G.Whiz

Got the MP3 download of the Satanic Bible the other day. I looped it through my mixing software and played it backwards, just to see what would happen. It was really eerie -- some guy in this Ozzy voice was chanting "Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you." But one thing is for sure, playing Pitfall backwards is a hell of a lot easier than having to jump over those damned logs... ~G

It takes 11 days to *count* to a million. Now imagine the time it'd take to get what you want to do. No, No, not do 1,000,000 screens, just 1,000,000 points. That would be just crazy (but would certainly eat up some time on the island...) ~G

Does that include the Swordquest series? Any idea why that fell apart? ~G

Just thought I'd mention that the counter rolls at 10k and the current record is in the almost 500k range.. so... Ah, yes but this was back when it first came out -- still doubtful but you never know. It always puzzled me why they ended the counter at 10,000 instead of adding a measely couple more zeros... ~G

Hacked version of River Raid that allowed you to go through all the screens. Probably never make it to 1,000,000 in my lifetime anyway, but if there was nothing else to do, might as well try... ~G

Wow, even though we were by far the first on the block (and one of the first in the city) to own an Atari, my collection was very small: Combat Air-Sea Battle Indy 500 Kaboom! (which I then traded for...) Yar's Revenge River Raid Video Olympics Warlords Empire Strikes Back Pitfall II Space Invaders ...and probably a few others. But once my friends starting getting into it and getting their own systems, we all sort of bought different games and then just hauled them all to whoever's house we were playing at. In my city, there wasn't really a lot of places to buy them for the first few years. Video Olympics, I remember, I had to order through Sears -- and it took about 3 weeks to arrive. Mostly we would save our money and buy them on family trips to bigger cities, but even then it was expensive. By the time I had a "job" delivering flyers, it would cost about a month's worth of working to buy one cartridge! Picked up a few others since then, but I am certainly not a "collector" by any means. I saw in our move that I have Adventure and Defender, though I don't remember getting them... ~G

Again, I don't know all the ins and outs tech-wise, but I suppose if PAL and NTSC have different gameplay, then they should. The only thing I'm advocating in this debate is that records and record attempts should all exist on the same level playing field. Otherwise, how can you gauge "who is better" if the variables are different for everyone? But hey, I've never been a record holder (though I may have come close in Space Invaders in the day -- rolled the counter I think about six times and was playing for hours... unfortunately no way to prove it though!) and I don't think I ever will be now. For me, this debate is purely hypothetical. I suppose the ones who really should be sorting out the "rules" are those who have records to defend or defeat! ~G

No, that can't happen here. Other consoles maybe, but not the 2600. The worst thing that might happen is, that the whole game runs slower (including the timer). But everything will always stay in sync 100%. Then that right there is an advantage. You would be able to "time" your jumps better if the whole process was moving slower, thus giving you the advantage. Don't get me wrong, I think that emulators are great, and hacks even better. I haven't played your hack of Pitfall! but it sounds like you did a great job. I think if games can be made better for the sake of gameplay (as many Adventure hacks and PacMan hacks have proven) then I'm all for it. But when it comes to "official" records, it should be on the console only, or at least have a separate category for emulator/hack records. ~G

Haven't read the debate, but IMHO there are too many things that can be affected through emulation. No emulation is perfect, and if for example the timer runs slower on certain emulators, then you are going to have more time remaining on Pitfall at the end. Then there is the possibility of hacking an emulator to give you exactly those differences on purpose... Choice of joystick (as long as it doesn't somehow hijack the programming), choice of monitor, even choice of console should be irrelevant. But once you remove the programming from its "natural" environment, there are too many things that can go "wrong" for it to be a reliable platform for gauging records. ~G

I agree, it's probably the power cord entering the console. I've had that problem too many times -- you've got the game going, sitting up on the coffee table, wires running everywhere, then someone runs across and rips out all the cords. Eventually, the connections get loose and don't sit in properly. My fix was to put a piece of duct tape over the hole on the console, cutting a hole at the power entry source. If this isn't tight enough, a small piece wrapped around the actual cord should hold it in place. This is temporary though, and may need attending to every once in a while. Also, make sure there is plenty of slack on all cords. And don't let anyone try to climb over the cords once you have it going (especially if they have a beer in their hand...) ~G

Indy 500 is definatly an early release. I think it came out in 1978 and it has a label variation with a number on the top label, which only the earliest releases had. Yeah, I thought it was early. My Dad still feels ripped off to this day because he bought it for us when it first came out on the "promise" that there would be other games coming out for the extra paddles you had to buy with it... I always thought that Tempest should have been made to use these controllers. It was probably a big enough game to package it with the controllers too, for the people who didn't pick up Indy. Now that I think of it, Indy 500 was a text label, so it must be early. So if it is considered a "sport" then change my vote to that one! ~G

Do you mean Asteroids? The arcade version of Space Invaders had a similar riff, but in the 2600 port, it just sounds like marching. Hmm, I must be getting confused (not hard to do). Yeah, you are right about Asteroids though -- for the arcade version at least -- it's been a while since I've played the 2600 version. Is it in this one? ~G

ET: Theme from ET Raiders of the Lost Ark: Theme from Raiders Parker Bros. Empire Strikes Back: Star Wars Theme Space Invaders: Jaws theme "dun Da, dun Da, dun Da..." progressively faster (or maybe just coincidence...? Yeah, right!)

I hope you didn't take my joke about Video Olympics the wrong way. I love it, but I mentioned it jokingly becuase I don't consider it a true sports game. Pong rocks! No, didn't take it the wrong way at all... In fact, I was very happy someone mentioned it. I think the reason that Video Olympics works so well for me is that they took Pong and made several different games out of it, in essence extending what was already possible with Atari. This made for some great game play. The other ones mentioned didn't do this, but instead took a "top down" approach trying to cram as much of the sport as possible into one game. Didn't work well in most cases. Another favourite of mine that I remembered was Night Driver. Then of course was Indy 500, still one of the best head to head racing games (ice racing is the best!) -- but is this considered an "early release"? And is either one considered a "sport"? ~G

Finally, someone mentioned Video Olympics! Okay, not the greatest of games in the end, but definitely the best of the early Atari sports games. That one, I believe, was the very first one that I bought with my own money... Volleyball was always fun -- wasn't there a four-player version? -- and other Pong-related "sports". Just remembered too that you could spike in volleyball too. Come on! Beats Atari "Get a Home Run by Hitting Past Second Base" Baseball any day! 'Course if we wanted to play sports games, we went to whoever's house had Intellivision... ~G

Interesting points. I agree that something will survive, just as ancient texts have survived hundreds of years. A well-kept console will probably last a long time, and there will always be someone who knows how to fix it or replace parts if it breaks. Spitfire parts, for example, are now far and few between, but there is a company in England that manufactures these parts for the six (?) remaining original Spitfires still flying, as well as building and maintaining replicas. Whether or not these future people "enjoy" playing the games beyond a passing fancy is debatable. I tend to think not, though I am still surprised at the number of younger people who continue to enjoy them today. For me, playing Atari was great but I always looked down the road to imagine what could be. Excellent graphics, more involved gameplay, realistic sounds. Definitely not your standard Atari game. One game that really excited me (though it was Intellivision) was Utopia. This game was basic, but I thought of all the other possibilities that might come down the road. Sure enough SimCity, the Civ series, and even the Ultima series built on this theme of simulation -- all games that I have also enjoyed. I must admit that I don't play too many games any more, though I hear a lot around this board that the Atari games have much better gameplay than today's games. If that is true, perhaps game companies need to get back to the basics and build simplier games like Adventure, but using the graphics and sound technology they have now to make it more realistic and immersing. But if there is one "constant" in all of this, it's the fact that there have always been games throughout the history of Man, and there always will be. Games are both a way to learn, a way to entertain/be entertained, and a way to relax. What form those take in the future and how much they will supplant today's idea of fun can only be up for conjecture. ~G

Running "strings rampage.bin" will get you a list, along with a bunch of other random junk. The list looks like: PEORIA.JOLIET.CHICAGO.KALAMAZOO.DETROIT.CLEVELAND.PITTSBURGHBALTIMORE.P0LAD1234ANEWARK.MANHATTAN.BOSTON. [email protected][email protected]^PAUL.DULUTH. BISMARCK.CUSTER.BILLINGS.BOISE.SPOKANE.SEATTLE.PORTLAND. [email protected]@VEGAS.PHOENIX.A56789RQUEAMARILLO.LUBBOCK.DALLAS.HOUSTON.BA !#$ROUGEN1%&([email protected]ICHMOND.CHARLESTONKNOXVILLE. C)*+ANOOGAATLANTA.TUSCALOOSAMEMPHIS.NASHVILLE.LOUISVILLEXINGTON.CINCINNATI,-.ANAPO5SST^LOUIS.L/[email protected] WICHITA.KANSAS[][email protected]@[email protected]_`"ANGELESHONOLULU. [email protected] (I added line breaks to keep from having to scroll horizontally, but all the punctuation is what's present in the ROM image) I only count 78 cities, but I may have lost count somewhere... You lost count. They're all there. I've been to all of them more than once. You've been to Duluth? Based on its positioning among the other cities, I'm assuming that's Duluth, MN. Reminds me of the cabin owner in "The Great Outdoors" who wears that shirt that says "I've Been to Duluth"... ~G

Yeah, I had a few friends who had Ham radios, and it always seemed kind of cool to me that you could just reach out on the airwaves and talk to a complete stranger who just happened to be listening. I tried some chat rooms and IRC when I first got Internet about 11 years ago for that exact reason, but it got old fast. There's something about the anonymity of chat rooms that gives people license to say or do whatever they want. I'm all for free speech, but there's a point where you just can't stand the drivel anymore. With Ham I imagine it is a lot more personal because you can actually hear the voices: more truth, more interesting, less drivel. And the other upside is that you always know if you are talking to a dog... ~G

eBay is the great equalizer. I used to collect Gund teddy bears, and eBay was a hotbed of them. But in the last few years I've noticed prices going down. Much is probably the fact that Gund is not as popular as it was, and with the death of the Beanie Baby, the overall market is in decline. But I also think that a big part of it is the rush to get something that couldn't be gotten before. I didn't have access to all of this stuff, living in a small town, and suddenly the world was literally my oyster -- as long as I had money in my PayPal account. But once you get what you want, and so does everyone else, things die off. And this too shall pass with Atari. Once all the serious collectors get everything they want, and all the things that there are to be found are found, the Atari market will even out. Might take a bit longer, but eventually it will happen. This topic kind of makes me picture some guy waxing lyrically into his microphone all evening about whether ham radio clubs will survive cell phones and the Internet and chat rooms. Of course he never gets a response... ~G

I'd be surprised if they were exactly the same. Remember, this was before computers and each letter would have been hand-typed -- obviously the case from looking at the documents. This Kathy O'Donnell would have written it -- probably in long hand -- and a typist (the small jp in the sig) typed it out. It is also obvious from the writing style that Kathy probably wrote this herself, and not a professional writer from the marketing department or outside contractor. Although perhaps not a "one-off," it definitely isn't polished as it would be if it were for public display. Different dates doesn't surprise me either. What marketing team (or in this case, Consumer Affairs) will complete this in one day? Especially if there was chaos in the office about an impending takeover... So, in the days in between, the letter was rewritten or was mis-typed or was typed from a different version. There are several possibilities. Unless there are extreme differences in the facts (date of Bermuda trip, rules of the competition, etc.) I would think that minor differences in the letter would be expected, not suspicious. And for the letterhead -- any business that has been around for a while has more than one style of letterhead. New one comes in, people use it immediately while others use up the old stuff first. Nobody writing to a 10-year old kid is going to be worried about consistency of the letterhead for something like this, he or she will just grab whatever is closest. ~G

I think "The Ataris" are, but I couldn't say for sure. ~G

If you have Acrobat, you can go to File -> Reduce File Size. Alternatively, go back to the creation program (e.g. Quark, Word, CorelDraw, whatever you used) and reprint the PDF using "Standard" or "Low Resolution" settings. The problem is mostly your photos. If you have a lot of them, which it sounds like you do, these photos will eat a lot of space. High Res settings for your PDF sound good at first, but that usually sets all photos at about 300dpi (used for printing presses), hence the big file size. Low Res settings will reduce the photos to about 72 dpi (great for on-screen viewing) and dramatically reduce the file size. You still may be in the mb range, but hopefully you can get it down to an e-mailable size (if you so desire...) Hope this helps, ~G

I think it's safe to say there are no "great" undersea games since none of these mentioned appear on many top ten lists. Dolphin was groundbreaking in its time because you had to play using sounds instead of visual -- perhaps the only one? I didn't much like it as a game, but I appreciated the uniqueness of it. I must admit I did like Atlantis in its day, probably because I never really got good enough for it to become monotonous. But I would question whether this is really an "undersea" game since you are actually firing into the air... Sea Wolf sounds like one I could get into, though I have never played it before (on the 2600, anyway). ~G

Or as justification - however slight - that the 2600 wasn't merely just for entertainment but also an educational tool, a selling point that worked for some people. Yes, I think it was a marketing tactic. I seem to remember reading somewhere that somebody complained to Atari it wasn't really a Video Computer System because there was no way for the user to program it. So, they came up with this, which technically fit the bill no matter how useless the program itself was -- couldn't save, couldn't create any real games, so what's the point?! I remember a similar thing happened with chess. As usual, Atari marketing got itself in a corner by having its own artists draw "screenshots". One was of a chess game, which they printed on the console box even though the cartridge didn't exist (I remember wondering about this at the time too...) So, they ended up putting out Chess because of the demand and claims of false advertising... ~G

One of the most famous ones is the one in Adventure where there is a 1 in 18 (I think...?) chance that the gold key will randomly be placed in the gold castle, effectively making it impossible to complete the game. ~G