Retro Rogue

He started there in '82. There was no directive there like that then. If you like I can check with Howard to get a quote as well, that would take it even a year earlier.

No idea, I chose it to try and get as close to the Atari/Bauhaus font as I could with a royalty fee font.

Regarding this, I just shot a message over to Steve Woita who was there in this time period ('82-'84) and did the 2600 games Quadrun, Taz, Asterix and Garfield during that period. His answer: "That is pure garbage! No one told me to do anything while I was there." He proceeded to also provide his own games Taz/Asterix and Garfield as examples of non-space games with black backgrounds.

http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Baumans

You're describing yourself to a tea on the other claims, you came into this with continually chiding commentary and claims that it's all wrong because people lie and there's some big conspiracy of lies regarding the flickering and further inferring that somehow we've never heard these other "angles" and didn't vet the hell out of them (including Tod's statements). Also, there is no other angle about the claim that 2600 Pac-Man was the first official material to use ghosts. Either other official materials existed before 2600 Pac-Man's release or they didn't. Guess what, they did. It's a binary situation. But this: is just an overemotional and patently false inference about me and the research Curt and I have done and continue to do. I've stated fifty times over we don't go by one person's memories and recollections, nor do we even go just by people. http://ataribook.com/book/example-vetted-info/ I'll be happy to bow out of this convo and you can continue to infer and make claims all you like. No fear of ticketing needed.

And yet there's the inconvenient use of Ghosts on Ms. Pac-Man's US release flyers and operations manuals when the game was released in January 1982 several month's before Atari's Pac-Man(not to mention that those flyers were first available during the October 1981 AMOA). Likewise for Iwatani's statements quoted. Once again, Atari was not the first to call them ghosts. Your statement "The monsters weren't referred to as 'ghosts' in any official capacity before the VCS manual" is wrong. Iwatani and Bally/Midway did it before Atari. The fact it wasn't on the instruction card doesn't make the fact it was used on those other two official items go away. You're just getting obnoxiously silly already with the willful ignoring of these facts, it's hard to tell anymore if you're being serious or just trolling to draw this out.

Nope. It's quite the opposite actually. You've had people surmising all this time (without any real directly knowledge of what went on) that it was poor coding or rushing vs. Tod just making bad decisions. The revisionism is what's been going in public this time. Rumors and myths told long enough become truth to some, and any attempt to clear up those long held misconceptions because "revisionist thinking." The problem with that is Tod has been saying the same thing for years, and like Howard has no skin in lying about the development of a game from 30 some years ago that was universally poorly received, which they both accept. There's nothing apologetic about it, it's mentioned matter of factly about the design process. If it had changed over time or was presented in a covering manner, I'd find it suspect. Likewise the others we interviewed that corroborated about the anti flicker code they borrowed did so in the course of normal interview about their game, not in a "let's talk about Tod" and defend him scenario. There's no mass conspiracy of defending Pac-Man by ex-employees going on. We're very careful not to "lead the witness" in our interviews and instead look for blind confirmation. And in fact the only time we specifically asked people to discuss Pac-Man was the one time when we did group interviews in front of their old building over two days and simply asked them what their thoughts were on the game. That claim wasn't any more accurate than when it was mentioned a few posts up or all the previous times in other threads. I already showed it was being used in an official capacity before 2600 Pac-Man and provided the links, plus Iwatani himself was and continues to do so. All I care about is preserving info as accurately as possible, something I take very seriously. Nothing is unimportant to me.

We've gone through this already. After Pac-Man's release, both players and the media viewed them as ghosts (because of their look) rather than the generic original monster term. Enough so that when Ms. Pac-Man was released in January '82 they had been officially renamed as ghosts: http://www.arcade-museum.com/manuals-videogames/M/MsPac-Man.pdf http://flyers.arcade-museum.com/?page=flyer&db=videodb&id=707&image=2 Atari did not originate calling them ghosts or push for the move to that. Even Tōru Iwatani refers to them as ghosts and "ghost shaped monsters" and explains he had ghosts in mind when creating the four of them: https://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/toru-iwatani-1986-pacman-designer/ http://www.wired.com/2010/05/pac-man-30-years/ "Pac-Man is inspired by all the manga and animation that I’d watch as a kid. The ghosts were inspired by Casper, or Obake no Q-Taro." http://pacmanmuseum.com/history/Toru-Pac-ManCreatorSpeaks.php "Some of the elements are related to ghosts. The way the ghosts were designed, it’s not something nasty. It’s an enemy, but still somewhat amicable, lovable. " http://www.onlinespiele-sammlung.de/pacman/interview2.html 'Yes. The relationship between PAC-MAN and the Ghosts is like Tom and Jerry’s "Fight in a friendly way . . . " PAC-MAN does not eat until he dies. It’s just a fight over the cookies, something like "Don’t eat my cookies."' Also see this article on the difference between ghosts and the term "monsters" in Japaense culture (which apparently there is not much of the difference that westerners lay on the terms): http://hyakumonogatari.com/2013/11/15/whats-the-difference-between-yurei-and-yokai/ Yes lets, lol. What you stated is an opinion and it's not based not based on any fact. Period. Atari didn't change them into being called ghosts (see above). Likewise, Tod wrote an anti-flicker for Pac-Man which was leveraged by several other games also in development at the time that hit the market before Pac-Man, one of which was Asteroids. He's stated this in numerous interviews, including directly to Curt for our book interview, and it's been verified by others there at the time. He had the tools to not make them flicker as much, he's stated that point blank to us, but *chose* to have them flicker to be more ghost like. His impression, as with many (see above) was that they were supposed to be ghosts. Wanting to try and jazz things up given the project limitations, he changed the background and made the ghosts/monsters flicker like ghosts. He has no reason to lie or play cover thirty some years later.

As previously mentioned, the colored background was also done on purpose. With the limitations on graphics he wanted to do something try and make it more interesting, hence the colored background and flickering ghosts that to him were more ghost like. As for the bonus items, if the graphics are limited because of the project specs vs. the resources that would include thinks like the bonus block. There wasn't a lot of resources left to play with for that kind of stuff.

It wasn't done ASAP, he had the normal dev time. He couldn't do anything more graphics wise given the system's limitations vs. the project specs (it needing to be a 2-player game with only a 4K ROM). Likewise the ghosts flickered on purpose.

I think it was done more like, "This is all I was able to do graphically given the specs, let me add some coloring and effects that don't cost a lot of resources to try and dress it up a bit."

Yes, you heard wrong. No, it was not tons of ET. The dump consists of about 758,000 games of over 60 titles of games across the 2600 and 5200. They were all returns from stores for credit (some still had the price tags on them) and E.T. just happened to be one of the many games in the mix (and in the minority at that). It was not a mass dumping of ET, that legend was disproven. The problem is people (before seeing the documentary) latched on to the fact that there were any ETs there as being representative of the "legend" being true (and the documentary company counted on that publicity leading up to the release).

But it's not the same or apt for comparison as we already established. Just as the later 4K homebrew versions of Pac-Man are not. If you're not going to compare on the actual parameters that affect the final game and make up your own rules of comparison then what's the point? All those others are better in the graphics department because of the corners they cut. I also stated I wasn't commenting on your opinion of the game itself, or anyone else's. Just on some of the comparison claims being given. I realize being where you're located these contexts of what I said might be misunderstood by you since English is probably a second language. Never said you said about cashing in. I was addressing everyone at once. And the flickering of the ghosts was done on purpose. Tod felt it was more ghost like. It had nothing to do with limitations.

Never said it was worth it, however the game was unfortunately started towards the end of 4K game allotments (larger ROM space was cost prohibitive, that's why we have generations of certain K games as prices dropped). If it had been started later it would have hit a larger ROM size or if marketing hadn't decided it needed to be 2 player he would have had more resources to work with as well. The point being that regardless of whether you personally like the game, people (not just you) throwing up other later games in comparison without taking the full facts into account isn't an accurate comparison. Saying you like these later games better? Certainly, no prob. Saying these later games are better so then obviously Pac-Man was just a rushed cheap cash in? Not so much and completely nonfactual.

Actually it doesn't. It's a single player game. Tod had to his as a two player game in 4K, which means using even more resources for keeping track of two distinct mazes, etc. That's again what also lead to the constraints in the finished game. All the Pac-Man 4K home brews are also single player. It's not just the 4K it's what he had to accomplish in that 4K. And every other programmer at Atari we interviewed had immense respect for Tod and what he was able to accomplish.

That was the unfortunate choice Rob had though when doing the game and it looks like they picked up on that. Either use up the limited resources to create a version that looked and sounded like it but didn't play like it, or create one that played like it but didn't look or sound quite like it. Rob chose the later. The thing was the landfill was not a burial of bad games. And actually, Atari did have an exchange program with stores. They could accept returns (and many did). The landfill is composed entirely of merchandise returned to Atari from retailers, both unsold and returned. Well, that's to do with the the move to larger ROM sizes as well. Graphics and games on the 2600 can improve a lot when you do that. Even more when you add more RAM as some carts did.

One of the first things we do when interviewing is ask people if they kept any paperwork, etc. and would be willing to donate it or allow us to borrow it to make copies. For some people it was just another job and they kept a bit of paraphernalia as a memento. For others they kept boxes full of documentation and paperwork. Most of the ex-management we've interviewed fall in the former category. An example of someone who falls in the latter would be Ed Logg, who still has all his engineering log books (the daily diaries programmers and engineers kept to document their projects). The closest so far we've found in large lists of release dates are the ROM release lists from Jan Boehm that were recovered from the mainframe tapes. Those are the dates that ROMs had been completed and released for manufacturing. We've had to verify a lot of these though, as some are dates later than known release dates which means they were later revisions of a ROM and just weren't noted as such. Keep in mind, release dates weren't a thing back then. It's more when did it first start shipping to retailers and when did they start putting them out for sale, which can be tracked by other means (appearance in newspaper ads for a store as being for sale). Pac-Man was the first attempt at a co-ordinated release that I'm aware of and it didn't quite work out, as some retailers started selling it in early March instead of National Pac-Man day. As far as retailers, that sort of paperwork is long long gone. It just wasn't important to keep past a certain date. And certainly no importance over the volumes of other merchandise at the time and that has come in since. It was just another product out of many. I could go to a Sears or JC Penny's and say find large figures on overall sales that year, etc. But sales on specific merchandise would have been tossed ages ago, especially for a specific item being sold 30-some years ago. The exception might be people who ran mom-and-pop type operations and might have a few boxes of their old paperwork in the garage or basement.

There's a larger article based on a more inclusive interview with Jim (with more pics as well) in the next issue of RETRO magazine as well. Covers the events of the destruction and burials up through dig, as well as sidebars on the archaeological team and more. I'd been sitting on all of it since June at the request of the producers of the documentary, who wanted to wait until the documentary was out until the info was released.

Donkey Kong for ColecoVision.

Actually, when I talked to Mark back in July he said he did negotiate with Atari Interactive as well for those. He'd legally have to. While Atari licensed the IP, it's still their game code and physical port. We had a long conversation on the tribulations of needing to go to multiple companies for the licensing of these types of ports in fact.

Either way it's more misinformation about me on his part. Never said anything about going solely by interviews, just that they are important for helping to give the full background and context on something. Figures and stats alone do not do that, and they're both parts of the whole. Either one on it's own is faulty. Especially off the cuff interviews of the type you usually see in older magazines, or PR based interviews in newspapers and magazines from the time. Our vetting process and the process I've personally used for years has already been laid out there for some time now: http://ataribook.com/book/example-vetted-info/ Yes, we go through news reports, internal documentation, legal documentation (such as court reports which we've paid a lot for), other forms of direct documentation and a large swath of direct interviews. That's the wonderful thing about having someone on block here though, don't have to deal with more of the nonsense and misrepresentation of facts and people from him. Since my last post he's probably been regurgitating more googled articles now (that have been up for ages and everyone has seen before) in a cherry picking manner to try and support more skewed claims (that further show a complete unfamiliarity with industry goings on or internal goings on at these companies) rather than doing any real research. Anyone can do that kind of low level research, it's called being a casual historian. Like a fan who's into looking up baseball stats. Nothing derogatory about it and nothing wrong with it, I think it's great when people show interest. But it's nowhere near the level of deep and thorough research involved at the academic and professional historian level for him to be presenting it as such and as some sort of debateable counter. It has zero to do with any sort of "ego" on my end as I'm sure he's still claiming. There's actually a decent group of people across the globe doing game history research and documentation at the professional level I'm talking about, and we've all had some very engaging conversations and sometimes debates that have lead to new avenues of thought on a topic. That includes for myself, where yes I've had my mind changed by someone elses research. Specifically where (as is normally done at this level) they've dug up some new information or additional info that expands what was known before about a topic, and then you're able to double check with the sources (which normally include documentation, interviews, etc.) as you normally do at that level. But then as I said, we've all put in that level of research, documentation gathering and critical thinking, so it's coming from that area of mutual respect and professionalism because we all know we put in the same amount of work and seriousness it requires. They would consider it just as insulting for him to try and come at them the same way and demand that minor level of research be put in the same light, as anyone in any field of research would. Again it has zero to do with ego and everything to do with respect for the subject matter and field. I could also care less if people like him buy the book (or the subsequent books). I haven't been involved in games history research for over fifteen years to make money, and we certainly didn't write the book (nor are we doing the other two books) for any silly notion that we're actually going to make any real money off it. They're purely for love of the subject and wanting to educate while helping a lot of the unsung heroes who worked at these companies to tell their stories. The fact that the current book is still at four out of five stars on Amazon with 67 reviews (which is a lot for any book on Amazon that's only two years old) and has overall been extremely well received on the merit of it's content and research (despite the first edition editing issues that we're correcting with the second edition), gives Curt and I the only "job well done" we really need to continue on making this material available to the public in this format. And we look forward to continuing to do so.

Just revisiting this because after someone asked me about the serial numbering I noticed the same numbers on multiple units. I'm thinking those are lot numbers vs. individual serial numbers. Case in point, you list the one from the Atari Museum as 417B. That's the same serial number that's on this one here: http://articulo.mercadolibre.com.ve/MLV-432095660-atari-touch-tablet-cx77-_JM As well as the one that the Computer History Museum has in it's archive: http://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/102628706 This person just picked up one with the same serial as well: https://www.facebook.com/groups/atariage/permalink/10152888865580255/

No, it's not. You've taken some base figures and surrounded them with your opinion. It's just as is evident below. You're telling me to stick with facts, and that's all I deal with on a professional level. There is a long and lengthy vetting process for this info involving years of research, cross referencing, and direct interviews, and personal opinions are kept out of it... in fact I work very hard to make sure they are, which is what makes your claims even more insulting. I expect this from you, given when you earlier tried to missrepresent what we did or did not say about the El Paso plant in the book, which I let go. I'm not going to take the misrepresentation of me you're trying to do here. Though at this point it doesn't make any sense to continue beyond this post, because it's like dealing with the black knight in monty python. Again, based on sell in and not sell through figures. That's not retail sales to consumers, that's sales to retailers. It was a false figure (which is why the industry doesn't do it anymore) and what made the shockwave in December all the more louder. More information first presented directly by the people involved on the business side. It also seems by your previous posts you're trying to argue the consumer industry crash is a market crash (based by your crash in 1985 comment) when it was an industry crash. They certainly relate to one another, but one is not the other. Again, Atari's problems were in trying to overcompensate from the shortage of '81 by having them order for all of '82 in advance and then reporting first half sales and projections of the second half on it. Not my words, the words of the multitude of management we interviewed combined with paperwork, internal emails, etc. Most of those competitors were out by the end of '83. I have not recounted a "theory," and nowhere did I say they weren't part of the problem. In fact, what I stated was the problem of the crash that started in '82 was far more complicated than just a glut of 3rd party companies and their games. They were certainly a major piece of the puzzle, but still just one piece. That's all I present are gathered facts, ones I work very hard on to make sure they're vetted and accurate as stated. We're very open with our vetting process, which is the process I use as well for the research I do for newspapers, magazines, museums, academia, etc. People such as yourself are assuming I'm interjecting my own opinions or in some cases even interjecting ego in my responses when it's coming from nowhere in that area. Simply recounting figures and not the rest of the story as told by the people who were directly involved with it on the business end and related documentation tells only half the story and leaves too much open to opinions. That would be poor research. Such as the ones you're presenting. That's where you get myths like it involved just a bunch of bad games. Or that Alamogordo was a mass burial of bad games. It's like talking to someone with blinders on here. That's exactly what sell in vs. sell through is discussing. Likewise, that's all I've been stating is there's a difference between industry and market. I.E. it's been differentiated. Go look. Really, it's not that hard. Industry stocks crashed in '82 as industry earnings started dropping dramatically. The plunge in industry earnings continued throughout '83. This was tracked by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc. Market != earnings. As stated, the market never went away and was there through '85. The industry all but did however. Sales up, earnings down. Once again, per ex-management that's because it was a tracking of sell in and not sell through. They were falsely inflated sales numbers that didn't reflect the cancellations of orders and the stock return program they had in place. Something they tried to hide and caught up with them by the end of '82, and was fully out in the open in '83. I did, the issue is the problem with your viewpoint mentioned earlier. You need to do a little deeper research rather than going off of straight figures and taking newspaper PR at face value. The large layoffs due to manufacturing were a cover story, something confirmed by ex-management via interviews and also publicly by the lawsuit those initial 500 workers filed and won for that very reason. The new plant in Asia had already been known long before, and the workers were all originally supposed to be shifted within the company and even told that their jobs were secure, and then were suddenly laid off on the day of announcement without warning. Or as one article covering the settlement recounted, "The company retorted that the layoffs were a matter of economic necessity, noting that the dismissals came just one week after Warner said a downturn in video game sales had led to sharply lower profits in the last quarter of 1982." Again, a position re-iterated by the ex-management people we interviewed. This is again showing why it's not worth the time and energy to go in circles with you.

Andre, that's just not accurate regarding the industry or it not being the time it happened. You're going on an oversimplification of the causes leading to a skewed idea of when it started. Mid '82 is when Atari (with 80% of the market) started suffering the ramifications of a crowded market (as one person with Warner noted, in early '82 there was a handful of new companies and by mid '82 there were exponentially more) combined with large cancellations of orders by retailers (they had forced rerailers to order for the entire year in advance) leading to dropping sales and warehouses full of non-moving stock in August that they were trying to hide. The fact they tracked and reported sell in instead of sell through numbers helped to further misslead what was going on, as did extending the final quarter. The bubble finally burst on Dec 7 with their earnings announcement q hen they were forced to admit what was happening with slowing sales and far less earnings than predicted. Which when combined with similar announcement by other companies like Mattel lead all the games industry stocks to plummet the rest of the month (it effected tech stocks overall as well), never recovering (which is what happens qhen a bubble bursts, what's referred to as a crash) and leading to the layoffs in January, followed by even more downsizes and ultimately closings throughout the year. We interviewed many people at length about this from the top down, including Ray Kassar, Manny Gerard,heads in manufacturing, heads in distribution, and even retailers. Ray was ready to be fired that January, which doesn't happen coming off strong sales on a "white hot market." Plus the occurrences of that December and what happened overall ib '82 were more than covered by financial newspapers and magazines at the time (which we also put a lot of time and money into tracking down). This isn't based off of looking up some old articles or interviews online. A lot of serious research went into this.

You really think so? This was the first documentary to really cut through some of the long told myths though. Granted, it didn't do it until the very end.