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pacman000

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Posts posted by pacman000

  1. Posted

     

    But from what I gather the Channel F is why the 2600-VCS even has game cartridges according to older news paper articles (the few that had both those systems mentioned at the same time for like a year.)

    Considering Atari "rushed" the 2600 out before other cartridge system went ont he market well.

    Possible, but most of what I've read suggests the 2600's cart slot was inspired by Pong-on-a-Chip-in-a-Cart systems. Atari was even planning one of their own: http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/dedicated/gamebrain/

  2. Posted · Edited by pacman000

    Power + Programming = Performance

     

    The Traimels, being hardware people, focused on creating a powerful system, but ignored developer requests. This made the Jaguar harder to program, and few highly-skilled developers actually made games for it.

     

    Trip Hawkins, being a software developer himself, focused on creating a powerful system and the tools needed to exploit that power. So, yeah, 3DO games look better than Jaguar games.

     

    Which is more powerful? I dunno... From what I've read it's impossible to make a 1 to 1 comparison between game systems. Architectural differences can ensure the systems are equally powerful, but in different ways. One system may be able to move more sprites and background layers at a higher resolution than another, but the other system may be faster at 3D rendering.

     

    While I do find such debates interesting, they're of little use. Unless someone develops a game for both systems and decides to share their experiences, there's not much to say besides fan-boyish speculation.

     

    On that note... Atari is Awesome and the Jag 2 would've totally buried the N64 if JTS hadn't sold everything off !!!!!11!!! YAY! ;)

    • Like 3

  3. Posted

    The VCS and Channel F were in development at the same time.

     

    Magnavox sued Atari for copying Odyssey Tennis. Atari agreed to give Magnavox the rights to everything they produced in 1976, so the VCS's release was held off till 1977. It''s hard to run a startup, and after a lawsuit Atari didn't have the resources to produce the VCS, so Atari sold to Warner to get the money to release their already developed console.

     

    (Hopefully that's still all correct; it's been awhile since I reviewed the history on all this.)

  5. Posted

     

    I think die-hard Atari fans would agree the first iteration of the company was short-lived. Technicalities and semantics and specifics aside. I believe the bigger picture is that most fans of Original Atari refer to

    Original Atari lasting up to the end of the Jaguar days. To me, that is when Atari died. Anything after is a zombie lurching around without direction.

     

    The difference, again, between 1982 Atari and 2017 atari is the type of product and how it is developed/marketed. 2017 atari has yet to produce anything that captivated me like the VCS did in 1977.

     

    I'm not necessarily asking for another VCS-like product, but one that can enamor me and romance me like VCS did. Ohh yes it's possible. It happens on occasion even decades later.

     

    As far as "Delusional people acting like it's changed or something..." They're not delusional at all. Just seeing things clearly. It has indeed changed. Even my non-classic-gamer colleagues even express it by saying things like, "What ever happened to Atari?" or "Wow that was was cool company that made those games, wish they were still around."

    I generally agree with this, tho I must point out that Atari Games was kept alive as Midway West till about 2003. Even if they changed names to avoid confusion, it still existed, and would've been influenced by its past.

     

    I do care some about continued existence. If Atari has kept going from '96 till today they would have some sort of culture influenced by the company's history. even if all the 70's/80's employees had retired they would've passed their knowledge of the company on to new employees through stories. When JTS took over they fired all but 5 people who were supposed to help them sell off/license Atari's IP. From what I've read Hasbro only bought Atari's IP; I find no evidence they kept the few remaining Atari employees. Whatever we have today can't be the Atari of the past because Atari stopped existing. There's no history, no culture; the folks who would've set it up were left out of the deal.

    • Like 3

  7. Posted

    I'd like to see reviews of Bit Corp's Games: http://atariage.com/company_page.php?SystemID=2600&CompanyID=194

     

    Apollo's Games: http://atariage.com/company_page.php?SystemID=2600&CompanyID=36

     

    BOMB's games: http://atariage.com/company_page.php?SystemID=2600&CompanyID=10

     

    U.S. Games' games: http://atariage.com/company_page.php?SystemID=2600&CompanyID=41

     

    Xonox's Games: http://atariage.com/company_page.php?SystemID=2600&CompanyID=9

     

    And CommaVid's Games: http://atariage.com/company_page.php?SystemID=2600&CompanyID=22

  8. Posted · Edited by pacman000

    Is this better than Telegames old Personal Arcade/Classic gamer packs?

    http://telegames.com/cgamer.htm

    http://telegames.com/pa.htm

     

    You can actually download a trial version of Personal Arcade for free: http://telegames.com/download.htm

     

    (EDIT: I just tried the download; it no longer works :()

     

    More importantly, is Telegames still in business selling these? They haven't updated their FaceBook page in years, the search engine on their website no longer works, and they never answered my email, telling them that their search engine's broken.

     

    It does look like AtGame's collection has a few different games (Wing War instead of Alcazar; I'd like to try both.)

  9. Posted · Edited by pacman000

     

    On the bright side though, the Ataribox has brought a load of traffic to the AA site and new members, lets see if they stick around after the dust settles....

    On the dark side, all this AtariBox news appears to have forced AtariAge off the 1st page of Google for the keyword "Atari."

  12. Posted · Edited by pacman000

    Found this on Slashdot: https://games.slashdot.org/story/02/09/17/146252/interview-with-atari-jaguar-creator-john-mathieson

     

    They didn't have the full article, only a link, and the link was dead. Luckily the Wayback Machine had it: https://web.archive.org/web/20021013115028/http://www.chez.com/toxicmag/real/articles/mathieson.htm

     

    (Scroll down a bit unless you know French; the intro is in French.)

    • Like 3

  14. Posted

     

    The article also says Atari made Kangaroo and Dig Dug. I think we can chalk some of the "facts" up to artistic license.

    Atari licensed the game's rights. At the time they did make them, as far as business men were concerned. They marketed, distributed, -and gained profits- from them.

  15. Posted

    I'd say arcades were more like movie theaters; very good back-in-the day when they were the best/only option, but today consumers can get nearly the same thing at home. Arcades had a good run; they were still fairly popular in the early-to-mid 90's, and there are still some good ones around today. They're just not the massively popular be-all end-all everything of gaming anymore.

     

    (I hate saying this because I like both movie theaters and arcades; to me the home experience isn't the same. Going out to do something, be it seeing a movie or playing games at an arcade is an event; you can't replicate that at home.)

     

    http://www.businessinsider.com/movie-theater-attendance-is-declining-as-cord-cutting-becomes-more-popular-2016-9

    • Like 2

  16. Posted · Edited by pacman000

    It may be different for computer software. From the same story I linked to earlier:

     

     

    One final note. The Ninth Circuit ruled in September that similar implied licenses on software — so-called end user license agreements, or EULAs, that software is licensed for the customer's personal use subject to certain conditions, not sold — do prohibit resale. But that's another story.

    I really wish they'd written that other story.

     

    All this IP law stuff gets confusing. (Isn't a CD technically computer software, since it's digital code ran by a computer to reproduce music? But all this is getting us off topic...) Finding a Wii U developer kit is interesting, but probably not that valuable. The Wii U's being superseded by the Switch, so there's little worth to developers; as a collectible it's cool, but if you tired to sell it Nintendo could sue; they're really protective. Even if the courts decided that it was OK to resell you'd spend a lot on legal fees, too much for the system to be worth much.

     

    As for technical specs... I dunno. Probably the same as the Wii U without regional lockout. Might have a port to connect it to a PC. Don't know if it could play retail games. Just going by features other developer units have; I have no internal info on the system.

     

    As for the unit's history, you'd probably know more than I do. Where'd you find it?

  17. Posted

    Back on topic...

     

    It's interesting to note that the 1st article said, point blank, that video games weren't a fad. I always thought most folks at the time thought video games were a fad, and they game up on them after the crash for more versatile computers.

    • Like 2

  20. Posted

    Are you sure this would be different than a promotional record? It's not necessarily illegal to sell those.

     

     

    UMG's case hinged on proving that it still owned the promo CDs. John T. Mitchell, an attorney practicing in Washington, D.C., who is outside general counsel for the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, the trade association that advocates for the interests of brick-and-mortar and online music retailers and wholesalers, says the court rejected Universal's argument that, " 'These CDs are not to be sold because we still own them, even though we've not really done anything to suggest ownership. We're not giving you a self-addressed, stamped envelope to return it to us when you're done. We're not reflecting them on our books as part of our personal property. We're not treating it in any way as our property, we're just calling it our property.' "

    Mitchell goes on to say, "It was very clear that UMG had no interest in getting the CDs back. In fact in those cases where it did, the court noted that it was to destroy them, not to get any ownership value out of them."

     

    https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2011/01/07/132744291/for-promotional-use-only-not-for-resale-oh-yes-it-is

     

    (Not trying to argue. This just got my mind going. :))

  23. Posted

    You don't need a theme song or opening credits. A simple title card with the series name, episode number, & episode name will do. Theme songs take up time you could spend on games. It might be a good idea to thank anyone who's helped you at the end of the video, in leu of opening credits.

     

    It might be nice to compare different versions of the same games across different systems. Don't just say arcade beats 2600 which beats Odyssey^2; try to find the good parts in all versions.

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