jaybird3rd

Yes. It looks as if they took one of these right off the shelf at Gamestop ... ... and slapped an Atari sticker on the back.

That's beautiful! We may need to expand the five post reaction options to add ...

Enough, from both of you.

@AtariGeezer: Your expletive-laden reaction (now hidden) to tschak909 was entirely out of line. You've been blocked from this thread until further notice.

I've only briefly looked over the carts, but at first glance they don't appear to be for the Aquarius. The Aquarius cartridge port has VCC on Pin 25 (tenth from the right on the component side), and this pin is disconnected on these cartridge boards. The EPROM address and data signals also don't seem to line up with the correct pins for the Aquarius.

"New Atari Year that 2020?" Happy New Year, everyone!

What's especially sad is that they could have made a lot more money if they had taken the trouble to decide on and adhere to a competent plan. Instead, they invalidated all the stories in the Extended Universe with a snap of their fingers, and through their fumbling, they effectively invalidated the stories of the Original and Prequel Trilogies as well. What did we end up with? A derivative, disjointed, inconsistent, preachy, agenda-laden mess of a "trilogy" with little narrative coherence and none of the genuine sense of adventure or fun that the Original Trilogy had ... but with lots of glossy, noisy, CGI-heavy action to keep the undiscriminating normies happy. Instead of building to a crescendo, as the last chapter of a successful trilogy should do, the numbers for Episode IX are fading fast. It will probably make money eventually, because it has "Star Wars" in the title and that's good enough for too many people, but the final results surely haven't lived up to what anyone expected or hoped for. This whole endeavor has been mismanaged beyond belief.

That looks exactly like my copy of BurgerTime Deluxe. I'm not sure why anyone would want to make counterfeit copies of that particular game; it isn't especially rare or valuable.

Unfortunately, as others have already said, I think the peak interest in Atari 2600 games—and in pre-crash video games in general—is probably behind us. Those who currently have the most mainstream influence on the perception of video game history, and thus on the priorities of video game collectors, tend to be younger people who came in during or after the NES. This is a pet peeve of mine that I've complained about before, but their perspective is highly Nintendo-centric: to them, the NES is the be-all and end-all of classic video gaming, the first console that really "got it right." With the exception of a few significant arcade games, everything before the NES is seen as a mere litany of early failed experiments and evolutionary dead-ends, only worth revisiting today for the purpose of considering the necessary historical mistakes which made the NES possible. Needless to say, I don't agree with that view at all, but I'm well aware that I'm part of a small and shrinking minority. Those of us who still have an appreciation for the pre-crash era of video games are mostly the ones who were there at the time to enjoy it, but compared to the general population, there aren't very many of us left. I think the predictions of a continuously building level of interest in an era of gaming that is now forty years or more in the past were wildly optimistic.

I'd say it's more like 0.33 out of 3. The only part he got right was the $10K Atari game, and if memory serves, the only Atari game that fell into that price range was "Air Raid."

Yes. The most pernicious thing that this new trilogy has done to Star Wars ...

Please stop drawing the thread off topic. This isn't the place for it.

Just out of curiosity, will these fit the INTV System III box as well? I can post dimensions for you if it would help. Definitely let us know when the Aquarius box protectors are available, too!

Yes, it's too bad about Geek Vintage. I think the website has been taken over by someone else; the new content doesn't look like Erik's work. Fortunately, the serial number database he started is still available via the Wayback Machine (see here), so there's a data set that we can start with.

Just because you can't see something doesn't mean it isn't there. The posts still count because they're still in the database. Yeah, but I'd still love to know what he had in mind when he wrote that goofy title. "New Atari Console that Ataribox?" doesn't even sound like an English language sentence. I could have changed it, but it's so weird as it is that I've been afraid to.

With this post, this thread has officially reached 1000 pages (although most of you won't catch up for another two pages or so).

I removed Post #2, if that's what you meant by reopening your offer. I'd love to have some of those items myself; I could use better scans of Space Speller and Zero In (particularly the boxes), and the Extended BASIC manual, too.

Maybe Atari thinks that games can be built without any tools, just by thinking aloud:

Welcome, and thanks for the video! It's always great to meet a new Aquarius owner. The Aquarius is an interesting little machine; it fits into the same entry-level category as the Sinclair ZX81, and I've always had a soft spot for those machines because they (along with the TI 99/4A) gave me my start in computers. The Aquarius actually had a lot to offer: it should have been released much earlier, but it's an attractive and well-made machine. Even today, its simple, minimalist design makes it a great platform for learning about assembly language programming, electronics, and related subjects. I'm putting together a new Aquarius website which will explore these topics in more depth, and it will also showcase the original hardware and software. In the meantime, keep having fun with it, and just let me know if you're ready for an Aquaricart and/or 32K RAM module!

I'd be supportive of that. It could include discussion of Atari's PC-compatible desktops (the PC-1 through PC-5 series and the ABC), as well as the Atari Portfolio.

... to "make it even better!"

Exactly. Gauntlet is one potential direction, an Assassin's Creed style game with classic SwordQuest artifact collecting and puzzle-solving would be another, and you could even incorporate a racing element. Imagine, for example, if SwordQuest Airworld were reconceived as a Mario Kart style racing game, with the players riding flying horses through tracks on the ground and/or through the air. Take advantage of the episodic structure of the SwordQuest games to experiment with a mix of different genres; if players don't enjoy one, they can find another that they like better, all while staying engaged within the SwordQuest world. There's so much potential, and so many interesting ideas just waiting to be implemented. But what do we get instead? A rogues' gallery of trolls and duped Indiegogo backers in denial, pining about how great it would be to be able to play good old Centipede again. (Never mind the fact that you can already play it in a hundred different ways, all of which make more sense than "that Ataribox?".) Such a pitiful lack of imagination ... and these are the people who call themselves the "real Atari fans"! Well, sure, SwordQuest is very derivative, but that might actually help to market it to fans of the "Lord of the Rings" movies, or the new Amazon series. Bringing back the contest in a modern form would be another great idea: online leaderboards, achievements, physical prizes ... lots of interesting potentialities there, too. But no ... let's just throw the old Atari Vault back in the microwave and serve that up for the hundredth time instead.

If ever there was a vintage video game (or game series) that needs and deserves a remake, it is the SwordQuest series. The concept was intriguing, but the original 2600 games never lived up to its potential. There are any number of directions that could be taken with it; for example, one could make each of the four new SwordQuest games in a different genre to differentiate them, while also making them episodes of a larger story. (A hack-and-slash dungeon crawler, perhaps pattered after Gauntlet Legends, would be a good fit for the SwordQuest theme, so maybe that could be one of the episodes.) The puzzle-solving aspect of the original games can be done in much more interesting ways now, and there is even an almost-complete comic book series that can be brought back exactly as it is for ancillary marketing; just commission a new AirWorld comic from DC to finish the series. This is the kind of thing that "Atari" would try if they had any imagination, any real appreciation for their history and back catalog, and any real passion for games. Instead, they chose to take the brain-dead and lazy route, licensing the logo on T-shirts and repeatedly recycling the old 2600 and arcade library. This misguided and misbegotten "that Ataribox?" is only their latest iniquity.