kimchipenguin
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Posts posted by kimchipenguin
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3 hours ago, Ben from Plaion said:
All three games announced today come with instructions. Thanks
That's welcome news
Have they been tested on PAL 7800 as well?
My game request would be a combo Asteroids / Asteroids Deluxe cartridge.
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5 hours ago, TrogdarRobusto said:
Hey, Ben is still in the deep end on the Atari 2600+ 🤣 ... we will def get you some answers from Atari/Plaion/Retro Games as questions pile up. I think there is an interesting blend here of more straightforward mini-console with some extension to allow for more advance uses (USB, SD slot, etc). I;m not the expert, but I'll get an expert into this thread ...
Looking forward to the expert, and more Atari-licensed retro stuff that us Europeans can actually buy
One odd decision is to go with that - in my opinion - silly "The" prefix. Unlike with the C64 and Amiga mini, they obviously licensed the Atari logo, so why not print "Atari 400" on the device instead of ruining the look by putting "The 400" on there? If there's ever going to be a 400 maxi or any other Atari-licensed mini made by Retro, Atari should speak to Retro, to keep the mini case more authentic.
Or just offer an Atari sticker in the Atari store 😉
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On 11/24/2023 at 12:02 AM, Albert said:
I'm curious what you mean by no luck? Do they not work at all? Are you trying them with 2600 or 7800 games (or both?)
Thanks,
..Al
I tested two original three-button Genesis (Mega Drive) pads.
7800 game (Planet Smasher): D-pad works, buttons don't
2600 game (Demon Attack): Neither d-pad nor buttons do anything.
With the Mega 7800 adapter, the pad works with both games.
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I had no luck with two Mega Drive (Genesis) three button pads.
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Basically any productivity software that didn't use GEM windows was mono-only. Many German public domain games were mono-only as well.
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On 1/31/2022 at 9:58 PM, calimero said:
Interesting, there is no STeve or Protext on www.atariuptodate.de
Incorrect, both are there. Protext is listed as a word processor and Steve as an office suite (like Atari Works)
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5 hours ago, oky2000 said:
Looked up the games and found no mention of STE enhanced releases via a quick search on google for "STE enhanced". If they weren't then to try and sell the 520STE (1040?) for the same price as an Amiga 500 in 1990 (379.99 via Silica Shop in UK) by including STFM only titles in the bundle seems like the biggest marketing cockup I have ever known. Everybody knew the Commodore Plus/4 was doomed to fail (due to RRP and also the introduction of the useless 16K RAM base model which 99.99% of games were written for) but the STE is not quite as doomed, I think Commodore had yet to sell 1 millions A500 units or only just managed it.
Atari certainly didn't care about showing off the STE hardware with an STE exclusive game or else they would've paid a developer for an exclusive. In Germany the computer was advertised (together with the STFM!) with a screenshot of Test Drive. I also assume that cost was important for inclusion in a bundle.
As an "Amiga killer", the STE was always doomed to fail, but at least it was (mostly) compatible with the older models, unlike the Plus/4
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Interesting, I have a Dutch magazine in tabloid format (I own only one issue though)
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9 hours ago, ParanoidLittleMan said:
And they were useful exactly in case of typing in - better overview, and easy to see if some line was skipped during type-in.
Magazines still used line numbers for any language that didn't have any. Never missed them when I switched from C64 BASIC V2 to GFA-Basic. But magazines frequently had to publish bugfixes in the next issue, because lines (or sometimes even a whole page) was missing from the print.
23 hours ago, jefffulton said:I loved ther ST basic interface, and if the yhad just ironed out some of the bugs and supplied a compiler early on, it could hace been a nice way for A LOT of Gem programs and games to have been created in PD.
It always seemed convoluted and made for a system with a higher screen res. Writing GEM programs was quite complicated in ST-Basic, or do you expect compiled programs to run in a GEM window that's magically supplied by the runtime library? GEM was long associated with being slow and both ST-Basic and Logo contributed to this impression.
23 hours ago, zzip said:I just found a listing written in Forth too. Considering most of these languages were commercial products, it would seem only a small percentage of readers would be able to use any giving program listing
Some of the listings showed how to do solve certain problems in a programming language. There were also more languages that mattered on the ST. Forth listings were rare though, as were listings written in APL
The third image shows a program written in machine language. It requires a program to type it in - the magazines frequently adjusted their font size.
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On 7/1/2021 at 9:43 PM, project7800 said:
The problem is, I'm having a hard time finding type-in programs for ST BASIC. All the usually Atari magazines, and even ST specific ones, don't seem to have much.
Most ST specific magazines published their first issue in 1987 or even later. By that time, ST-Basic was very much dead.
One of the earliest (the earliest?) ST-only magazine, ST-Computer from Germany, did print listings in ST-Basic:
https://www.stcarchiv.de/stc1986/07/dateiverwaltung
Both GFA-Basic and Omikron Basic were released in 1986. ST-Computer magazine either didn't receive good submissions or they banned ST-Basic later. There were many type-in listings written in GFA, Pascal, C, Assembler, Modula-2 though. Here's another example for the "popularity" of ST-Basic: https://atariuptodate.de/en/proglang/ST-Basic/
On 7/2/2021 at 9:00 AM, ParanoidLittleMan said:I don't think that there was lot of Basic code, or whatever other language published in printed form, for 16-bit, floppy equipped Atari ST.
No, there was plenty Basic code or other programming language published in printed form. There were fewer games as type-in listings though. Most German magazines didn't have cover disks and offered a "service disk" instead. Sometimes these would feature some games. I managed to get a few of these disks and the games were not great
Back in the day, one service disk would cost as much as three public domain disks!
Happy Computer (German, multi platform mag) would publish type-in listings for the ST and other computers until 1990. For GFA-Basic they would usually switch from a two to a four column layout and a smaller font (GFA programs were "longer"). They also had these hex type listings for which you needed a helper application. Many of these games aren't available online.
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On 4/23/2021 at 9:34 PM, JJohnson said:
-Atari and SEGA successfully sue and get Nintendo's exclusivity contracts nullified, and third parties do port games to the Master System and 7800, such as Megaman, Castlevania, Contra, etc.
-NES is released as before and releases practically the same games as before, but Atari does release side-scrollers, RPGs, shooters, etc. to compete, leading to over 250 games for the Atari 7800.
Even in an alternate history, it might take too long for Sega and Atari to break the exclusivity contracts through lawsuit. The contracts only worked because of the Master System's poor performance in Japan and NA. Nintendo obviously had very strong first-party titles, system sellers, which in turn attracted other companies to develop for the NES.
- Let Sega have a strong mascot early in the Master System's life. Sonic 1985!
- Both Sega and Atari should realise much sooner that gaming has moved on from early 80's arcade ports. If they can't innovate, let them have faster copy machines!
- Nintendo were actually quite hesitant to fully invest into the video game market - and they licensed their arcade games to other companies. Maybe the people at Atari were big fans of the toy company from Kyoto and made a much more general deal that allows to port any Nintendo game to any Atari video game system for the next ten years!
So no more Nintendo exclusives. Whatever Miyamoto-san comes up with will appear a couple of months later on the 7800 and in an awfully mutilated form on the 2600. Fortunately for Nintendo, the deal will run out by 1989. Unfortunately for Nintendo, Miyamoto-san left the company for Sega years before then.
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I believe Atari only sold about 2 million 8-bits and those are everywhere. If they sold 4-6 millions, those would be everywhere as well. Europe may have been the market, but that was small in comparison to Apple and Big Blue. As for musical folks, that was really a small demographic specialty area. Let's face it, Atari was not a leader in the consumer computer segment. Innovative as hell, but terrible marketers.
So why ask for sales numbers if you believe in your made up ones?
Millions of home computers were sold in Europe, it was by no means a small market. STs and TTs were doing quite well in the business market in Germany - thousands of STs were used as terminals or in self-service machines for printing business cards. But business machines aren't usually kept for nostalgia afterwards. What you see in museums, collections or on eBay are just the survivors. BITD the TT wasn't a rare machine. Now it's rare to see one on eBay.
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Apple is doing very fine and they sell approx. the same number of Macs each year. Doesn't matter if they lose market share as long as they keep their very healthy margin.
Atari chose the mass market though, with slim margins. This would never have worked out against an army of PC clones. More innovation would've bought Atari a few more years, not more.
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There were more: https://www.atariuptodate.de/en/emulators
(Emulators - Screen, not all are mono/color emulators).
I used Emula on my Atari to emulate mono resolution.
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If you'd like to see the Atari ST version of New Aladdin, I uploaded it here:
https://archive.org/details/the-new-aladdin-col-287-atari-st/
It's the "Fun at the White House" issue
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This is the only game in the contest I don't understand. Tried it on two Lynx emulators and there were no "space crystals". At my first play attempt there were plenty of enemies, later attempts - barely any enemy at all.
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I'd suggest checking out www.stcarchiv.de which is a (mostly) Atari magazine archive for German-language ST magazines. Articles are in HTML so you can use any online translation tool.
Old articles can be a useful source but still need to be checked obviously...
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Seems he hasn't changed that much over the last twenty years. Here's an interview from 2001 (mostly about the ST but also Jaguar):
http://www.stcarchiv.de/stc2001/11/leonard-tramiel-interview
I don't think Leonard has ever been made a scapegoat by others. Unlike Sam and Jack, he was never in the spotlight - although he did appear in some trade shows.
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Mini magazine that I created during the ejagfest (in English language): ejagfest 2019 mini mag
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On 10/7/2019 at 8:21 PM, pacman000 said:
And two million units to retailers doesn't sound all that incredible; if ten thousand stores each ordered two hundred units you'd have 2,000,000 preorders. (Or twenty thousand stores ordered 100 units, etc.)
Of course this is highly speculative & based on a few assumptions. Consider it a hypothesis, one which needs a lot of testing.
Just having ten thousand stores selling the Jaguar would've been a huge success for Atari. In Germany, the Jaguar was mainly sold & advertized by small mail order dealers or some dealers who sold Atari computers - and why would they stock 100 units with only a couple of games available? Some shops offered pre-orders, even for games that were never released (or never developed as it turned out). Atari couldn't even deliver Jaguar kiosks to the big department stores...
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I owned all three (GameBoy first, then GameGear, later Lynx when it was heavily discounted).
First, very few people buy a system based on its specs and the GameBoy was already a huge improvement over what came before (Game&Watch, Microvision). Nintendo already had a huge advantage because their previous system was the NES. They had the trust of both consumers and developers, plus the marketing to make the GB a success. Internally, multiple teams were developing games and they had connections to almost every third-party developer. Atari only had Epyx as a third-party developer in the launch window. The GB's library quickly grew and you had franchises that were popular on the NES (Castlevania, Super Mario etc.). They didn't look as good, but playing such games mobile was a huge deal.
The Lynx's other competitor, the GameGear, didn't enjoy the third-party support the GB did, but basing the hardware on the Master System was a genius move. With very little effort, Sega and other developers could port their Master System games over to the Game Gear. These ports not only included arcade games that were popular in the mid-80's either, Sega released Sonic games and their jump'n'runs based on Disney characters.
So Atari had two rivals that specialized in game consoles and were very capable at developing games. Both had successful franchises and consoles that were still current by the time their handheld systems launched. They had business relations with big third-party developers and could concentrate their marketing dollars and yens on their consoles. Atari had none of those. They still had their computer business that released three systems in 1989 (Stacy, STE, Portfolio) and Atari still suffered financially from their purchase of the Federated stores. The regional branches of Atari had some freedom on advertizing too, thus the Lynx saw little support from Atari Germany. Atari Germany's ads for the Lynx II were awful, still concentrating on the color screen instead of the games.
Considering all these circumstances, the Lynx still did pretty well...
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There are two flaws I found in this game compared to River Raid:
a) shooting the fuel tank only awards ten points - it would improve the game mechanic (should I shoot for more points?) to increase it beyond the points awarded for destroying enemies
b) You can't speed up or slow down the plane.
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It's probably the most impressive game in the contest visually and shows great promise for a full release. Lynx Quest feels as if you had released a couple of Lynx games before...
BTW, I wouldn't mind a Time Pilot port to the Lynx
Have they been tested on PAL 7800 as well?
Back in the day, one service disk would cost as much as three public domain disks!
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Atari ST/TT/Falcon Homebrew Games Released/Completed/WIP in 2024
in Atari ST/TT/Falcon Computers
Posted
My website AtariUpToDate keeps track of all releases (not just games) and the start page shows all releases of the last 12 months:
https://atariuptodate.de/en/
And there's also my magazine ST-Computer (German only):
https://www.st-computer.org/en