Mclaneinc

And the games for a mere 14,500.00

Yeah, I saw Andy's twitter message, they were the elites, neither had to worry about studio problems. Apparently there's a fair few stories re Archer and Jimmy, when Jimmy wasn't playing tournaments he 'liked to enjoy himself', take what you want from that, I heard him and Jimmy had some good old nights out. Back in my Pool and snooker days I played in a lot of tournaments and I was lucky enough to play a frame with Jimmy, such a talent, wiped the floor with me. Later on I moved to Ilford and the resident profs in my local Snooker club were Ken Docherty and Ronnie O'Sullivan, had a joke frame with Ronnie (when you could get him away from playing cards), so much fun because all I did was watch as her cleared most of the table first visit.

Yeah, Lotus II was a head turner (music was ok too) People who didn't JUST port, but looked at the host machine and used it as much as possible.. Andrew Braybrook was another similar coder back then, when he took on the Amiga he actually went over to either Germany or Finland and learnt off the hackers (not as weird as it sounds, most of the C64 demo coders went on to the Amiga and Andrew was already mates with most of them via the C64 scene, and who best to tell you the secrets of a machine, hackers and demo coders) etc to use the Amiga, the result, Fire and Ice, still one of the finest platformers on the Amiga. We were lucky with these folk, they had the clout to say to a studio, "Hold on, I can upgrade this game, but it will need more time" and because of who it was they got that time and we got better games.

Love this, the detail and genius he used to almost mo-cap in a crude form..Man was a true out of the box thinker. The physics for Pool etc are just amazingly good, playing pool was something I did on a club level, he nailed it.

Lets not start getting you a bad name Chris Keep safe, I hear it's might cold near your edge of the border.. Toronto, nice area..

Cold weather flashing?

Him and Woakes were good mates...Totally agree re the quality. He was the golden child of that era...

And now Archer, been a real bad year for the Atari faithful.. (ok, archer was a multi systems guy but when he wrote for the Atari, he used the machine fully) Most of us are at 'that age' when this sort of thing is all too common, people we looked up to just dropping, some just way too young to be gone....ALL gone far too soon..

Congrats Chilly Willy, it's an awesome prize...Well done tmp for being such a champ and offering a prize..

That is such a crap set of news to wake up to, I would not say I was a mate of his but he always recognised me at the shows and had a good old laugh, I remember him looking at my trade badge when chatting and he said, I brought my disk drive from you lot and I said, yeah, from me, I did all the forms and sold it to you. After that we'd always chat at the shows. Such a shame, a year younger than me and taken by the horrible disease, as Doc said, a powerhouse of a coder, he did it all. Truly sad...And as he told me and a mate, only once you master the C64 Dropzone are you ready for the challenge of the Atari version.. RIP Archer, you left us a legacy of fantastic games to remember you by..

The Last Ninja series is a Marmite type of game, I'll use the C64 as it was the original version. It looks and sounds great, but then you get the pixel perfect stuff that can be annoying and the fighting system just annoys me, trying to get the exact angle and placement to kick or punch is a pain as is knowing that unless you get it spot on the opponent will land a load more blows than you. Clearly it was enjoyed by many, it turned into a multi machine series. The Atari version I think I saw that it was based on the BBC code, I presume the BBC version had little or no music which is a shame, it's really part of the essence of the game. Thankfully, the Atari version had a rock solid main theme, and it plays very well, so the creators should be proud. The combat (for me suffers the original mechanic, BUT that is not the programmers of this port's fault, they were being faithful). I think it's a really good port, it does all the things it should. I do however wonder if the C64 version would have been do-able on the Atari? But, if I want to play that, I can just load it up on my C64..It's all good...

Hope everyone is having / had / starting to have a lovely day, we started off with a small lottery win (56.00UK), won't be sailing around the world on that but it's more than welcome as it's car tax time again (all sorted thankfully, the extra cash just makes a free month of payments, hooray) We don't do a big xmas, it's us 3 and the cat, a nice lamb joint, a glass or two of wine, and we are all happy. Whatever your take on the holiday, I hope it's a nice couple of days for you. And of course, if a little retro something came your way, then please tell us. And for those in the cold weather bombed parts of US and Canada, lets hope your power etc stays up, and you are all safe. Paul..

You know things are bad when "Goblin Mode" has been added to the Oxford Dictionary..

Thanks to all for trying to dig up stuff on these lost games, who knows, maybe one day they will be found and archived..

Very moving Paul, you said stuff we all think. RIP those guys.. Thanks Paul.. Paul..

Hope it's a wonderful event, let's hope COVID does not affect it (can't imagine it will be considering how things are more open now). Looking forward to any releases but you guys and gals (and kids) have a great time..

Oh, we never complain, we bring things to Phaeron's attention

Just a quick happy holiday, season's greetings or merry Christmas (apply whichever means more), it's been another not so good year for the group with deaths, businesses closing etc Lets hope the new year brings some good news, in the mean time, I wish everyone the very best times (yes, even you Atarmania, I don't hold grudges over words). May this time of happiness, give at least a few days of peace and time to enjoy. From Paul, Cindy and Serena..Oh, and Felix the cat...

Yup, all drivers go on that disk..

Hell no, not another Atari dealer gone.... Never used Gavins shop but to know it was out there was reassuring. I really hope the 'personal' things are solvable...Thanks for being out there... Paul..

Sweet looking case, I don't have my syscheck any more, a fellow Atarian needed some memory so I donated my sys check to him as a gift (it's what we do) and should I need to borrow it I can.

Very Apple look... Not really prototypes though..

@Keatah, yeah sure, in my case I was also archiving website's that had been captured on the Pool disks etc, I soon discovered that you had to be selective folders that you included in the scan because I you accidentally included folders of web sites and then scanned for byte identical copies it would find thousands upon thousands and going through the results one by one was time-consuming. So clever me did a mass delete of the dupes (I had backups) only to find that it was taking dupes from the website links, so making the webpage broken because the file it linked to was gone.. There's other awkward things ie being careful of collections from other folks if you want to keep them separate.

Yeah, I seem to remember you saying about a machine or mod in a thread back then, but yeah, no point in holding on to grudges, he's passed and may he be making great music if there is an after life..

Thank you for that, I wasn't trying to sound like I knew stuff (I've said many times I'm not into electronics theory) but I sold gazillions of those chips when at Maplin, while I didn't know what to do with them, I had most of the spec in my head from the catalogue, and it seemed to be the go-to item when an op amp was needed. Best of luck to the OP..