Lynxpro

Natomas represent... Is "Who" a reference to something else, something scifi'ish?

It's hard to ignore them because they have a habit of jumping into every [profitable] portion of the tech industry they can with their mediocre wares. I have no respect for a company that built their success on ripping off the technology of others and passing it off as their own. And I'm not talking about Windows vs. Mac/Atari/Amiga, I'm talking about the pilfering of DEC's version of BASIC, followed by ripping off CP/M nearly line for line for their PC-DOS. As for American pride and Microsoft, just remember they tried to sell out the entire American computer industry by creating the MSX "standard" as the launchpad for the Japanese invasion of the home computer industry. To me, Microsoft is "The Mule" from Asimov's Foundation series.

One word... MySpace. Murdoch really doesn't understand the internet. He's old media. He's like the Polish army fighting German tanks with men on horses [except he's rich]. In contrast, the problem with the late Steve Ross - much like Governor Jerry Brown - is that he was a good 20+ years ahead of his time.

Tengen's ports had it. I did not know that. Better fire up the NES emulator with those game images. Loved the Atari Games/Tengen version of Tetris. Far superior to Nintendo's weak-but-legal offering.

Unless Sony has moved 8 million PS3's in the last couple of months, then the 360 is most certainly not #3 in worldwide sales but rather a solid second place. Wii: ~84 million 360: ~50 million PS3: ~42 million well 360 is ahead but barely Try this one http://www.vgchartz.com/ Wii 84.6 mil 360 51.3 ( including all the dead ones,so the active number is far less) ps3 47.2 360 is a distant 2nd Then.. weekly hardware chart worldwide as of 29 jan 2011 PS3 105874 Wii 81077 360 71341 Still different than #3 worldwide, and say what you will about M$, I will always be appreciative that they brought an American company back into the console fray, along with Xbox Live. Keep PSN, I'll pay for a good on-line service. Period. As far as the weekly numbers, they're meaningless for January. Microsoft has already said that they pulled product from planned January and Februay shippments to meet heavy December demand. So they're isn't enough product to meet demand right now. But now this is a major digression and I'm starting to enter fanboydom (bad, bad!!!). I despise Microsoft although I own a 360 [in addition to my PS3]. At this point, Sony is just as much an American company - if not more - than Microsoft. Microsoft's underhanded dealings in the video game industry is the reason why 3dfx went under, not to mention Sega as a hardware company. I won't forgive them for either of those acts. With that having been said, I despise Nintendo even more. I hope the 3Ds is an even bigger flop than the VirtualBoy [or Windows Phone 7]...

That's a policy I generally apply to everything. If there's something wrong in the world, usually it's his fault. Uh-oh, on the verge of political. Can already guess your leanings.... heh heh My disdain for Murdoch has nothing to do with his alleged politics. It has to do with him being a complete jerk as a businessman especially when it comes to tech. First of all, he launched a hostile takeover of Warner Communications which he had no hope of winning. He was emulating Carl Icahn, another jerk. He bought the shares cheap, demanded Warner do certain things and threatened to take them over. When he was unsuccessful, he basically forced Warner to buy his holdings for a tidy profit just to shut him up. His attempted takeover was the reason why Steve Ross had to liquidate Atari Inc. at a firesale price so quickly even though Ross did not want to part with the company because even he saw the writing on the wall and felt the popularity of video games would return. Example #2. Murdoch grabs a controlling interest in DirecTV. Murdoch forces DirecTV to cancel their agreements with TiVo and forces DirecTV to offer his inferior DVR wares from the Israeli company NDS that he owned. Not only did this hurt TiVo but DirecTV subscribers to this day still have to put up with DVRs with inferior software [although the hardware itself is decent; certainly better than what the cablecos offer]. Murdoch has been gone for a couple of years now but the damage was done. Example #3. Overpaying for MySpace which nearly triggered another bubble via the Web 2.0 companies. He completely screws up MySpace and now the company has laid off half its work force. Example #4. Blaming Google for all of News Corp's faults despite the fact Google directs lots of traffic to News Corp websites that probably wouldn't receive it otherwise. I haven't even mentioned what he's done with the Wall Street Journal, nor anything to do with his politics. [although I despise him for the damage he's directly caused the Royal Family over the past 3 decades].

But some of us were at the time writing - and often times, quite often - in to Atari and offering advice and titles for them to license to help out the system sales. So in essence, some of us were there, although rather distantly. And that's just from the consumer standpoint. There's plenty of advice that was given from the press at the time too, whether we are talking about video games or from the computer market. Lots of things got botched. Does anyone remember the fiasco when Atari Corp. sacked the editors of Atari Explorer - and The Atarian - Magazine? How many of you guys had video game tips published in The Atarian and didn't get your free game from it? I had several published and I finally settled on receiving one Lynx game [Dirty Larry - Renegade Cop] for all of my efforts and that was only because I spoke directly to Gary Tramiel about it at a shareholder's meeting about four years later...

You just described MySpace circa 2009.

I'd imagine this was the reason why the Lynx came to the market at [approximately] $189.99 MSRP instead of $149.99 as originally intended. The video game press was rather hostile to the Lynx. If I remember correctly, EGM really picked on it over the battery life issue. Even with the Feds on Nintendo's back, it still didn't help the Lynx out in terms of third party support from first tier companies. It's such a damn shame because the Gameboy was such a POS in comparison. How many years was it until the GBA came out when the Gameboy line finally eclipsed the capabilities of the Lynx in 1989? I'd like to see someone unseat Nintendo in hand helds. I've always felt the PSP was the spiritual heir to the Lynx but even with Sony's money, they still have been unable to beat Nintendo there.

It's been ages since I played the game on the 7800. Was there any sort of score to it? I just watched a video of it from YouTube. It sounds like the audio effect of being zapped by the security robots came from Parker Bros's Star Wars - Jedi Arena for the 2600. Some of the other sound effects sound exactly like the blasters in Atari's Vanguard for the 2600... Is there a specific type of internal 360k 5 1/4 drive that you need? There's sometimes swap meets in town for old computer hardware... Here's a video of allegedly all versions of Impossible Mission: Who knew the game had been ported to the PSP and the DS? Not me! As for the C64 version, the sound effects don't sound like they are too complex for a Pokey chip. And with a larger ROM image, I'd imagine the digitized voice sample could be added to the 7800 version if the community were inclined to do so... Aside from the audio, I'm not too impressed with what I see in the SMS version...

Tell that to my 12 year old self from 1987 who had to turn off his 7800 when he was on Level 56 of Galaga so he could attend a church service with his family. For that, I blame the Tramiels!

Any game that was licensed for the NES was exclusive to it for 2 years per the contracts with Nintendo of America. The game could've appeared on various computer platforms but not on another console. I'm pretty sure the contract also stated that not only was it exclusive to the NES console but that they could only appear on computer platforms if they were disk based. This would explain why Atari didn't go around this by licensing the games for the XE computer line, converting them to cartridge format, and then providing them to all the retailers that stocked the XEGS. It was either that or the Tramiels didn't think about that or it possibly being a marketing nightmare explaining how the cartridge was for the XE computer line but omitting the XEGS from the packaging and still assuming Joe Consumer could understand this without receiving misinformation from the retail zombies at Toys R Us and the like... Licensing only became more loose after both Ataris took Nintendo to the courts over antitrust allegations. It still baffles me how Atari Corp. lost that case...

That's right! I totally forgot about that. Separate question...does anyone here have a heatsink installed on the Maria chip? Nice. Just imagine if Curt had done a blasphemous deed like adding a SID chip to the XM adapter... Impossible Mission could have the C64* audio ported to it. Added bonus, making Timbaland shed a tear over each C64 parted out for the SID chip to go into an Atari enthusiast's device. *Mentioning the C64 as a source since I do not recall the game having been ported to the Atari 8-bits...

Wait... does the 7800 emulator available on the Wii Homebrew Channel actually emulate the Pokey too? *EDIT* That was rather stupid of me since I've played Ballblazer on it. I guess what I meant to ask is whether there are any issues with it emulating modified games with Pokey support that did not originally include it... Hmm. I'm not a fan of the Xevious intro tune - via the Pokey - on the 5200 from what I've seen/heard. Some of the actual effects - such as blasting enemy aircraft - do sound better on the Pokey version though. Even though it isn't very faithful to the arcade, I do prefer the Mothership's effects via the TIA in the 7800 version... Which brings me to the following question... can you run TIA and Pokey audio at the same time or was the 7800 specifically designed to shut off the internal audio if it did detect a Pokey chip in the cartridge? Forgive me if this has been answered over and over again; just trying to figure out if 6 channel sound was possible... It appears that AtariNerd's later post states that with the XM, you can use the Pokey and the Yamaha chip at the same time, but no word if you could use both of them with the TIA at the same time... Those were impressive. Wait...that person installed a SID and a Yamaha sound chip in an old CP/M machine? Impressive. Kinda makes me teary eyed that the ST didn't have the same Yamaha sound chip included... One feature I'd like to see on all versions of Pac-Man - including authorized releases from Namco - would be the addition of the "Zoom" button feature. It was probably an unauthorized mod created by GCC but I vividly remember a lot of arcades here in Sacramento having it installed on their Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-Man units. It was like a super turbo boost to the game. If GCC actually created it, it's a shame they didn't include it by default in the 7800 version. I've found very little info about it on the web but I know I didn't imagine it!

Speaking of Gauntlet, I was just reading the entries for it and Dandy on Wikipedia and the Dandy entry reports that John Palevich worked on both the OS for the unreleased "Atari Rainbow" computer as well as on the AMY sound chip. Seems I'm going to have to hit up the Atari History Museum and one of the few websites devoted to the AMY chip that I've found in the past to see if Palevich is listed on those sites too...

I'm curious about what computer platform Atari Games used to create the actual arcade game on...

It wasn't just the Tramiels; after all, the decision to omit the Pokey chip from the console was Atari Inc.'s decision. I still don't understand how they thought omitting the Pokey chip from the console but shipping it with certain titles would be a cost reduction. I guess they figured that there was no way all 7800 owners would purchase every title that was to have a Pokey [or the other low-cost chip] included in it. I think the decision to omit a cartridge bay door off the unit was Atari Inc's as well. Why they chose to do that while the 600XL and 800XL had them is beyond me. Oh right, reduced costs at the user's expense of getting dust into the cartridge port. The decision to use the same cartridge slot as the 2600 carts was also Atari Inc's decision. I don't know about the rest of you guys but I always had problems with Super Game Cartridges with both 7800s I had to play with. It always felt like you had to force the cartridge in and there's no way that was good for the cartridge connector. In hindsight, its too bad they didn't use a [near zero force] connector like the 5200 and included the 2600 slot just for backwards compatibility but that would've cost extra. But we can fault the Tramiels for getting rid of the Expansion port on later 7800s; using black & white on the cartridge stickers, boxes, and program manuals; failing to secure a licensing agreement with Atari Games until right before the release of the Lynx; not using the Pokey chip in more titles; "firing" crucial Atari Inc. staff and never discovering how to use the AMY sound chip which could have been used on the 7800 [as well as the XE and ST computer lines]; canceling various titles due to ROM sizes or reducing the memory on released titles, etc. Now, with all the talk about the Pokey, I have to admit the sound on the 7800's version of Xevious to me sounds better than the 5200/XL/XE version. Sure, the Pokey audio does sound closer to the arcade version on some of the effects but in other areas it sounds inferior. The Xevious intro "tune" to my ears sounds better on the 7800 but then again, it appears the 5200 version was rushed and possibly a rough-cut. I actually prefer the inferior sound of the Mothership on the 7800. And man, the 5200's graphics for Xevious does suck...

I was so mad when I learned Atari Corp. hadn't acquired Atari Games prior to the release of the 7800. My friends and I thought for sure that Atari would clean Nintendo's clock with games like Gauntlet. We were so disappointed when Gauntlet appeared on the NES by the "mysterious" company named Tengen. It made the rest of them so mad that they had their parents buy the NES for them and I was the only one who had the 7800. It was so disappointing because we all had had 2600s for years and we had borrowed each others games for years. Once I learned that Atari Games was still a separate company, I began pestering Atari Corp. to license the Atari Games Corp. titles. I think I sent them a letter once a week requesting them to do so. As for the Atari Games Corp., had they lived up to the contractual agreement with Nintendo, they would've been restricted from publishing their titles for the 7800 regardless since most of their titles were already licensed for the NES. That doesn't seem right about Atari Games Corp. having to license the "Atari" name and logo. I thought they had worldwide exclusive rights to the name and logo for use solely in arcades and Atari Corp. had worldwide exclusive rights for computers and home video games... [not counting Ataritel]. That's how it was always explained after the Tramiel acquisition. I guess it complicates matters if one wanted to market "Atari Games" t-shirts. I'd assume you'd only have to secure a licensing deal with Warner Bros. Interactive...

How about interactivity with the ROB? Just because Nintendo never found anything useful for it doesn't mean the Atari homebrew community couldn't...

I'm really disappointed in the Wii. My friend hacked his and while it is decent playing 7800 games it seems to really suck at arcade ROMS via MAME. The Wiimote is terrible when it comes to playing the old games. The buttons are too slow [i gave up on level 26 on Galaga because of it; I got up to level 52 when I was 12...I could've really used the High Score Cartridge back then!]. I'm trying to convince him to buy one of Nintendo's retro SNES controllers for the Wii. I used to play Robotron on the 7800 in dual stick mode; I wish I would've had a joystick holder for it.

I should hope so, the NES version sucked. I can't tell you how disappointed I was when I bought the NES and that game, took it home grinning from ear to ear, and plugged it in to find out how crappy it was. I came very close to taking it back. Much later, I was very satisfied with Gauntlet II for the Amiga. It was arcade perfect, up to the ability for 4 players(players 3&4 required a special adapter for the parallel port). That's good to know about the Amiga version. The ST version was also arcade perfect - from my recollection - but I don't recall if it worked with a 4 player adapter. I do know that there was a 4 player hardware adapter marketed for the ST; the game Leatherneck used it...

Once Tramiel passed it up, it would've been too difficult. Namco bought an 80% stake in Atari Games shortly thereafter but apparently they allowed the employees to buy it back during the turbulent time period where Atari Games/Tengen was suing [and being countersued by] Nintendo. Time Warner then re-acquired them circa 91. During a time of shareholders demanding Time Warner reduce its corporate debt, Time Warner again decided to sell off Atari Games/Tengen/Time Warner Interactive to WMS Industries [owners of Williams and the former Bally-Midway library, not to mention the Tradewest IP] in 1996. WMS spun that division off later and it became known simply as "Midway". Midway later went bankrupt in 2009 and most of it was sold to - yep, you guessed it - Time Warner through its newly created "Warner Bros. Interactive" gaming division. So apparently Warner Bros. Interactive owns all the IP for Atari Games Corp. arcade games from 1984-1996. Many of the Atari Games Corp. titles eventually were licensed for the Lynx. That was after animosity between the two companies [Atari Corp. and Atari Games Corp.] was settled during their many lawsuits against Nintendo and also at the behest of the company that was the largest [minority in the case of Tramiel's Atari Corp.] shareholder of them both, Time Warner. That still didn't settle all the feelings; I can remember Sam Tramiel complaining at the 1992 Atari Corp. shareholder's meeting about the waning popularity of Atari Games Corp. titles in the arcades [this was during the whole Street Fighter 2 craze] and of course later Time Warner had Atari Games Corp. settle for actual shares in Atari Corp. in order to forgive debts from the licensing deals...

Which Atari computers? Are you asking about the 8-bits [400/800/XL/XE] or the 16/32 bits [sT/Mega/STe/MegaSTE/TT/Falcon]? The STs and up had early web browsers. I'll let someone else from the "scene" tell whether ethernet has been enabled on them via expansion.

I'm rather curious if anyone believes the AMY chip could have been added to the 7800 via either the Expansion port or via the cartridges themselves [a la the Pokey]...

According to the book "Game Over", Atari Games would've cost Jack $10 million more in 1984. And Warner would've sold it so long as they retained a 25% stake in the combined company. That was the one thing Steve Ross insisted on; he wanted someone else to revive Atari while Atari's woes were no longer dragging down Warner's stock price - which had triggered Rupert Murdoch's hostile takeover attempt - and then he wanted to buy back the company on-the-cheap once it was turned around. This is why Ross wouldn't sell Atari to Philips because Philips insisted on owning 100% of the company; Tramiel agreed and Warner owned a 25% stake in Atari Corp. for most of that company's life. EGM back in 1991 reported that [Time] Warner approached the Tramiels about selling their stake in Atari Corp back - and this was right after Time Warner had reacquired Atari Games - but they passed on the golden opportunity. I only type this from my MacBook because neither Atari nor the Amiga have a modern platform as a realistic alternative. Perhaps had Jack Tramiel and Irving Gould put away their sharp weapons when the Atari/Commodore lawsuits were settled and agreed to combine the ST and Amiga into a single shared platform, we would have a viable third computer platform to this day [and I don't mean Linux]...