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Albert

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Posts posted by Albert

  1. Posted

    Damn. I wasn't aware that was a bad dump. I'll have to see if I can encourage someone to re-dump it. I don't have the means to do so myself, unfortunately. But considering other Activision carts have been dumped fine, I see no reason why River Raid should pose a problem..

     

    ..Al

  2. Posted

    I'm working on a Lynx section for AtariAge and would like to enlist help from any Lynx enthusiasts out there. I'm looking for Cartridge Scans, Box Scans and Manual Scans. I already have several Lynx games and don't need scans of those items. Specifically, this is what I have at present:

     

    Lynx Carts:

     

    - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

    - Chip's Challenge

    - Crystal Mines II

    - Dirth Larry

    - Double Dragon

    - Hydra

    - Ishido

    - Jimmy Connors Tennis

    - Klax

    - Kung Food

    - Malibu Bikini Volleyball

    - Pit-Fighter

    - Qix

    - Rampart

    - Toki

    - Tournament Cyberball

    - Turbo Sub

     

    Boxes:

     

    - Awesome Golf

    - Batman Returns

    - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

    - Checkered Flag

    - Chip's Challenge

    - Crystal Mines II

    - Dirty Larry

    - Double Dragon

    - European Soccer Challenge

    - Gates of Zendocon (small box)

    - Hockey

    - Hydra

    - Ishido

    - Jimmy Connor's Tennis

    - Klax

    - Kung Food

    - Malibu Bikini Volleyball

    - Paperboy

    - Pinball Jam

    - Pit-Fighter

    - Qix

    - Rampage

    - Rampart

    - RoadBlasters

    - Robo-Squash

    - Robotron: 2084

    - S.T.U.N. Runner

    - Shadow of the Beast

    - Shanghai

    - Steel Talons

    - Toki

    - Tournament Cyberball

    - Turbo Sub

    - Warbirds

     

    Manuals:

     

    - Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

    - Chip's Challenge

    - Crystal Mines II

    - Dirty Larry

    - Double Dragon

    - Gates of Zendocon (small box)

    - Hydra

    - Ishido

    - Jimmy Connor's Tennis

    - Klax

    - Kung Food

    - Malibu Bikini Volleyball

    - Paperboy

    - Pinball Jam

    - Pit-Fighter

    - Qix

    - Rampart

    - Robo-Squash

    - S.T.U.N. Runner

    - Shadow of the Beast

    - Shanghai

    - Steel Talons

    - Toki

    - Tournament Cyberball

    - Turbo Sub

     

    So basically anything *not* on this list I'll ultimately need scans of to fill out the Lynx section. I know I have more cartridges with my Lynx, but when I moved from Austin to California I seem to have misplaced it (read: it's in a box deep inside my storage unit!). I'm hoping to recover it fairly soon.

     

    I'm also seeking out good quality, well-lit pictures of any Lynx hardware. The Lynx I own is a Lynx II, so I'll especially need pictures of the original Lynx (I should never have sold the one I bought when they first came out!)

     

    The important thing is that any submitted images are high quality. By this I mean scanned at a fairly high resolution (at *least* 200 dpi) and submitted at a reasonable resolution (boxes no less than 600 pixels wide, each manual page 600, and carts I'm not sure of yet (normal size carts are 400 pixels wide on the site, but Lynx carts are quite a bit smaller so I may go with 300 pixels wide or so). Also, if you submit images please compress them as little as possible. We'll then resize, crop and compress the images before putting them online.

     

    The other thing I'm looking to do is make a list of all the Lynx cartridge variations. I personally remember several different types of Lynx carts. I think the original carts were completely flat, perhaps with some dimpling on the end. But these were difficult to remove so Atari later added a perpendicular edge near the end of the cart. And it seems Atari finally settled on the nice curved end, which is how all of *my* cartridges are formed. But I had a variety of different types of carts for my original Lynx (that's what you get for being an early adopter!)

     

    So two things with the different types of carts: 1) I'd like to know *which* carts were produced in each style and 2) I need good quality pictures (not scans) of these different styles so I can create a "Label Variations" style page for the Lynx carts. For an example of what I'm talking about, look here:

     

    Atari 2600 Label Guide

     

    Alternatively, if I can find someone in the Bay area to loan me these carts (cards?) I can take pictures of them myself..

     

    Please email any submissions to [email protected]

     

    Thanks in advance for any submissions, we're looking to create the most comprehensive collection of Lynx information and pictures anywhere on the net!

     

    ..Al

  3. Posted

    Major -- You're right, the file was missing. I've fixed the problem so you should be able to download it from the above link. I haven't had a chance to verify that the ROM works, so please let me know if you have any problems.

     

    ..Al

  4. Posted

    quote
    Wow! That's great! It's tons faster to load!

     

    Great, I'm glad to hear it made a difference. I can probably optimize it a bit more, but anything I do at this point won't make a huge difference. The thing to do is bookmark whatever "simple" rarity lists you're interested in so you can go to them directly without having to suffer through the fancy page first.

     

    If you have any other suggestions on how we can improve the site, we're all ears..

     

    Thanks,

     

    ..Al

  5. Posted

    quote
    If you're in California, maybe you can go to the next Southern California Classic Collectors meet. Nothing as big as PhillyClassic, but a great way to spend an afternoon with some fellow collectors.

     

    That's a bit far to drive for me, we need something along those lines for Northern California. There must be a classic gaming club here in Silicon Valley where it all started!!

     

    ..Al

  6. Posted

    Hi Chad!

     

    quote
    Next, on the subject of submissions. Can we assume that if there is not a picture of the cartridge, manual, or box in the Rarity Guide then that is because no one has submitted that photo? I don't want to double up submissions that someone else is already working on.

     

    At this point Alex and I have probably scanned nearly every 2600, 5200, and 7800 item we have (which is where nearly all the images have come from, thus far). The only exception is 2600 manuals, we haven't started into those yet. For everything else, if there's a hole that means we need a scan! Please submit to your heart's content, it doesn't usually take us very long to get the images online. If you'd like to check first before taking the time to scan something, please drop us a line and we'll get you an answer ASAP.

     

    quote
    For example, I have a mint, boxed Shuttle Orbiter that I can scan the manual and box for you. Also, the cart is in better condition than the one in the Rarity Guide, would you like scans of cartridges in better condition?

     

    Please do scan Shuttle Orbiter, that'd be great! All we ask are that the scans for boxes and manuals are at least 600 pixels wide (for boxes, and 600 wide for an individual manual page, so if you scan two pages of a manual together we'd need it at a width of at least 1200, which we'll then hack up into two images). If you can scan them even higher, that's great as it allows us to crop/shrink the images for better quality. I typically scan everything at 200 or 300 dpi, save the originals for later reference, and then reduce the images to a width of 600 for the site. We'd also prefer to get images with very little (or no!) compression so we can compress them ourselves to maintain consistency with all the images on the site.

     

    While I know we don't have the box or cart for Shuttle Orbiter, I'm not sure about the manual. I doubt I have a copy of the manual, but perhaps Alex does. Again, we haven't gone through our manuals yet (very soon!), and they tend to be the most time consuming items to scan.

     

    And if you have better scans of any items, please pass 'em along. I know some of my cartridges and boxes aren't in the best shape. Getting pristine scans of everything on the site will always be an ongoing goal..

     

    Thanks!

     

    ..Al

  8. Posted

    Hi Jahfish,

     

    quote
    hi albert, i could lower the picture size a little more ... i hope you will be able to have that extra section soon online. would be a nice one ... or at least this could be an extra section for the message board

     

    Actually I would prefer larger images that show more detail. If you have larger images that'd be wonderful. But don't post them here in the message board, instead zip them up and email them to us [email protected] . As long as the message(s) are under 3MB in size, they'll go through fine.

     

    I probably won't have an opportunity to work on a new Storage section until this weekend, and I'll make an announcement here when I'm done with it. In the meantime, anyone who has pictures of Atari and 3rd-party storage units please send 'em our way! (I have a few in my storage unit that I'll need to dig out and take pictures of)..

     

    Thanks,

     

    ..Al

  9. Posted

    Hi Joel,

     

    I definitely plan on attending the Classic Gaming Expo in Las Vegas. However, it would be nice to have an event locally (at least, locally to me!) where I could meet other collectors in the Bay Area. Plus, I'd be able to tote lots of stuff to such an event, vs. flying out to Las Vegas where I have to be very choosy about what I take along (leaving space to bring back tons of goodies! Or just having tons of goodies shipped home ).

     

    If no such event exists in the Bay Area, I may have to organize one sometime in the future..

     

    ..Al

  10. Posted

    Woops, I guess I should have read your news item more carefully before sticking my foot in my mouth! A 7800 Pitfighter makes more sense, and at least the 7800 has two distinct buttons (although the arcade game has three). Still, it won't look anywhere near as good as the arcade game..

     

    ..Al

  11. Posted

    Okay, I just finished creating a simpler version of the rarity guide. For comparison's sake, the fancy rarity page takes 193,187 bytes (!), and the new one takes 62,898 bytes for the same number of records. So the new one is 1/3 the size.

     

    You can get to the new list here (I've also linked it from the text at the top of the fancy rarity guide):

     

    Atari 2600 - Simple Rarity Guide

    Atari 5200 - Simple Rarity Guide

    Atari 7800 - Simple Rarity Guide

     

    I left the filtering and column sorting capabilities in the simpler rarity guide, since they're not really adding that much to the overall file size.

     

    Let me know what you think,

     

    ..Al

  13. Posted

    In order to provide a better viewing experience for the message boards, we removed the navigation boxes on the left of the page when you're in the message boards. This helps in two areas, first you have more screen real estate for reading messages and two it cuts down on the size of the page, resulting in a (slightly) quicker load time.

     

    There are navigation links at the bottom of every page, plus clicking on the AtariAge graphic in the upper-left corner will take you to the home page (with the news items). So hopefully everyone will feel this is a positive change.

     

    ..Al

  14. Posted

    Hi Elektro,

     

    Funny you should mention this, as my DSL connection has been down since Thursday and I've been forced to work on the site using a 33.6K connection (which is the fastest I can get here, apparently). Yes, the rarity guide pages are a bit slow because they're pretty link-heavy (all the pretty, little icons link to other pages and the HTML behind the pages grows pretty fast).

     

    So what I'll do is create a much simpler version of the rarity guide that's still generated dynamically (so it's always up to date), but doesn't contain all the clutter that the current rarity guide does. What I'll likely do is just include the Title, Company, Label, Rarity and then NTSC/PAL. It'll be a simple table with no links anywhere else, like the old rarity guide. It'll also be a single page, like the old rarity guide (so it may take a little while to download, but you'll have the whole thing when it's done).

     

    When I'm done with this, I'll link it from the header text at the top of current Rarity Guide pages (for all systems, 2600, 5200, 7800). You can then bookmark the resulting page.

     

    I'll post another message here when I've done this (I'll probably work on it tonight).

     

    ..Al

  17. Posted

    Hi Devin,

     

    Actually I would hang onto all those Sears games, as they're generally rarer than their Atari counterparts. The games themselves are identical, so if you just want to play them there's no reason to get the corresponding Atari game. But if you're a collector you'll want both the Atari and Sears versions.

     

    As for Prototypes, yeah, it's nice to have them in your collection but they tend to be very expensive. This is especially true for prototypes of games that were never released commercially!

     

    ..Al

  18. Posted

    quote
    Well, for your opening, here's one of a few scans I'll be posting here for you - This is the Atari 7800 Pack-in Collector's poster! I've never seen this scanned before - probably from what a pain in the #&*( it was to assemble.

     

    I have a ton of poster-size Lynx manuals that I need to scan for the upcoming Lynx section (oops, did I say that out loud?) Unfortunately they are a royal pain in the neck to deal with. However, there are programs out there that will stitch images together, including at least one that has a nice UI for doing so. I'll probably end up purchasing a commercial program to do this, as I have several other poster-size items I'd like to scan, mostly videogame related.

     

    I assume you just put that together by hand? That's what I did for a few 5200 manuals that are a single large sheet folded twice (once vertically, once horizontally). Not so bad with those, but with the larger posters (like the one you scanned) it becomes rather tedious!!

     

    If anyone has recommendations for software to help with this drudgery I'd love to hear them..

     

    ..Al

  19. Posted

    Hi Fortress!

     

    quote
    I hope it's OK if I use whatever information I can find on your site to help me with my chronological history of Atari 2600 games.

     

    Sure, as long as we can reciprocate! Unfortunately our "release date" information on games isn't very complete and probably not very accurate at this time. In the mad rush to get the site online some things (such as the dates) didn't get much attention! As the years pass, it's going to become increasingly difficult to determine exactly when a game is released, so it's nice to see you actively seeking that information (as well as the games' Programmers).

     

    I like how you've setup 1982 and 1983 on your site, especially the way you've put everything into context with other events of the time. Very nice!

     

    ..Al

  21. Posted

    Hi Eduardo, welcome to AtariAge!

     

    quote:

    Ask not what AtariAge can do for you...

    ask what you can do for AtariAge!

     

    Heh. We're basically looking to fill any holes that currently exist in the rarity guides as far as the Graphics and ROMs are concerned: Cartridge Scans, Manuals (for systems other than the 2600 at the moment), Boxes, Screenshots, etc. This also includes label variations that we may have missed. Also, there's various information in the database that is not yet complete, such as Programmers, the Year a game was released, and so forth. Not that we'll ever have complete information for Programmers, but we can certainly try!

     

    And of course we're always looking for feedback on how to improve the site and for new features we can add! We have a long list of items we'll be adding to the site over time, but we'd love to hear from the community and see what they want!

     

    Thanks!

     

    ..Al

  22. Posted

    I would have loved to gone, but Philadelphia is quite a drive from California. Does anyone know if there's such an annual event in the San Francisco Bay Area? I've been out here less than a year, and while I've hooked up with some collectors out here I am not aware of anything along the lines of a Classic Gaming Show..

     

    ..Al

  23. Posted

    Could you imagine when he finally sells the car? "Fully Loaded! Complete with in-dash Atari 2600!" It certainly is cool seeing all these neat hardware projects so many years after the system's demise.

     

    I can see the newspaper headlines now if the guy was to get in an accident while driving his car and playing the 2600 (not that he would be foolish enough to do such a thing),

     

    "ATARI CAUSES WRECK ON I95"

    "PAC-MAN INJURES 20!"

     

    ..Al

  24. Posted

    quote:

    Look, I think the ingenuity behind these portables is fantastic. But, is there really a market for this? I mean, is someone really going to pay 200 clams to play the Atari 2600?

     

    I'd buy one! The only problem is you need to carry cartridges around with you, and they tend to get bulky very quickly! Since the 2600 was never intended to be portable, the cartridges are fairly large.

     

    What I'd *love* to see is a portable 2600 that takes CompactFlash cards or something along those lines. Or with a bunch of onboard RAM that you could then dump games into via your computer and a USB port. Now *that* would be truly awesome. I'd be such a beast in a heartbeat.

     

    ..Al

  25. Posted

    quote
    You guys got one heck of a site going... the companies page was an excellent idea.

     

    Thanks! I have some improvements in mind for the Companies page that will make it even more useful (and interesting), but I'm not going to reveal them until I get them done..

     

    quote
    It's pretty cool, but it will be harder to see now when someone posts a new reply.

     

    Yeah, since everything's not on one page it takes a little more work. However, there will probably be a much larger volume of messages since we're covering more than the 2600. It should be easier to see the active topics with this system, versus the old (and very simple) WWW script we were using on the Nexus. With that system, it was harder to track threads because they wouldn't come to the top when replies were posted.

     

    As Alex said, we'll probably be fine-tuning the message boards until we get 'em just right!

     

    ..Al

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