Scott Stilphen

For him to call it 'revisionist history' is incorrect. The definition of that means attempting to re-write history by altering the facts, and I don't see any examples of that here. The video is of course biased towards towards the VCS department (perhaps it should have included a subtitle alluding to that...), but the VCS was by far the most influential product ever produced by Atari, and that's logically the audience you would target. Not to say he couldn't add other volumes covering other aspects of the company, but he's simply sticking to what he knows best. As for it failing to cover the internal conflicts, I doubt you'll find many people willing to spend their time and money on 20-year-old tales of bickering, just as I doubt Warshaw would be willing to interview any ex-marketing folks. At Atari, the marketing department was marketing run amok. I've talked at length with close to a dozen ex-Atari programmers, and this is a common thread with all of them - here you had a department comprised of people who were totally unfamiliar with the product, and yet had influence over what products should be created and who to market them to! With that scenario, it's inevitable there's going to be friction with other departments. Marketing and lack of recognition (both artistically and financially) were the major reasons people left. Given that background, I wouldn't expect to see an opposing viewpoint from a story told soley by programmers. Ironically some of the facts Crawford stated might be considered revisionist history. Since he was only in the VCS department between 79-80, any information he knows about it is second-hand at best. On Tod Frye and Pac-Man: Atari created the situation that led to him demanding the creation of a royalty program (and rightly so), but another important factor here Crawford didn't mention is that at that time both Frye and Warshaw were approached by 20th Century Fox to head up a VCS programming division. He might not have been as outspoken without that offer to fall back on if Atari called his "bluff". If he either took or erased his Pac-Man code, he could have faced a lawsuit or even criminal action (and/or possibly leading to him being 'blackballed' in the industry). At worst, the game would have been delayed, which is what should have happened all along. Over the years the blame has fallen squarely on Tod, but Atari had the final say and chose to release it. The deal for the E.T. home rights was completed at the end of July, not June, giving Warshaw at most 6 weeks to program it, not 9. Also, his comment that his game "would make the movie famous" was certainly spoken in jest, if true (given his persona as being the "stand up comedian" of the department, it's certainly plausible!), since at that point the movie was already the highest-grossing film of all time. In his own words he admitted the game's concept was weak, but from a technical viewpoint, I think did an incredible job with it. Whether someone else could have done a better job is debatable. In this case, Atari (1) paid far too much for the rights - something like 35 million (?), (2) didn't allow enough programming time, and (3) over-produced the game, which led to the infamous landfill story. Even accounting for all returns, the game sold over 1 million copies, but they produced approx. 4 million! They would have had to sell at least half that to break even. They knew it was a risky gamble to take, especially after Pac-Man. In both situations, Frye and Warshaw took advantage of a company that routinely took advantage of its employees - namely the programmers. They both saw an opportunity of a lifetime and took it, and I'm sure neither have any second-thoughts about it. Would you?

http://www.erasmatazz.com/

FYI: The Airworld hoaxer and the admin ("Osiris") for that site are the same person. Why is this guy still allowed to even post here?

Thanks for the info! What's Craig Pell's website? I'll try and track down a copy at a local library, or buy one, and post a better scan.

Could either be a bad trace (the pin is grounded somewhere between teh connector and the RIOT chip) or the RIOT chip is bad. I think Best Electronics still sells those chips.

Looking through the latest DP guide, there's still quite a few titles that lack any programmer names, but there's only 5 pre-80 titles: Circus Atari Code Breaker Human Cannonball Miniature Golf Space War Anyone know who programmed them?

(From auction description) Please check the following location for the latest information, including a link to a thread in which the classic gaming experts attempt to resolve it's origin Attempted......and SUCCEEDED! In fact, a recent CNN poll found that more people believe NASA faked the moon landings, than they do your story that you have a real Airworld prototype.[/i]

Agreed. The PAL bin currently available doesn't have that bug.

How ironic that the 'master of prototypes' doesn't have an EPROM reader

DVD FAQ You can either use 2 single-layer DVDs, or 1 dual-layer DVD (which holds at least 4 hours of footage). Either way, there's plenty of space to add the extra footage....and the Doug Neubauer interview

Russ: There's no footage of Doug in Volume 2. The programmers that are featured are: Al Miller, David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Carol Shaw, Larry Wagner, Bob Smith, Dennis Koble, Tod Frye, Rick Maurer, Rob Fulop, and Steve DeFrisco. If you're serious about making a DVD, considering that there was hours of footage shot for that gathering (the better part of a day, I'm guessing), why not fill it with some of that footage?

Are there actually 2 different released versions, or are you counting the cart version and the fixed bin version released here?

...in Popular Mechanics, December 1977, along with a mock-up Air-Sea Battle screen. Space Mission was the early name for Star Ship. Sorry for the poor quality - it's from a microfilm machine (does anybody have this issue? I'd like to get a better scan of it). [/img]

Check out my Pac-Man and Ms Pac-Man pages for more info on those glitches (which result in some cool tricks).

Here's an NES mod link I modified one years ago, and it works great with most games.

The carts with the copyright were the last run of carts made. It's unknown who added that screen but it wasn't Brad Stewart. You can see an interview with him at http://digitpress.com/archives/arc00120.htm For more info on Asteroids, go to http://www.digitpress.com/eastereggs/26asteroids.htm

He's listed in the credits on both volumes, but he's only in #1 - for about 3 seconds. Sounds like his interview got left on the cutting room floor.

What interview? Can you post a link to it?

*gasp* You should know there's only one true site for Easter eggs

I use either TV tuner or electronics cleaner (which evaporates quickly) unlike WD40 which will initially clean it, but will cause grime to build up even faster afterwards.

I did an article on Atari-made 2600 carts, which is included in #7. I have no plans to cover any 3rd-party companies so if somebody wants to, feel free.

An abomination of all that is pulp?

A few 1982 issues of EG mention Foxbat - an air combat/war strategy game Atari was developing (btw, "Foxbat" is the name for the Russian MIG-25 fighter plane"). One of the EG news bits also said Foxbat was replaced by Raiders on the release schedule. A letter in the Oct 82 issue (page 28 ) from Atari rep Karen Johnson stated it was Warshaw's game, although years later I found out (from him directly) it wasn't. It was later learned that Doug Neubauer was the Foxbat programmer. He was working on Solaris (then called The Last Starfighter) as early as 1984, and it's obvious that Solaris and Radar lock use most of the same display kernel code (and even Super Football to a lesser extent). So it seems very possible that Foxbat and Radar Lock are the same game, but only a Foxbat proto or Neubauer himself could prove my theory.....

The fake Airworld site is back up, with updates (but no ROM or video files )

http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/categories/prod...sp?pf_id=226861 Was there another RotS PC game?