JeffVav

Couple paddle games on there too (Backgammon -- I guess -- and Canyon Bomber). FWIW, I also alerted the marketing execs I knew to be at the show today.

Looks like you beat me to it on that announcement. Thanks to everyone who helped us diagnose the problem. Just FYI to everyone, the message needs to be phrased better but when you are told a game is downloading that you already download, it's actually updating. It's not that you're downloading the same thing twice, but rather in Version 1.2 we added new control schemes and it's the art for the new control schemes that's coming in when you select a game you already bought and downloaded, first time after upgrading the app.

Hi, seems like several people are having trouble with the Download All button. Anyone who would like to help us diagnose the problem, please message me. I'd like to know your device type(s), OS version(s), method of download, and what version you upgraded from. If you are familiar with the iPhone Configuration Utility, it would help tremendously to send me a log of what happened during the attempt to Download All.

There's no way around this, but there is new content coming in (new control schemes). Have you tried the Download All button over Wifi?

I'm surprised to hear this. We tested on everything, and I haven't seen a difference between my 3rd and 4th gen devices. How is it different exactly? Do the sensitivity adjustments help?

AFAIK, the box at http://www.atariage....areLabelID=2357 is fan-made. Nope, I used the original artwork Atari used for the promotion prototype boxes. Interesting. Good to know. Unfortunately, if Atari doesn't have paperwork to prove ownership, they don't let us use it.

Hi all, Our team has been working for years in the retrogaming arena, both as Code Mystics and with Digital Eclipse before it. We're on the verge of releasing an original title for DSiWare (June 2011, with iOS and PC to follow). It's called Dreamwalker and is an action-puzzle game where we tried to capture the old school gaming feel in a modern game with broad appeal. So, I thought it might be of interest to people here. The official site and trailer are up now, so if you're interested, have a look at www.dreamwalkergame.com. The iOS and PC versions are still in-progress, so we'd be eager for any feedback. Thanks, Jeff

AFAIK, the box at http://www.atariage.com/box_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=2357 is fan-made.

Always a chance. We wanted to get the first update out quickly to address some basic issues (iPad 3.2 bug, some misunderstandings about Pong). We're definitely listening to control feedback but didn't want to rush the job. You'll have to ask Atari's lawyers. It's always a possibility. The initial choices were made based on name recognition, I think. (Yes, some 2600 games are obscure, but the Atari 2600 is one item from a technology point of view.)

The fireball is red and yellow only in the cocktail variation. The upright variation of the game is actually black and white with cellophane over the screen to give it the colour. To see it red and yellow, go into Settings and set the Cabinet option to Cocktail.

Did you try tilt for rotate and thrust, not pointing where you tilt... Yes. The problem is that the rotate buttons are digital: on or off. Tilt is an analogue control. So you tilt, but you're not sure how much, until suddenly it starts responding (goes "on"). Then you're not quite sure how much to tilt back to stop the motion, so you end up overcompensating. When it comes down to it, tilt suffers from the same problems as touch screens in trying to reproduce button-like inputs: no feedback in a situation where you don't intuitively know where the threshold is. At least with a touch screen you can tell when you're touching it and when you're not.

They were provided to Atari back in 1999 by John Hardie and Sean Kelly, of CGExpo fame. They've been making the rounds through the various compilations since then.

You tried the roller version of the controls (not the disc default)? I wanted the roller version to be the default, but alas was overruled. Change it under Settings. Accelerometer controls for Asteroids are completely unusable, IMHO. We tried, where the ship would face the direction you tilted the phone.

There is an opportunity cost to licensing... lawyers and the like. Even if they were so inclined, I would be surprised if Atari could make Activision an offer that Activision would feel would make it worth their while. As to leaving a back door open, that would violate Apple's approval requirements. I would expect any app that managed to sneak a back door past Apple (not that we ever would) would get pulled as soon as it was discovered and that developer probably kicked from the programme for life. Incidentally, I wish the author of a certain mainstream article had bothered to do the test you just did before posting his unfounded theory...

Thanks, I feel a little better now. (Referring to your full post, not just the quote above.) And those very first Mac boxes are part of what I was getting at: even way before there was a reason to "compete" I feel Digital Eclipse was showing these games some due respect by crafting boxes that were shaped like the arcade cabinets. They're still my favourite boxes. It's never been shovelware to us. I've passed on some offers to do classic compilations because the publisher wasn't going to give us the time and/or budget to have a hope of doing it right. As for Quantum and I, Robot, I have my own wish list, too. It's been harder to get the budgets to expand on things these days, FWIW. I mentioned in the DS thread how we were throwing in stuff on our own dime just for the sake of integrity (Atari 400, Army Battlezone). That said, being #2 top grossing iPad probably gives us some legitimacy to ask "what can we do to keep this ball rolling?"

MAME has always been a tricky topic for me. We (as Digital Eclipse) made the first video game emulations available with Williams Arcade Classics back in 1994. I feel we set the standard for "not just the ROMs" before there was a standard: we tracked down Larry DeMar, Eugene Jarvis and John Newcomer and put about 30 minutes of video interviews with the original designers. We have taken care to put the games in context, treat them with respect, and collaborate with the rights holders to get them released officially, etc. As I understand it, Dave Spicer saw what we did and created his Sparcade emulator which covered Namco titles. Then the MAME dev guys saw what Dave Spicer did and were inspired to create MAME. When you cut corners as MAME did (just the ROMs, releasing it as a perpetual beta, not getting the rights), they obviously built up their offerings faster, and for free they get more awareness. And as a free perpetual beta, there was more tolerance from the audience. Now MAME has, over the years, been backfilling many of the problems (friendlier features, bug fixes, and escalation of CPU speeds make the performance no longer an issue), and they will always trump us on value and quantity -- it's free because they don't pay for the rights. I generally stay off the topic of MAME as I know people are very appreciative of it and get very defensive of any critique. I do get a little uneasy though when our work is compared with MAME (especially, say, with a customer review I saw that suggested we'd ripped off MAME's code) as we'd introduced many of the features first and they were copied from us: video game emulation in the first place, retention of high scores, cabinet art, alternate tile set skins, etc. We innovate, it's copied in free unlicenced renditions, and then people no longer see the value in what we've done. (Ironically, we've later had to deal with external QA who, during development, sometimes take it upon themselves to check our game's behaviour against MAME and we've had to point them to video of the real cabinet and show them that in fact MAME was wrong.) That's why these compilations rarely get released for PC anymore, I feel. On consoles, handhelds, mobile, etc., unless you're "jailbroken" or the like, we can at least deliver these games legitimately to the audience without having to compete with unlicenced versions. I'd speculate that a compilation on Android would be slow coming for the same reason. Anyway, bottom line, we're not competing against MAME on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch unless you are jailbroken. At least the games, there, are competing on a level playing field. If people don't see the value in owning a retrogame for $0.15-$0.25 on their phone, then that's their choice as consumer. If no one wants to play, we'll stop making them. It just astounds me the number of people who are outraged at the prospect of paying $0.99 for 4 games that are, IMHO, of reasonable quality. I'm not suggesting the experience is equivalent to the arcade cabinet, but you also didn't get to own the arcade cabinet for $0.25.

It does. They made a few typos in the description (like saying "92 games" instead of "82 games" for the 2600 list).

Actually, we had it in but there's something wrong with the iPhone 4's gamma. It looked way too dark when it was only blue.

Had to comment out loud somewhere about the 1 star reviews over having to pay: Does anyone else find it ironic that you can own a game for $0.25 ($0.99 for 4 games) that used to cost $0.25 for one play, and yet some people are outraged at the "money grab"? I'm trying to imagine somebody walking up to an Asteroids machine in an arcade, looking at the coin slot and throwing their hands up in the air: "25 cents for ONE PLAY and I don't even get to take it home with me?! @% that!"

Yeah, we're aware the controls are not ideal, though some of that can't be helped on a touch screen. One thing that would help would be specific suggestions that people feel would improve it. Some that I've seen mentioned: Sensitivity adjustments An option to flip left and right placement Auto-anchoring for the joystick to centre on wherever you initially touch Touching anyhwere to fire in games that only have one fire button Full screen game play with overlaid transluscent controls Accelerometer control for Red Baron and the paddle games Anything else? You can already control many games by dragging on the playfield, and Asteroids and similiarly-controlled games have multiple schemes, as does Millipede and Centipede.

That's what I like about hanging out on AtariAge. I enjoy best the critique from people who understand what it was striving to be. Of course we want to know what we can do to make things better. When, say, we did the Nintendo DS compilation, I wouldn't expect rave reviews, but I'd always read more carefully the ones from people who were admitted retrogamers. If you're not the audience, there's nothing I can do to help you appreciate it.

They're not broken. You're playing a 4-player game (in Warlords) or a 2-player game (in Basketball) without networking. It should say "All Players" next to the controls indicating that you are controlling all players. It was either that or the other players did nothing at all when you weren't networked, and that would make Combat even more dull. Use Game Select to select a 1-player game. I did notice that in one game (can't remember which one), but in Basketball I specifically noted that it said "1 player" on the game select screen ("Console" overlay). (Then again, I seem to remember the 1-player version of Basketball being game variation 2, but this was variation 1.) I'll have to check more closely... but if this isn't a bug, then there may be some incorrect or misleading text on the game select screen. I just double checked. For the 2-player game, it says "1: 2-Player Game" with "All Players" next to the controls when playing, and you control both. For the 1-player game, it says "2: 1-Player vs. Computer" with "Player 1" next to the controls, and the AI plays correctly. Perhaps the "1: 2 ..." and "2: 1 ..." label was confusing at a glance? The number before the colon is the game variation.

I warned my contacts at Atari about Pong. So many people are unfamiliar with the actual original 1972 Pong. It had "bugs" (not really bugs, since the thing is built on TTL not software). We create games exactly, so we recreated these behaviours. So, for example, the paddles would cut off at raster row 256, but the ball would reach row 262. The ball is only 4 pixels high, so could sneak past the paddle at the bottom corner. Likewise, the pots weren't tuned such that the paddles could reach the top of the screen. They came up about 10 pixels short. So, again, the ball could sneak by. Third quirk: the ball wouldn't bounce until it touched the bottom of the screen, so you would see it blip on the bottom for a frame as it wrapped around from the top. You can turn off this behaviour and have the paddles reach the full scope (see Settings) but I'm adamant that arcade authentic behaviour be the default mode "out of the box". (It's bad enough Pong has an AI at all -- borrowed from Video Olympics -- because the arcade Pong never did.) Back when we did the Nintendo DS releases I actually had to write a document that went out with review copies explaining to the press that these were not bugs in the recreation so please don't say we did a bad job because of this. No such luxury for user-based reviews on iTunes. I actually want to add a disclaimer to future updates informing the user (just once) that the quirks are intentional. If they still don't read it, there's not much I can do.

They're not broken. You're playing a 4-player game (in Warlords) or a 2-player game (in Basketball) without networking. It should say "All Players" next to the controls indicating that you are controlling all players. It was either that or the other players did nothing at all when you weren't networked, and that would make Combat even more dull. Use Game Select to select a 1-player game.

Not surprised, pretty lame. Hi Albert, no, no! I promise you that's being corrected as we speak. It was an honest mistake. We're putting in exactly the text we put in the DS version that you and I talked about. BTW, I emailed you about sending you copies of Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 on DS (the credit was in there!) back in December. Did you not receive it? I need an address...