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News from the Perch

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Picross preview

OK, I admit it. I'm behind the times when it comes to cool, simple yet addictive puzzle games that other people have known about for years. What rock was I under?   First I found out about Sudoku a couple of months ago, and what a great concept that game is. Even my wife got the bug and now solves a few puzzles each week! And next, I found -- you guessed it -- Picross. This is another challenging puzzle game which is perfect for a handheld platform like the Lynx where you just want to kill so

Songbird

Songbird

Is it hip to be Squared?

Next on the Lynx multicart preview is a cool puzzle game I just got to try out last week called Squared. Think of it as a "Loopz-lite" and you're not far off.     The player gets an assortment of familiar shapes and has to create completely filled rows and columns to remove blocks and score points. Expected play modes include scoring goals, clearing the entire board, and special blocks to make a some stray playfield blocks vanish. The demo game is laid back but challenging, and I look forwa

Songbird

Songbird

Prowling in the Jungle

It's amazing to me, and a tribute to the Atari community as a whole, that we can continue to look forward to new Atari Jaguar and Lynx products in 2006. Think about it. That's a full ten years since Atari published its last Jaguar game, and at least seventeen years since Atari first sold a Lynx! Wow.So what does this year hold? Never enough, I know, but that's life when you're doing this part-time for the love of the hobby and the community. But here are a few tidbits on what I see coming down t

Guest

Guest

Good things come to those who wait

Yeah, it's a cliche; I get it. But I was just discussing "delayed gratification" today with my two oldest boys during (believe it or not) a game of Risk Factions on XBLA. We talked about how you collect stars to turn in for troops, but the more stars you turn in, the bigger the troop supply. So, if you can wait long enough, you get a much better reward than if you take a reward as soon as you qualify for the minimum. Of course, you can only earn one star per turn in most cases, so it takes a goo

Songbird

Songbird

Robinson's Requiem now available for the Jaguar CD

Get all the details right here:   http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/182663-robinsons-requiem-now-available-for-the-jaguar-cd/   and help spread the word via Twitter, Facebook, VideoGameGeek.com, and more!   Show your support by ordering your copy today! Thank you to all the Jag fans who have made this such a great system to support over the last twelve years.

Songbird

Songbird

The end of a journey...

... is just the beginning. How do you describe it? A respite? A rebirth? A reprieve? A return?   Stay tuned for what happens next!

Songbird

Songbird

CGE 2010, here we come!

It's been quite a few years since I made it to CGE... looking forward to seeing old friends as well as new Atari fans! Be sure to drop by the Songbird booth even if you just want to chat about all things Jaguar and Lynx.   Plus, I am trying to arrange some last-minute goodies which I will make available at the show... stay tuned!   Source: Are you attending CGE2K10?

Songbird

Songbird

General update

Songbird Productions now has Ocean Depths CD and Bomb Squad CD in stock for the Atari Jaguar. These two encrypted CDs come straight from Starcat Developments in Germany -- you won't want to miss out!   Also, we did a complete Jaguar inventory over the weekend, and found one last Jaguar's Edge Fall Preview 1995 and added it back into the catalog. First taker gets it! And while we were inventorying, we came across a number of genuine Atari Lynx and Jaguar prototype cartridges received by Songbir

Songbird

Songbird

PROTECTOR IS BACK

The original Protector, first released in 1999 for the Atari Jaguar, is back in stock! This game has been out of production since 2002, but due to fan demand is now available for a limited time. Once the supply runs out, it is unlikely this game will ever be produced again. Visit the Songbird online catalog at:   http://songbird-productions.com   and click on Order / View Catalog to order your copy today!

Songbird

Songbird

Jaguar purrs once again... with a new CD game by Songbird!

Yep, it's true. I'm finally working on Mystery Project #1 which has been dormant for, oh, a decade or more. Wow. Did I just blink?   Anyway, more details will be forthcoming soon, but rest assured this will be ready for release at Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas this September, and while it's not a formerly lost Jaguar game like Robinson's Requiem, I hope Jag fans will nonetheless be presently surprised with what I have in store. Stay tuned!

Songbird

Songbird

Not just fun and games...

Some non-programmer people might think it's easy to make games. Or at the very least, if it isn't easy, it's a lot of fun. Make no mistake about it: developing games is work. A lot of work. If it wasn't, everybody would be doing it, eh?   Sure, it starts out fun. You think of this really cool idea, you get motivated to stay up late for weeks on end and get a mini-game engine running just to show you can do it. You feel a real sense of accomplishment early on, because "that's my baby" and look

Songbird

Songbird

So what *are* the Mystery Games, anyway?

One question which comes up every couple of months is "What are the Mystery Games?" This is understandable, since on my Songbird Projects page I mention not one but multiple Lynx and Jaguar mystery projects.   I put these as a placeholder for projects either in progress or intended to be in progress. I can say that all three are in progress, although one is not running on the target hardware yet. The other two are running in some shape or form on the target hardware right now. Having said that

Songbird

Songbird

Songbird acquires Quest Machine

If you're into super heroes, comics, or board games (particularly Euro games), then you may be interested in my latest news:   http://songbird-productions.com/pressreleases.shtml   My love for Atari systems hasn't diminished. I just found a really neat opportunity to acquire a board game publisher who was exiting the business. I've always had a great love for tabletop games because of the face-to-face social dynamic you don't often get with video games. So call this a parallel passion of min

Songbird

Songbird

Still "Chopping" away on the Lynx multicart...

Yes, it's been a month. What can I say? Well, this: I had two weeks off, mostly in the Orlando area, and I didn't think about video games very much.   The Lynx multicart is definitely coming along, and Karri continues to do an excellent job integrating the minigames as well as creating a nice overall presentation on the menu/system screens.   ChopperX is the latest game I've been playing, and this game is really, really, cool. You control a helicopter which must be piloted by a four-year-ol

Songbird

Songbird

Be careful what you spout on about...

... for it may come back to haunt you. Yep, about 4 months in my last blog (ack!) I talked about how hard it is to finish a game project. Well, here we are creeping into autumn and the MegaPak is a bit behind schedule.   We've made some changes which always causes churn-- notably Picross has been postponed to a future multicart, and Dicee/High Roller/whatever-it's-called will be taking its place -- but really I think many of us hit a big slowdown when summer weather kicked in here in the State

Songbird

Songbird

MegaPak status

OK, I got load the current build of MegaPak last week on my Lynx flash cart, and things look pretty good although there are still a good number of bugs to fix before it's in the can.   One thing where we could use some community help: background and logo for the title screen. I'm afraid most of us programmer-types aren't all that great at graphics, so if someone reading this would like to whip up a 16-color 160x102 graphic that would make a nice background and MegaPak logo, please contact me!

Songbird

Songbird

MegaPak and the meat grinder

Well, it's not so much of a meat grinder as it is a couple of techie geeks working evenings and weekends, doing their best to test EVERYTHING on MegaPak and fix the bugs they find. This is a long, slow process - as demonstrated by the roving deadline associated with this project. We wanted to be finished a number of weeks ago, but real life and a few nasty bugs have made this linger longer than intended.   I finally took it upon myself to access the code library and build tools so I could buil

Songbird

Songbird

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