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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

 

Car(s)2(oons)

The trailer for Cars 2 has been released:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFTfAdauCOo   It looks pretty good. I'll admit I was skeptical about Cars 2, since contrary to most Pixar films (where they put story first), I'd heard reports that Cars 2 was green-lit and scheduled before a story was even in place.   Why would Pixar do that?   Simple.   The Cars franchise pulls in some 2 billion dollars a year in merchandising.   Two. Billion.   With a "B".   Now, the idea of a spy story
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

10
 

Homebreviews - part 38

Back to the venerable 2600, and two games that have some of the best label art ever!   K.O. Cruiser 5/5   K.O. Cruiser is a boxing game that harkens back to the arcade classic Punch-Out!! You control the transparent outline of a boxer, throwing punches and dodging blows from your opponents. You win by either knocking them out or going the distance and getting the judges' decision. If you get knocked down, you have only seconds to get back up before you're counted out.   K.O. Cruiser is a
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

5
 

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
 

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
 

Hey kids, it's vitriolic rant time! (Yay!)

Are you in college, planning to go to college, or planning to send kids to college someday?   Don't ever, EVER take out a student loan from Sallie Mae. Be wary of any loan company that might sell your existing loans to them, as well.   They're evil. I will be well-rid of these conniving, thieving, dishonest, money-grubbing, manipulative, opportunist robber barons, the day I finally get my last loan paid off.   I don't "hate" very often, but I hate Sallie Mae.   I've come to personify the
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

4
 

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
 

Homebreviews - part 36

I had one more game that came in after the last batch...     Incoming! 4/5   Incoming! is a 2600 port of the classic computer game Artillery. You and another tank face off against each other across a variety of terrains. Factoring in wind, the angle of your shot, and how much power to use, you take turns firing at each other. The first one to hit the other tank a given number of times, wins.   While there's already a similar 2600 game called Artillery Duel (by Xonox), Incoming! literal
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

1
 

Homebreviews - part 35

So what's left over when you've tested and reviewed everything else in the AtariAge store? Is this the end of Homebreviews!? * Labyrinth 1/5 Labyrinth is an unreleased prototype of the game Escape From The Mindmaster, which requires the Supercharger peripheral to play. The game comes on a CD, so you'll need to plug the Supercharger cable into the headphone jack of a CD player, then play the CD for about a minute for the game to load. Once loaded, you maneuver through a maze in first-perso
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0
 

Homebreviews - part 34

No games (as such) this time around. I'm getting near to the end of what the AtariAge store currently has to offer... Testcart 3/5 Testcart is a utility cartridge that allows you to check an Atari 2600's various components and controllers to see if they're working properly. When you plug in the cart, it displays a few colors onscreen so you can make sure your 2600 video circuitry is working, and plays music so you can check the audio. After a few seconds, the screen will change to a displa
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0
 

Toy Story 3 (spoiler-free review)

In a word - perfect.   While Toy Story 3 was in production, a friend of mine at Pixar (who was sworn to secrecy) would only describe it as "like visiting with old friends". I have to agree with that sentiment. I was concerned that Pixar had an uphill battle in making a worthy sequel to two of the best-loved animated films ever, and the commercials that they've been showing didn't really alleviate those concerns. However, this is easily my favorite of the three. The sense of adventure in this f
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

18
 

Homebreviews - part 33

So it's time to go back to the arcade! Or perhaps "hack to the arcade", since these reviews are all about AtariAge's "Arcade" hacks. As with previous hacks the question is: Is a hack worth paying for if you already own the original game? This entry also contains my 100th Homebreview! It's hard to believe, but I've gotten almost as many games from AtariAge as commercial releases that I'd bought back-in-the-day. And there are even more new games on the way. But first... Pac-Man Arcade 4/5 Pa
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0
 

Homebreviews - part 32

Ah yes, the Atari 7800... the poster child for "too little, too late". The 7800 had great promise when it was previewed in Electronic Games magazine back in '84, but the industry crash killed it before it even got out the door. By the time it was finally released several years later (to cash in on the success of the NES), nobody took notice, and nobody wanted to take a chance developing titles for it. The 7800's miniscule library eventually was the death knell for the system, at least as far as
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0
 

Homebreviews - part 31

Adventure! Excitement! A Jedi craves not these things. Well, their loss! Because they're missing out on two excellent, yet very different adventure games for the 2600. Cave In 5/5 In Cave In, you take on the role of an adventurer/archaeologist in search of an ancient artifact. But finding it does you no good if you can't get it back out of the cave which has collapsed around you, threatening to trap you forever. When I started playing Cave In for this review, I must admit to some frustra
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

1
 

Homebreviews - part 30

Well, if I don't start writing some more reviews, I'll never catch up. So we'll start off with two games with musical names! (Okay, so one of them isn't a game. But "two carts" wouldn't have rhymed. ) Harmony Cart 5/5 The Harmony Cart is a programmable multi-game cartridge that allows you to load almost every game ever written for the Atari 2600 onto an SD memory card, and play them on a real console. While there have been other programmable cartridges for the 2600 before, the Harmony has
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

0
 

More Tron, more fun

"Recognize" this?     Remember wanting to play it?   Well... go ahead!     Space Paranoids is now online! And it even works on a Mac!   Well... not my G5 iMac. It runs like a dog on that. But it runs great on newer Macs. (Not iPhones though. Maybe someday.)   42 Entertainment made the game last year for the Comic Con Flynn's Arcade event that kicked off Tron Legacy's viral marketing campaign, which is starting to get rather extensive.   There have been clues left on various vir
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

50
 

Not exactly insomnia

So, it's 5:00 AM, and I'm wide awake. This is a side-effect of this time of year at my job.   As with last year and the year before, and for that matter, the previous sixteen or so years, I've been burning the midnight oil at both ends (how's that for a mixed-metaphor?) getting our end-of-the-year showing of student films put together. The first show was on Saturday afternoon (May 1st), and from Friday through Sunday morning I was awake about 40 hours straight, minus a short cat-nap in my offi
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

6
 

When artwork sneezes

Just a random idea I had a couple of weeks ago. But now seemed like as good of a time as any to post it...     72 < PreviousIndexNext >
Nathan Strum

Nathan Strum

2
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