ilaskey

Same here.

When I first moved to the ST I got rid of all my 8bit stuff. I had no idea how rare a lot of my software & peripherals were. At the time you couldn't get much for 8bit stuff so the 130XE, modded drives, peripherals, books, software, mags etc all went for about GBP100. Better than nothing but about 5% of what I paid. What was probably worse was selling the Falcon just after Atari collapsed, think I got £100 for that too including software, video mods, go faster CPU, PC emulator card etc. Finally, the Jaguar - complete with some review games on EPROM cards, Atari paperwork, ads, videos etc (I had been reviewing Jag games for one of the UK mags). I don't remember getting much for that lot - £20 or £30 the lot

On the 8bit side, Back when Computer & Video Games in the UK still published listings, I decided to do the ultimate Hammurabi/Kingdom type game. For a simple game, which was usually implemented by others as GR.0 text only, I went to town. Nice colour scheme, custom display list, scrolling regions, DLIs etc. Finally finished it and was very pleased. I went out to buy the latest issue of C&VG to get the address to send it to only to find out they'd stopped doing listings... Another was a version of Star Chess (The UK games console, not the Star Trek thing). Imagine chess but you can shoot pieces rather than take them (shields protected more powerful pieces needing repeated shots), warp off the board to safety and other features. There was something in Analog or Antic that allowed you to create a custom character set but blit it directly onto a gr.7 screen. I used that with PMs for borders and the cursors, more DLIs for cool effects etc. It turned out pretty good, even though I say so myself. On the ST side, by then I was a commercial developer working on DEC Unix etc. I had a Mega STe by then running Lattice C 5. I had some minimal dummy libraries I put together so I could write the Unix code on the MSTe, compile it, even though the output would have been useless at that point, and then bring the disks to work (1.44 floppy on the MSTe was very handy) and have the code compile up clean on the Unix box. very handy for early working from home. Happy days.

If you don't mind playing them on a PC, you can get all the Scott Adams ones here: http://www.msadams.com/downloads.htm

Someone over at bandcamp has done a cover of Nine Inch Nails' first album but using different 8 bit machines for each track. here's one representing the Atari 800 https://inversephase.bandcamp.com/track/atarible-lie

Price was certainly a part of it. When I bought my 400 in I think 1981, I had to take out a loan as it was 3 x my monthly salary for the 400 with 32k upgrade and 410. The 850 was another 2 month's pay a year later. A single game was 25% of a months' pay. I effectively spent 6 months income on a 400 and 850... Oddly, most people I knew with computers had Atari's. There was one Apple II guy and one ZX81. The other 4 people had 800's, 3 with 850's. Probably due to the local Maplins putting on a good show and having stacks of software, add ons etc. As far as magazines goes, it was a bit later but C&VG gave it pretty good coverage and there were articles in several other magazines reasonably regularly including a few oddballs that never seemed to last more than half a dozen issues. I also used to get Creative Computing and other American magazines/

That would make much more sense.

There was a lot in the Tim McGuiness interview that sounded a bit suspect even though it was definitely one of the best interviews so far. Things like Visicalc being first on the Atari 800, Windows still having code to read Atari 8bit disks and others.

You should be. When I was listening I thought how well structured and researched it was and I liked the different viewpoints from the various interviewees. This is certainly in my top 5 of the interviews so far, really good.

It was the expected price - $400 and $800

When I bought my Atari 400 etc it was £350 with another £350 for the 810 and £50 for the 410. I then got a 48K upgrade for £100 so £850 all in. Games were generally around £30-35 each. To put that in perspective, I was working in a bank and my monthly take home was £120 a month...

Were there any aspects of the 2600 he wishes were different in retrospect e.g. a bit more RAM, More sprites etc. I always felt Atari had particularly attractive packaging/artwork compared to their peers. Was that deliberate or just lucky with the art/marketing people?

Same here. SR2 was a nice competent game but SR was a game changer.

http://www.bundlestars.com/store/star-raiders/

Fair point in many cases but the Sierra project?

Whilst I am enjoying these and they are going to be a valuable oral history, especially as many of these people are getting quite old, I do find myself inwardly groaning when follow up questions aren't made when someone comes out with a fascinating bit of information or mentions a particularly rare item. Also, why wasn't much more inquiry made about Project Sierra on the Jess Jessop interview?

Ah, thought I'd restored his experiments, missed that, still, made a nice enough noise :-) Programming wise, I think I learned more about conciseness and optimization of resource. Later on when writing C on Unix/mainframes, it became all too easy to get a bit happy mallocing whatever you needed and certainly, younger colleagues wonder why I bother to only take what is needed, be it disk or RAM. Modern compilers do make it easier to write clearer code that is easy for humans to parse, knowing the compiler will do a lot of the tweaking for me. Nothing worse than going back to old code and wondering what on Earth was going on!

I was trying to explain to my 13yo son about how computers used to come ready to program etc as he's started making noises about doing game design. I fired up Altirra and for the first time in 30 years wrote a few lines of Atari Basic. Amazed I even remembered this much. He was quite taken in by it and spent half an hour happily playing about with it, trying different numbers etc. Anyway, here it is, nothing special but I was chuffed after all these years. I used to write stuff in a mix of of this and 6502, usually and later a bit of Action and Basic XE. Wish I'd kept all my old programs but it all went years ago when I upgraded to the ST. 10 GRAPHICS 7 20 FOR X=1 TO 100 30 COLOR X 40 PLOT X,0 50 DRAWTO 1,70 60 NEXT X 70 FOR X=1 TO 100 80 SETCOLOR 1,X,X 85 SETCOLOR 3,X+5,X+5 86 SOUND 0,X,Y,200 90 NEXT X 100 SOUND 0,0,0,0

I was at the ECTS show when Sony had their stand launching the PS1 next door to Atari's. I was helping Daryl out by demoing Mutant Penguins at the show so spent 3 days next to the Sony stand. It was immediately clear to me Atari were stuffed. They had a stand with a few average looking 2D games and a few rough looking 3D ones and Sony rolled out Wipeout. Which it was.

I wrote for various UK magazines over the years and the general impression I got was that over here, the editorial team and advertising teams were mostly kept separate. The editors rejected any attempts by advertising to influence reviews eg "X games company will do a double page spread for 3 months if we do a good review of x". As the magazine market started dying this was less rigorously enforced though and I know a number of people who left the industry as a result of the level of influence being applied. By and large, reviewers were proud of being 100% honest in their reviews. On the other hand, the US side was rather different and bribes, advertising promises etc were very common and in many cases, the companies provided their own 'reviews' for publication. You could usually see the effect of this when US companies who were new to the UK tried the same thing and were nonplussed when we refused to publish their 'review' they provided.

http://www.notator.org/ is a good place to find out about this

WordUp word processor and Lattice C were my main tools. Also LDW Power spreadsheet Timeworks DTP Superbase Pro

I liked it at the time http://laskey.co.uk/atari-jaguar-power-drive-rally-review/

Sega Dreamcast. Killed way too soon.

I remember it. It was one of those mags for sure but not front cover. In the news section I think. Covered in gems with a fuji logo in contrasting stones. Seem to remember it was worth $10k or something. Utterly bonkers of course.