else

Darn, wish I had seen that. Even though it's not exactly rare it still went extremely cheap....

Since there are emulators available, I would think the answer is pretty obvious....

I've seen these things in stores for a couple of months now. Even though I'm a big Coleco fan, they don't appeal to me in the least. It looks like they're just trying to cash in on the Coleco name, and could care less about what made Coleco great. These games seem like cheap generic junk from China to me....

Forget adding more stuff -- I would have just liked to seen Atari fix all the bugs in the hardware in the first place.

The Genesis game Warpspeed had some similarities to Star Raiders. But it does strike me as odd that there have been no remakes for SR, especially considering it was probably one of the most famous computer games of the early 80s, and one of the very, very few to make the transition to consoles (2600 and 5200). It was in the top ten list for years and years. 952690[/snapback] Also strange to me is that Atari never ported it to any other system back then as an Atarisoft title either....

You would only be sad if you bought several copies at $500.00 each 953243[/snapback] But that's not what he said though. He said it was "a sad time for Atari fans".

From what I hear you can get an NTSC one for $50 bux (or motorodeo) from the right people now. Sad, this game was a grail and all BS aside it's sad to see it drop like a rock. From $500 to $50 bucks in a couple of months? It's a sad time for ATARI fans weather you realize it now or not. EDIT: But I will be 1st in line when BMX is worth $50 bucks..lol.. 953082[/snapback] Sad time? You're kidding, right? More people (such as myself) might now have a shot at being able to play the game and add it to our collections! I don't know you could be sad about that!?!? Now, if by "sad" you mean "happy", then I couldn't get any more sad....

Sean Kelly did this release of the Atarisoft titles. I am sure that Atari was going to release them. There was a 2nd release of these titles that had the Atarisoft labels. Here is a picture. 952785[/snapback] Ahhhh, those labels seem much more fitting....

I'm suprised they put Coleco style labels on these rather than Atarisoft style ones. Was Atari planning on selling these titles to Coleco or something?

I've got a complete "released" collection. I think I've got all the "released protos" as well (I think). Not interested in selling though....

Well, I got DR-DOS installed on it last night and I got GEM and all the GEM Apps installed on it this morning. Pretty slick! The screen certainly is slow on it though -- your mouse basically disappears for a bit whenever you move it. Too bad the screen isn't color, but I know that's asking for too much.... I'm really not sure how useful GEM is anymore in 2005 (given the fact that I also have a pretty modern laptop), but it's nice to see this old Atari doing something! Thanks for all the help!

What everyone seems forget about is that both Coleco and Mattel had Atari 2600 adapers for their systems by the time ET came out. Plus Coleco had the Gemini out too. So for Atari to produce more carts than systems they had sold is really not all the strange. Heck if ET had been a better game it may have been a great business decision!

951490[/snapback] Thanks for the advice Curt. Haven't heard of OpenDOS before. Does anyone have a link to it? I tried searching for it, but I end up at the SCO website and can't find it there.... 951556[/snapback] Okay, I think if have found a site for DR-DOS (which seems to be the same thing as OpenDOS). I'll give it a try later tonight.

951490[/snapback] Thanks for the advice Curt. Haven't heard of OpenDOS before. Does anyone have a link to it? I tried searching for it, but I end up at the SCO website and can't find it there....

Wow -- he designed a custom PCB and everything. Now that's dedication! A better link that shows the custom PCB

They probably cut down the size by doing a fair amount of redesign, not the least of which was probably spinning a new PC board. I'm guessing this is probably not an option in this case....

Thanks for the info. There is unfortunatley no SCSI port on it either.... I guess even if it did have a modem I still wouldn't have much use for it. I use broadband for everything these days anyhow!

Not trying to do anything fancy with it, really. Just thought it would be neat to get it to do *something*. It sounds like it's more of a conversation piece though at this point so maybe it's not even worth my time trying. It does seem odd to me that a laptop wouldn't have a modem, or at least an expansion slot for a modem. I guess that was the state of the world back then. It just seems like a very "closed" system when I look for expansion slots....

Okay, this isn't an ST/TT question but it seems like the most relevant group.... I have an Atari ABC laptop that I purchased off eBay a while ago. I'd like to get it going. It powers on okay, but the hard drive appears to be empty (it sounds like it is working okay, but I can't say for sure). So my question is what can I realistically do with this thing.... What OS can I hope to run on it -- Windows 95? Windows 98? Can an external CDROM drive be connected to it? If so, what type/kind should I look for? And if so, what version of Windows will I need to use a CDROM? Is there any hope of getting it on the net? I don't see any PCMCIA slots, an ethernet port, or a modem port on it.... I'm primarily a Mac user (though I do use a windows machine for work), so any help at all is appreciated....

Two words... E-bay. 950293[/snapback] Ummmm, actually it is "eBay" which is one word.

Why not start by selling compliation CDs for current systems such as the PS2, XBOX, etc. You know, like the Blue Sky Rangers are doing for the Intellivision? That would seem a lot easier and less risky than doing FB2 right off the bat.... Plus then the licenses would be in place to do a FB2 in the future. BTW, you mention that licenses shouldn't be a problem for most games. However, the games that sold my family on the Colecovision back in the day were Donkey Kong and Zaxxon. In my mind, these are the "killer apps" on it. I imagine they were to a lot of other people as well. These "key" licenses don't seem like they will be easy to acquire! But I do wish them luck....

You have to understand that a lot of things are different today than they were back during the first crash. Back then, when games were distributed on carts, the ROMs were very espensive to make and thus required a huge outlay of cash on the company's part. This put them at great risk if the game didn't sell well. Today, games are distributed on CDs which cost almost nothing to produce (a fraction of a penny maybe?). This means a company isn't as exposed to all that risk if a game bombs. To use an analogy, today's game business is much more like the move industry -- it requires a lot of up front money to produce, but the product can then be replicated for next to nothing. That wasn't always the case in the game business.... I can see a downturn in the industry, but I don't see another all out crash coming again.

I believe Coleco outsourced most of their game programming. Can't remember the name of the company they used though. This probably contributes to why they aren't so well known....

Yea, I've always thought that too. If you believe the bell curve story, then it seems like they were trying to simulate analog control using a digital controller -- with disasterous results. Either that or it was just plain old crappy coding and they just made up the bell curve story as a cover....

Yea, kind of, I guess. Basically you drop your stuff off and they list it for you. Then they take a cut of the winning amount. There's a place right here in the moderate-sized town that I live in that will do it for you....