Scott Stilphen

Right. A lunar lander isn't very practical in space, unless you're landing on something Agreed - it's a poor man's Lunar Lander. It always appeared to me like you were actually destroying the moon! As soon as you're over the moon and you press fire, it disappears. Maybe they should have called it Lunar Destroyer Yes, it's an early effort, and like most of them, it's pretty weak. But at the time it was cool to have a first-person perspective game like that. As for the enemy objects, they can be easily hacked into something else (that giant letter "Z" is the worst!). An update would be cool - a straight Lunar Lander port would be even better. Btw, I submitted all the Star Ship 1 pics on KLOV....right before I sold the machine

Same here.

I have complete scans of all the Atari Age and Atarian mags (2 CD's worth). $5 (to cover costs) and they're yours.

Start a game, and then scroll the picture up (hit 'Page Down' key) until you can't see Q*bert - he'll then fall off the pyramid, die, and then the replacement will keep falling off (w/o dying)!

I agree. I think the saying is "There's never enough time or money to do it right the first time, but there is when you have to go back and fix it"

No. Guess you need a recap.... I'm not asking him to personally send me anything. All I wanted to know is what happened with the original plan of releasing whatever prototypes he acquired (and there's certainly more than the few he listed recently here- http://www.atariage.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15409). They didn't appear on the Anthology package, and they haven't appeared on the website (and now maybe they'll appear on the next anthology installment). His reason? Because DP won't release theirs (!? WTF kind of answer is that?). So I asked Joe Santulli about this; he has no idea what Ken is talking about since they don't have any unreleased Activision protos (or Imagic, or Atari...or anything else). In fact, Joe emailed Ken directly and asked him about this, and guess what- he ignored him as well. It's a simple question, and all I want is a straight answer.

Ah, no ....if you've read this whole thread, then you'd know that I questioned a comment Ken made, which so far has gone unanswered.

I did, but you didn't respond to that either

Only thing I've heard is that Atari bought the rights to do a home version at the time. Don't have any other info on it.

or limited to only those who post on this board

...as long as you don't ask him any 'tough' questions

What level does this happen on (exactly)? I'd like to verify it, and add your info to my Easter egg site

Konami also announced Super Scramble, but this had nothing to do with the arcade game (from the description):

I wasn't aware that you were giving them out if people emailed you (not trying to be sarcastic here, but did you ever publicly state that? If so, I missed it ). Wouldn't be easier to just make it available on your website? I was soley speaking about the gameplay. I realize some people are 'completists' and need to have the whole package, but I'm sure there's also a good number of people who couldn't care less about all the extras, and are simply interested in the game itself.

Only releasing the ROM to a select few (programmers, reviewers) is not only unfair, it will create yet another dividing factor in the community (it's already happened with prototype games) - you're basically saying some people are "worthy" of having it while others are not. Homebrew authors certainly have full say in whether or not they want to release the ROM to their games. However, saying that releasing the ROM will hurt sales has been proven to be very minimal, if at all. Those who buy the cart version do so b/c they want it on cart, and would buy it anyway regardless if the ROM is available or not, and you don't see them selling their carts if the ROM becomes available afterwards. And the excuse that the game is not the same on a real system via a Cuttlecart (or similar device) is absurd (and a bit insulting to Chad) - sorry, but there's no difference there. If you wanted to satisfy the "try before buy" crowd, you could release a demo or limited version ROM, much like shareware. As for prototype games (which are always an undercurrent in these types of discussions ), my stance is - these games were designed for the public to enjoy, not just one person, or a select few. Unfortunately, there are a few ROMS out there now that already fall into the later category. The game should be made available, whether or not the current owner decides to pursue having carts made; nobody can demand that, but morally it's the right decision. And owners who hide behind the excuse of "I don't have the legal right to release..." are the biggest hypocrites going - as if they have the legal right to own the game in the first place! Makes me wonder how a programmer would feel knowing that a game they spent a good deal of time creating - and to which even they don't have a copy of - learn that only 1 copy exists, and the person that has it refuses to release it (in any format).

You're right- it was Warshaw's tape (knew it was on one of them )

Yep, he's on the Stella video. I missed his keynote speech at CGE, but I vaguely remember something 'Marketing Adventure' - what was it?

To those who are unfamiliar, Atari's Marketing department would routinely circulate a list of game titles around to programmers, which they determined people would buy, based on the name alone - Rock Fight always being the number #1 title on the list! Rob Zdybel tells this story on the 'Stella at 20' series. I recently came across this article in News of the Weird. ROCK FEST "News of the Weird reported on the annual Gotmaar festival in Pandhurna, India, in 1989, describing how, despite the village's increasing modernization, its work comes to a halt after the first full moon in September, with males dividing into two groups to gather rocks and throw them at each other, attempting to injure as many people as they can. At sunset, they stop, nurse the wounded, and return to normal life. Apparently, the festival continues with equal vigo, despite attempts in recent years to make it less violent. In September 2002, participants again rejected safety rules, and 500 were wounded, some seriously."

Update! This info comes from Mr. Miller via Al Backiel, who recently interviewed him for DP. I asked Al to ask him about his 3D demo, and here's what he had to say: “The (3-D demo) game was Checkers, my first Activision game, which was published in early 1980 without the 3D display. It just didn't work well enough on the 2600. As I recall, there were two main problems with using the red/blue glasses (anaglyph) on the 2600. The first is that the 2600 is only capable of 160 pixels of horizontal resolution. This didn't allow much precision in the horizontal offsets between left and right eye needed to position objects in 3D space. Secondly, television sets of that era didn't consistently render the colors. So the blues and reds in the display wouldn't exactly match the blue and red eye filters. On many sets, this caused a serious ghosting problem, in which each eye would still see a ghost of the other eye's image. I'm still extremely interested in the use of 3D display for interactive and passive entertainment. With today's computer and CRT technology, it is now possible for that to happen, if the user can accept wearing "shutter" glasses that momentarily alternatively block each eye. This needs to occur at a minimum rate of 70 or 80 times per second for the effect to be acceptable (in my opinion), which precludes it from happening on NTSC televisions.” Makes me wonder what companies like Amiga and Spectravision did differently (if anything) to get around this problem....or if they were truly advertising vaporware.

Hopefully one or both programmers can be contacted and shed some more light on this. Btw, does anyone know who programmed Atari Video Cube/(2D) Rubik's Cube? My guess would be that the 3-D version appears to be accurate in how you manipulate the cube - maybe this proved to be too confusing a control scheme for kids? Resulting in the simplified (i.e. dumb) version we got, which plays nothing like a real cube, except that only the goals are similar.

Thanks. Sounds like the Pro-Line joysticks, but I don't think it has the same CX number. Is there a controller section on this site?

This game is falls into the category of where the best thing about it is.....the box art

That's one of mine, actually You meant this version of R.C. has turned up now

This artwork/box was only used for the original (text matte-label) release. And the same artist didn't do both:

Videolivery often advertised in EG and other classic gaming mags. The picture is just to give you an idea of how most of them looked (it's a scan from a poor photocopy), but some of the more interesting titles listed are: Atari Fox Bat (Dec.) $29.86 Airworld (Dec.) $29.86 Frog Pong $29.86 M-Network Pro Football $29.86 Big League Baseball $29.86 Tank Battle $28.86 Parker Bros. Jaws (Jan '83) $29.86 Vectrex Auto Race $28.86 Colecovision Smurf 2 $30.86 Coleco Turbo (Sept.) $69.86! U.S. Games Weird Bird (Jan.) $22.86 Guard of Treasure (Nov.) $22.86 Gopher Attack (Dec.) $22.86 Apollo Kyphus $24.86 Guardian $24.86 Pompeii $24.86 Squoosh $24.86 Imagic (for Mattel) Big Bully (Dec.) $31.86 CommaVid Mission Omega $28.86 Underworld $28.86