pacman000

The FM Towns Marty used floppies to save games. Used floppies all the time as a kid; everyone in our school did. Don't remember too many problems. Even if someone did pull off the cover you could keep it safe in an envelope, like a 5.25" diskette. If I remember correctly the FDS used smaller 2.5" diskettes w/o an attached cover; they had a removable cover.

It also helped disgrace Atari by 1) Rasing consumers expectations beyond what was possible, and 2) making it look like Atari was lying about the system's specs.

Hmmmm.... What of this? http://articles.latimes.com/1992-05-02/business/fi-1361_1_video-game-market

Funny, I always thought the Jaguar had a lot of developers interested in it, but few completed games due to poor support/sales.

In another topic someone mentioned all the Goodwills and Salvation Army stores near him scrap old electronics. Has anyone found anything in a thrift store lately, or are all of them just throwing this stuff (games, systems, computers) out?

I'm both surprised and saddened the Jaguar didn't already have a game like this.

I'm at once happy that it was saved and sad/sick because someone was going to throw it all out. What else has been thrown out over the years?

Tramiel got the home rights to Atari arcade games made before the breakup.

As I understand it Pan Am and RCA were already doing poorly in the early 80's. And while Atari looked good from the outside they had a lot of internal troubles in '82 which led to their downfall.

Early home computers had more than games. Here's a list of C64 spreadsheet programs: https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Spreadsheet And here's Atari Write, for Atari's 8-bit computers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AtariWriter

Atari: Price Without the Power tm

Found this today: http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/panther.html This sounds like the older, inaccurate information Curt had from one interview. I can't confirm that; the Wayback Machine no longer has an archive of The Atari History Museum. While it's not accurate for the Panther, could it be for the Mirai? It sounds a lot like what's already suspected. Could the interviewee have gotten the two mixed up? (I'd actually say "kludged" is too harsh a word; combining and extending well-supported technology doesn't sound too bad.)

20 years from now there will be a 300pg thread on here asking if Atari really buried all those SpeakerHats out in the desert...

I want to say yes, but it seems like even Atari wanted to replace the system by 1996... Software drives console sales. Atari attracted a lot of developers, but few of them wanted to produce games unless the console was successful. Atari didn't have a good support system for the few developers who did produce games, so the few released titles were unimpressive. If Atari had a better development system, or if they had more money to pay developers...then they'd still have trouble. The Jaguar was released at the wrong time. It was too late to really compete against the SNES and too early to compete against the PSX. Then there's Sam Tramiel's heart attack. If he hadn't had it, Atari might've continued, but I can't see them lasting that long. If they weren't merged with JTS Wikipediia might read something like this today: "In late 1996 Atari corp filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which was quickly turned into chapter 7 because no reasonably prudent person actually believed the Jaguar II had any hope to turn the company around. Their assets were auctioned off, with most trademark and IP rights going to Hasbro Interactive. (See Hasbro Interactive.)"

$50 in 1990 is equal to about $95 today. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=50.00&year1=199001&year2=201701

Tough times for old game companies...

I remember reading about a keyboard/Linux/hard-drive expansion for the PS2, but cannot find any info on it today.

Wait, does this mean you have a Bit Corp Gamate? If so that's cool.

Wait, if it doesn't have a fan does that mean it's less powerful than the canceled Jaguar 2?

Famicom support: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/218334-retail-support-for-the-famicom-in-2003/

The best tech is the tech the best meets user needs. The Game Boy was cheap, durable, and it wouldn't run out of juice on a long car ride. Those advantages outweighed color graphics and back lit screens. There were a few other systems with similar tech (Gamate! SuperVision! Game Master! MegaDuck!) But they had trouble getting decent software. </Gameboy fanboy> And I see you put best in quotes, so you you probably knew all this. The 2600jr. stayed around so long 'cause the fun was back:

http://inpublic.globenewswire.com/2016/05/31/SIGFOX+and+Atari+Announce+Partnership+to+Develop+Atari+branded+Connected+Devices+Using+SIGFOX+s+Global+IoT+Network+HUG2016626.html;jsessionid=Ud0F6wvUVGQdOY1JSEtqlOhtd37Mx4PVbEMQzNQ9AGx23TsST1_e!1585849556 On a more serious note, that's close to what I'd do with Atari, license the still-recognized name to other less-recognizable tech companies with products which already work. But this is from a year ago, and I still haven't seen an Atari-branded connected device.

Here's the interview: http://downloads.atari-home.de/Scene_Demos/!MAGS/JEO/JEO_0103.TXT It's in an old text-based online magazine, so you'll have to use your browser's "find" function if you want to jump to the interview. Searching for World Tour Racing should do it.

Sounds like they were rented to retailers. I'd imagine whoever owned them recalled them and scrapped them to recoup whatever they could from their investment when it didn't take off. No reason to stop looking tho. I'm a hopeful person.

I'd like to read that interview; where can I find it?