davidcalgary29

But what's your basis for the belief that there is or was widespread criticism of the 2600's late '80s library? It was a 10 year-old platform by that point, and most critics judged it on that basis: I don't recall gaming magazines at the time saying more than, “...and there's a new 2600 release!"...if anything was said at all. And yes, there are some silly YouTubers out there are producing some questionable critiques, but they're of little consequence. The 2600 has some terrible commercial releases, but most of those were crash-era titles. With a few exceptions, most 2600 titles from the late '80s were actually pretty good. I'm going to add Crossbow to the list of superior late '80s 2600 arcade ports. It gets alot of flack because Atari turned this into a point-and-click shooter, but as 7800 Alien Brigade shows on the Evercade, it doesn't mean you still can't have fun just because you can't use a lightgun. And Activision did a pretty good job with Commando. It’s not very pretty, but gameplay is decent.

I'll be here when you're ready.

Who are these people of whom you speak? Solaris is an outright classic, and Xenophobe is an amazing (albeit ugly looking) piece of programming. Okay, Rampage looks like a kindergarten art project, and Desert Falcon is unfortunate, but companies (and Atari) had learned by the late '80s and were producing some pretty great stuff for the 2600. Not nearly as amazing as today's efforts, of course, but still pretty great.

Treasure Island Dizzy is a platformer that has fun with the unique movement of its rolling, egg-shaped protagonist. I'm betting that it will be a great fit for the Evercade, and especially when bundled with the other Oliver Twins games. Of course, you can always get Treasure Island Dizzy and Fantasy World Dizzy for the Jag from the AA store if you don't want to wait for the Evercade cart.

But Atari couldn't attract a lot of third-party developers to its newer consoles (Jaguar aside), so they ended up coding most of the releases themselves. And since they didn't have an Asian development team, I do believe that most product did come from North America, with a few titles developed in Europe. Without access to Japan, Atari couldn't even produce popular playalikes for its consoles, and the generally litigous nature of the Atari/Nintendo/Sega rivalry gave Atari short-term cash, but probably prevented them from acquiring lucrative offshore titles. Atari and Sega really should have teamed up to go after Nintendo (and Atari REALLY should have agreed to distribute the Genesis) instead of suing each other, but that's hindsight for you. Aside from the unreleased Jinks and Tower Toppler(?), XEGS software came from the Lombard division (or were repackaged, earlier titles from third parties); Plutos and Sirius may have been coded for the 7800 in the UK, but Atari didn't release them, either. And Epyx was an American company, so the Lynx started out with this commercial handicap as well. The inability to tap into modern gaming trends was probably a major factor in the failure of all of Atari's post-2600 consoles.

I had no idea that Artworx published anything except Strip Poker until I came across one of their catalogues in the late '80s. I have to say that most of their games didn't look that interesting.

I don't know...those were all the games I was playing in the arcades in '84, so I can't say that I was looking for "something better" at the time. 1986 was certainly a different story, but the 7800's launch library was perfectly fine for a North American home console in '83-'84.

Well you know that I love the A8 line to death, so I'm the last person who would argue that it shouldn't have existed. You've got to admit, though, that the 5200 had bigger problems than the video game crash and Commodore (which wasn't even competing in the same market; and the C64 didn't really take off until the end of '83, when the 5200's fate had been sealed). I don't see anyone suggesting that the failure of the 7800 was directly tied to its performance or hardware. I still think that it might have been a hit if it had been released in early '82, and if the 5200 had never been released, but the window for success was actually very small, and ultimately missed. And the Nintendo (which was hardly a known quantity in North America at the time) side deal went sideways for lots of reasons, some of which were out of the control of Atari.

If Atari Inc. had been that serious about defending Atari's gaming market position, they would have dumped the home computer line completely (which was a money loser for them) and gone directly to the 7800 without stopping off at 5200ville. I would have hated this personally, as the A8 is the best thing any version of Atari ever put out, but it would have made for better business. I know that the Tramiels have been correctly critcized for some of their choices at Atari Corp., but the decision making at Atari Inc. was downright disastrous at the end, too.

So does Evercade. I asked them about this, and they said "no", although they were always looking for "curiosities". Here's hoping they move into home computers next.

Sure: they would have produced the PCjr, version 0.2. I mean, yes -- this is all very cool, but even if Atari morphed a bargain-basement PC clone company, it still would have disappeared by the mid-'90s; the margins were too thin and it would have had too many competitors. I actually think that Atari and Commodore did the best that they could given increasingly hostile market conditions for both companies in the early '90s.

"Working title: Blinko". Yup, pretty much sums up both the movie and video game for me. Wait -- Sam Tramiel read the script for this in 1994 and still wanted to pony up 100K for its rights? Wow. Also: project is started in May, 1994. July, 1995: "...we haven't yet found a programming team for the Jaguar version. I know that this may seem like bad news..." I had to laugh at that one.

I haven't played any "terrible" consoles...but I'm still having a heck of a time getting my Gizmondo to work properly. The poor thing hasn't aged well at all, and the rubber has deteriorated to a tacky, and somewhat slimy surface; the unit won't work properly without a SIM card; half of the features (ie. e-mail) were never implemented before the company went bust; and I've got to do a hard re-boot because the OS crashed. Most of its games are also weird and not particularly enjoyable. This, for me, is the bottom of the gaming barrel.

Yes, I recall that from the few times I played the game. I'm just speculating, of course, but with money as tight as it was at Atari, I believe that you'll always get to the answer if you follow the dollar.

There are some other cartridge extenders out there that might well work on the XEGS. And this problem is really limited to a few modern (ie. 21st century) homebrews, and not Atari's own cartridges or the vast number of third-party carts that were made for the system.

I'm going to respectfully disagree with this. I thought the inclusion of 2600 Tempest was a lovely gift for Atari collectors who might have wanted to try out the proto but not spend the extra bucks getting a cart (or multicart and downloading the ROM, or play it on an emulator). I mean yes -- it's an unplayable mess -- but the fact that they included it shows that Evercade wants to go above and beyond the standard "hits" collection, and makes "Atari No. 1" collectible in itself. An entire cart of protos would be a great idea.

Because the rights probably only extended to the game itself, and not extra artwork that could be used to promote the game. I'm sure it was cheaper to create a likeness than it would have been to pay extra $$$ to create unique drawings of copyrighted characters.

Well, I always knew that the 2600 would survive the apocalypse: in Season 4, episode 7 of 3% ("Sun"), you can see one, and possibly a stack, of Darth Vaders, as Rafael, Elisa, and Joana flee a group of homicidal Inlanders at about ten minutes in. And this, of course, after all possible power sources in the series have been blown up.

Contained as an Easter Egg in Lexis. My dream port is a Mr. Do! collection -- all four arcade games on one card. It would be a beautiful thing.

No, I wrote to [email protected] They're really good with turnaround, too -- I got my answer overnight.

I contacted Evercade support and provided my feedback on "Atari No. 1". They're apparently trying to acquire more 7800 titles, so I'll keep my fingers crossed for a dedicated 7800 cartridge.

Now, I know you're not criticizing the Lynx here, but I'm still waiting for someone to show me how it was behind the curve or lacking in any way (aside from being a battery-eater). In fact, in some ways, it still hasn't been beat: the Evercade won't, for instance, be able to replicate the Lynx's ambidextrous and vertical play options. Hardware aside, the Lynx has often been criticized (by those who don't play it, of course), for being "chunky" and "too large", but its ergonomics for long-term play were actually pretty great. As I've noted, that's something that Evercade should note.

I'd ask him if he was surprised in the continued and unquenchable interest in a console that was a commercial disaster a quarter of a century ago, and if he gets asked any questions about other projects he worked on at that time for other, more commercially successful, platforms. I love these interviews, but I'm always curious what the hell people think when asked about work on the Jaguar. I can just hear them say "the JAGUAR? I worked on ... for the PSX! And that sold five hundred thousand copies!!! And you seriously don't want to know about that?!". I so love this system.

I still think that they need to tweak the shape of the existing unit, as it's not that easy to hold for long periods of time. And can the display be rotated? I also really hate the current layout out on the left; the d-pad and "Menu" buttons should be reversed. That being said, I'm getting a fair amount of use out of mine because of the interesting collections that they've collated and how play differs on a handheld unit. Most of the 2600 games on the "Atari No. 1" cart are a bust (Centipede and Asteroids aside), but I was surprised to see how many of the 7800 games translate well to handheld action. Alien Brigade and Food Fight are particular standouts on the cart, and I certainly wouldn't be playing them at all otherwise because of bad memories of gameplay with the ProLines. Alien Brigade in particular is an underappreciated gem. And, yes, I decided to buy the DataEast cartridge because of Burgertime (which doesn't offer a great playing experience on the Evercade, truth be told)...but I stayed around for Magical Drop II. And I thought that I'd be spending my time with Earthworm Jim on Interplay I, but ditched him for Clayman and Incantation, which are much more fun as handheld players.

This certainly isn't for bargain-hunters, which is a bit ironic given the original stated purpose of the Spectrum. I'm backing the campaign because it's got a gorgeous design and I lollygagged and procrastinated and missed the original campaign even though I really wanted one of those. And the success of this campaign will no doubt spur other (and cheaper) crowdfunded projects for other legacy machines.