Retro Rogue

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/207910-lets-pool-our-resources-and-buy-atari-how-much-will-you-contribute/#entry2681825

Not in this case. The parent company, Atari SA, also declared bankruptcy now and is moving towards the liquidation of everything.

Where? I just checked BlueBay RBC and it doesn't say anything about bankruptcy.

That's what I meant was Warner Bros. Interactive, don't know why I had Time Warner on the mind. In updated news, so everyone else knows, the info Curt and I had known since Sunday is finally out: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2013/01/201312264140926709.html Atari SA Itself is filing for bankruptcy as well. There will be no reorganization or separation of the US subsidiaries, the entire company, subsidiaries and all, is going up on the auction block. It's All being liquidated.

I really doubt Valve would do any better with the Atari brand name or its IP. When you keep putting development into the hands of kids who barely understand the IP because the didn't grow up with it, you have the type of game that have been released over the last several years. All done by outside studios similar to Valve. No. Time Warner Interactive Entertainment. Midway Games is no more. And Spurge, those were all later games by the company Atari Games. The earlier arcade game IP (released under Atari Inc.) is joint owned by the current Atari and TWIE (Atari SA/Atari Interactive owns the copyrights and IP, TWIE owns the arcade appearance).

LOL, apparently you haven't read much of this thread or the previous available threads. Atari SA and Atar Inc. are one in the same; same CEO and President, and both based in the U.S. (with Atari SA out in Los Angeles). Jim moved operations to Los Angeles back in 2009 or so when he became CEO of Atari SA and they bought Cryptic, wanting Cryptic to run most of Atari SA's operations. At that point, anyone left at Atari Inc. was transfered to Los Angeles save for a few people, which is what Inc. still is today (a few people in a rented office space). Secondly, Nolan isn't on the board he's simply an advisor to it - and also shares the responsiblity for the mess Atari SA is in now. It's more of a safe bet that whoever buys the Atari brand name and IP when it's liquidated will want a clean break and will not be having him signing off on games as he has been for the past few years.

We were called in at the very last minute to try and help it but it was just too late, they couldn't implement any actual changes. We even came up with an entire backstory to tie it into the original and expand for future related titles.

No, it's not. This is the real deal. Curt and I found out yesterday about it through our contacts and have the full inside scoop. Can't say much about it all, other than someone who Curt and I would consider "good hands" is very intersted in it, and we're hoping he gets it (there's going to be bidding by a lot of people). And no, it's not Jim or Nolan. Keep in mind, the craptastic remakes and mobile titles over the past few years were all under Jim and Nolan's direction. Jim as CEO of Atari SA and President of Atari Inc. and Nolan as an advisor to the Atari SA board whose job has been to review and sign off on these games, such as the horrible Star Raiders reboot all the way on up to the current "offerings" of this past year. What I find truly amazing is that the problems happened during a year that should have been one of the most profitable. They just wrapped up celebrating the 40th of the brand, how can you fuck up making money during that?

What coin manufacturer were you working at and hanging around then since the 90s then? The industry people I was reffering to earlier are all from manufacturers like Midway, Williams, Stern, Atari Games, etc. from the 70s through the 2000s. The people making the games, and all people I've interviewed specifically about this topic over my years as a writer and programmer in the electronic entertainment industry (coin and home). I don't recall stating that what I was relating was my opinion either. It was clearly stated as the insight from these industry vets (people involved in the design and manufacturing of said games). What makes what you're saying and basing it off of more fact then theirs? No, if there's a negative portrayal on the impact of JAMMA it's via the people mentioned above. Which is again only half the story. The need need to unify the arcade pinouts to make conversions less of a nightmare is *because* operators were wanting more and more to be able to convert cabinets rather than be stuck with unique cabinets and control setups that could not be converted to newer games and instead had to be dumped somewhere when they were no longer earners. JAMMA as a wiring standard was created to allow the re-use of cabinets and adoptions of more standard control layouts as I mentioned, to make conversions *the norm.* Which is also what lead to cheaper methods of initial manufacturing to plan for the eventual swapping of games. I.E. Glass to plexi to translite, and painted side art to decals. That's simply all a matter of history, nothing new or unique to understand there. No, not when operators were looking to simply reuse the cabinet/control panels they already have. In fact your own statement concurs with the stated limiting factor to a tee - at the time it supported 2 joysticks and 8 buttons. That's what game designers started designing for. You have only to look at the JAMMA games released in the late 80s and early 90s to see the propensity of slapstick/multibutton games, let alone see the bulk were winding up in arcades as JAMMA conversions to already used cabinets. Honesly there's not much more to go in circles about, you're entitled to your own opionions but not facts. Either way, thanks for the interesting discussion.

Whether or not someone can make money anymore with Tekken is irrelevant, I was not referring to now. Likewise again, I'm talking from an industry perspective, not the player perspective. There was a concerted effort to move the coin industry in that direction (for those that weren't abandoning it for slots) starting in the early 90s that started reaching it's crescendo in the mid and late 90s. In relation to your example, that's pre-Tekken. That's a common player's perspective. Coin industry veterans would not agree, and I've interviewed plenty over the years (one even wrote a fascinating article on the industry's perspective back in 2001 - Arcade Fanstic by Kevin Williams). From their perspective the decline in video coin started more around the '84-'85, and more in relation to JAMMA. The shift to JAMMA was great for operators but killed the uniqueness of the custom arcade experience that was prevalent before. Items such as the forced uniformity on the game controls and cabinet designs in favor of that constant re-use for new games meant there wasn't anything different to offer, i.e. that out of home experience. When they eventually expanded JAMMA to account for more than the ubiquitous slapstick/50 buttons controller layout and produced more custom cabinets - specifically going for that out of home experience again in the late 90s as mentioned, it was too little too late. Generations of gamers had already grown up with the viewpoint you mentioned - that now that consoles (and home computers) had caught up hardware wise (i.e. internally) with video coins that there wasn't a reason to be pumping coins in the coin version of a game anymore; there just wasn't much of a difference in play. So to sum up, for the industry viewpoint, consoles being able to catch up was more of a result of that dropped ball of uniqueness that JAMMA initially forced, producing a gap that allowe consoles to take over, and what you're describing as the reason for failure was more of a byproduct of that.

That was more of a stigmatism from the 70s on back that she was probably regurgitating without realising the context. Arcades and most coins (pinball) were banned in various cities across the U.S. because of the connection to gambling and organized crime. Los Angeles, for instance, banned them until 1974. There was also the stigma that "hoodlums," etc. (and by the 70s druggies and party minded teens) tended to hang out in arcades. I wouldn't totally agree with that. Most people tend to look at this from a player perspective vs. an actual coin industry perspective. What happened in the 90s in the coin industry is you had more of a shift to redemption games and that format, which was experiencing a similar kind of renaissance that video arcade games enjoyed in the very early 80s; namely placement in non-traditional locations. Many resteraunts, gas stations, malls, etc. started placing redemption machines (usually crane machines) as they became the big money maker. Likewise, the video arcade manufacturers in the late 90s and early 2000s combated the in home experience with coins designed for what the industry terms as "out of home" experience. Setups and environments that could not be duplicated at home at the time, such as the large multi-screen sit down racers. The "huge machines" that racerx described in the rest of his post that I didn't quote below. That's completely inaccurate. First, the crash started in '82 and came to a crescendo in July of '84 with the splitting of Atari Inc. Second, the coin and consumer industries and markets are two completely different things. The crash was specific to the home industry (called the Consumer industry), and had nothing to do with the coin industry. They are not related industries and never have been, there's no such thing as single "video game industry" to point a finger at. That's a mythical unicorn. The needs of the Coin industry vs. the Consumer industry are completely different. The Coin industry (and coin-op manufacturers) markets and sells to what are termed operators and distributors. (Operators being the people at end locations who set the machine up and make money from it, distributors being coin vendors who rent out to operators.) The Consumer industry markets and sells directly to the purchaser - the player. That's the direct customer. Thirdly, because of all this, coin has always had it's own long established cycles and pracitces completely separate from any imagined ties to the Consumer industry. The Coin industry was around long before the invention of arcade video games of course. In the case of the 80s, the Coin industry had experienced intense growth from '79 through '82, selling to operators at many non-traditional locations. (Traditional being arcades, bars, etc.) Locations like doctors offices, gas stations, department stores, etc. The bottom fell out of that expansion in '82 as the many of these operators discovered the length of earnings were limited, and they couldn't afford to swap out for newer games like more traditional locations could.You had a Coin industry shakeout with many coin companies exiting or consolidating across '82-'83, which then lead to an upswing cycle. As Gary Stern (Stern Electronics) described it to me, as Consumer was entering it's crash Coin was entering its growth phase again. (There's a reason why the Warner kept the Coin division.) By the time the NES was test marketed in late '85, the Coin industry was already well into its upward cycle. There's no question that traditional arcades were affected by Coin's shakeout across '82-'8, and you had a change in those locations; that could be what resulted in your perception. But by '85 you had a different flavor of arcade emerging more reflective of the change of the industry and its shift to JAMMA. For me, that's when I lost the desire to go to arcades, their atmosphere had changed as had the uniqueness of the game play experience as JAMMA cabinets became more ubiquitous over the custom cabinets and controls of the golden age. That's one point I agree on with the article byline - that unless you grew up in that golden age era you don't understand the difference between an "arcade" and something like Dave and Busters or the like. The "real arcades" of the golden age on back were more of a social hub, a place to hang out regardless of whether you were playing the games or not. Sort of like the younger person's version of the corner neighborhood bar. And the design of the locations and their atmosphere reflected that. To me the experience and atmosphere of a real arcade had left by the mid and late 80s and the arcades of those era and later were a different experience. What I'm left with are photographs that give an inkling of what it was like back then to go to a real arcade: http://timeouttunnel...age_timeout.htm http://timeouttunnel...rt_training.htm http://www.tepg.se/joysticks-1983/

They already started. Photos of the first 10 were posted on the atarimusem and syzygy pages on Facebook.

Thanks for the compliments. Per the spine cuts, please complain to them about your copy. We've been seeing that happen with different runs being sent out where some are fine and some wind up chopped completely crappy. They need to know. Also, feel free to write a review on Amazon when you're done.

They're just a Hong Kong corporation, there is no U.S. branch.

Yah, you're more likely to see terminals and mainframes in 70s television shows than a home computer. Hollywood television usually uses what they can get cheap for props or whatever prop houses have for rent.

Do you mean any TV show? It looks like you're listing Sitcom/Television series. Tom Snyder's talk show, "Tomorrow" had one of the earliest apperances I'm aware of (1976). Processor Technology got their Sol-20 personal computer on the show and Tom Snyder sat there playing legendary hacker Steven Dompier's game "Target" on it for a segment.

Many people have asked for an index to the book, and there simply wasn't the time to include it in this edition. As such, we've decided to provide an index at the Ataribook.com site in the near future. We're taken a novel approach to it though: We'd like anyone who has gotten a book to help us build the index via a unique crowd-sourcing effort we came up with. We're using Revisionator.com to host a version of the index that anyone can contribute to, which will then be using to build the final index. We've started with a basic listing based on keywords and a few topics. https://revisionator.com/docs/MIFwnB4ambBXFudC9WX47cU7/view

Unfortunately, it's one of many issues with their emulation. They did some work on it since the 3, which is probably what caused the changes in the 4.

Read back in the thread. The FB3 & 4 have nothing to do with the 2. These have been done by a Chinese company that's using an inaccurate emulator.

Except that's not the actual original patent for Atari joystick controller, that's for the later CX-40 controllers. The actual original CX-10 mechanism is by Gerald Aamot and John Hayashi and is patent #4,124,787. That's what happens when you have people putting these things together that don't know their history like when they tried to put an Atari Games poster in the Flashback 3.

It was never designed with the killing of dedicated consoles in mind. In fact the idea of having the 2600 a dedicated system as well (still microprocessor based but with games built in on ROM) was investigated as well during it's initial design. And that's why it says "Yes, that was an irony we were happy to create."

Yes, it was Curt. He's still working his way through and trying to force shipping from his hospital bed, he doesn't want to give up on Amazon. We've gotten the bulk of the pre-orders shipped through, just a small amount left.

Atari never made any shoes. That Journey shirt is very suspect as well, Atari had nothing to do with that game.

That's what we're probably going to be doing for the bulk of them. It's just taking way too long for Amazon to process these, and people will get it quicker just re-ordering. We certainly will not be doing this again with them if we do pre-orders for the next book. We'll probably just wind up doing it on our own and just manually ordering copies and mailing them out.

I like phone. I like lamp.