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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

Tron: Legacy (spoiler-free review)

I saw Tron: Legacy in IMAX 3-D today, after months of waiting and anticipation.   With much effort, I did manage to avoid spoilers - although some twit in the audience was talking during the film and guessed one during the movie. Here's a suggestion to all of you who are going to movies and like to talk during them... BE QUIET! You aren't at home watching TV, and nobody wants to hear you talking during the movie they're paying to watch. If you can't stand not hearing yourself talk for the dura
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

27

Fix your RF

By sheer coincidence, on Tuesday's episode of ZeroPage Homebew, James posted a poll asking if people used a video mod or stock RF to output video from their 2600s. Overwhelmingly, people answered RF. So the timing of this blog post is pretty good, since I've been working on this particular entry for well over a week.   RF tends to have a bad rap with the Atari 2600. It's the standard connection between your console and TV, and was designed for a time when the only input that TVs had wa
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

27

Colony 7 Sprites

Okay, I think I have all of the sprites done for Colony 7. It took a little time to rip the ones from the original arcade game in MAME, but thanks to Snapz Pro X 2, I can capture movies of anything on my Mac. Then it's just a matter of taking the individual frames I need, and importing them into ImageReady, so I can see them as animation.Like this:(enlarged to 300%)The Advisor doesn't do much, does it? Although really, how much action can you expect from an Advisor?Those were pretty easy to capt
Guest

Guest

27

Homebreviews - part 19

Believe it or not... this entry includes my 60th Homebreview! To mark the occasion, I'm reviewing a couple of games that were released at the Classic Gaming Expo this summer. The ROMs aren't available, so I've posted movies of them, to show you what they're really like (sorry about the quality - they were shot off of a TV screen).   Actually, I would have rather reviewed a really good game instead, but these are the last two unreviewed games that I've got. So there you go.   Although these r
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

27

Star Wars in HD

So yesterday finally brought the long-awaited return of Star Wars... in HD!       Yep, that's right! Season 4 of The Clone Wars debuted on Cartoon Network!     What?     You were expecting a write-up on some other "Star Wars in HD" event that took place Friday?   I can't imagine what that would be...   Anyway, season 4 started off with a two-parter, Water War and Gungan Attack. In the first episode, there was a war under water, and in the second one... well, I don't want to spoil
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

26

To-do-over

Almost two years since the last list. Looks like the prediction of the great Homebrew Crash of 2016 was right! Hide the children! Run for the hills! Exit from the EU! Nah... there's plenty of stuff happening. Some of it just takes awhile to materialize, since this is all done in peoples' spare time and all that. Some of this is old. Some of it is new. Some of it is borrowed. Some of it is way overdue. Wait... that's not quite how it goes. Eh, close enough. Anyway... latest updates are
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

24

To-Do Part Two

Well, just when I get a bunch of stuff checked off my To-Do list, more stuff gets added to it.   So, new to the list are: New ghost sprites for Dennis' PacMan (not Pac-Man) (Some) new sprites for Rainbow Invaders Tiles for Bob (maybe he's redecorating his bathroom or something) Plus I still have to clean up the Four-Play title screen a bit, finish the label art for it, finish the manuals for RPS and MGD, and I may take a crack at the power-ups for SuperBug.   Plus, I need to write
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

24

iBlog 2

So I finally bit the bullet, and bought a new cellphone:   http://youtu.be/ZJoEPWVJqFw   Man... I love those commercials. "The HerniaMate™ 2000! Pick one up (if you can) now!" What's in that thing - a car battery?   Anyway, what I really bought was an iPhone 5. Hence, the start of iBlog 2, and the end of iBlog 1. So long! It's been fun!   Well, fun up until my battery died three months ago and I had to pay for a replacement to tide me over. In hindsight, I don't regret it, since my old p
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

24

Sci-Fri

So last Friday saw the second season premiere of The Clone Wars. It started off quite well with a two-parter about the bounty hunter Cad Bane, attempting to steal something called a Jedi Holocron in the appropriately titled Holocron Heist, and then using it to get some critical information for the Emperor in Cargo of Doom.   The animation seems a bit better this year (still some wonky walking), but the plot was a definite improvement.   First, Cad Bane is an excellent character. Unlike the u
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

24

Clones, clones, clones (that would be three)

Season 3 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars kicked off a few weeks ago, although I've been too busy to either a) watch all of the episodes or b) write about them, until now.   Last season, the series really began to mature, and it grew on me quite a bit. The characters had more depth, the plots were better, and the production values and quality of the animation increased.   Season 3 started off with more of a whimper than a bang, but it has already had some high points.   The whimper was because
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

23

Spit into the Wind!

After reading Mezrabad's review of Human Cannonball, and the subsequent comments about the classic game Artillery, I remembered a graphical hack I did of Kirk Crawford's version of Artillery for the Mac.   I created this back around 1990. Re-titled "Spit into the wind", it featured two caricatures of my college profs hocking loogies at each other. So I thought, "Hey! This is another (fanfare please)... Stupid Game Idea!" It would be a natural for the 2600. While there's already an Artillery-ty
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

22

B-cos, that's why!

Oh sure... you may love Anime, but do you love it as much as these people?     Well, in that case, you've likely been at the 2008 Anime Expo. Even more likely, you're into Cosplay.   And frankly, you're creeping me out just a little right now.   That said, it's time to check out the Expo's Cosplay photo galleries, and play everyone's favorite game...   Dude... or Chick? Play along at home! Just peruse the galleries below, and ask yourself whenever you see someone festooned in all the
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

21

Captain America: Civil War - Spoiler-free movie review

I'm just about to head off for a late-night show at the ArcLight. I'll be posting a review either much later tonight, or in all likelihood, tomorrow. I hadn't quite planned on going to see the movie this soon, but it's getting really difficult to avoid spoilers. I've really been looking forward to this movie, since Winter Soldier was so good. But on the other hand, Age of Ultron was quite a disappointment, so I have no idea how this will turn out. Except, of course, that it will be much be
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

21

And the loser is... XBox 360!

So, it's time to tackle the latest console wars.Get comfortable... this is going to take awhile. Sony vs. MicrosoftThe XBox 360 is going to sell a lot of units, and eventually make money for Microsoft. But they're going to be second place to Sony, even before the PlayStation 3 is launched.The reasons for this have to do in part with the technical specs of the systems, the games available at or after launch, and brand loyalty. And while those are all going to be contributing factors, none of thos
Guest

Guest

20

Get a CLU

Tron: Uprising debuts in June on Disney XD. Looks stylish!   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ds_ukdV7Kw   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K17aH76uNv8   Not quite sure about the lead character, Beck, though...   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPfmNxKLDG4
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

20

300th Stupid Blog Entry!

Part 1 - Eh, close enough   Sharp-eyed viewers will no doubt notice that this isn't the 300th Stupid Blog Entry... it's the 301st 302nd 305th 307th 310th.   Yeah... I've procrastinated finishing this one a few times.   However, this entry is about the 300th Stupid Blog Entry, so technically, the title of this entry is correct.   Descriptively speaking.   Back in September, I was planning to write up some massive, over-long entry like I did for the 200th Stupid Blog Entry and 100th Stu
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

19

To-Done?

Another year, another To-Do list. This one's pretty late. Usually I write these early in the year, but this year there wasn't really much to update. I'd finished up most of the projects on my last To-Do list and decided I wasn't really interested in taking on anything new. This new To-Do list (half-written in January) originally wasn't going to contain any homebrew projects. Between Star Castle, Ixion and Stay Frosty 2, I pretty-much got burned out on working on homebrews last year. I ended
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

19

Snowpiercer (?) - Spoiler-free review

Yeah... I'd never heard of Snowpiercer before, either. This despite it having a fairly-star-studded cast including Chris Evans (Captain America), John Hurt and Ed Harris.   I think this film is the reason for a bit of Avengers trivia. In The Avengers' shwarma end-credits scene, Evans is hiding his face with his hand. The reason being, he had grown a beard for another movie, and they couldn't completely hide it. And in Snowpiercer, he has a beard.   So I'm guessing Snowpiercer is that movie.
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

19

It's like eating potato chips

When you start getting homebrew games, you just can't stop at one.   So that's what sparked the idea behind my new avatar. My 2600 just can't get enough new games - it seems to be sitting there saying, "Feed me! Feed me!" As soon as I finish playing one game, it wants another one right away. (Of course, if you've gone without food for almost 20 years, you'd probably be a little grumpy, too.)   Besides all of the homebrews it's recently been fed, it's now able to absolutely gorge itself, than
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

19

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, ju
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

19

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

Christmastime!

Reindeer Rescue Wrap-upWell, it looks like Bob is done programming Reindeer Rescue. I think the game turned out great, and people are gonna love it! It's already climbed up to the fourth best-selling homebrew of all-time in the AtariAge store. That's pretty amazing! (The fact that it can be had for free may have had a little to do with that... nah. )It was a lot of fun creating the sprites and other in-game graphics for it. I want to thank Bob for inviting me to be part of the project, and givi
Guest

Guest

19
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