TankedThomas

Good for a laugh. As for that video Atari uploaded, it's the exact same one from January (as @Flojomojo already pointed out, I see). Not just the video content, but the whole video listing. How the date is different, I'm not entirely sure (probably can be screwed with in the settings, though I've never seen fit to try). Even my down-vote from January is still there (again, like Flo's - I wrote all of this before I saw his comment hiding between the others, dammit). Trust me, I'd love to click it again, but then it'd just give them one less. It's definitely the same video. Hard to tell, but they had two "working" units at D-Cave so... I guess it's a real, working unit. Doesn't really tell us much of anything. Even if it worked perfectly, it'd still be crap, and they're still just running Windows 10.

I think I speak for everyone when I say: What a bloody mess. Also, we're in full lockdown as of tomorrow and the supermarkets can't even keep flour stocked, so no more tacos for a while, it seems.

Sounds like it would actually require more toilet paper. Something you can apparently only get by fighting for it at Woolworths now. A surprisingly thoughtful article from Huffpost. Thanks for sharing. And yes, I think they might, though in their minds, disagreeing = trolling = bullying = a declaration of war (or perhaps war itself). Or my cat, who'll decide she'd rather play. With claws and teeth. That's pretty one-sided entertainment... Kinda like us laughing at VCS backers, I suppose.

We know they're reading this thread and we haven't all thrown our money away to comment on IndieGoGo, so I agree that it's not really behind their backs... I thought he'd found my YouTube channel. Though he may have, since I chewed him out on YouTube too. I think he might have been the one who insulted me for it. As if I care what some goober thinks of my low-quality videos I made for fun. F1JV seems like the type you see on the evening news for some unspeakable crime. Dude is certifiably insane. But then again, that's like saying water is wet or that the sun will rise tomorrow. (Though you wouldn't know it with the mass panic lately). He needs to get help. It gets better though. Atari said they produced 100 pre-production units (with red, supposedly unfinished motherboards) to test their manufacturing process, then sent those to developers. That was in December/January, if I remember correctly. Then they did the "corrected" run with the blue motherboards approximately a month later. Another 100 units that they sent to developers. I don't remember if they said this outright but the implication was that they were replacing the first batch with the second batch. And now this would be a third exchange. So allegedly, Atari's (likely nonexistent) developers will have had three different models of dev kit by April. Within about four months. Which doesn't happen with dev kits because that would obviously be insane and unreasonable. So Atari are more than likely lying. And that's putting aside their whole spiel on Quality Assurance. I'm no expert on how QA is handled at factories, but their QA documents leave a lot to be desired. They seem very haphazard, almost as if they were thrown together just for this blog post. Which I'm sure can't be true because Atari aren't liars! I also find the wood grain stickers having quality problems laughable. It's just a sticker. How do you screw up the only two you've made?

Yeah, okay, that's amazing, I need that. But only if I can get it in blue.

I missed Taco Tuesday (we were out of lettuce), but I made it in time for Taco Thursday (even though it's now Friday here when I'm typing this). Okay, they're pretty basic, but they tasted damn good. Cajun chicken, lettuce, carrot, spring onion and the chilli sauce I showed previously (plus some cheese on one). Yeah, I'm not very exciting when it comes to salad things, but that seasoning is a whole other story. Not a huge fan of the standing taco shell thing they came up with, but I'll take what I can get. Next time, I need to make some soft taco shells. Or burritos. Or both.

They should get Tay AI to do the press releases. At least it'd be entertaining.

Man, some of those backers like F1JV and the Werner Bros. are just plain nasty, and that's not cool.

I'm enjoying all the excuses that these stupid virus is giving people. So many overreactions. Atari appesrs to be claiming that they can't even send emails or place home calls because of it. Heck I'm pretty sure they said they were writing a new blog post for the end of last week - whatever happened to that? (Rhetorical question; we already know). Not that any of Atari's excuses matter. Atari, you can't delay something that doesn't exist. You're still in the prototype phase. They should have sold a taco recipe book instead.

Mistakes were made.

Partially kidding - the stupidity of people just never ceases to amaze me. Kind of like how Picard keeps getting worse with every episode. At some point, you just have to wonder what went wrong with humanity that we managed to get to this point. I don't have any love for Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft any more and certainly think all three have a lot of room for improvement, but I still don't think Atari holds a candle to them (as no reasonable person would). To be fair, some of them seem legitimately mentally challenged, which is what bothers me so much about this - some of these people are clearly being taken advantage of by Atari because they don't know any better, and Atari is all too happy to take their money. It's certainly concerning either way... Part of me wishes they'd ditch the Switch and go back to making hanafuda cards full-time though. I guess sometimes I just like the simpler things. I know they still make some, but they're scarcely available outside of Japan and certainly never over here. I got a box of taco shells yesterday, so hopefully I'll have some photos next week! I think we ate all the nice meat though so it'll probably be relatively boring but oh well. They're still tacos, dammit!

That's fantastic. Now we have to make this real. Alternatively, every comments section of VCS videos. By the way F1JV, I want to be a taco when I grow up, not a buffoon. It appears to just be an interest check... which doesn't make much sense considering they've still got pre-orders open on their site as far as I'm aware, plus Walmart and GameStop. Funny thing about GameStop/EB Games though - you can literally pre-order something that doesn't (yet) exist. Most of them will happily take your money. So I guess you should go pre-order your 128-bit Atari Jaguar 2 right now. Seriously though, I don't know how people actually manage to delude themselves this much...

It's pretty sad that people are still believing in and defending Atari at this point... I guess when in doubt, just call people evil hater taco trolls. I didn't follow the Spectrum Next project (though I'm hoping to get in on the next batch), but from my understanding, they were upfront with backers, were a small but passionate and dedicated team, and even managed to deliver original games for the system (with more in the works). And yet a (relatively) big company like Atari only has a prototype or two with which they're still stringing people along whilst showing no real progress for three yesrs, and now they're trying to con even MORE naÏve people into buying their overpriced, underpowered and guaranteed-to-cook-Itself PC. Keep in mind that the press release posted here yesterday discusses three other upcoming mobile games. So now that's four (or is it five?) upcoming mobile games from Atari (all of which sound terrible) and yet STILL not a single new game announced for the VCS.

This really is beginning to look more and more like the Vega+ every day. A small amount of units that only some backers will get before the whole thing implodes? Looks like we're heading that way after all...

Are you being sarcastic? I genuinely can't tell at this point.

I suppose it's a case of "the enemy of my enemy", etc., though it seems like Hyperkin at least tried to be decent about the Retron 77. Previous products... Well, everyone is aware of that stuff. Brazen abuse of things like GPL is why I won't buy products from a company like that, though I admit I'm still considering the Retron 77 because it appears to be all above-board. This is also the main reason (but not the only one) that I've refused to buy THEC64. What I really want to know is why Atari SA thought this lawsuit was a good idea. Sure, against a small company, they could easily get a default judgement as we've already seen because the other party can't even afford to defend themselves, but Hyperkin can - either they actually expected to win (in which case, they're crazy), or they're just trying to sink Hyperkin by hurling legal fees at them (which could backfire if Atari has to pay those in the end). Maybe Curt has a better explanation. The most important question though is whether Atari bought the rights to the Net Jet from Hasbro.

If you're ol' PDubs or like throwing your money away, then sure, but throwing your money away haphazardly isn't an investment - it's stupidity. At that point, you may as well donate money to charities instead. That's a much better use of unwanted cash than filling Fred's coffer.

I can't top the tailor himself. Well-played, sir. This thread never ceases to get better.

It's Atari SA. They ABSOLUTELY use slave labour. Feargal Mac and Rob Wyatt, at the very least. Probably many more. Same place as their totally finished OS: Tacoland. But not the good Tacoland that has Taco Tuesdays, Taco Thursdays, and the all-you-can-eat Taco Birthday Tacos (it needs "taco" twice because it's that epic), and even has a taco mascot handing out tiny tacos to all the good boys and girls. It's the Tacoland in the back alley of the most dishevelled part of town that everyone avoids because you'll lose your tyres before you even find a place to park, and if you somehow manage to get home intact that evening, their health and safety-defying tacos will have the last laugh as they carry out their revenge (hopefully before you get near the bedsheets).

Star Trek memes almost make me forget about Atari conning everyone. Though I'm not sure they can erase the awful memories of what has been done to that poor franchise as of late, unfortunately. Maybe they're taking a page out of Atari's playbook. "THE GOOD GUYS ARE NOW THE BAD GUYS! WE SUBVERTED YOUR EXPECTATIONS!"

I appreciate your lengthy response. I won't hijack the thread with another massive reply but it seems I did indeed miss a few options (and I wasn't aware there was DLC - I honestly never noticed it on the store page). And the Adventure achievement. Whoops! I admit I'm still not entirely sold on Atari Vault (even though I bought it) but, as you pointed out, Flashback licensing is obviously a whole different beast. Still, they feel like competing products, at least to some extent. Anyway, I just wanted to close out by saying that, especially after reading through all your other replies here, it's clear to me that you and the rest of the dev team really care about these games and making sure your work is impeccable, and I admire that love and dedication. If nothing else, as I said previously, the emulation seems spot-on to me. I do wish we could give more money to the developers and less to people like ol' Fred though, but I suppose that's just business. Oh, and I'm glad I'm not the only one who wanted Battlezone. To be fair, Rocket League will run well on a figurative toaster. I'd say it's a somewhat deceptive demonstration for showing off the power of hardware. Some of the games that NVIDIA and AMD shill with their GPUs tend to be much better candidates for showing off the performance. It's entirely possible the hardware isn't tuned well. The Ryzen Embedded chips appear to be a bit problematic. But nobody can say for sure. All I know is that Atari Vault ran flawless for me on Linux and my GPU was barely being taxed, so the VCS hardware should theoretically run it effortlessly too. Does it count that I was thinking about them whilst writing that long post yesterday...?

Honestly, some of it is just the game selection. I realise licensing costs money but Activision games are kind of important for the 2600. Maybe some of the Epyx games, even. I was hoping there'd at least be Battlezone (not that I don't have two copies already, but still). It just feels like half the library (probably an exaggeration, to be fair) was sports games or duplicates of the arcade games (and, at least in most cases, the arcade version will typically be the better game to play). Lots of other filler-type games too, such as Blackjack. I like Blackjack, and I probably played that one the most on Atari Vault, to be honest, but I could play Blackjack on just about anything. I'm also a bit surprised that there are no 5200 nor 7800 games, and I didn't find Spacewar in the arcade section which seems kind of important at least history-wise. After all, it's called Atari Vault, not 2600 Vault. I was disappointed by the lack of emulator options - very few filters (mostly just scanlines on or off), including a lack of options for the background, and the list of resolutions really should have been a drop-down list (preferably with ratios included) instead of just scrolling through a whole bunch of them. Using only the keyboard, I couldn't find a way to scroll backwards between the three menu sections (I was expecting something such as Shift+Tab), but I could go forwards with Tab. Being able to bring up manuals during games would have been nice, and I honestly found the game options often more confusing than playing with the switches on the 2600 (I realise this won't be a problem for everyone, but I couldn't really get my head around it, especially for Adventure). Pong has acceleration on keyboard controls which is just awful, and you can't adjust the mouse sensitivity as far as I can tell. Finally, the achievements seem bizarre - obviously for such old games, they're ultimately just a novelty, but some range from difficult (then again, I suck at games, so don't mind me) to buggy (the Yars' Revenge one wouldn't unlock for me), but most importantly, only cover some games. I was surprised that something like Adventure didn't have any achievements but, if I remember correctly, Air-Sea Battle does. Don't get me wrong though - the emulation is solid overall, and it is certainly a way to play a bunch of old Atari games on modern hardware (even if the game selection is rather mediocre even compared to some of the Flashbacks). Though I have my criticisms, I don't think the development team did a horrible job, and I assume there's more than one of you on the boards, so I want to make it clear that my criticisms are not meant to be an attack on you nor your work, but aside from being highly critical of most things anyway (even with things I love, I'm always looking for ways to improve them), I just found it lacking overall, especially in game selection (which is, I assume, on Atari and not the dev team) and generally as Atari's big ticket item (or more accurately, the only item) for the VCS. Anyway, I'll shut up for now, but since I ended up with a developer responding, I thought I should give you a fair and honest reply. And to reiterate what I've probably made clear by now: I don't think (most of) the people working for Atari are bad people (i.e. the contractors). I just think the guys at the top are bad people (especially Fred) - the state of modern Atari truly saddens me.

Werner is a goober - not very sharp, and technically inept. He's impressed with things that can't even be proven, and things that you can do on any old PC but he doesn't know how to do. "Shill" is probably too nice a name for him. Definitely sounds like he's got a crap PC, and the equivalent skills to boot. Dude's comparing a cheap Logitech controller to a more expensive one. No surprise the more expensive one is better. Buy an Xbox One controller for your PC, Werner - it'll blow your mind. But enough ragging on him. I got Atari Vault from the Fanatical bundle the other day, but it's a good thing I wanted the other three games because wow, what a crappy, half-assed compilation. If it weren't for the arcade games, I'd probably say my original Flashback is better, and it certainly made me want to pick up my 2600 and play that instead (but it needs repairs first, unfortunately). But at least I could play Pong. And it ran on Linux. So much for being the VCS' killer app.

Too bad we've already established that it's only sheer incompetence which would cause that. Oh, and the Atari guy in the video I posted said it'll probably be out in April. Too bad the social media team didn't get that message! Not that this unfinished travesty will be out then, either. Which reminds me - they had blurred-out FCC numbers in one of the recent Medium posts. Don't know why they'd blur them out, maybe legal reasons, but is it possible to look up the FCC registrar to see if they indeed filed with them, or would we not know for sure (e.g. it's kept secret for X amount of time or we can't search by company/product name)? I'm not entirely sure how the FCC works but it'd be interesting to know if that were a ruse. Surely not at this point, but...

Found a couple of videos on YouTube from "pimpmyconsole". I don't believe these have been shared yet. The information conveyed here is... misleading at best. Amusing to watch, just for all the inaccuracies though. "It's essentially a jailbroken console." At least it's actually plugged in though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAdYHWE_vnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MuRvSaTnTI And Werner, since I know you're reading this thread, here's my parts list again to prove you wrong: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/8YghK4 And the other one (which is now cheaper than the first - it was previously more expensive): https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Cmk7vW Suck it.