Lynxpro

Did anyone else back-in-the-day find it amusing Atari Corp. painted the Sega Phaser the same color as the XEGS and photoed it with the console for the initial press release?

Doesn't that version include GCC's infamous unauthorized "Zoom" button or is it only Tengen's Pac-Man for NES that has it? And does the Sega Genesis version have it too?

What I meant was I felt it was stupid for Atari to continue paying to develop *new* games for the 2600. They could've continued manufacturing the pre-existing games as long as it was profitable [and it would've been great for them to have started making combo carts at the time of the older classics that were "out of print" so to speak] but as far as I'm concerned, a dollar spent on developing *new* 2600 games could've been a dollar spent on developing new 7800 games, acquiring decent games through licensing, and/or spending on advertising for the 7800. In retrospect, they should've paid to finish developing the "2600 on a chip" and then taking the 5100 design, adding a 2600 cart slot to it, wedging the 2600-on-a-chip [the Jan design? isn't that the name] into it and then maybe adding the Maria chip to it. Granted, that might've cost more in R&D than actually what Tramiel spent in finally paying GCC for the 7800...not to mention all the pre-existing cases already manufactured. Granted, Atari Corp. probably could've found a use for the already manufactured 7800 cases had they abandoned the design...Tramiel certainly reused the SX212 case for the XEP80 case and if memory serves correctly some sort of interface case for the Atari laser printers... ***Albeit even with such a design, they probably would've been out extra expense including the Atari 2600 joystick ports on it in addition to the 5200 ports [whether 2 port or 4 port] but at least it would've been completely backwards compatible not to mention being able to handle more than 2-3 fire buttons on it... Which reminds me...do the 5200 controller ports have roughly the same capabilities as Atari's "enhanced joystick ports" later used on the STE, Falcon, and Jaguar? It wouldn't surprise me if Atari Corp. did go back and recycle the designs even with a different pin configuration...

Pardon me here...is the purpose of this to adapt a more "reliable" controller with analog sticks for use with the 5200 or is it just the fact that the PSX controller is favored by some gamers? Wouldn't the NES Max controller also be of interest since the DPad does 360 control? Of course, I don't think that controller counts as analog...

He's a physics guy, that's what he was doing before he got called to come over to Atari Corp. and that's what he continues to do now. Interesting. I thought his PhD was in computer operating systems...

I don't remember. I wasn't buying any 2600 games at the time. Even then, I thought it a waste for Atari to continue making 2600 games instead of focusing on the 7800...

I'm not bothered by any of it. Africa brought it upon itself when it rebelled against the British and French Empires in favor of being ruled by homegrown tinpot dictators that made the Empires in retrospect look like shining beacons of liberty. The continent went from a major exporter under imperial times to a basket case needing constant bail outs from our First World Countries. And if someone wants to buy ethical electronics, you'll have to stick with retro computing since everything now is built in China and the Chinese government doesn't give a rip about human rights in Africa and all the other places they acquire their raw materials from... Maybe I have a jaded opinion of the subject since I strongly believe the Nigerian spammers deserve a fate far worse than being shipped off to the spice mines of Kessel...

Could it be he held anti-Japanese views? And I don't mean to assert that as a slam either...the guy was a victim of the Axis Powers so I can't fault him or many other people of his generation for that possibility...

But Ted Hoff lasted for more than a year. He wanted to transition Atari Corp over to a hardware-agnostic game publisher such as what AtariSoft had done before and the current "Atari" is. I met Hoff on two different occasions; great guy. But of course his vision ran counter to lashing Atari to a two-bit hard drive manufacturer. It must've been "super"-CEO Kenan who wanted to move Atari Corp operations to Boston so he could still run Atari France. What's striking about Atari Corp is how many great executives they actually employed that after they left the company went on to be superstars. Reminds me of the Sacramento Kings, or the Washington Senators before that [and, of course, in baseball]. I think that really feeds into a lot of the anti-Tramiel sentiments amongst Atari fans, both then and now in retrospect... Considering his OS expertise, I'm surprised he didn't go to work for Microsoft post-Atari... After all, Mr. Gemulator certainly did...

Who sold 7800 games for $9.99? Was it Sears [via the Sears catalog] during the initial 1986 [re] launch? I'm trying to remember but I think most of the "later" titles were $14.99 and up [and the Super Games were $30+]. I can distinctively remember my dad driving me across over to the South Sacramento Federated store to buy Food Fight because the closer Citrus Heights Federated didn't have it nor did any of the local Toys R Uses, KB, or Good Guys. I never saw the 7800 sold at any of our Targets in this part of NorCal either...

Well, that explains it. Do you have Leonard on speed-dial? Years later, a lot of developers set up shop in Chicago. Was it Mead Ames-Klein or Elie Kenan that Atari made a big deal about [to Atari Explorer and Antic/STart] who was supposed to turn around the company and move all operations to Boston but lasted like one month on the job? For awhile there, Atari Corp. was like a revolving door with their "leadership" much like the Soviet Union prior to Gorby, except the Atari people weren't croaking.

I've always been curious why Atari Corp. opened up a video game development office outside of Chicago to develop games for the 7800 and Lynx instead of closer to Sunnyvale... Has anyone ever interviewed any of these former Atari Corp programmers?

That's awesome... Now only if the AMY chip could be sourced...

Or IBM taking a 50% stake in Atari Inc. as Steve Ross was pressing them for...

That was revolutionary. It predated the Nokia NGage's "sidetalking" by almost 20 years... As for Sears, I remember seeing the 600XL and 800XL models there in their computer department... The department mainly consisted of the systems out on display but not connected to monitors or tvs... You could touch the keys but that was about it. I was lusting for an 800XL back in 84... And then they disappeared near 85. I remember the 520ST hitting Toys R Us before I saw it anywhere else.

I thought it might be GEM [hoping it was an Atari ST] but it looked more like a Mac the last time I watched the show and paused the scene. If the writers of Fringe were really up on their Atari trivia, they would've shown Peter reading the Atari Force comics, especially since they dealt with traveling through the multiverse...

Dunno. Coleco just doesn't feel authentic.

Impressive. Did you buy any of those during the limited 1984 test launch? I'd prefer to have one of those translucent cases that Atari Inc. produced for internal mold testing. I also like the white "Jaguar" case that one user posted on Facebook [on Atari's wall] which was from the dental instrument mold.

And yet the majority of us use computers descended from that horrible platform...

Yeah, maybe they had the color Mac that appeared in the Short Circuit universe... I can't remember what thread [AICN?] it was a year or so ago that I complained about the Walterverse not being different enough. For example, I mentioned they had Windows computers in the Walterverse and I complained that perhaps they should show "modern" versions of the Amiga or the Atari ST as having won the personal computer wars... Of course, I can't understand their logic of the United States still existing if Andrew Jackson* had never existed. The British would've won the War of 1812 and we would've been reunified into British North America... *In one of the episodes last season, the Waltervese Fringe team recovered a $20 bill from our universe and they didn't know who Andrew Jackson was; in the Walterverse, MLJ Jr. is on the $20. It appears Nixon won the 1960 election and was apparently assassinated instead of JFK.

With XM support too... 128K RAM combined with the Pokey and the YM chip would do wonders... I wonder if that A8 port of Space Harrier would work on the 7800/XM...

Jeff Minter strikes me as the type of guy who might could be persuaded into creating this... He did have some VLM'ish stuff he made back then on the C64 prior to jumping to the Atari ST platform...

Wasn't there an arcade classics all-in-one joystick a couple of years back that had Joust on it? That could be another explanation. I don't remember if the NES version had better sound than the 7800 version... Very true. I just remember clearly the Mac Plus debuting at the same time as the Atari 1040ST(f) in early 1986. I remember the computer press making a big deal about both featuring 1MB of RAM but at two different price points...and I got my 1040 shortly thereafter... Is JJ's group working on the planned BSG theatrical film? GI Joe toys were visible in that toy store. They were on the bottom shelf and they weren't as prominent as the Ghost Busters toys...

I couldn't make out the Secret Quest box. The writers must really have been fans of Joust and Atari. The kid had a Pro Line joystick in his hand but it could've been one for the 2600. The graphics looked like they were from the arcade so I suspect the production team had the arcade game running via MAME on an unseen computer... The other inconsistency was in the Walterverse, a Mac Plus was shown on Peter's desk...in 1985...

I'd like to see Cloak and Dagger... Actually, I was just reading up the specs on Atari Games's Toobin' title. It also used the YM chip and a Pokey for audio. At least a port to the XM would have arcade-perfect audio... And the Atari Games/Tengen version of Tetris. Although the arcade version used dual Pokey chips for the audio... A 6502 for the CPU...