your Atari, Amiga and Commodore 64 favorites in retro style.

The stick is a limited edition item, and is bound to sell out fast. The complete package sells for $29.95 and includes the stick, numbered certificate of authenticity, USB cable, and a copy of the excellent Stella 2600 emulator on CD. You can learn more at Reflex Audio Systems.

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February Retrogaming Times Monthly
February 2, 2010
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

February Retrogaming Times MonthlyThe February 2010 issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly is now online for your viewing pleasure. Highlights from Issue #69 include:
  • Apple II Incider - A Tribute To Joe Kohn
  • Press Play On Tape - Please Wait 10 Minutes
  • The Homebrew Sleuth: Atari 2600 Seawolf
  • Mutated Output: Third CoCo The Charm?
  • All Eyes On...Columns
  • Dual Perspective - Street Fighter II
  • Modern Retro - Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
  • A Pixilated 21st Century!
You can read these articles and more inside the Retrogaming Times Monthly, now running 149 months in a row! You can also browse the RTM archives to catch up on past issues.

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Pre-Order New Flashback 2+ from Atari
January 22, 2010
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Pre-Order New Flashback 2+ from AtariYou're probably familiar with the original Flashback 2 console that Atari released a few years ago. It's basically a small Atari 2600 console with 40 built-in 2600 games and includes two 2600-compatible CX-40 style joysticks. The Flashback 2 has been out of production for some time, but Atari has just added the Flashback 2+ console to their website for pre-ordering. This revised Flashback 2 contains a slightly different assortment of games and features Atari's reversion to the original-style Atari logo that is now featured on their website. The box and manual have also been completely redone. Expected ship date is February 22, 2010 and the price is $29.99. Those who pre-order now will receive a free t-shirt that features a 4-switch Atari 2600 console with two CX-40 joysticks. You can learn more and pre-order the Flashback 2+ here.

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FailSafe 7800 Homebrew Label Contest
January 19, 2010
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

FailSafe 7800 Homebrew Label ContestThe War Continues...

After the successful elimination of the terrorists and their missile silo complexes, we have heard through various sources that they have relocated, and have doubled their security! Once again you must invade enemy territory and prevent the missile launching aimed at Washington D.C. and stop the terrorists once and for all!

FailSafe is a new Atari 7800 homebrew game by Bob DeCrescenzo (aka, PacManPlus), who has a stellar track record in releasing a variety of high-quality arcade ports under his belt. FailSafe is an unofficial sequel to Atari's original game Countermeasure for the Atari 5200. AtariAge and Bob DeCrescenzo are sponsoring a contest to create original artwork for FailSafe. This label artwork will appear on all copies of FailSafe, which will be made available for purchase in cartridge form after the contest has run its course. This artwork will also be featured on the cover of the manual created for FailSafe.

Click here to learn more about the contest!

We've extended the contest a week--it now ends February 7th, 2010!

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Retrogaming Times Monthly - January 2010
January 16, 2010
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Retrogaming Times Monthly - January 2010The first Retrogaming Times Monthly of the new year is now online! Highlights from Issue #68 include:
  • What's On Tap? Rec.Games.Video.Classic Is!
  • {ress Play On Tape: Denial Collection 3
  • Apple II Incider - Thexder
  • Obscure Output: The Rainbow Goes Digital
  • Dual Perspective - Sonic The Hedgehog
  • Modern Retro - Vagrant Story
  • Old Wine in New Bottles: Pinball Edition
  • A Pixilated 21st Century!
  • Video Game Tattler
You can read these articles and more inside the Retrogaming Times Monthly, now running 148 months in a row! You can also browse the RTM archives to catch up on past issues.

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Atari Chips Reborn?
December 14, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Atari Chips Reborn?Curt Vendel of the Atari History Museum and Legacy Engineering has been hard at work reconstructing several proprietary Atari chips, including the GTIA (used in the Atari 8-bit computers and 5200), the MARIA (used in the Atari 7800), and the TIA (from the Atari 2600). There is great potential for creating new Atari machines in a variety of form factors, based on Curt's work. When asked about these new developments, Curt had the following to say:

"Many in the Atari community, myself included, have cobbled together one thing or another to keep our systems alive. A dream for everyone has always been the possibility of perhaps a new Atari 8-bit system. As many know, I have most of what was Atari's mainframe archives, among them are what are called "Tape Outs"--these are 9 track reel to reel tapes that in the 1980s and early 1990s would be sent from a chip design firm--such as Atari's "ASG" (Atari Semiconductor Group) to a place called a "FAB" which is a chip fabricator. The final layered data files are in a streaming binary format called "GDS" and this data instructs the FAB on how to process and create actual IC chips.

I've been spending a great deal of time as of late recovering the data from the tapes, having to massage them to process and create a viable GDS and/or DB file so that the actual chips could be plotted and tested with some software that I use. The effort has been successful for the most part and several of Atari's proprietary chips are coming back to life in simulation. Now we need to see if they can be recreated in a FAB at a reasonable cost. What is the potential of this? Doing the chips in smaller SMT packaging, and potentially bringing back to life some of the later CMOS designs of combo chips which could lead to a SoC - System on a Chip. This is all very early work, but the future just got a little brighter in terms of preserving and continuing the legacy of Atari's custom IC chips."


You can read all about Curt's hard work over in our Atari 8-bit Computers Forum. In addition to technical discussion (which includes Curt Vendel), you'll find various high-resolution images of the reconstructed chips.

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Mean Santa - New 2600 Homebrew Game
December 11, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Mean Santa - New 2600 Homebrew GameMean Santa has arrived just in time for the holidays! Created by John K. Harvey (Propane13 in our forum) and released by the 2600 Connection, Mean Santa is a new Atari 2600 homebrew game that reveals Santa’s dark side. Instead of delivering presents he’s taking them away! Mean Santa is being sold in a serially numbered limited edition of 100 copies. It comes complete with labeled cart, plastic case and manual.

As of this writing there are only about 30 copies left, priced at $25 each. Ordering information can be found at 2600connection.atari.org, and you can discuss the game in our Atari 2600 Forum.

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Panic Atari 2600 Box Retro Art
December 10, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Panic Atari 2600 Box Retro ArtPanic, a longtime developer of popular Macintosh OS X applications, has unveiled a fun project they put together completely unrelated to their Mac development efforts. Apparently they are big Atari 2600 fans, as they commissioned artist Lukas Ketner to produce original artwork for four Atari 2600 Panic games, had Panic been around during that time. The resulting artwork mimics the style Atari used for many of their releases (examples here, here, and here). Not only did Panic commission this art, they have actually produced boxes based on this artwork and have made them available for purchase! To learn more about this wonderful Atari retro art, please visit the Panic Blog, which includes some backstory as to how these boxes came into existence. You can order these boxes, as well as posters adorned with the art, directly from the Panic Store. To discuss these creations please visit our Atari 2600 Forum.

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Atari Force Comics Collection in PDF
December 8, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Atari Force Comics Collection in PDFIf you grew up with the Atari 2600 as a kid, you're probably familiar with the Atari Force Comics that Atari included with some of their games (Defender, Berzerk, Star Raiders, Phoenix, and Galaxian). DC Comics would later create a second series of Atari Force comics, published monthly in a more conventional comic-book format. This second series takes place 25 years after the first and comprised 20 issues as well as a "Special" issue released in 1986. AtariAge user Thumpnugget has painstakingly gone through all 750+ pages of these Atari Force comics to build a complete PDF collection of all 21 issues, and he's made the entire collection freely available for everyone to enjoy. Each page was photoshoppped by hand and required unique handling to remove all the dirt and filth accumulated over the years.

You can download the entire Atari Force collection via BitTorrent, and you can learn more about this effort here. If you're an AtariAge Subscriber, you can download the entire 600MB file directly from AtariAge. If you've never read the original Atari Force comics that Atari included with their games, you can view those here.

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Christmas Retrogaming Times Monthly Online
December 7, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Christmas Retrogaming Times Monthly OnlineThe Christmas 2009 issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly is now online. Highlights from Issue #67 include:
  • High Score Monthly! Profile
  • Christmas Memories From The Golden Era
  • 1982: The Best Christmas Ever
  • Fooling The Stores: A 1984 Guide To Videogame Return Policies
  • Apple II Incider - My Apple II Wishlist
  • Pitfall!: A Homebrewer's Journey
  • Looking Forward Into The Past
  • Please Save Christmas Santa!
  • Dual Perspective - Super Mario Brothers
  • All Eyes On Mega Man III
  • Modern Retro - Tekken 3
  • Old Wine in New Bottles: Taito Legends 1 & 2
  • A Pixilated 21st Century!
  • Video Game Tattler
You can read these articles and more inside the Retrogaming Times Monthly, now running 147 months in a row! You can also browse the RTM archives to catch up on past issues.

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Classic Video Game Magazine #3 Pre-Orders
November 29, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Classic Video Game Magazine #3 Pre-OrdersClassic Video Gamer Magazine (ClassicVGM) has announced they are now accepting pre-orders for Issue #3, due to be released in January. ClassicVGM is a full-color, professionally printed magazine about classic video games. The third issue covers Shield Shifter and StripOff by GDG, and Zaku by SuperFighterTeam (among others). We also have a fantastic article covering 30 years after Pac-Man; it is a retrospective on Arcade gaming. Column favorites like What’s on Tap will be returning as well. Pre-Orders for ClassicVGM #3 end on December 28th, 2009. You can view the full-size cover here and learn more about ClassicVGM by visiting their website at www.classicvgm.com.

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Stella 2600 Emulator 3.0 Released
November 17, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Stella 2600 Emulator 3.0 ReleasedThe multi-platform Atari 2600 emulator Stella has recently seen a significant upgrade to version 3.0. This latest version includes major improvements to emulation of the Atari 2600's TIA chip, allowing for more accurate emulation in many games. Several debugger improvements were added as well, making Stella an even more invaluable tool for Atari 2600 game developers. You can view the changelog and discuss this latest version of Stella in our Emulation Forum. To download this new version of Stella for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, please visit the Stella home page.

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Retrogaming Times Monthly #66 - November 2009
November 10, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Retrogaming Times Monthly #66 - November 2009The November 2009 issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly is now online. Highlights from the Issue #66 include:
  • Press Fire To Begin
  • Retrogaming News
  • High Resolution - NES
  • My Life Of Cyber Crime
  • All Eyes On Wolverine: Adamantium Rage
  • Apple II Incider - Lode Runner
  • Vectrexenstein - Mine Storm
  • Dual Perspective - The Legend Of Zelda
  • Modern Retro - Speed Freaks
  • Video Game Tattler
  • Gaming Advertisements
  • Game Over
You can read these articles and more inside the Retrogaming Times Monthly, now running 146 months in a row! We missed posting news about last month's issue (October 2009), so be sure to check it out if you haven't already. You can also browse their archives to catch up on past issues.

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Houston Arcade Expo - November 6th/7th
November 4, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Houston Arcade Expo - November 6th/7th The Houston Area Arcade Group (HAAG) is holding their annual arcade expo on November 6th and 7th at the Crowne Plaza Houston Reliant Park hotel. Admission is $25 for a weekend pass or $15 for a single day, which gets you access to over 150 arcade games and pinball machines all set to free play! You can also participate in arcade and pinball tournaments, win door prizes, try your luck at a game raffle, and partake in the full bar. There aren't many opportunities to enjoy large collections of classic arcade games, so if you are in the Houston area (or can get there!), you should be at this expo!

AtariAge will be at the show, and we'll have a slew of classic gaming systems setup for play! For more information, please visit ArcadeCenter.com.

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AtariAge to Attend Portland Retro Gaming Expo
September 10, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

AtariAge to Attend Portland Retro Gaming ExpoAtariAge will be attending the Portland Retro Gaming Expo taking place on Sunday, September 20th in Portland, Oregon. We will be introducing several new homebrew games for the Atari 2600 (including Juno First and Dungeon), and we'll have some surprises in store for attendees as well! If you're in the area and into classic gaming, you won't want to miss this event! Please be sure to stop by our booth and say hello if you're there! If you're not able to attend the show, information on how to pre-order these new games and have them shipped to you after the show is available here. We look forward to seeing many AtariAge visitors at the show!

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Retrogaming Times Monthly - September 2009
September 10, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Retrogaming Times Monthly - September 2009A new issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly is now online. Highlights from the September 2009 issue (#64) include:
  • Movies with a Byte: "Joystick"
  • The Legend Of Trash Truck
  • All Eyes On Power Rangers: The Movie
  • RTM Idiocy: The Pot Of Lead At The End Of The Rainbow
  • Apple II Incider - Spy Hunter
  • Modern Retro - Worms
  • Videological Dig - The Ratings War
  • Laughing Pixels
  • Gaming Advertisements
You can read these articles and more inside the Retrogaming Times Monthly, now running 144 months in a row! You can also browse their archives to catch up on past issues.

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Atarimax USB Cartridge Programmer and Maxflash Studio Software
September 8, 2009
Posted by Albert Submit News | Archives

Atarimax USB Cartridge Programmer and Maxflash Studio SoftwareSteven Tucker of AtariMax has released a new USB cartridge programmer and Maxflash Studio Software for easy creation of menu-based Atari 8-bit multi-carts. The new USB Cartridge Programmer allows you program your multi-cart creations to a real cartridge in just seconds. No more messing with in-system programming via SIO2PC, just plug, program and go! The Maxflash Studio Software includes a built-in recognition database of over 1200 of the most popular games, letting you drag and drop nearly any game program file into your cartridge workbook and have it work the first time, every time, without fussing with advanced configuration settings. You can learn more about these new AtariMax products at AtariMax.com and follow the discussion over in our Atari 8-bit Computers Forum.

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