SpiceWare

Corrections made, thanks! This is why like I to post them in the blog before they go up in the store

Gingerbread Man, by Fred Quimby 5/5 In the Gingerbread Man you take on the title role of the classic children's tale and must make your way through 20 levels to earn your freedom. The game consists of 5 distinct levels, with well varied goals for each. In level 1 you find yourself in the oven and must pick up pieces of other baked goods and use them to extinguish the fire that's relentlessly chasing you. In level 2 you must collect balloons scattered around the dining room in order to float up through the chimney, but beware the cat & dog as you look pretty tasty to them. In level 3 you've made it up to the roof and must collect tiles to build a bridge while avoiding the hungry cats and bird. For level 4 you've made it to the forest and must find a way to acquire a worm to feed a baby bird in order to gain the mother bird's gratitude and help. In level 5 you discover the mother bird is fickle and has decided to eat you instead of help you - in your struggle to escape you've fallen into a cave and must contend with the bird and another hungry cat. Once level 5 is finished you're back to level 1, but with more enemies to deal with. It's very challenging and I've not yet been able to complete the first 5 levels without using a continue. The graphics are adequate, on par with the earlier Atari releases, but this is an Atari game where game play is more important than graphics, and Gingerbread Man has the game play down in spades. Music and sound effects are well done. The label graphics and manual were done by Nathan Strum, and quite frankly they're awesome! Even though it's based on a children's tale, Gingerbread Man is is anything but child's play. It's a worthy addition to your homebrew collection. While not relevant to the review, one thing that's really impressed me is that Gingerbread Man was written in batariBasic. This really goes to show how capable batariBasic has become. Next up, Crazy Balloon.

I don't think I'll be able to play this one - I'd picked up the box while I was at Best Buy and the back of it had something to the effect that it supported up to a 50(maybe 55?)" display. I was disappointed as my HDTV is 65".

I'm up to level 18 in Portal! Need to get back to work on Stay Frosty though, we have until next week to finish Stella's Stocking as that's when the new 64K boards will arrive.

Our light sixer Atari came with a set of paddles, when did they stop coming with them

Reviews are back in action! The couple of opportunities mentioned before are a new job with Spacedesign where I'm working on software used in the space industry, and Stay Frosty, one of the games in Stella's Stocking, this year's Atari Age Holiday Cart. I'm going out of order for the next 2 reviews, the normal sequence will return in January with a review of Crazy Balloon. I'll post this review in the store tomorrow in order to give time for feedback. Toyshop Trouble, by John Payson w/Zach Matley, Bob Montgomery and Thomas Jentzsch 5/5 It's Christmas Time once again at Atari Age, but this year instead of playing Santa you get to be one of the elves frantically dashing around the production floor of Santa's Workshop painting toys. Toyshop Trouble is the Atari Age Holiday Cart for 2006. This was the fourth year of what's become an annual tradition here at Atari Age. Don't fret if you missed out as Toyshop Trouble is now available as a regular non-numbered homebrew. When you power on the game, you're presented with a really slick title screen with some nice holiday inspired music, falling snow and a Holiday Light Show similar to those fancy light kits that flash the lights in sync with music. Start the game by hitting RESET or FIRE and you're presented with the production floor were once the shift whistle blows you have to paint a bunch of fire engines red as they glide along the 5 conveyor belts. An intermission screen then shows up with instructions for the next toy to be added to the mix. Hit FIRE once you've reviewed the painting instructions to advance to the next round(this also makes for handy pause feature between rounds). I did find it odd that the first toy had no instruction screen to let you know to paint fire engine red, but when you run over a toy the status area at the top of the screen will let you know the proper color(s) to paint a toy. The first bunch of toys are pretty straight forward to paint as each are a single color. The next bunch of toys required 2 colors each, and toys after that require the 2 colors to be painted in a specific order! When a toy is finished it's rendered with exquisite multicolored detail. Unfinished toys are a single color, which makes it easy to tell which toys are done or painted the wrong color. Controls are straightforward and responsive, with the fire button being used to make you run instead of walk. And you'll need to do a lot of running to paint all the toys in time for Santa's departure! Besides the afore mentioned title screen music, the in-game sound is very good. There's a shift change horn and specific distinct sounds for when you've applied a proper color, finished painting a toy, or screwed up and applied the wrong color to a toy. The graphics are phenomenal, with lots of colors for everything. Your character is rendered with different animated shapes for left/right/up/down and even all the diagonals. I'm really impressed that John was able to pull this off. Nathan Strum did an excellent job in designing graphics that could take advantage of this. The really nice manual and label were once again done by David Exton. Next up, Gingerbread Man.

Wow, an A+. Don't see many of those at VGC. Looks like the review may have helped sale, I see MM is now #5 in the 2600 Games Bestsellers list.

he has

Good call, I've submitted my review as well.

Yep, I saw MM at #5 at one point. Since we've got a little extra time for the holiday cart I'll see what I can do about getting a GBM and TT review up. Probably won't be until tomorrow evening though as I've got plans to meet up with some friends after work.

Thanks! I think Al has to approve reviews before they get posted. It's there now. I've started reviewing homebrews in my blog, then posting them in the store about a week later. They're temporarily on hiatus until January due to the new job and something else

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it! There's a neat little blue button on the bottom-right of this page

The level load times are pretty bad, especially when I'm used to games like Ratchet & Clank. I've read that there's frame rate issues on some of the other games in TOB, and that they don't make sense as they sometimes occur when nothing's going on. I suspect EA doesn't yet comprehend programming the PS3. Reviews have basically said that despite the issues the game's still fun on the PS3, but that if you also have a 360 or PC you're better off getting those versions instead.

Working for me now too Looks like somebody knocked the prior homebrews out of the top 5, but 2 different homebrews are now in the top 5.

Last week I checked to see if The Atari Times had any new reviews, but they were down. They're still down today. Anybody know what's up

That could be a good idea, I doubt many of your viewers know about homebrews. Can you make a minor change to your signature and turn the youtube.com bit into a real link - www.youtube.com/TheLegend2600? To do that use the following (but remove the single space after each [ ) [ url=http://www.youtube.com/TheLegend2600]www.youtube.com/TheLegend2600[ /url]

Picked up The Orange Box because of Portal, and from what little I've played it's well worth it. Only disappointment is it doesn't scale up from 720p to 1080i like Ratchet & Clank does. Instead I get 480p(my HDTV doesn't support 720p, only 480p/i and 1080i).

Well here we tend to fill Christmas Stockings with goodies. Maybe you have to collect the proper items(ie: not coal) to fill Stella's Stocking.

In the case of the iPod - the Dock Connector supports USB, Firewire, Video(both S-Video and composite), stereo output as well as a serial connection(probably how the car adapters control the iPod). Can you imagine how bulky the iPod would be to have all those connectors separate?

I've read something somewhere about downloading game demos, just like you can with the PSP. Haven't set up my network account yet, have to look up the info from when I set up my PSP(I'm hoping I can use the same account). I do have network plugged in already and have updated to the current firmware. Motor Storm will be the next game I try, mostly as it came with the PS3. Haven't decided what's next, but Uncharted is on the short list. Got the Pronto Pro updated, just wish the remote was IR instead of bluetooth so I could add it to the Pronto Pro as well.

Picked it up today and had a lot of fun rewiring my TV and receiver for it. My TV only supports 1 HD video source, component only at that(I'm an early HD adopter, HDMI didn't exist back then). Luckily my receiver supports switching between 2 component video sources. I'm currently reprogramming my Pronto Pro remote so it knows to use the receiver for part of the video source selection. My folks are coming for a visit later this week and they can't use the TV without the Pronto Pro. I'm quite impressed that Ratchet & Clank is scaling up to 1080i, even though the game only supports 720p. My set doesn't support 720p, so I was expecting to only get 480p. The graphics are phenomenal. Blu-Ray movies sure look sweet!

That sounds pretty cool. I'm starting with Spacedesign next week here in Houston.

David has confirmed that the new build is working properly on his system.

If you enjoyed Warlords, check out Medieval Mayhem, my take on it. It includes the launch dragon, multiple fireballs, etc. It even takes advantage of the stereo output from your atari2600.com modded system. My site has some videos of the game in action, ROMs to download and try out on an emulator(though be warned that a mouse makes a poor substitute for a paddle), and some other info. If you like what you see you can get a cartridge of it from AtariAge.

I'd seen mine there a while back. Your games' info looks to be much better filled in than mine.