Alex

Okay, now you've really got me interested, I'd really like to talk to you about this in email or AIM. I don't believe that Pompeii has ever been archived, were you aware of that? Please email me at [email protected] when you get a chance.

I agree with you Joe. I think the original article is well intentioned but is very flawed. Anyway, I'll post my thoughts over there.

You can sort by rarity. Just click on the Rarity link at the top of the column. It will sort in ascending order. Click again to reverse that order. You can sort all the columns this way - an easy way to see which cart scans, roms, or whatever that we're missing. You can't however, sort by Rarity if you want to start with 4 for example. But you can sort and then page over to all the 4's.

A good suggestion. Since it's all database driven, it might not be that hard to do. I suppose we just need to set a fixed-width table (currently they're dynamic) with a modified guide, something like our low-bandwidth rarity guide.

Please tell us more. What is the nature of the speech game? What kind of speech does it use? Can you tell us more about the development system?

I'm not sure of the details yet, I'll try to find out more and post it to this thread.

[img' target='_blank'>/images/news/tvgames.jpg[/img]You can

quote: Originally posted by Sol: I can not go to these show for these gaems. How can I buy them is there a site??? Hozer Videogames sells most games on cartridge, including the two most recent Ebivision games, so hopefully they will have Allia Quest in the future. You can also buy Combat 2 from Hozer.

I imagine they would release them if they could, since they've already released two games that they did own the rights to. More than likely it would be TSR/Wizards of the Coast that would prohibit the project, but that's just speculation on my part. But you're right, it would be nice. I got to play them in '99 at CGE, and they were pretty cool games.

quote: Originally posted by Sol: I with Rich this time I find alot of things here that I find on another sites. Even your name AtariAGe was taken from old magazine did you buy to use there name??! If there is anything that we have used from another site without permission, please tell us what it is and we will remove it. Most of the content on the site we created ourselves. The rest was either submitted willfully to the site, or borrowed with permission from another site. It is possible that somone submitted material that was not their own, even though we have requested that people not do this on our contribution page, in which case we would remove it upon notification. Maybe the content you see on other sites was taken from us? "AtariAge" is not copyrighted in any form. I do not believe that "Atari Age" is copyrighted either, based on a nonprofessional search I conducted. We do not use the Atari Fuji logo. Finally, I believe the use of Atari in our name would fall under fair use laws, if Infogrames were to care. There are plenty of examples of company's names being used within other names - look at all the gaming magazines for example.

quote: Originally posted by rich_vcs: WOW! I would humbly submit that what you just said was quite pompous and arrogant considering that a good amount of your site seems to be borrowed from various sources including Digital Press and others. I think the Atari Age guys are starting to get a little too full of themselves. Rich Fair enough, I can see how that would appear pompous. And I should amend that to say "North American releases" since we don't include PAL games. That said, I think our list is pretty complete, including numerous box and label variations. Aside from Tempest's list, it probably has the most entries. The rest of your comments just seem hostile, and I don't know where that's coming from. I'm sorry you feel that way.

quote: Originally posted by rich_vcs: But it has been available before. I downloaded it about a year ago although as I said previously, I don't remember where from. Digital Press even put it on their site when they heard that you were holding up the release. Did you guys make a public inquiry for the ROM? I don't remember seeing anything in the newsgroups. Is it possible that you didn't look hard enough? Rich Yes, go ahead and search groups.google.com, and you will see my queries. It was also posted on my web site for years that I was looking for it. I know the ROM had been dumped before, but never released to my knowledge. I didn't know DP had it, and I guess they didn't know that it wasn't out there.

quote: Originally posted by rich_vcs: What's everyone talking about? I downloaded Video Life about a year ago (don't remember where...) so it's been around for a while. Maybe the Atari Age guys didn't look hard enough. I also don't like their comment that one of the options was to hold the ROM until an emulator worked with it (however long it took). Why? Why not release it and let the tech people work on it. Was the ROM sent to the authors of all the other 2600 emulators so they could get it working as well? Rich Believe me, I looked hard. Who knows why I couldn't find it. I checked every emu site I could find. I posted periodically in several newsgroups that I was looking for it. My web site stated that I was looking for it. I know it was dumped before, but it was never posted anywhere that I could find it. You are the first person to tell me they've downloaded it before. I said that holding it was one option, one that we obviously didn't choose, and in fact never entertained that idea. I was merely pointing out our options, and stating why we chose to do it the way we did. We did let the tech guys work on it, as we have stated numerous times. We didn't send it to any of the other emu authors simply because we didn't want to wait for all of them to have compatibility. It wasn't meant as a slight to any other emus or their authors, they're all very impressive. That was just the compromise we made between a timely release and functionality. Judging by the complaints on this thread, I can only imagine the verbal blasting we would have received had we indeed sent it to all the authors and waited for total compatibility. I honestly don't understand where all this animosity is coming from. Are we missing something here? We actually thought people would appreciate full functionality and an accurate dump.

It's quite good. We haven't had a chance to create a new entry for it yet, but we'll have scans and screenshots up soon. The graphics are great, he created some really cool effects, I especially like the starfield (Unfortunately you can't really appreciate that unless you see the game running). It reminds me a bit of Megamania except that the enemies attack in a more vertical pattern rather than horizontal. It's very much in the classic vein. [ 08-28-2001: Message edited by: Alex ]

quote: Originally posted by Digital Press: I had no idea this was such a big deal! Wow, I wish you would have asked me Alex. I've had the ROM on my site for ages. In fact, just because you don't "see" it on a page doesn't mean it's not there - try http://www.digitpress.com/emu/a2600/xxxxxxxx.bin where xxxxxxxx=name of a rom you're looking for. Hopefully this helps your future searches. Digital Press Ten Years Conquering This Tiny Planet Thanks. Since you have other rarities posted, I just assumed you didn't have it. I believe that's the last of the original NTSC ROMs, so I'm not looking for anything else right now except for some of the protos. But I'll check your site in the future if I'm looking for something. We had no idea this would be that big of a deal either. Albert was able to get the ROM at CGE, we thought it would be nice to tweak it, and now this. Shessh! I never would have guessed it would piss anyone off. Live and learn. Can't we all just get along?

As far as I know, they are not available anywhere. The prototypes are owned by Intellivision Productions, and they have stated that they can't release them because of copyright violations. I don't know if they've even been dumped, much less made it into anyone's hands. I don't know if they'll ever be released to the public, unfortunately.

quote: Originally posted by Digital Press: Is it really *that* complicated? Didn't the previous version of Z26 come with instructions? Maybe I'm just BRILLIANT but it only took a few moments of my time to figure out how to load it. For you, me, and other people versed in emulators or operating systems? No, of course not. For many people? You bet it is. You'd be surprised at how many people have no idea what a command line is, or even how to get in to DOS. We get enough questions on how to run emulators as it is, it's pretty obvious that if we were telling people to use a command line in DOS, we'd be getting a lot more. We decided to make it easier for everyone in the first place, and we didn't think two weeks was a great sacrifice for that.

We wanted it to work with natively with an emulator, do you really think that isn't a valid reason to hold it? We happened to choose z26, it seems to be quite popular these days. We realize not everyone uses it, but at least there is one emulator out there that will run it. I'm sure the others will add functionality in future releases. Our options were to release it with no native support (and confuse lots of people), release it with support from one emu as we did, or possibly delay the release for some time by waiting for all emulators to support it. We tried to compromise. Just because emulation isn't perfect, doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for accuracy. We can make it act like a real cart in a real system, so why not? Even if most people don't appreciate it, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. Some people will appreciate it, and others won't know the difference. Haven't you ever done something properly just because that's how it should be done, not because some people might or might not appreciate it? I'm sure you have. If we sat on the cart for a year, I could understand your complaints, but two weeks?

I don't believe Leonard claims to have seen a released copy. A version at a gaming show, yes, but not a production copy. I have yet to hear of anyone claiming to see a production copy, much less show proof of one. Obviously the game existed at some point in prototype form, since Telegames has the code. Is this what you are referring to? Or do mean someone claims to have seen a retail version of Glacier Patrol?

No Scott, that isn't the only reason. The first reason is to have an emulator that autodetects the game properly. The day we were notified that the new z26 was released, we released the game. Maybe you would know how to run z26 from a command line, but most people don't. The second is to release a version that emulates the game as accurately as possible. Why rush an imperfect version when a few weeks can improve it? Like I said, I've been asking publicly for this ROM for 3 years (just went back and checked Google) - we finally get it at CGE and we should not wait two weeks to make sure it runs as accurately and smoothly as possible? Did it really bother you so much that we held on to it for two weeks just so that we could release it under the best conditions? You are correct that most people won't be interested since it isn't a traditional game, but since the ROM will be around for years to come and will be downloaded by thousands of people, I think we made the right decision. Why release something that isn't as good as it can be?

Hmmm, reproduction patches in the works? I sure hope so, that would be super cool! If you are indeed doing this, please print something on the back of them to differentiate them from the originals, or people will get ripped off on Ebay. If I had 'em, I'd send them to you, but I don't.

Interesting, I just got it to work. I had to set it up like this: C:mess32bbiosa78007800.zip The last version I had (which may not have been the directly previous release) ran fine with the zip file in the 'bios' folder as opposed to a 7800 sub-folder. Did you mean .zip file as well, or are you actually running it with a 7800.bin file?

It's a commercial program, called the Ultimate Bulletin Board. You can find out more at the Infopop site. If you're looking for a freeware system, check out Hotscripts for some good options. For a Perl solution, I've used Ikonboard, it's similar to UBB but not anywhere as robust. Personally I would use a PHP/MySQL solution such as PHPBB if you have that option. [ 08-25-2001: Message edited by: Alex ]

I'm having a problem with the latest version (from August 20th I think). It can't recognize the 7800.rom file for some reason. Never had the problem before, though I've heard other people are having problems with this latest version.

I'm looking for a good scan of Xonox's Spike's Peak, single ender only. Anyone have it? This one is pretty rare.