kimchipenguin

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

There was simply not enough time to improve the hardware further. The laser printer however was a brilliant business move: Mega ST + Atari SLM804 + Calamus opened a new niche market for the ST. Germany had quite a good support network for Atari DTP too. A 1989 Falcon wouldn't have been the Falcon we know today. And there was little potential for success in the 8 bit gaming market. Support for 8 Bit Ataris was already slowing down in Europe - C64 was more popular, Spectrum of course and the CPC too. Any Atari console would face the same difficulties that the 7800 did: Nintendo had a lock on many games, Sega had their huge arcade library while Atari only had the rights to their own aging arcade titles. Some of the best C64 games were released in 1987 and the C64 sold extremely well despite the 520ST. Many people were still quite happy with their Commodore back then.

In Germany, I've never seen a Jaguar ready to play at the big retailers back in the day, nor any print or television ads. Atari did however advertise the Lynx as late as 1993. Atari Inside magazine did print a two page list of developers and titles that were presumably in development, but that magazine was never a reliable source and they probably copied that list from somewhere else. Same with some retailers that advertised games as pre-orders that would never be released. Also, Atari didn't handle distribution themselves in Germany and Austria. They left it to Pagedown, an Atari retailer with little experience with game consoles. Excerpt from an interview with Pagedown (Atari Inside magazine) in 1994: "Pagedown: According to unconfirmed statements, 800000 consoles have been sold in the U.S. to date. In May 1994, Paul Welch (Sales Manager Atari UK), told us about 500000 units for the U.S.. Our sales volume for Germany should reach 30% of the American market easily.". Pagedown didn't have any connections with department stores and were relying on the Jaguar's success to expand marketing. I'm not sure whether they ever expanded their advertising beyond the two Atari magazines but with such a small window of opportunity for the Jaguar, I doubt it. There was also a German Jaguar print magazine that supposedly had a circulation of 15000, even though it was sold at Atari retailers only... The other Atari magazine in Germany, ST-Computer, mostly ignored rumors and supposedly soon-to-be-released Jaguar titles and just reviewed games that were actually released. Video game magazines did the same.

At least more than a couple of units were shipped to Germany, because there was an actual advert in German 64'er magazine announcing that prototype units could be bought. Maybe they were shipped from the U.S.? 64'er reviewed the C65 in their 3/94 issue and gave away a unit to celebrate the magazine's ten year anniversary. The import price was 598 DM + shipment. McWill (who does the Lynx and Game Gear display replacements) owns a C65 motherboard with the CPU and VIC-III missing.

Regarding Lynx at ejagfest: There are always at least six Lynx consoles at the ejagfest for the Checkered Flag competition. In the last two years McWill also participated and modded consoles during the event. It's probably the best place to show off your game. I'll probably go there to get some news for my magazine ST-Computer which also covers Lynx, Jaguar and the VCS consoles (or: "everything except Atari 8-bit computers" ).

Turbo C/Pure C was by far the most popular C compiler in Germany, which meant great support by various GEM libraries. It's unfortunate that the sources for Milan TOS aren't available. Milan claimed in 1999 that they recompiled TOS 4.x with a more modern compiler.

The NES didn't dominate every market and was far from being a dominant force in Europe. The 2600 was also much cheaper, I picked up mine with the 32-in-1 cartridge. Looking at how much stuff Atari still had when they liquidated their inventory, they could've easily bundled the XEGS with six games and 12 joysticks

Lots of early articles about the ST contain errors and I guess the author had little time to write a good review (or didn't have a review unit at all). Of course the 260ST had the same connectors as the 520ST, so the difference is just the memory and price. "Kurzerhand verdoppelt" just means that Atari doubled the RAM capacity, not that it's any easier for users to upgrade. Other sources indicate that the 520ST was sold in Germany along with the 260ST, but the 520ST was sold together with disk drive and monitor while the 260ST was sold without either. I can't confirm this, my first ST was the 520STM (connected to a SCART TV )- by that time the ST lineup made more sense

It was on the market for a while - Atari advertised the 260ST twice in Germany: https://forum.atari-home.de/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;pic=165 https://forum.atari-home.de/index.php?action=gallery;sa=view;pic=166 There's also a review of the 260ST: http://stcarchiv.de/hc1985/12/atari-260-st All STs had at least 512 KB RAM, although there were plans for 128KB and 256KB STs at one point. Hatari supports both memory configurations.

Lynx User Magazine 6 and two issues of Atari Entertainment are here: https://archive.org/details/@mjaap

1. No support for ST Low (and most ST Low software wouldn't work anyway) 3. No. 4. The Coldfire is not a superset of the 060 instructions. Software which was designed for the Falcon won't work (no DSP). 6. FireTOS is a modified version of TOS 4.x with various enhancements. Don't think of the FireBee as a super ST or Falcon, it's more like a successor to the Milan or Medusa, i.e. a machine for GEM software.

Burda, one of the biggest publishers in Germany, did the layout on TTs well into the 90's. They were even using custom keyboards. Lots of smaller publishers used the Mega ST and later TT, especially in Germany. German ST-Magazin introduced a magazine within a magazine that was all about DTP and featured a list of printing companies you could use to professionally print your Calamus documents. Of course, if you had some spare money, you could buy a Linotype and connect it to your Atari. Back on topic: I switched from C64 to ST because the Amiga was too expensive Didn't regret it though. Then later I switched (but still kept) my Falcon for a PC because of the Internet. In 2004 I bought my first Mac because I started writing for a Mac magazine.

There were dozens of TOS patches to fix bugs or enhance parts of the OS. TOSPATCH is a program that allows you to selectively apply patches and generate a patched TOS image. KAOS was probably one of the more extensive ones, there's the TOS 1.7 by Level 16, TEX and TNT-Crew and a TOS 2.08 for the STE that is a backport of TOS 4.x. The TOS v4.04 used by the FireBee and CT60 also include enhancements as did the Milan TOS (TOS 4.08).

I do have the PDFs, but I guess it makes more sense to put OCR'ed versions on stcarchiv.de. That way you can use Google Translate or something. I'm no hardware expert, but it looks very complicated - hence the offer to order the preassembled board back in the day. The same magazine also published DIY solutions for a graphics card adapter, Autoswitch Overscan and Mega Bus interface for non-Mega STs.

The absolute fastest non-Falcon accelerator is the Medusa. Before it became a full TT clone, Fredi released a 040 accelerator card for the ST as a DIY project in German ST-Magazin.

Never seen one personally, but here are two photos taken from ST-Computer's May 93 issue (more articles from German Atari magazines: http://www.stcarchiv.de). It shows the large and the medium model. The photos were taken at Frankfurt's music trade show. According to the article, an Austrian company was the distributor at that time - for German-speaking countries at least... Prices in Deutsche Mark: MIDI-Translator light Version: DM 590 MIDI-Translator full Version : DM 890 Hotz-Box Touchboard large : DM 15000 Hotz-Box Touchboard medium : DM 7000

I had some fun with the included Mazewar game and the XFormer emulator, but I never found more disk images. I was very excited about the ZX81 and later ZX Spectrum emulator though, the ST is an excellent Sinclair emulation machine Of course, neither of those machines had fancy custom chips.

Bumping this thread - mine is #394. I bought it in the mid-90's in Germany when various retailers were selling Atari NOS. It wasn't sold as "rare", but more of an oddity. Supplies were significantly less than the 7800 joypad. A specific controller for the advanced joystick ports was announced during the STE's life span. The Falcon titles that were developed for Atari (Steel Talons, Llamazap etc.), all require this controller.

Seems more bad inventory management on Atari's part - lots of products that didn't sell, while products that were in demand (TT, Falcon) were in short supply. German press frequently made fun of the "banana ship" that was supposed to deliver new stock to Europe. I bought my 2600jr at a department store in '91 or '92. They didn't sell any Atari games, but the console came with the 32-in-1 game cartridge. Basically the NES Classic of its day, but actually available in stores.

Nice! I have attached another ad, this time from mid 1997 (ST-Computer 06/97). It seems that Germany received *a lot* of Atari joysticks: You could buy five CX24, CX40 or CX78 for 20 DM, or 36(!) CX24 for 49 DM.

Atari's were quite commonly used for science. ST-Computer magazine ran a series of articles about the ST being used by scientists, federal agencies and corporations. Here's one where the ST was used at an observatory: http://stcarchiv.de/stc1990/11/spiegelteleskop

Here is another scan of a Falke Verlag advert for various Atari items. All prices are in Deutsche Mark, divide it by 2 to get the Euro price. The XL was no longer advertised as being compatible to the VCS. They did seem to receive lots of 7800 games, Portfolio stuff. 59 DM for an Atari XL with cassette recorder and a "surprise" (like Light Gun or Touch Pad"). When I bought my XL at a small trade fair in Elmshorn, the surprise was the Light Gun. I'm also glad I picked up the grey Jag-Pad for 19 DM. I don't recall Seidel or Falke selling Jaguar games, so presumably they didn't buy that palette. They had the whole calculator product line though, the small solar one was given to new subscribers.

How are these games going to be released on cartridge then? That is (understandably) the dream of many developers - to see it released as cartridge, just like the games during the Lynx's lifespan. I don't see sound or reduced content as a problem. You won't get arcade perfect ports anyway due to the low resolution. As editor of a magazine that also happens to cover Lynx games, I'm happy for any game that gets completed no matter in which shape or form. I don't think having more space is helping any of the games currently stuck in "development hell".

If you'd like to know more about the magazine the ad appeared in, there's an article about the Atari Inside in the only English issue of ST-Computer magazine (free download): http://st-computer.atariuptodate.de/index.php?content=magazine&issue=08&year=2014 It's funny that buyers didn't know what they were buying. It was quite unusual for German Atari dealers to sell Atari consoles other than the Lynx or Jaguar, but Seidel would've probably been shocked if he ended up with 750 8-bit game cartridges Obviously, German dealers were more interested in 16/32 bit stuff. Maybe I should try to locate Seidel for a short interview...

Atari did move most of their inventory (centralised) to the Netherlands in 1993. Germany was managed and supplied with hardware from Atari's Dutch HQ. I know that German retailers Digital Data Deicke and Softwareservice Seidel bought some of Atari's inventory. Suddenly you would start to see hardware they usually didn't sell, including VCS consoles, 8 bit computers and Atari calculators. The ad is from Falke Verlag, publisher of the Atari Inside (online article archive at stcarchiv.de). They probably got their stock from Seidel. They sold a VCS7800 with three games for 39 DM, and an Atari 800XL ("compatible with VCS2600 und 7800 games") for 45 DM. I only picked up stuff I was interested anyway - a big Portfolio package including the drive, an Atari XL with light gun to play Bug Hunt and a Lynx II.