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In Games at Work by Morgan Ramsay, Nolan Busnhell said that the pinball game was called Transition and was going to feature a 3-level playfield based on heaven, hell, and earth. (whether that's accurate or not, I don't know) Ted Dabney worked on it but I don't think it was ever finished. Several years back, Al Alcorn told me that from what he could remember the driving game was "...some big arcade piece which would be a 20 player game like those mechanical race car games where you bounce balls into a box and your car advances." In Atari Inc. Goldberg and Vendel indicate that the contract was just for the video game and the pinball game and don't mention a driving game (and they may well have seen the original contract). Keith Smith http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/

I'm guessing you guys already looked at http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Formatting-Complete-Guide-Amazon/dp/1440488886 and folowed the gudelines in http://www.amazon.com/Building-Your-Book-Kindle-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354477189&sr=1-1&keywords=building+your+book+for+kindle and looked at sites like http://epubconversions.com/about-kindle-conversions-and-other-ebook-services/hire-me/ Here's something that you might consider. Since the formatting of your book is pretty consistent from chapter to chapter, pay a service to convert a single chapter and send it to you in HTML or Word or some other format. Then look at the resulting HTML etc. to see what they did to get it to look right and follow that same pattern for the rest of the book. I've been dreading trying to convert my book to Kindle format since I've read so many horror stories about how hard it is (from what I've read, it seems that many are saying you have to edit the raw HTML yourself to get it to look right). As a test I took the first two chapters of my book (plus the TOC and the other front matter) and converted it to Kindle format. I was shocked when everything came out looking pretty darn good. I have headings, a table of contents, indented quotes, footnotes, text with shaded background, a numbered list etc. and just about all of it looked quite acceptable. The footnote links even worked (thought the TOC ones didn't). Of course, I didn't have any pictures or captions so maybe that's the difference (or maybe I just have less exacting standards??)

Hi, I tried to edit my post to put in the correct URL but couldn't figure out how to do so. Is there a way to edit past posts? If not, could someone on that end update the post with the correct link: allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/2012/11/new-atari-history-book-released.html

No red bull here, just eagerness to read the book. OK, I hate to admit this, but I actually took the day off work to read the book. Is that sad or what? Of course, the fact that it was 70 and sunny out didn't hurt (I sat in the park while I read).

FWIW, I just finished reading the book a couple of hours ago and posted my first impressions on my blog. Keith Smith http://allincolorfor...r.blogspot.com/

Mine was delivered at 11:21 AM Central. I didn't actually get my hands on it, however, until 4:00 PM. Once I finish devouring it (not literally, of course - then again that might not be such a bad....nah!), I plan to do a blog post about it. It should be a few days, at most, maybe even tomorrow night. Not that that's any great endorsement, since the blog is new and has few followers but I'll do what I can to promote it. Keith Smith http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/ Currently in the midst of a long "Ultimate (So Far) History of Cinematronics/Vectorbeam" for which I interviewed two dozen people (including what may be the only interview with Larry Rosenthal in the last 33 years).

Congratulations on the book's release. Can't wait to read it. Did you say there say there was going to be a Kindle edition? If so, when do you expect it to be available (I thought you said somewhere it would be available a day after the print version, but I'm not sure). I want to know because If the Kindle version isn't going to be out within a few days, I'd like to get my order in by tomorrow night so that it ships Monday (I'm so eager to get my greasy fingers on this baby that I might even pony up for FedEx if I can't get the Kindle edition). Keith Smith http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/

I was researching some video game patents today and came across an Atari patent I hadn't seen before. Patent #4,142,722 was filed on January 30, 1978 by Roger Hector and John Romano for a 2-player, sit-down, head-to-head, rifle game. Each player had a "ray" rifle with a Y-grip. There was a screen between them with obstacles on it (as well as the score). The goal was to hit you oppnent's target, which jutted out from their seat. I don't know if it even made it to the prototype stage. Maybe it's common knowledge here, but I haven't seen it before. I've posted a picture from the patent application (along with a couple of other oddball Atari patents) on my blog at: http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/ If anyone knows the story, let me know.

I recently started a blog on bronze/golden age coin-op video game history at: http://allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com/ Not much on there yet (and no doubt what is there contains errors), but I welcome any feeback. The website is part of a larger project I'm working on - a book on the history of coin-op video games up to 1984 that I started about 10-15 years ago then dropped until very recently. The tentative title is "All In Color For a Quarter: The Definitive History of Arcade Video Gaems 1971-1984" (some may recognize the title from the Mame history file, to which I contributed back in the day). The "definitive" part is a bit brash,but I couldn't very well subtitle it "the most definitive history of arcade video games so far, though still far, far short of being truly definitive". It may seem pointless to write yet another book on video game history, espeically with such a narrow focus. There have been a lot of great video game history books written in the last 10-15 years (Kent, Herman et al) but they still don't go into nearly the depth I'd like to see. Much of the focus is on home games and the arcade and corporate history sections seem to concentrate primarily on Atari, Nintendo, and Sega with a nod to Bally/Midway or Cinematronics. The two biggest differences between my book and the others are that I want to focus on: 1) the (coin-op) games and how they were designed 2) the history of companies other than Atari, Nintendo and Sega (I want to tell the story of Exidy and Cinematronics and even companies like Meadows Games and Digital Games). I WILL be covering Atari, of course but that's only a small part. (Plus I'm sure I won't cover Atari anywhere close to as well as Curt Vendel and Marty Goldberg will in their book). So far I have intereviewed about 100 people (mostly designers and executives) and counting, including people from Meadows Games, Digital Games/Micronetics, Fun Games, Pacific Novelty, Rock-Ola and many more (including, of course, Bally/Midway, Cinematronics, Stern, Allied Leisure/Centuri, Gremlin/Sega, and most of the coin-op designers from Atari).I've also pored over hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, websites, and books. I'd love to take what Curt and Marty did for Atari (including clearing up the misinformation out there) and do the same for the other companies but that would require interviewing a thousand people and getting access to internal documents from those companies - AND would take a lifetime or two to complete. My book won't be anything remotely close to that (though its currently at 600 pages and counting), but I hope it will be worth reading anyway. Heck, I may end up posting it for free (my current plans are to publish it as an e-book).