Shaggy the Atarian

Don't tell Atari, they might have to "delay" things again. Then gamble on taco futures.

The core of it was "we need a competition," so that is limited, but you could hire a contemporary fantasy writer like Brandon Sanderson to flesh out the universe and then you'd have something with depth. Most fantasy owes a lot to Tolkien anyways, so that's not a big deal, or difficult to overcome. Either way, a lot of 2600 titles could be greatly expanded upon with some effort, but that's not any effort that anyone at Atari wants to pay for.

Haha, that's the guy! As I recall, the Orbi turning out to be a virtual zoo or whatever it was was the last we heard from him. I think I laid out a variety of reasons as to why it made no sense for Sega to jump back into the console market then, and applied that to Atari as well. Unless you have some amazing idea for a console that's unique among the existing batch, a crapton of money to develop for and promote it, you're not going to succeed. But some people can't understand that times change and nostalgia is very limited in driving purchases; as time marches on, the size of the market that doesn't have any fond memories of playing games on your branded console increases, making it that much harder to move a game console into successful territory.

The comic books in particular could have fleshed out the SQ idea on more powerful hardware (ST, 7800 or Jag, if talking about BITD). I also thought it bizarre that Atari Karts used generic themed tracks instead of doing them all around existing Atari properties. A Swordquest Earth/Fire/Water/Air course (maybe have it randomly select which element the theme would be every time you play) could have been pretty cool. SQ today could be a very interesting adventure game, following the story of the comic books that wouldn't be difficult to expand on. I like the idea of a Gauntlet style game for it; if you were angling to compete in the Zelda-style adventure space, you could play as Tor or Tarra, and since they were roof-hopping thieves, you could incorporate certain elements of Thief or Assassin's Creed to spice things up. But as you mention, you need someone with a vision and imagination for that to happen, and Atari's vision is only the quickest way to 🤑 and their imagination only seems to entail what a nice retirement on the Maldives would be like.

RE: Sega, they still do arcade hardware, although it was fun for a while when I'd see a guy proclaiming that the PC used in the arcade machines would be the next Dreamcast. Sega's a great example of how difficult - and expensive - it is to make a console a success. Of their most recent shooter, I enjoyed Mission: Impossible Arcade, although it's incomplete (will be finished by next March, just in time for the blip of the VCS to maybe happen): Fun fact: A single brand new arcade game costs around $3-4 million to develop (per Eugene Jarvis from a couple of different times that I asked him about how much one of these things cost to make). More to manufacture and market, which is where a lot of cost comes into play.

By what I see in some other posts of his, Mr. Warner is convinced that because it has the AMD Ryzen name attached to it, that it's automatically top-of-the-line. But his approach seems to treat all Ryzen processors as equals, which is an ignorant take as he's gaslighting the followers into thinking that it's going to be kicking the crap out of the PS4Pro and XBX. It ignores the performance of not just the CPU, but the Vega 3 GPU. Of course, we can only make assumptions on performance, but this looks like it will be close. You'll be be able to play CounterStrike at 64 fps in 720p at least, although no serious CS player will bother to game on a VCS. I noticed that with all of the benchmark tests for Vega 3 on YouTube, everyone plays the games at 720p and low settings. I have a hunch that a lot of VCS fans think they'll be gaming in 4k still, which will be a rude awakening if they try it. That's why we mock and criticize at times, as a lot of people buying into the BS are going to be shocked when they find that the performance isn't going to be what the hypesters make it out to be.

I forgot to update this thread with more - but before getting into more IAAPA stuff, I'm running a poll on the "Game of the Decade" Separate polls for video arcades and pinball machines. The former is almost cracking 100 votes, but would definitely like to see it go higher: https://arcadeheroes.com/2019/12/03/as-arcade-heroes-turns-13-lets-find-out-your-game-of-the-decade/ For more new game videos: Another new Space Invaders game, but this time from Taito proper called Space Invader Counter Attack: Also from Taito, some mini-game goodness in Festival Hero. This could be the next Panic Park: Decent rip-off of Crazy Taxi in Crazy Ride, but could use some polishing: Unique take on the arcade basketball genre with Zombie Jam: Get your groove on with StepManiaX There's a bunch more on my channel, but I'll let this suffice for now

I'll be repeating others here, but this looks absolutely fantastic. Well done. This is the kind of quality that had this game been released back in '93, I think it would have sold some Lynxes.

Oh relax. I think everyone here wanted to see Atari succeed. It's their own incompetence and ineptitude that brought them to this point. What's there to enjoy about the VCS? If it exists, it should be easy for you to point it out. Do you think that Atari acted like a child when they would go around deleting non-trolling questions on Facebook and Reddit, just because they didn't have or want to answer? Did Atari act childish when they accused a journalist of lying about an interview where the COO of Atari looked like a total ignoramus about his own product? Wasn't it childish of Atari to setup a developer portal that never responded to inquiries, then just ignored requests until people stopped asking what the deal was? Is it a merit that the console was supposed to ship this month to backers (it won't), still has no unique content announced for it? Even the NUON, which ended up only having six releases had more game announcements for it prior to release. Is it a merit that the streaming service they've announced for it has a lot of problems and is poorly rated? Last I checked, a console lives and dies by it's content. If you're hyped to play Atari Vault on a low-end PC, that's fine. I just think you're wasting your money since you can already do so on an existing device you likely have at home. I guess that's all not a problem, as they're Atari, and thus should be completely free of any criticism. We should just buy the product like good mindless consumers with a hankering for Fuji logos.

Man, if only there was some medium that Stefan could use to look up the specs of the "bleeding edge" R1000 series APU? Oh wait, there is. And it's in the same class as digital signage and digital casino gaming! Everyday desktop computing and core gaming are suspiciously missing from the suggested list of uses though... https://www.amd.com/en/products/embedded-ryzen-r1000-series Then there's this page that rates the R16066 with a multi-core score of 7234. That happens to be -209615 points below the current top range multi-core score for the AMD Epyc. If the R1606G is bleeding edge, then what does that make the Epyc? https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/11110784

They've also teased Asteroids and Missile Command. Glad to finally see this in action - shows that it is being properly handled by someone with some vision as to how to "evolve" Breakout. I think that's been the most annoying and frustrating thing about Atari SA. They really are clueless as to what to do with their own IP, but that's what will happen when you didn't create anything in the first place.

Well, if the system ends up having more issues than a typical Xbox 360 did(a real possibility, given the timelines here+not knowing if they found someone competent enough to take over the reigns on the QA/testing phase), then I'd dispute that it really "works" at all

Yeah, that's the guy. So I'm sure he'll be opining on it, but like I said, I highly doubt that Atari will be pleased with anything other than a glowing paid-for "review" from CNET or Engadget, while real world reviewers are going to be asking "Why do I need this?," "Who is this for?," and "LOL, they call THIS a PC?"

And that officially makes for one other thing that you can get your hands on right now, (Tacos and Amico Club), while you can't get an AtariVCSbox. Meanwhile, I'm sure Atari is working hard on another "exciting" blog post that is the equivalent of a dog chasing it's tail.

There was one tech YouTuber who said he backed the project, but I can't remember who (I thought it was this guy, but it's one of the other ones with glasses and a beard ). I don't think they will do so, they're probably dreading that any of the tech guys get their hands on it, as excepting our friend Zoyx here, they all know that it's as much a laughable PC as it is a game console. We had a preview of how they'll react to negative press from the first The Register piece...and their Reddit behavior. It should keep the popcorn popping, in the event that they finally ship something other than a wordy blog post.

True, there's no guarantee they'll be interested in anyone's content. But if they answer, they're still doing better than Atari, which just sent emails to a black hole then acted like it was some sort of glitch, shrugging until people stopped asking.

Of course, if they pull an Atari and never answer anyone then there'll be hell to pay. But so far they are doing everything in the exact opposite way as the Tacobox, so should be interesting to see the comparison. Let us know!

In related news, IntelliVision unveiled much more about their console today, including announcing a bunch of partners working on content for the machine, new games, some details on one of the pack-in games (reimagining of Skiing), controller redesign and more. https://www.intellivisionamico.com/press-releases/press-release-december-3rd-2019 They also posted this video. As a reminder to the VCS Faithful, Atari could easily do something like this, they don't have to beg for PowerA's permission or anyone else, but they haven't. INTV doesn't have crowdfunding/backers to please, but they've got the sense as to how to market their device. If Atari had the competence to be showing things like this, they'd save themselves a lot of mockery and questions. Instead, it's easier for them to delete posts on Reddit:

Yeah, why should they appease a bunch of their investors and potential audience beyond the initial backers? And lol, "plenty of updates." Which is why they said no news is good news!

Lol, it makes all the difference. Have you never heard of crowdfunding and how it works before?

Have a clock that has both flip flaps AND nixie tubes, then we'd be cookin' with gas

Lol, you might think so, but it only sounds like that in your head. A variety of more capable options for those laughably considering the VCS as just their TV computer have been shared in this thread. If you're not going to use it as a game machine (the primary marketing angle from Atari - I've noticed that since Rob Wyatt left, they've barely mentioned the sandbox mode that they were touting for a time), but as a PC, what are you going to do with it then, that you can't already do with the device you're using to browse this forum? Name me something that the VCS can do from a PC usage perspective that a Raspberry Pi3/Rock64/Intel NUC can't do. They can all stream videos. They can all do word processing. They can all use art programs. They can all be used to make music. They can all run basic video editors. And they cost half the price of a VCS and are out now. So far you've been showing an Atari level of competence answering such questions, so I don't expect anything brilliant on your part.

I see that you have a limited ability at trolling and how to communicate. But you can keep on posting, because it's hilarious. Especially when considering the VCS as a serious living room PC solution. 😆

That's a really expensive doorstop.

Mm-hmm