Mindfield

Pimpwars. Never did get into that one. I was heavily into Usurper tho, and Assassin, and Wasteland, and Modem Wars. I was working on a port of both Wasteland and Modem Wars (called Hacker in my port -- and my version was rather better :-) on the Atari ST way back... woulda been great if I'd finished those. Even worked out a great universal terminal emulation scheme that internally handled ANSI and VT52 using the same routine, using an escape sequence lookup table. Ah, those were the days...

ICQ here ... probably more because I've been using it since the days I actually had a 5-digit UIN (where now new UINs are typically in the, what, 70 million range?) I'm used to it. It works for me, and everyone I know uses it. Plus, I vigorously avoid or, where avoidance is impossible, burn, mutilate or otherwise render inoperable anything related to AOL. If I had a dollar for every CF-ROM (Compact Frisbee ROM) mailer I've gotten from them... And MSN Messenger, being Microsoft-based, is to be avoided with all due urgency. Anything that makes me sign up for that damned passport ain't worth usin'. (Xbox trade shows notwithstanding, but that was work related, so I had to bite the bullet and sign on... blah)

Yeah... what a letdown. From the height of video gaming technology with GameLine to the world's biggest troll haven: AOL. *sigh* At least it's still related to the telecom field...

I sort of categorize the generations by the competition it engendered, like thus: First Generation (1975-77): Atari's Home Pong (and kin, clones, ripoffs, etc), Magnavox Odessey 1, Fairchild Channel F, Emmerson Arcadia, RCA Studio II Second Generation (1978-82): Atari VCS, Mattel Aquarius/Intellivision, Colecovision, CGE Vectrex, Bally Astrocade, VTech CreatiVision/**** Smith Wizzard, Entex AdventureVision Third Generation (1983-86): Atari 5200, Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System Fourth Generation (1987-1992): Consoles: Atari 7800, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, NEC TurboGrafix 16. Portables: Atari Lynx, Sega Game Gear, Nintendo Game Boy, NEC TurboExpress Fifth Generation[/i] (1993-1998): Consoles: 3DO (3DO, Panasonic, Goldstar), Atari Jaguar, Nintendo 64, Sega 32X/Sega Saturn, Sony PlayStation-X. Portables: Nintendo Game Boy Pocket/Colour Game Boy/Game Boy Color Sixth Generation (1999-2001): Consoles: Sega Dreamcast, Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo Gamecube. Portables: Nintendo Game Boy Advance, Ban Dai WonderSwan/Color As far as my definition of "Classic" is concerned -- I'd say it's any system up to and including the third generation. Essentially, all the "firsts" -- those initial efforts from newcomers to the console and handheld arena. Fourth and Fifth generation to me isn't quite classic yet, but still falls into the "retro" scene, with the exception of the handheld scene, which really only came into its own in the fourth console generation. You can't deny the Lynx wasn't an influential and classic machine... you might even say the GameGear was classic, as it was essentially a portable Master System for which many of the same games existed. When it comes right down to it though, if it instills within you that bittersweet melancholy of nostalgia and longing for the "good ol' days" then that's a good enough definition of "classic" in my books. (Um ... hey. What's with the censoring of poor Mr. Smith? Okay, so he was unfortunately named **** . (Stop that! D-I-C-K, okay?!) Anyway, y'all probably know what I'm on about here anyway) Dickey **** **** . I'll take Famous Phalluses for 200, Alex. [ 11-15-2001: Message edited by: Mindfield ]

Pure speculation, but perhaps there's two sets of data -- one table for what graphic element goes where, and one that defines what each graphic in the first table is. I don't know why it'd be done this way as such a secondary table would be redundant since, from a programming standpoint, the first table would be self-defining (object 1 is a floor section. Is Monty standing on object 1? Yes, so don't go to the fall routine. Otherwise your code would have to do further comparison. i.e. Object 1 looks like this. Definition 1 is a floor section. What's Monty standing on? Object 1. What's Object 1? Definition 1: A floor section. Ergo, Monty does not fall.) From a VCS programming standpoint, where you want code to be as compact as possible, this doesn't seem prudent or likely -- but you never know. Another possibility is that the object you used in your example isn't, in fact, a floor section, or perhaps was meant to be a floor section you can fall through, but was never used. Is there another tile like that in the set? Or is there another unique tile (like the "blinking" floors) you can use to test with?

There was also Whomper Stomper on the 8-bit, which actually made considerable use of digitized voice in the intro and between levels.

What about emulators like PCAE? It doesn't natively recognize ROMs; you have to set everything up yourself as to cart size (which includes bank switching methods), broadcast type, controllers used, etc. Wouldn't a modified Monty run on that? If not, then is it possible that Monty's protected with a simple checksum?

Sorry about the access problems to the site. I should have mentioned that if you are unable to get in the first time, or if you connect and disconnect, you must wait 30 seconds before attempting to connect again or the server will place a temporary (60 minute) ban on your IP. It's a safeguard to prevent against hammering (repeated attempts at accessing the site which can result in slowing down other people's connections) Anyway, the site's always up so if you find you get a server ban, wait an hour and connect again. It'll let you back in. As for Yar's Revenge -- that particular capture was courtest of The Roach. He provided me with a whack of great high quality Jag commercials, as well as that Yar's Revenge theatre ad and the full-length (but low quality) version of the Jaguar infomercial "The Cave." The rest of the stuff on my site was culled from numerous sources (including The Commercial Archive, AHS, and any others I could find)

Another Atari BBS on the net -- cool! And a real one, at that -- that must have been quite a feat, particularily considering you'd have had to do all the coding in BASIC. I haven't been on a Carina board in many, many years. Back in the day most boards were BBS Express! Pro or Oasis. (I was in the latter camp, being a beta tester and writing modules for it) I was only on one Carina board at the time -- The Neverending Story BBS in Toronto. I'll have to check it out. BTW, is ATS any relation to AT1, the one I've been using to call the likes of Closer to Home?

I always considered the southeast quadrant the "poor" quarter, possibly because of the sort of riff-raff I invariably encountered there, and the fact that the Smithy located there is the cheapest around -- it's the first place I went upon creating a new character, as I always knew his price for a dagger started lower than anyone else, and I could always haggle him down to between 170-200 gold, depending on my charm. Plus, the design of that corner of the city was easy to "make my rounds," as I called it, as that's all I'd do for a while -- walk around that little island in the center where the Thieves' Guild and Jack's Fitness Academy are secreted, surrounded by the Inn, the Tavern, the Smithy, the Shop, and beyond a secret area, the entrance to the Dungeon. It was convenient as it was close to a watering hole and a place to sleep -- and the other tavern, just west on your way back to the town square, had the cheapest water flasks in the city, though it was only open for a short period of time. And it was a short jaunt from the bank in the town square, where I could appraise and sell any gems/jewels I got as booty during fights.

I'm sure it's possible. It's just a matter of figuring out how the levels are laid out internally and then altering 'em. The first step is figuring out the internal dimensions of each room. Now, there are a few ways that this might be handled. Method 1: When designing game levels, you generally take a "tiled" approach -- that is, internally, each room is made up of blocks represented by a single byte that defines the static object contained in that block -- a section of wall, a segment of ladder, a portion of floor, etc. Then, usually, a secondary descriptor layer defines the placement of dymanic objects and enemies -- diamonds, torches, keys, swords, doors, snakes, and the starting points of skulls and spiders. These would be kept in a numeric array of four-byte sets containing the object or enemy, the screen it appears on, and its internal X and Y coordinates. When Monty enters a room, that list is referenced in order to populate the room with objects and enemies Monty can interact with, and updated according to that interaction (a diamond is taken, a spider is killed, etc.) Method 2: Same as method 1, but the aforementioned list is hard-coded into the level design itself. That is to say that rather than using this reference list to populate levels with interactive objects on the fly, those objects are included in the level layout itself and dealt with according to object type upon entering the room. When an object changes state (from present to missing) it's simply removed from the address space of that room. Given the restricted addressing space of the VCS carts, method 2 is probably more likely, as method 1 requires more space (level layout plus object list) Basically what you'll want to do is go through the ROM with a hex editor and look for long strings of repetative patterns that contain a lot of nulls (or some other byte that represents areas where there is no object, since Monty is a game with a lot of empty space in its level design. Usually this is represented by a null - character $00, but there's no accounting for a developers' particular quirks) Once you've found that, try and find the beginning. This will probably be room 1 -- where you start out, and try and fit the strings together so that they formulate the numeric equivalent of what the room would look like on-screen. Once you've done that you've got the room dimensions, and so can go ahead and de/reconstruct each level. Hell, I may give this a shot myself. :-)

Chris Cracknell? A.K.A. Crackers (From HELL!!!)? Jezus... of all the places in all the world I thought the VCS scene would be the last place I'd see his name associated with. He's a local boy, y'see, from the old school BBS days... cool. Anyway. Somehow, I just can't wrap my head around an X-Rated E.T. game. It's kinda like trying to imagine Sharon, Lois & Bram doing a strip tease... &ltshudder&gt I regret that analogy...

Odd. It shouldn't be asking you. (Mind you it works best in a real FTP client. Browsers just don't quite cut it...) Here's the manual connect info: Address: ftp.mindfield.dyndns.org Port: 2026 Login: emulation Pass: roms Hot link again: Mindfield's Emulation FTP

Oddly enough, I liked the 8-bit Atari commercials with Alan Alda. I guess I just like him as an actor, and seeing such a respected actor praising Atari was kinda cool. However, for VCS/console ads, I'd have to say that I liked the full length Yar's Revenge ad. Very avante garde for its time. Incidentally, I've got a pile of ads online for anyone who's interested. Mindfield's Emulation FTP They're located in the /nostalgia/ dir. EVeryone (that I've been able to find) is represented here, but of course there are more Atari ads, radio and television, than anything else. Enjoy... [ 11-08-2001: Message edited by: Mindfield ]

ICQ only, since quite nearly its beginnings, back when I actually had a 5-digit UIN. 'Course that UIN is quite lost, so now it's 7644693.

Personally I think the standard joysticks are fine for control mechanism. Artillery Duel sort of worked, though it didn't allow for the most precise aiming. What I'd like to see is a single player mode, something Xonox's game lacked. I love artillery games, from Scorched Earth to Warheads to Blast Doors on the PC... it's about time there was a decent one for the VCS -- and this one looks quite decent. :-)

Actually anything by Bitmap Bros. (Speedball, Speedball II, Gods, Magic Pockets, etc.) rock. I never really got into Mega-Lo-Mania, to be honest. I _did_ like the original Populous, though. I gotta get me Populous: The New Beginning for the PC. Seems like it's much like the original, but updated to today's computing standards. Other classics off the top of my head include: Dungeon Master + Chaos Strikes Back - the grandaddy of all dungeon crawlers. Anything and everything by Thalion - any games written by former demo coders are all right by me. :-) Chaos - PD game by Martin Brownlow, a port of the Spectrum game of the same name. A simplistic but highly addictive multiplayer wizard battle game. Anything by Jeff "Yak" Minter, of cozz (Llamatron, Revenge of the Mutant Camels, Trip-a-Tron Light Synth - the sequel to Colourspace on the 8-bit and the precursor to the JagCD's light synth - and if you can find it, the unreleased beta of Hardcore -- hey, if anyone finds this, I WANT IT! I lost it when I lost my last ST) Attack of the Mutant Tomatoes - Possibly one of the best PD games around. Critical Mass - Another one of the best PD games ever written for the ST Turrican & Turrican II - some of the best platform shooters I ever played Autoduel - a conversion of Steve Jackson's tabletop and one of the quintessential CRPGs. Simplistic graphics, but great gameplay Anything by Psygnosis/Psylapse - these guys always made top notch stuff, and their later games had the most awesome FMV intros. Another World (a.k.a. Out Of This World) - I'd give this one the award for most clever and artistic use of polygons. It's impossible to tell where a cutscene ends and gameplay begins. Amazingly immersive gameplay. Barbarian (Palace) - Medieval swordplay. Lotsa fun executing (pardon the pun) the decap move. Great Gianna Sisters & Hard & Heavy - Two Mario-style platformers, very well done. The latter is the former's sequel. Gauntlet I & II - Classic arcade conversions, very well done. Master Blazer - Lucasfilm's ST update of the classic Ballblazer. Wicked music, fantastic graphics and classic gameplay. Rick Dangerous I & II - Nicely done platformers. Phantasie I, II & III - Classic, if minimalistic CRPGs. Rampage - You can't be without this classic arcade conversion. The Ultima games - more classic CRPGs, probably the most well known. Elite, Frontier: Elite II - Two of the best space trading/fighting/flying games in existence. Mercenary + Escape from Targ, Damocles: Mercenary II & Mercenary III: Excellent 3D adventure games. Fate: Gates of Dawn - If anyone has this or finds it, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! This was one of the absolute BEST RPGs in the history of CRPGs, and I only ever found it once. I'd really love to get this one back. Big Business - One of the most hillarious business sims around. Ishar I, II & III - Silmarils make the some of largest, prettiest, most engaging RPGs around. Captive: Tony Crowther took the dungeon crawler and made it kick serious arse. I'm still in awe of how he managed to cram literally hundreds upon hundreds of huge levels onto one floppy disk. Knightmare: Tony's second dungeon crawler, this one in a medieval setting, but no less amazing than his first effort. I've probably glossed over loads more, but this is what I can think of that I used to play endlessly. :-)

quote: Originally posted by Atari-Jess: out of these games, what ones are good? there is a lot but i want a good list of THESE ones to get. It's all pretty much a matter of taste. Here's a brief rundown of the ones I know of: AFTER BURNER Third person over the shoulder shooter. Sega arcade port. Very popular. ALTERED BEAST Classic. Morph from man to beast and beat up zombies, vampires and other nasties, collecting powerups along the way. BATMAN 1 & 2 Platformers. Run, jump, use your Bat-erang. ARCHIPELAGOS & TROPHY SOCCER Archipelagos was a wierd, non-violent, pseudo puzzle game. Gain energy by leeching it from plants and breaking power rocks to destroy the obelisk in each level. It doesn't translate well into words, but that's the gist of it. There's a 2000 remake on the PC which was kinda cool. Never was into sports games, so no comment on the soccer game. ARKANOID Classic Breakout-style game with powerups and beasties. BAD LANDS Super Sprint with weapons. BATTLE TECH & WATERLOO Battletech: turn-based role playing game. Waterloo: Strategic recreation of the Battle at Waterloo. BILLARD & ADV RUGBY Billiards: Pool or snooker. No comment again on Rugby. BLOOD WYCH & MACADAM BUMPER Bloodwych: First-person dungeon crawler adventure/RPG ala Dungeon Master, but not as polished or in-depth. Two player simultaneous play possible. Macadam Bumper: Video pinball. A 16-bit port from the Sinclair Spectrum and BBC Micro. BLOOD MONEY Side-scrolling shoot 'em up. Also popular. Cool intro music. BUGGY BOY Not sure on this one. CHESS MASTER Popular, long-running chess franchise. TRACY & SPIDERMAN Tracy I've no idea of. Spiderman I think is the side-scrolling platformer. DOUBLE DRAGON DOUBLE DRAGON 2 Classic side-scrolling beat 'em ups. There's also a third in the series, but it stank. DRAGON BREED & SPINDIZZY WORLD Dragon Breed: I believe this was an overhead shooter. Spindizzy Worlds: I dunno 'bout anyone else, but I loved the Spindizzy games. Think Marble Madness with puzzles and stuff. NEBULUS & ELIMINATOR & PACMANIA Nebulous (a.k.a. Tower Toppler): Unique vertical scrolling platformer with some impressive cylindrical scrolling effects of the tower. Hop ever higher on each tower while avoiding nasties 'n stuff. Well done game. Pacmania: Yet another in the Pac Man genre, this one in isometric 3D. You can also jump over ghosts in this one. EMPIRE OF THE MINES & PINBALL MAGIC Dunno either of these. CHASE HQ Half first-person over-the-shoulder racing, half side-scrolling shoot 'em up. Chase and collar criminals. Cool. F 16 COMBAT PILOT I'm not sure; is this the same as F-16 Falcon? If so, this is probably the grandaddy of combat flight sims. FAST LANE & DYNAMITE DUX Not sure about these. I know I've played Dynamite Dux, but can't remmeber what it's all about. FERRARI FORMULA 1 Racing. Average. FIGHTING SOCCER & INTERPHASE Dunno about the first. Interphase was ... um ... unique, to say the least. Fast polygon 3D action, but gameplay that's probably impossible to describe. Try it. It's fun just flying around in it anyway. :-) FIRE AND BRIMSTONE & HYPERFORCE Fire & Brimstone: I think this was an RPG. Or was it Titus' side-scrolling platformer? I can't recall. Don't know about Hyperforce. FIRE AND FORGET 2 & ORIENTAL GAMES F&F 1 & 2: One or two player first-person over-the-shoulder shoot 'em up. Player one plays a car, two, a jet, simultaneously. Pretty good. FLYING SHARK WWII Combat flight sim, I believe. GOUST N GHOST One of the quintessential side-scrolling platformers. A must have. HARD DRIVIN Atari's classic polygon 3D stunt racing game. Don't forget to hit the cow! Get its sequel, Race Drivin' too. HELLRAISER Movie license. Blah. INDIANA 500 Indy car racing. Also dull. IRON LORD IVANOHE JAWS & PHOBIA KICK OFF 2 & DYNASTI WARS Not sure on any of these. LED STORM Side-scrolling shooter. Average. LICENCE TO KILL Bond movie license. Side-scrolling action game. Take it or leave it. LOTUS TURBO ESPRIT & JAMES POND Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge: First-person racing. Fantastic. Get its sequels, Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, and Lotus III -- the third is the best, with awesome fog, snow and night driving effects. James Pond: Cutesy but well done omni-scrolling platformer. Its sequel, Codename: Robocod is better. MUNSTER & FIRE ZONE Dunno. NARC Isometric 3D fast-paced shooter. Play a narcotics officer bustin' heads 'n stuff. Not bad. Plays best on an STE. NITRO & FUTURE BASKET BALL Dunno. NORTH AND SOUTH Historic wargame. Not my cuppa tea. OPERATION JUPITER Mission-based action/strategy game. Pretty good, actually. OUT RUN everyone knows Sega's classic Outrun! :-) PANZA KICK BOXING A lot of people liked this. I didn't. ROAD BLASTER Atari's classic racing/shooting game. Nicely done. ROAD RUNNER Side-scrolling action/racing game. Evade Wile E. Coyote while picking up bird seed along the interstate. ROAD WAR 2000 Post-apocalyptic overhead turn-based role playing game from SSI. I have a soft spot for these, and this one's pretty good. ROBOCOP Side-scrolling action game. Rather dull. TOTAL ECLIPSE & CYBERNOID Total Eclipse: One of the several games using the Freescape 3D engine. (Others include Castle Master I and II, Driller, etc.) Basically a 3D adventure game. Not too bad, if a little plain. ROADLAND Rodland -- platformer. A little too cutesy for me. R TYPE R TYPE 2 Quintessential side-scrolling shoot 'em up. RVF HONDA & DARKSIDE Not sure here. SLY AND SPY No idea. SPACE HARRIER A lot like Afterburner. SPACE INVADERS Really, now. :-) SPEED BALL 2 Speedball II: Brutal Deluxe is a futuristic sports game. Amazing music, fast and frenetic gameplay. If you like sports-style games, this is a must. STARGOSE Not sure. STARWARS Which one? ULTIMATE ACTION FIGHTER & STRIKE Dunno either of these. STUNT CAR RACER Ooh, I loved this one. Fast 3D polygon stunt driving... some wild and wooly drops and jumps in this one, all on a raised track. Flying off and crashing is almost as much fun as racing! :-) SUPER OFF ROAD RACER Dunno. SUPER SPRINT Atari's classic circuit racing game. An almost arcade-perfect port. A must for any self-respecting racing fan. SUPER CARS 2 Think Super Sprint with larger graphics and powerups and stuff.0 SUPER SKWEEK Overhead-view puzzle/logic game. Cute and fun. SUPER LEAGUE SOCCER Dunno. TEENAGE QUEEN Adult strip poker game. TIME SCANNER Dunno. TOKI Nicely done platform game. A little on the slow side. TURBO OUTRUN Outrun ... um ... turbocharged. :-) VROOM 3D racing. One of the best racers there is ... personally I thought it was hard to control, but... chacon son gout I guess. Get No Second Prize instead. Now that is wickedly fast 3D racing. VULCAN & CHESSMASTER 2000 Dunno about the first. Chessmaster 2000 is of course an upgrade over previous Chessmaster games. WIPEOUT They made this for the ST? Damn. This was a pretty wicked PC racing game back in the day... 3D racing with gravity-(and physics)-defying twists, turns, and loops. XENON XENON 2 Xenon: Overhead-view shoot 'em up. Very nice. Xenon II: Megablast: Vertical scrolling shoot 'em up with powerups 'n stuff. Even nicer. Title music by Bomb the Bass. XTRON Dunno. Z OUT Sequel to X-Out. Shoot 'em up. Pretty cool.

Actually I've had excellent success with most of the emulators under XP. Most that ran under WinMe run under XP. I've come across a few that I couldn't get to work, but those are emulators I haven't used in so long that I frankly can't quite remember if I ever got them to work in the first place. And believe me. If I ran into any noteworthy emulator problems under XP I'd be whining about it every chance I got. I'm a certified, bona fide, no holds barred EmuHolic. :-) A few tips for legacy compatibility in XP: 1. If it doesn't work, check the properties. Set "compatibility" to Windows 95 or 98/ME. 2. (DOS) If it doesn't work, follow step one, then click the Memory tab and set all values except "Initial Environment" to maximum. Leave the environment at "auto." Do this for every executable belonging to the program you're trying to run. 3. (DOS) If you have troubles with your sound, take your old BLASTER environment variable from an old AUTOEXEC.BAT or DOSSTART.BAT file and add them to the AUTOEXEC.NT file located in your WINDOWSSYSTEM32 directory. This only works for programs that don't have their own native sound drivers. (The default AUTOEXEC.NT file that comes with XP already has a common BLASTER variable; change it to reflect your particular configuration) Some issues I have yet to work out how to pull off. I haven't been able to figure out how to recover more than about 580k of conventional memory under emulated DOS. This means programs that have unreasonably high conventional memory requirements won't run, or won't run properly.

My site has pretty well any Coleco stuff I've been able to dredge up. Mindfield's Emulation Area Wander into the Console section, then into the CV/Adam area, and you'll find some Adam disks (17) and CV ROMs (287).

It's probably floating around. I tried STOS very briefly and couldn't stand it. Although it was a little more long-winded, I found writing games and other things in GFA to be so unbelievably superior as to make me forget all about my brief but unpleasant STOS experience. And GFA with the SpriteWorks package was unbelievable. :-) (I may even still have the SpriteWorks disks around somewhere... best buy I ever made. :-)

Two more things not mentioned: Hardware Scrolling and hardware sprites. Not obvious enhancements, and they didn't really catch on very well, but there were a few games that made good use of these features. In fact, there were quite a few things the STe was capable of that the non-E machines could only dream about. Look at Stardust, the several Doom-style clones that had 3D scrolling and gouraud shading in real-time, and there was an STE-Only pinball game (Pinball Dreams?) that used hardware scrolling/sprites and the enhanced sound of the STE to excellent advantage. [ 10-28-2001: Message edited by: Mindfield ]

I hope so. It was fairly good as it was, so I'm hoping the end product of their overhaul will be something us ex-ST users will be proud of. :-)

Problem is, officially, those Space Invaders are a Taito property. Atari were simply the first to exclusively license the arcade title for conversion to the VCS. Although the excitement of the time of being able to bring a killer hit home probably gave the VCS version of Space Invaders more notariety than its real arcade counterpart, it's still a conversion of a Taito title, so I couldn't consider it any kind of official mascot. Plus, there's no real singular, identifiable character in there. A collection of bug-like invaders, and your little mobile missile launcher. Definitely not huggable plush material. :-)

See, the thing is, those of us here today in this forum recognize and appreciate the fact that Atari's lack of any sort of mascot or flagship game was a part of its charm. But that is largely hindsight talking; the fact that we can both look back and appreciate Atari's rich history from a distance, and that we have so much newer, yet somehow lacking technology upon which to cultivate that appreciation. I have to wonder if these same things would have been said 15 or 20 years ago when we didn't have the benefit of advance knowledge. See, on the one hand, Atari's lack of a mascot or gaming franchise gave Atari a broader appeal; the fact is, Atari was so much more than games. Their home computer lines were excellent, and I used several of them for many wonderful years. Had they a mascot, they would have an indellible mark upon them that would have forever marked anything they made as childish or without merit in the more serious computing field. Nintendo and Sega were able to get away with it because that's all they really did was game machines. (Yes, Sega tried to enter the computer field with the SC 3000, but we're all rather familiar with how that went) On the other hand, I believe that having such a mascot is a good part of what ultimately brought Sega and Nintendo the success they enjoyed. Success, I might add, that saw them outlive Atari. I'm not saying bad management and poor business decisions weren't to blame for Atari's demise, of course; a profound lack of advertizing, alienating dealer networks, countless R&D projects funded with millions only to be scrapped, and a few bad eggs in the hot seats. (the Sons of Tramiel, and the autocratic Ray Kassar). But I think maybe their chances of survival might have been bolstered by the presence of some kind of mascot. As abhorably commercial as that might seem, perhaps pegging Atari as big sell-outs to some, I think maybe some kind of mascot or game franchise exclusive to Atari would have put the Atari name in more people's faces for longer periods of time, thus prolonging their exposure and ultimately even adding to their longevity -- even, dare I say, their continuing survival. Even if it was with the Tramiels, as I feel that, despite the buffoonery we all witnessed during their ignominous reign, I still felt they were a part of the "real" Atari, post-Warner era. After all, The XE, ST, Falcon, Jaguar, Lynx and 7800 all owe to the presence of the Tramiels in the big chair, which only served to prove their foresight and vision, if not their business acumen.