Jack-Ass Tramiel

Looks cool! Anybody know if we can actually buy one? My you French Atarians out there could find out? J-AT

This brings a question I've had for a while to mind: What ever became of the original illustrations that were created for the Atari-brand 2600 cartridges? Does the original artwork for Yars' Revenge, Adventure, Haunted House, Asteroids, Missile Command, etc. still exist? Did any of this work ever appear in classic gaming shows for sale or auction? Or did the Tramiels throw this stuff out or mutilate them? (The artwork for the Lynx title Gates of Zendocon is the 2600 Asteroids illustration redone.) It'd be a real shame if these original works were gone. I would love to have a high quality poster print of some of these illustrations. J-AT

So has anybody on this board actually gotten to play this version of Pac-Man? If so, what's it like? How does it compare to Ms. Pac-Man? Also, how much memory does this version use? It looks to me like it definitely uses more than 2K, so the argument that Todd Frye could have done better might not be the case. J-AT

Tempest, what is Missile Command II like -- what do you do in the game? J-AT

Has anybody ever actually seen it running? Played it? It looks even better than that Pac-Man hack created from Ms. Pac-Man. Here's the page on this site for it: http://www.atariage.com/screenshot_page.ht...areLabelID=1022 Last I read, Ebivision planned to release the game but with the Pac-Man character changed to a goldfish and the ghosts into jellyfish. But since then, nothing. What happened? Still, even if the game is released and the Pac-Man characters changed, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult for someone in our community to change the characters back to Pac-Man and the ghosts. J-AT

Why don't you get in touch with the author of Z26 and tell him what you're doing? His 2600 emulator is written in assembly, I believe, and it's the tightest and most compatible around. Who knows, he might be able to make available a cut-down version of his code for your project. Imagine that -- an emulator program that is put into hardware form. I don't think anybody has done this yet. Things would come full circle! J-AT

Another vote for a Pitfall III, done in such a way where it picks up from the style of Pitfall II and does something even more sophisticated (if one can imagine that). I'd like a sequel to H.E.R.O. as well. J-AT

I had an Atari 2600 since around 1981 or so when I was a kid. Through the years, I would sell the unit but would wind up with another model in my hands. I never really bought too many games for it. As a kid, I think I only had about 4 or 5 games. In college, I had an Atari 2600 Jr., and the guys in my dorm would gather around the dorm's TV to play Winter Games on it. There would be nightly competitions after dinner to determine who was the best. They even set up league play that would last the week. I'm really quite proud I was able to contribute to this. The last games I ever bought for the system were the last (and best) that were made for it: Kung Fu Master, Commando, Skateboardin', F-14 Tomcat and so forth. (Damn, I never was able to beat Kung Fu Master since it was so tough. Has anybody ever finished it? And what happens in the end?) Anyway, the games that really got me excited about the 2600 again were Pitfall II and H.E.R.O. and I bought them immediately when they came out in 1984. To this day, Pitfall II is the ultimate 2600 game in terms of design, playability and challenge. It's the type of game that I hope future homebrew 2600 game makers aspire to. The game that I played the most (and still quite a bit to this day) is Phoenix. Don't know why, but there's something about it that gets my twitch reflexes going. J-AT

I sent the author my compliments on the article and mentioned this. It turns out that Tempest you were in fact quoted twice in the part about collecting lost prototypes but were edited out by the Salon editors. Christian Bogey was also quoted and his VCS simulator mentioned in a whole paragraph about rebuilding lost games (like the Ewok game) but that got cut, too. He even mentioned that way-cool VCS music video from Golden Shower with a link but that was cut, too! It was a great article still but it's a shame that the "author's cut" was not used. J-AT