awhite2600

The Personal Computer Museum has two copies of Extra Terrestrials in it's possession. One is a work in progress copy with slightly different graphics, sounds and gameplay. This copy was donated by the publisher. The other copy is a released version that was donated by the original programmer. The game was definitely sold to consumers. Owners of Skill Screen Games have confirmed that copies were sold to some local retailers. We have also received unconfirmed reports from people in the area that they either purchased the game back in the day or still have a copy. These reports came into the museum after some of the local media coverage. Sydric and I are attempting to verify these claims. If we can prove that other copies exist we will share our findings with the community. So I would not class Extra Terrestrials as "Unreleased".

Perhaps I am biased... Extra Terrestrials by Skill Screen Games.

I want to echo Sydric's comments in post #86. This project has been a complete thrill ride that I'm unlikely to experience again. Everything from the initial discovery of an unknown cartridge, the research, meeting the programmer, being on the local news, creating the packaging for the reproduction has been a classic gaming high. This entire event has brought some great publicity to the Personal Computer Museum. I've been able to talk about this project with everyday people who thought that the Atari 2600 died in the 1980's. People are generally fascinated by the entire story. Educating people about classic computers and game systems is what the museum is all about. Extra Terrestrials has helped us to reach out to people that might not have been interested. A big thanks to all of the people here at AtariAge. Your enthusiasm for this project has been wonderful.

The believe that the carts are being shipped as people pay for them. Sydric is looking after everything. I don't know how many carts have been paid for or shipped.

The plan has always been to release the ROM to the community. I believe that the Personal Computer Museum will release the ROM once all of the reproduction cartridges have been shipped. We have discovered that the ROM does not run correctly on emulators. It does run correctly on a Harmony cart as well as on the reproduction cartridges. So we know that the dump is good. I will leave it to Sydric to decide when and how the ROM will be released.

My first computer was a Radio Shack Pocket Computer PC1. The computer could be programmed using a fairly stripped down version of BASIC. There were 1424 "steps" available for programming plus some memory reserved for variables. There was almost no string handling capability. I thought of it as a computer, but looking back it was little more than a fancy programmable calculator. I was 14 when I bought it and saved my paper route money for months. I couldn't even afford the error prone cassette interface at first. I'd write programs that stretched the unusual BASIC dialect to it's limit. Unable to save them, I'd end up deleting the programs to write something else. I still have my PC1 and it still works.

Thanks guys! I designed the box starting with just a scan of the 25+ year old cart label. Sydric was a huge help with his suggestions and input.

I wonder if the company selling the cases really understands them? They support SNES, N64 Genesis and Electronic Arts formats. I had no idea that Electronic Arts was a format. Did the person writing the description just look at the games in the picture and make something up?

The company that created Extra Terrestrials, Skill Screen Games was created as a games division of a company called Telcom Research. Telcom Research is a successful company that started in 1968 and is still around today. Check out their website at http://www.telcomresearch.com/. The effort to produce Extra Terrestrials cost the company tens of thousands of dollars. A professional programmer named Herman Quast was hired and paid to reverse engineer 2600 games and to create a new game. I have met Herman personally. He still works as a programmer doing work on embedded systems. Herman disassembled 2600 games to determine how the system worked and how to create new games. Skill Screen Games spent $15,000 to create molds and tooling in order to produce their first game. I'm told that the molds are still packed away somewhere at Telcom Research. Professionally printed labels, manuals and boxes were created for the game. Unfortunately none of the manuals and boxes are known to still exist. Due to numerous problems, the company did not get Extra Terrestrials finished in time for the 1983 Christmas season. By the time the game was completed in early 1984 the video game market had crashed. As a result, major distributors refused to work with Skill Screen Games to distribute their first product. In an attempt to recover their investment, the owners of the company tried selling the games directly to local game retailers. As the 2600 market had collapsed, very few stores purchased copies of the game. So I certainly wouldn't call Extra Terrestrials a "homebrew". Skill Screen Games did what most other companies did - they reverse engineered the 2600 and created their own games. Professional packaging and marketing was planned. They were just too late.

One of the owners of Skill Screen Games has told us that the cartridge shells were made for them. They spent a considerable amount of money on the tooling to produce the shells. They recall seeing the tooling packaged up many years ago - so it might still exist somewhere.

The value specified after WAIT 6502 determines how many times the word MICROSOFT! is printed. Entering WAIT 6502,100 will completely fill the screen of a 40 column PET with the MICROSOFT! text.

We are working with the Bantings and Mr. Quast to try to get more information...tools, source code, packaging...anything. Unfortunately it's only us gaming geeks that are excited about this find. As soon as more information is available it will be posted in this thread.

It looks too much like a hack of Freeway/ET than an 'original' to me. It will be interesting to see the source code once it's ripped to see how original it actually is. The cart size is definitely original, I like the look of the label too. I think it's a great story. Personally I would treat it like a one-of-a-kind prototype. Is it an EPROM or production chip? I didn't see this info or do we not know yet? Too lazy to go back and look, but I think I remember reading in this thread that the programmer still had the original source code for the game. It could very well be an original game that just mixed and match game play aspects from various games which I would constitue as a real original game. its difficult to say if this early homebrew or a real game, but seeing as the label has a company name with an address and everything, I would say this is a real game, not a prototype, and not a homebrew . . . but thats just me. This is an original game with original programming. Sydric and I have met with Herman Quast, the programmer, in person. You can see a picture of the three of us together at the PC Museum link earlier in this thread. Herman was inspired by other 2600 games and even disassembled some of them to determine how the 2600 worked. Remember - this was back in 1983 before any info about the 2600 was publicly available. Skill Screen Games made their own cartridge shells which is why the cart size is unique. This is not a one-of-a-kind or prototype cart. We were told that perhaps 200 or so were produced and distributed locally. At this time we don't know if there is an EPROM or a ROM in the cart. There is no way to open the cart without removing the label - something that we don't want to do.

Sydric and I are still working on getting the rom dumped. For obvious reasons the game will not be shipped to anyone to dump. If anyone has a dumper and wants to visit the PC Museum in Southern Ontario we would be happy to work with you to dump the rom. We are also looking at using either a Harmony cart and an RGA-1360 or a modified 7800 to dump the rom ourselves. Unfortunately we don't have one of the 7800s that is easily modifiable to support an EPROM with the dumper BIOS. We have two RGA-1360 switchers but need to find the time to do the modification to make them safe. More news is developing. Keep watching the skies...and this thread.

Didn't get a chance to look at the RGA-1360 when I saw Sydric yesterday. Realized that I forgot as I was driving home. Today I went to pick up a bunch of Atari stuff from a Kijiji ad. Included with the two systems, 100+ games, 10+ controllers, etc was...an RGA-1360! I'm going to crack it open and see how involved the modification is to make it safe. Then we just need to wait for Sydric to get his Harmony cart and we can dump the Extra Terrestrials ROM. I don't normally ask about value...but what is an RGA-1360 worth? Considering I picked up the entire lot for $60 CDN including Gas Hog, Miner 2049er and Zellers Scuba Diver...I think I did ok.

Is it "RGA-1360"? That's the model number for the "Video Game Brain". In that case, there's the possibility to damage carts and/or the console because of a bad design of that device. You shouldn't use it unless it has been modified as described in this post. Thanks for the tip alex_79. I will check out the exact model of the switcher when i visit Sydric at the museum tomorrow. We will then discuss either doing the mod and using a Harmony cart or looking into a 7800 style dumper.

this is a great story and the Banting family sure has one hell of a legacy. I have to say though I am scratching my head over the game-play of this game, it seems a tad boring. no shooting. maybe someone can hack it and add the ability to shoot your opponent and change the landscape to add different barriers or mazes. To answer your question Mark... Yes, the game is not the greatest. However as a two player game it is a bit of fun. If both players are reasonable savvy with a joystick the game does become interesting. The hidden walls add an element of uncertainty where the blue character can suddenly get an edge over the alien. The levels also seem to end for no reason - putting the alien back at the top and the blue character back at the bottom. Unfortunately without any documentation we still don't fully understand the logic behind the game. You may ask how I know all of this? I am the guy in the orange Atari shirt in the CTV video that was posted earlier in this thread. I had a chance to play the game with Sydric last weekend. Don't forget that you can try out the game too. If you can make it to the Personal Computer Museum this weekend we will be open and the game will be playable. Sydric is still waiting for some more info from the original programmer. Sydric was able to reach him by phone last weekend while the news reporter was at the museum. The programmer may still have some additional material. We still don't think anyone has the box. So please stop asking. Trust me, if the box surfaces we will let everyone know. The newspaper article states that the Bantings spent over $12,000 on tooling to produce the game. This leads me to believe that they may have created their own molds for the cartridge shells. So we may have answered the question as to why the cartridge design has never been discovered before - it's unique to this game. The Bantings also owned a business called Telcom Research that produced video timecode equipment and phone dialers. I was digging through an old box of junk last night and discovered that I have one of their dialers. This dialer was used along with alternative phone service in Southern Ontario in the early 1990's. For some reason the hard wired power supply has been cut off. I don't remember why but I suspect that I needed the power supply for another project years ago. See the attached pics.

That's me in the orange Atari shirt.

The company that produced the game was a family run business. The original donor was part of that family. He provided information and put Sydric in touch with other family members that provided additional info. Here is the link to the page with the company info http://www.pcmuseum....file.asp?id=519. This game was donated about a week ago. Sydric contacted me immediately and provided what info he had as well as some pics. Over the next few days Sydric got in touch with the family members and obtained the other info. He then waited until G4 could run the story before releasing news to the AtariAge community. So they potentially have more cartridges in their possession? I was told by Sydric that they don't have any more carts. I also asked about a box. I was told that there was a box produced for the game. Unfortunately they don't have the box any more. So this story could end one day like Air Raid - with a box being discovered. I was told that the company went door to door in early 1984 attempting to get retailers to carry the game. At most a few hundred carts were sold to retailers in Southern Ontario. I have lived in various parts of Southern Ontario all of my life. I have been collecting since the mid-1980's. I built most of my collection from local flea markets, thrift stores and private sales. I've never heard of this game until last week.

The company that produced the game was a family run business. The original donor was part of that family. He provided information and put Sydric in touch with other family members that provided additional info. Here is the link to the page with the company info http://www.pcmuseum.ca/companyprofile.asp?id=519. This game was donated about a week ago. Sydric contacted me immediately and provided what info he had as well as some pics. Over the next few days Sydric got in touch with the family members and obtained the other info. He then waited until G4 could run the story before releasing news to the AtariAge community.

For the doubters - Sydric is not the type to try a scam. He runs a computer museum (www.pcmuseum.ca) and has been named as having Canada's largest collection of video games. I've known the man for over 25 years. If he says the game is real then it is. He has already offered to dump the ROM. Someone just has to lend him a dumper. What kind of proof do you want?

Click the link in the original post.

I know Sydric, the original poster. He's a member here too. I know about this new find. You will be interested - guaranteed.

Awesome. Thanks. I remembered the slogan too clearly to have made it up on my own.

Gyruss is one of my favorite games of all time. I'm working on a personal project involving the game. (No, it's not a remake, port or similar project.) I recall seeing some advertising back in the day with the slogan, "Nothing moves or sounds like Gyruss". I have looked at all of my Gyruss related items and searched the web but cannot find any reference to the slogan. So did I imagine it or was there advertising using this slogan? Does anyone have an old magazine ad or flyer that might used this slogan? Thanks.