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About this blog

Mostly Atari-related projects, and other ramblings. Home of the Artie the Atari comic strip.

Entries in this blog

 

Once aTron a time...

Well, that was totally cool.   The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Hoozitwhatzit (the "Oscars" guys), held a screening Wednesday evening of a 70mm print of Tron at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, preceded by a panel discussion with director Steven Lisberger, VFX supervisor Richard Taylor, and animator Bill Kroyer.   They went over the laborious process of making the film (including some info I'd never heard before), a few anecdotes about the production, and talked a little ab
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

12
 

Homebreviews - part 37

Time again to dust off the ol' 7800.   Failsafe 4/5   Failsafe is an unofficial sequel to the Atari 5200 game Countermeasure. Having never played Countermeasure, I can't judge Failsafe's success as a sequel, only on its own merits as a standalone title.   The goal of the game is to drive a tank across hostile enemy territory, while destroying enemy gun emplacements, jeeps, terrorists and cruise missiles, while collecting pieces to a code that will allow you to to disarm a nuclear missile b
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0
 

Set Phasers on "Preposterous"

I went and saw "Star Trek" Thursday night. And I'm a little disappointed.   You see, I had some choice material already thought-up for my review. About the movie being an utter, unwatchable train-wreck. About how they'd screwed everything up, and the characters were all just vapid, Hollywood pretty-boys. I even had a great line about how Star Trek the movie was basically like an over-the-hill Hollywood starlet that had had one-too-many plastic surgeries, and you kind of felt bad for it because
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7
 

They do chicken... right?

So I grabbed dinner at Kentucky Fried Chicken tonight.   Yeah, I know. But I still eat there. (And I actually worked there once!)   Anyway... here's the thing that puzzles me.   All they make... is chicken. That's their whole thing, right?   And yet... it seems about half the time I go there... they are out of chicken!   "Sorry, we don't have any Original™. Would you like Extra Crispy™ instead?" "Sorry, we don't have any white meat. Would you like dark meat instead?" "Sorry, we're ou
Guest

Guest

15
 

Pixar's best?

I just went and saw Disney's Pixar's Ratatouille last night.   Even though Surf's Up was a good movie... Ratatouille is a great one. It's an order of magnitude better than anything else out there. (Sorry, Jeff.)   Pixar has set a new standard for animated films. Not merely CG animated films, but animated films, period. The animation is absolutely incredible, and would be, regardless of the medium. Computers do not make animation this good - people do. Pixar has the best animators, and in Bra
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4
 

A small diversion

I picked these up the other day: There are quite a few of these mini-arcade cabinets on the market. Different manufacturers make their own versions with various games being available. Some are available at Target and other stores, but I decided to pick up these particular ones from Amazon after seeing Ben Heck hack one of them into a multi-game keychain: There have been a number of reviews of them online, most of them being pretty favorable. To me they just looked... cool. I like
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7
 

Summer Full o' Superheroes pt. 6 - Captain America

A friend of mine got me into a free screening for Captain America the other evening, complete with free popcorn, soda and snacks! Now, despite this, I promise that this will in no way bias my review towards what is obviously the greatest movie in the history of cinema!   Okay, it wasn't that great. But Captain America was still pretty good.   Or rather, that should read "'Captain America: The First Avenger' was still pretty good", because after all, there may be two or three people on p
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Homebreviews - part 17

Climber 5 4/5   Climber 5 is an adaptation of a game (also called Climber 5) originally created for the Atari 8-bit computers. I downloaded and tried out the original version prior to writing this review. The object of the game is to climb up a building that's under construction, and retrieve a baseball that's been hit up there. You have to climb ladders, and avoid girder beams moving back and forth. That's about as far as the original game went, and an adaptation of that version is included o
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

5
 

Good riddance to bad rubbish... Part 3

So long, Domino's!   I've tolerated Domino's pizza for years. Sometimes it's pretty good, but more often than not, it's flavorless and bland. The only way it's halfway decent is to get extra sauce dumped on it (which then turns it into a soggy mess). Even after their so-called "improved" recipe, nothing really changed my opinion of them. The only reason I stuck with them as long as I did, was because there was one close enough to where I live so they could deliver. And when you're lazy and hun
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8
 

Summer Full 'o Movies pt. 2 - Iron Man

On with the next movie - Iron Man.   I think about half the reason I enjoyed Speed Racer, was because visually it was so interesting.   With Iron Man though - it was just a good, fun movie.   Robert Downey Jr. made a perfect Tony Stark. Even though I don't remember a lot of the comic book personality (I haven't read Iron Man in nearly 20 years), he made a great character out of him. He was both a self-centered jerk, and yet completely likable. He had a self-effacing manner about him, and a
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

3
 

Return of the bling!

A year ago I finally fixed my original Sears 2600. It had kicked the bucket in 2011, and after making do with a donor board for a couple of years, I finally got my original board working again by swapping out the 6507 and RIOT, plus installing Mojoatomic's re-cap kit. So I had my original 2600 (plus a CyberTech S-Video mod) all up and running again! But not quite... One of the first repairs I had to make back when I dusted it off in 2002 for the first time in over a decade, was the Select an
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

14
 

Only 8 pixels wide

So... where was I?Well, I managed to wrap up the coloring on the Solar Plexus label. Jess posted a picture of it here.Still on my "to do" list is the last part (or two) of the label tutorial. I just need to make some time for it.The big project turned out to be the manual for the 2005 MiniGame MultiCart. Besides a tight deadline, it was like doing seven manuals in one, so it turned out to be quite a challenge to cram everything in there, without it turning into something the size of a phone book
Guest

Guest

7
 

New old music - part 5

Ah yes! Fresh Maynard! Straight out of 1968...     I first got into Maynard's stratospheric trumpet exploits back around 1981. Another trumpet player brought a tape (remember those?) of Birdland into high school, and I'd never heard anything like it. I was immediately hooked, and went out and started buying up whatever albums of his I could find. Initially I was drawn to more of the rock/jazz fusion work of his Columbia Records era ('69-'82) although that was certainly a mixed bag, notoriou
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0
 

Homebreviews - part 40: Mini-Game Madness

Because reviewing five games last time wasn't enough... I really like mini-game collections. Sure, not all of the games in a given collection will appeal to everyone, but usually you can find one or two real gems on a given multi-cart, and they're typically good value for money. Plus the idea of a quick, simple game is part of the 2600's DNA, stretching back to the original nine games the system was designed to play. There are plenty of unissued, fun mini-games still out there in the forums, j
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

19
 

Holiday Treats

Here's a sneak-peek at a couple of projects I'm working on. They're "mostly done".   First, a label for a new homebrew release. The name has been left off of this picture, although some of you may find the imagery a familiar refrain.   This is a bit of a departure for me. No cartoons. No space ships. Just pure graphic design, meant to convey abstract shapes and rhythm. There's also an intentional division of the label into fourths; and a suggestion of the four directions of the joystick, an
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

8
 

More Holiday Treats

Well, since Fred just posted an announcement about selling off his remaining NWCGE copies of Gingerbread Man, and included a nice picture of the label artwork, I figured this would be a good time to post "the making of" blog entry for it.   First though, I want to recommend that you pick up this game. Directly from Fred, if possible. First of all, it's a really fun game (full review coming later). But also, Fred did a really great job of printing the manuals and labels. They're the best I've
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

7
 

WRC 2018

Well, the answer to last year's question was a pretty resounding "yes". For the first time in years, the World Rally Championship was truly competitive and unpredictable. Even though in the end, the same driver ended up winning the championship for the fifth year in a row. But he certainly had to work hard for it, since there were seven different winners last year. And best of all, thanks to Red Bull's excellent coverage, I could finally, actually watch the rallies using my AppleTV. So now
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

19
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