MikeMika

Hey John! Thanks for clarifying. I remember being fascinated by the story of these games. Also, while I have your attention, did you get that boxed Crossfire for your friend yet? I think I may have found one... Just e-mail me if you still need it! Mike

Someone should speak to John Harris regarding Deep Throat and, get this, the ALTERNATE versions of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I believe Halloween. If I recall correctly, some folks he had been working with were working on entirely different versions of the same games, and they may have had a hand in the Deep Throat game, too. It was a couple years ago, but it would be nice to have John set the record straight. I think Flesh Gordon was part of it, too. Mike

To add to how cool Othello for 2600 is, it is, I believe, Ed Logg's ONLY 2600 title. If I recall correctly, Carol Shaw wrote the display kernal and Ed did the logic. After that, he didn't want to touch the 2600 hardware again. He was a sort of half-breed, having worked in Atari Consumer and Coin-Op, though Coin-Op forgave him. Mike

I caught up with their marketing director a few years ago. I will keep him anonymous. I was doing sales at a company where he worked. When he found out I was an Atari nut, he enlightened me with his recollection of those heady days. About the time of E.T. and Pac-Man, he and the execs at Atari told Time Warner execs to meet them at a beach not too far from the Bay Area. When they met up, they sat in a circle on the beach and passed around a big ole bag of weed and got baked. The Time Warner guys went along with it. What was the agenda? Prepare a 500 (or 50, I might me wrong on the number) million dollar budget for the next year. It included buying the rights to a number of movies, games, etc, and a ton of really un-wise R&D efforts. They did the entire budget in a few hours and parted ways. They all sounded like great ideas. Well, he said they weren't so great after a sobering year. Maybe you shouldn't plan to spend half a billion dollars while baked off your ass? I bet it was fun, though. I have a feeling that it was high power meetings like this one that really screwed things up, and supports your developing theory. Mike

In Gran Prix, the bushes at the bottom scroll incorrectly. They skip unlock the top bushes. I agree that not being able to post your high scores is just as good as a bug. I have a whiteboard with scores on it next to the PS2 that is just a bit inconvenient. Great work, though! Glad to hear it is evolving. Mike

Shhh! There is a difference to actual time working on it and how long it has been since I started. Mike

Thanks, all! You know, I haven't even seen it yet. I didn't find out when it was going to be on until Tues. morning. About it being easy, I can see how that is getting interpreted. What was meant by that is that it is easy for someone to get the tools and the means to make the game. It's not a proprietary club like modern console development, although we did go into that a little bit (Xbox dev, etc.), but I doubt that made it into the short spot. All TechTV means by "easy" is that the information is out there for anyone who wants to give it a shot. Oh, and come on, 2600 programming, it's a piece of cake! Mike

Cupcakus: I really could use your help. I've never attempted a restoration before. I've built a Mame cabinet and I'm amateur at best with wood working (I finally got a table saw to do work around the house). I'm clueless on how to repair particle board and I have yet to find cockpit repro decals. The bottom parts of the decals are a bit affected, with pafrticle board/moisture blistering under it. It was already in B+ shape, now maybe a C, if that is a good enough way to explain it. I don't know much about the mechanisms internally, but it appears now that the yoke "sticks", too. The physical yoke moves, but the crosshairs ingame move only around the center and have little influence by the yoke. I made sure the inside was absolutely dry before attempting to turn it on, too. My gut says maybe the moisture affected something internal. Anyhow, I'll e-mail you privately if you don't mind. As you can imagine, I was most broken up about it- it took me 19 years to get one of my own for once, and wham! Ugh. Thanks, Mike

I was really bummed when I went downstairs and heard the horrible "Squish" noise when I took a step into the room. No hardware was ruined as far as I can tell, but a lot of boxes got soaked through. I had a garage filled with soaked boxed things like the NES Uforce, some games and jewel cases (Though the Atari games were saved by their elevated place on my shelves . For the most part, things have dried out alright, albeit a little warped. The biggest catastrophe was my prized Atari Star Wars cockpit arcade game. The water soaked into the lower particle boards and bowed them out. Now that they are dry, they've become brittle and started to flake apart. I guess it will be a summertime of restoration. And about the book, I wish I had some answers. We got it to a decent point, but not far enough to be too useful. It needs some work. I was planning on doing the rounds and getting guest writers to do some of the chapters. Like the "wisdom" books. Thanks for your concerns. If I can get Kickman to a decent state over the holiday, maybe I can sneak out a demo rom for you guys. Happy Holidays, Mike

Happy Holidays. Yeah, Albert knows my pain for sure. It's been very busy at work lately. I REALLY want to finish the game, and I was hoping to start it back up last weekend, when the room I do my work in (and keep all my classic collectibles) flooded! (I live in the rain drenched Bay Area). I had to rush and salvage a lot of things in the room and tear it apart. So it seems like Kickman is doomed! Well, I am squeeking a week out of work over the holiday, so I can't make any promises, but I do want to work on it. Sorry for the terrible tease to this point. Best, Mike

Happy Holidays! I'll be spending mine playing some good ole 2600 for some very classic memories, and then some Warring Worms, Thrust, and other new games to continue the "new Atari game" for Christmas tradition. Oh, and maybe some Xbox live. Happy New Year! Mike

It is also a tax write off. If they sold it to you, they would have to claim it. I think they are required to destroy them, too. Mike

Hmm... I remember getting 2600 "TrakBall" mode working on the C64 or Amiga... I seem to remember it behaving like the C64 mouse. I'll try to dig up the specs on that or find my old code and try it with the TrakBall. As for the 2600 Trackball, for those who are unfamiliar, it has two modes: Mode A - Simulate Joystick Mode B - Mouse mode Ironically, the arcade Centipede and Millipede actually SIMULATE a joystick. The game was originally made for joystick, they added the trackball later. The input did not change. It still just checks to see if you are moving left/right/up/down. It totally feels like trackball control, but it is not. It adds acceleration to the player in software. So in essence, the 2600 centipede with the trackall in Joystick mode should behave identically if it uses the same algorithms. Now Missile Command, that would be amazing to retrofit Thomas! Mike

Leonard is right. Before that, it just seemed like a fancy Pong machine. Consumers did not understand that the system would be anything more than Combat, etc. And why not? None of the other similar devices were. Space Invaders came out, and it was actually a pretty good port, and the game was huge at Drive-Ins, Theaters, Arcades, Bars and Laundromats. Suddenly the VCS made a whole lot of sense after Space Invaders. If it could do that game, it could do other arcade games, too. And it wasn't as blocky as the other games, to boot! Mike

...or? We'll see Mike

Glad you like it! Remember, it IS the old game, just enhanced a little bit. ROM space sure helps, too. Mike

Thanks, Scott! You know what, you're right. I went with my Dad as a wee lad and also brought my friend along. My Dad said they had a lot of games for cheap. I walked away with Video Cube and he walked away with (I am 99% certain) the silver label Gravitar, which I also did not know was a club exclusive. Back then, you didn't throw around $1.99 too lightly, or I would have purchased both! (I later inherited his Gravitar, Crazy Climber and extra Video Cube to make the happey ending). If I only knew then what I know now. Mike

Was Video Cube available to the public, officially? I purchased mine from Odd Lots (Michigan Close Out Store) for the meager price of $1.99. It was in a bin of about thirty of them. Mike

Thanks, guys! That Yahoo review is great. I don't think Jeff Vavasour (Our Chief Technical Officer/Mastermind) would have stopped at just 6. He has a dream of doing a super pack. The idea of putting 30 or more on a collection is a great idea, like Activision did with their PSX collections. We agree that "bang for the buck" is a healthy alternative. Only thing, the cost and time to produce a classic pack, particularly on GBA as Atari2600Lives and those said in the thread, is the roadblock. Also, while they are quick to produce, they are usually on condensed schedules and not your normal production schedule. So that with money, we can only put so many resources on it. Not to mention Jeff is a perfectionist. While some people use MAME source, etc, he doesn't even look at Mame. There are some little nuances here and there in Mame, and Jeff prefer's to build his emulators from scratch. Since he is so intensely close to the games he emulates, he notices every off pixel, slow sound, etc. Also, a few things had to be done to get as close as possible to the arcade games. Asteroids uses sub-pixel rendering on the GBA, not used very often on Nintendo handhelds, and we are the first on GBA, I think, to give players the option to rotate their screen/GBA to more closely match the arcade game resolution, like in Centipede and Tempest. The publisher also has a hand in which games we use. They are pretty good about this, as we give them a list of games that can be emulated within the time frame. Unfortunately, due to time, games that are best played with a trackball or paddle are also some of the easier ones to emulate/meta-emulate, and have the strongest recognition. Glad you liked the goods! We hope to make more, and one of these days, we'll have our dream collection out. Now if Namco could offer screen rotation on the Pac-Man games and then interlace the screen like we are doing with Phantasy Star, we'd have a sweet version of the arcade game! But I'll settle for the current collection. It's pretty sweet - arrangfement rocks, by the way. Tangent: Regarding Yars, I remember my friend played the GBC version on Thanksgiving, he did the music and some art for the game, helped me design it, and was also the only tester He started to get on a roll in the morning and I think he played through his family's and his fiancee's dinner. They weren't happy with him. Mike

... And glad to hear you liked Yars! I can go on and on about that game- it was fun to do. I know a lot of people didn't care for it, though. I met Howard Scott Warshaw while I was making it by nearly random chance and I showed it to him, he filled me in on some of the things he wanted to do with the original (I added some of those), and he signed my childhood Yars for Atari with "I couldn't have done it better myself." That was the highlight for me! Best, Mike

Hey, you're not BS'ing by any stretch- The numbers change month to month. PS2 is the king of the hill. The last report I just saw showed PS2/GCN/Xbox slumping a bit. GBA is pretty sustained, but it is a sleeper market for that thing. The market is brutal. It is not wise for anyone to get into from a publishing standpoint unless you land the big licenses. We're doing fine, as is Vicarious Visions and other developers, but there are far fewer of us, that's for sure. I guess it would be safe to compare GBA to PC on one level (Not cost of entry), in that it is hit driven. Now add the cost of a cart, and you get exactly the scenario you are talking about. Why would someone want to enter it? However, Namco pulled some good numbers on their collections for GBA. One company we worked with last year, out of all of their SKUs (PSX/PS2, etc), our GBA SKU was the leading moneymaker. A decent GBA title for us gravites to the high six figures. THQ has a pretty solid model that they use, they work the numbers down to a science. They intend to stick with the market. A lot of other publishers are doing the same. In fact, they are moving to adopt the same model. It is a brutal one, though, as it can be harsh for a developer. I'd hate to be down on the idea of a 2600 collection, but it is a classic game dilemna. We did Dragon's Lair for GBC. A great tech demo, but the numbers weren't as strong as some of our more modern licenses. Add to that the potential for having to acquire the rights to some of those games, and well, it gets less promising. Now, a Donkey Kong Country collection, etc, that makes it more interesting for people. The demo skews closer to the mark. So in the end, it is working for a lot of us fortunate ones. I'd say you stand to lose more than the PC market, but they share a lot of traits. We're going pretty strong. That said, we have gotten pretty close to the 2600 collection on a number of occassions. Really close, even without our instigation. Now, A2600Lives, if you want to fund our Game Cube/Xbox/PS2/PC title, that's a different story! Please e-mail me! We have collections for those platforms, as well as a great new game that's a bit more mainstream. PS2 is really where the money is right now. Game Cube looks like it has potential this Christmas, though. Poor Xbox, my favorite, has its work cut out for it. Fun topic for Corp-Geeks like me! (BTW- I'm in just about the same position as you, I think! Best, Mike

I would definitely agree that it is hard to break in on GBA. There are so many people you compete against to work on the platform. We, fortunately, have a lot fo momentum right now. I know times are rough in the UK, though. A lot of US publishers are pulling back from contracting out there. The market here may improve soon. Andrew: Do you still have my e-mail address? I am admittedly a pain in the rear to get ahold of, but I don't do it on purpose. Drop me a line. We should talk GBA, if you still have some interest in doing it. Mike

Actually, seeing as I work for Digital Eclipse, a majority of our work is done on GBA. (I also wrote Yars for GBC- Sorry it was one game, it was my first Game Boy title I had ever written and it was the first true homebrew 2600 title, which went legit- aka done blind without hardware or tools). We get industry numbers as well. GBA is the largest platform sell in. It is kicking even PS2 butt. However, it has a higher COG than a PS2, Xbox, or GCN. We are doing great with GBA. There is a lot of money to be made, but not with original titles. It is a license driven market. The demographic skews sort of low, too. We just put out Atari Anniversary Edition not too long ago, and while it is doing well, it doesn't do the sort of cash a Spiderman or Spyro does. You can get a million seller on a GBA, though. And you can make a lot of money. We are a relatively large company that seems to be making it work. I'd have to say the real reason Activision and others do not go for it is because of the game/brand recognition coupled with the cost of production. We are doing Phantasy Star Collection, and it seems publishers are a lot more interested in doing Genesis/SNES collections now, not so much the older systems. But believe me, it is not for a lack of trying. We are one of the largest GBA developers and we pitch 2600 collections at least once a month. We are baiting the hook constantly. We have a solid plan to pull it off once we get an "okay". Also, the numbers reported above aren't entirely accurate, but pretty close. There is a lot of crap out there, though, and that is mostly the reason. We get sell-in and sell-through data quite often, too, and we particularly look closely at it. There are always a few GBA titles in the top ten overall. On a recent title, we pushed over 70,000 one month- on a single title. However, there is a disparity. Nintendo first party games lead the pack. They have the luxury of time and money. In the GBA business, you're lucky to get more than 4 months to make a game and with that, just enough money to fund it. The quality of the majority games reflects this practice. Publishers don't take the platform as seriously, as it is a high risk for low return. A 2600 pack of say 10-30 games won't take us more than 3 months, which fits nicely within the average time frame. AND it would be more fun than the average game, and in reality, better games than those found on a Game & Watch pack. So, here's crossing my fingers. We are desperate to do a collection, as we've wanted to for quite some time. We'd like to throw in history, images, trivia, etc. So, if you get a chance, write Infogrames/Atari, Activision, etc. Every little bit helps. Best, Mike

Good question. I don't think they did the original Pac-Man for any of the other systems. They did do Jr. Pac-man for the 2600. They had an incredible 2600 "library" of code that they used on their titles. Jungle Hunt, Moon Patrol, Ms. Pac-Man... all used very similar kernals. A lot of the 2600/7800 Ms. Pac-Man logic was almost identical to the arcade version. They did Galaxian, which was actually a great job. Rumor has it that David Crane walked up to the monitor at a CES that the game was showing at and counted out the sprites on a single line, which is like 7 when 6 was the most at the time, and asked them how they pulled it off. The GCC crew gave Atari a worthy exit during the crash. Imagine if they didn't come around- We wouldn't have some of Atari's most memorable games. Mike

There is a very good explanation as to why the 2600 version is so good, as well as the 7800 version. Atari contracted GCC to do a number of titles for them, off-loading a lot of internal development to the Boston area company. For those who don't remember, GCC used to do Missile Command upgrades, basically boards that you add to the arcade machine to add more enemies or different patterns, mazes, etc. They also were working on a Pac-Man upgrade when they were approached by Midway to make a "sequel" to Pac-Man (There is more to this story, really, but this is the condensed version). So, the same group who made the Queen of the Arcades also made one of the 2600's finest ports of their own game. There was definitely some pride in getting it right. Mike