TankedThomas

March 26, 2020

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.

6 hours ago, Phill.T said:

Is that just a plastic case with a hdmi extension cable going through it?

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.

March 24, 2020

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.

March 23, 2020

12 hours ago, Spriggy said:

Shitloads! Pity they can't be used as an alternative to TP.

Sounds like it would actually require more toilet paper.

Something you can apparently only get by fighting for it at Woolworths now.

2 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

Was looking up stuff and this article got me thinking about how Atari was acting like they were being bullied. They might want to read this. They might learn something.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.huffpost.com/entry/bullying_b_2188819/amp

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).

2 hours ago, frankodragon said:

Atari is like those dogs that beg to be petted, but when they do get petted, they start growling.

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.

March 22, 2020

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...

On 3/20/2020 at 2:44 PM, TACODON said:

I'd say I ruffled some feathers over on the IGG page. Though I'm not sure what model trains and cereal and six grade have to do with any of this?

Some really nasty behavior over there.

I thought he'd found my YouTube channel. :ponder:

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.

On 3/20/2020 at 9:41 PM, Paul Slocum said:

This is the best part, they have to send the 500 units to their hundreds of developers:

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?

March 19, 2020

6 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

This one is train-related! Choo-choo!! 🚆

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

March 19, 2020

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.

March 18, 2020

5 hours ago, Flojomojo said:

"PONG is in our DNA."

I feel like most of their talking points could be handled by a bot at this point.

They should get Tay AI to do the press releases.

At least it'd be entertaining.

March 18, 2020

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

March 17, 2020

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.

March 16, 2020

1 hour ago, joeatari1 said:

Just reliving old memories...

Mistakes were made.

March 14, 2020

On 3/13/2020 at 9:22 AM, racerx said:

Are you kidding? There are actually people convinced that much of the negativity comes from people that are worried that Atari is a threat to their beloved Big Three.

You can't make this stuff up.

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).

On 3/13/2020 at 1:23 PM, racerx said:

Well, he's doubled down. Apparently Nintendo knows Atari's their daddy, and Microsoft and Sony are scared because Nintendo's scared.

Seriously...why do so many backers seem to be mentally challenged and/or certifiably insane?

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...

On 3/14/2020 at 6:36 AM, DurradonXylles said:

Nintendo has also existed for almost 130 years, and learned to adapt several times over during that period.

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.

On 3/14/2020 at 6:48 AM, OCAT said:

With all the local stores with barren shelves in the strategic sections ie: cleaning supplies, pharmacy goods, canned foods stuffs and frozen veggies, I would like to remind people to stock up on Taco kits.

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!

March 12, 2020

19 hours ago, Nathan Strum said:

Evil Hater Taco Trolls™ sounds like one of those Milton Bradley board games from the 70's. Just needs the Pop-O-Matic™ dice.

(Kids shouting) "Evil Hater Taco Trolls! Evil Hater Taco Trolls!"

(Narrator) "Those Evil Hater Taco Trolls are back! Can you stop 'em? Move your player around the board using the Pop-O-Matic dice! Land on the right square, and you can send those Evil Hater Taco Trolls back under the rock they crawled out from!"

(Kid) "Take that Evil Hater Taco Troll!!" (Kid slams plastic "AtariAge" rock over the Evil Hater Taco Troll in the center of the board)

(Narrator) "But don't land on William Shatner!"

(Kid lands on picture of William Shatner wearing a Mariachi outfit, "Jarabe Tapatio" starts playing from a tiny little speaker)

(Kid) "Oh no! Now I have to eat a taco!"

(Other kids, laughing) "Oh no! Es muy mal!"

(Kid, grimacing, picks up a fake plastic taco, and shoves it into the face of his player piece - a tiny, plastic Michael Arzt)

(Kid) "Nom, nom, nom!"

(Narrator) "Choose from all of your favorite AtariLand characters! Arzty-Farzty! Cheesy-Chezzy! Frugal-Feargal! And Hands-Down-The-Back-Of-His-Pants-Wyatt!"
(Kid, moving piece, landing on a square, cringes) "Oh no! Mike Kennedy!! Now I have to start all over again!"

(Kids shouting) "Evil Hater Taco Trolls! Evil Hater Taco Trolls!"

(Narrator) "That's Evil Hater Taco Trolls!! Coming soon from Atari!"

(Narrator, in fast, lower voice) "Evil Hater Taco Trolls requires some assembly. Evil Hater Taco Trolls will not work with the AtariVCS, but you can stream it for $5 and play it on a Raspberry Pi. Netflix not included."

That's fantastic. Now we have to make this real.

5 hours ago, digdugnate said:

Something about F1JV's IGG post seems eerily familiar- almost like there was a YouTube channel that had Gaming Videos with similar type language. 🤔

Alternatively, every comments section of VCS videos.

By the way F1JV, I want to be a taco when I grow up, not a buffoon. :_(

28 minutes ago, jhd said:

Is this an actual source of revenue (i.e. are people pre-paying for the units), or is it just a way to express interest in maybe, someday buying a system? The wording is unclear.

It seems to be the consensus around here that Atari is desperate for cash, so perhaps this is a way for them to fund the production of units for backers -- almost like a pyramid scheme where the new investors' money is used to repay those who got involved earlier.

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...

March 11, 2020

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.

March 11, 2020

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...

March 9, 2020

3 hours ago, Mockduck said:

Y'all were laughing at Atari's stock but given the crappy day(s) in the markets WHO IS LAUGHING NOW!!!! HAHAHAHAHAH:

My Pong-based speculation is totally gonna make me a billionaire as defined by me. You thought this was a $20 joke investment? No! Doing way better than the couple of bucks I buried in the backyard then forgot where I dug it as a kid.

For other big-money investors like myself out there I strongly suggest buying crappy stocks that stay crappy. At least then you won't be disappointed or scared.

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

March 9, 2020

49 minutes ago, godslabrat said:

The hilarious thing is that Hyperkin has made a habit out of using IP they have no right to use... and they're getting the runaround on a console they actually did legit!!

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.

March 8, 2020

1 hour ago, TwoShedsWilson said:

It's one of those things you invest in because of a love of the product, not so much I want to get rich.

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.

March 6, 2020

I can't top the tailor himself.

Well-played, sir.

This thread never ceases to get better.

March 5, 2020

14 hours ago, Mikebloke said:

Does anyone know which factory the VCS is being produced in? At the risk of delving into politics again, several factories in both central and especially Eastern China have been indicted in a report by an Australian NGO regarding the export of Uighurs from Western China for the use of slave labour.

It's Atari SA. They ABSOLUTELY use slave labour.

Feargal Mac and Rob Wyatt, at the very least. Probably many more.

10 hours ago, 8Bitjunkie said:

So, where are the games?!?

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).

March 3, 2020

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!"

March 3, 2020

On 3/3/2020 at 8:05 AM, JeffVav said:

Thanks for the reply. I think the common misunderstanding is that many assume Atari Vault is a collection of games for "the" Atari (i.e. Atari 2600 console), not games from Atari. The initial release contains just about every Atari-owned arcade game from Lunar Lander forward (excluding I, Robot, and the two GCC games, Food Fight and Quantum) plus Pong, and every released Atari 2600 game that Atari still owned. They weren't put in as filler, but rather they had us put in everything they had rights to. It confuses things further when boxes that actually had the Atari name on them (as opposed to third-party games like Activision) were the well-known (for good or bad reasons) titles that were actually once-licensed games they'll never get again: Space Invaders, Pac-Man, E.T., Superman, ...

Atari Flashback is not the same product. That is a compilation of game for "the" Atari (2600). Consumer licensing is a little different. If you approach, say, Activision to licence their games for a platform that they also make games for (PC, console, mobile), they'll probably say no, in case they want to do something in that space. But they don't sell hardware at Walmart, so if you want to licence their games for a Flashback-style box, you talk to a different department and the powers-that-be see no conflict of interest with their internal teams to take your cheque, and so that happens. That's why Flashback can have games the PC and console releases can't.

So, if you're looking for Atari 2600 games rather than Atari's games, I can definitely see how people would find Flashback appealing.

We'd love to have the true compendium of our youth as much as you, and we harass our clients on our collective behalf on this as much as possible, but business realities limit how far they can go. (One of my former contacts who will remain nameless got quite tired of me saying "too bad you don't own Battlezone anymore".)

Space War was a 1962 computer game that wasn't made by Atari. Do you mean Computer Space? I don't think the current Atari has the rights to it.

For Atari 5200, guess you don't have the DLC then.

So, roughly speaking, Atari Vault is the PC version of Atari's Greatest Hits on iPhone, which was Atari Greatest Hits on Nintendo DS. That lineage comes from two volumes of 50 games that became a 100-game app. At the time the DS titles were made, it wasn't thought financially viable to make a third cart with the 70s games, 5200, or 7800 games. (DS carts are expensive.) Ironically, the thought was seeing multiple versions of Asteroids (arcade, 2600, 5200, 7800) would be seen as filler, and the average person wouldn't even know about the 5200 or 7800, because they weren't a part of pop culture the way the 2600 was. By the time the console Atari Flashback Classics and PC Atari Vault was made, a demand for these games became evident, so that led to Atari Flashback Classics Volume 3 and the Atari Vault DLC, which included most of Atari's games from the 70s, and every Atari 5200 game Atari released (and many they didn't). You can see that they held nothing back they owned on the Atari 2600 side in the earlier releases, since every Atari 2600 game in the DLC/Volume 3 is a prototype. (Even the original 100 had to resort to putting the Stunt Cycle prototype in to replace Battlezone when it was sold.) I imagine if the DLC did sufficiently well, one could expect them commission another compilation drawing from, say, 7800, Lynx, maybe Jaguar? (Thing is, Jaguar emulation is a comparatively huge investment, so confidence would have to be high for anyone to sensibly consider it.)

Fair enough. We appreciate the feedback. On the menus vs. switches, one of the big criticisms of the earlier releases was from people who were experiencing the Atari 2600 for the first time, so the game select menus were there to make it a bit more accessible to them. They can of course be disabled in the options so you can use the switches instead. (I prefer the switches too.)

You can adjust the sensitivity for the mouse. Pong (and many of the paddle/spinner/trackball games) have two operating modes for the mouse in Atari Vault: "Follow Mouse" and "Paddle". In "Follow Mouse" mode, your paddle moves to wherever your mouse cursor is, so the sensitivity in that case isn't adjustable (except to the extent you can adjust your desktop mouse sensitivity). The thought was that people might enjoy using the travel they're used to for their desktop, relying on muscle memory. You can see the same control scheme more obviously in Centipede, where the shooter is limited to how fast it can go, so you can actually see it chase the mouse pointer if you move fast enough.

The "Paddle" mode is probably what you're looking for. In that mode, there's an independent sensitivity setting. To switch modes, go into Options > Controls, click the Mouse icon, then click the box which says "Follow Mouse". It'll toggle to "Paddle".

We put a tonne of control options (and other options) in there to try to satisfy all tastes, but the defaults tend to be for the casual user. (The design directive behind Vault was to make the games more accessible, but we wanted to keep the familiar options for hardcore retrogamers, which led to there being so many options.) It'd probably benefit from a manual, if people still made or read manuals.

There is an Adventure achievement. It's called Stealthy:

There are 100 games in the base package, so the original 12 were limited to the more popular games, generally speaking. The DLC added 50 more-obscure games but another 12 new achievements, which is why half of them seem to be for obscure games. So, because of the DLC, half the achievements are from the top 12% of the Atari catalogue and the other half are from 24% of the "bottom third" of the catalogue, so to speak, which probably explains the odd mix.

Re: Yars' Revenge, the Swirl has to be in-flight to unlock the achievement.

Response to the achievements has definitely been mixed. The thought behind them was that old-school gamers expect a proper challenge. So, yes, there's a mixture of easy and ridiculous in there. Not everyone was thrilled with our choices.

Anyway, again, thanks for your feedback. We do care a lot about these games. In fact, about 1/3 of the content comes from my own collection, and checked against my original family heavy-sixer purchased Christmas of 1977 (via Cuttlecart in the case of games where I don't have the original carts on hand). Being a compilation of titles from a specific era that we have released on various platforms for decades now(!), it's hard to bring something new to it each time. There's only so many times you can listen to Nolan tell the hot tub story and view pictures of plush Centipedes. (In that vein, the DS releases had an Atari 400 emulator and Army Battlezone, if you're lucky enough to have them. The online multiplayer was one of our primary new contributions to Atari Vault/Atari Flashback Classics round.) So if there's any way we can still push it further and bring more value to people interested in getting it for their latest platforms, we're eager to learn. We're not just out here looking for praise, we very much value criticism, too. That's why I asked.

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.

19 hours ago, Agillig said:

They posted a video of the system running Rocket League today. The quality of the video isn't the greatest (as usual), but as best I could tell, the game was running smoothly. Seems odd that it could run such a modern game that has pretty decent graphics, but they can't get vintage games to run correctly.

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.

19 hours ago, Zor said:

Isn't it likely that the Atari vault games run exactly the same as on any other Linux pc, neither better (like one fan pretended) nor worse ( as another said) ?

The thing about the games not being adapted to modern cpu clocks sounded very weird, unless it was already a problem with the vault.

They clearly have developed close to nothing, why the vault would be anything else, better or worse, than what already available ?

( And maybe pong is just shit with a standard controller ?)

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.

16 hours ago, lingyi said:

Hey! What's will all the posts without any mention of tacos! TACOS! TACOS! TACOS! 😍

I had Jack in the Box mini tacos today and I was pleasantly surprised that the were actually pretty good. They came with some kind of creamy dipping sauce, but were pretty tasty all by themselves. Helped that they were freshly made and steaming hot. Next time I'm buying some to bring home and use them instead of tortilla chips for my nachos!

Does it count that I was thinking about them whilst writing that long post yesterday...?

March 2, 2020

9 hours ago, JeffVav said:

Sad to hear that. Do you want to elaborate on how it was crappy and half-assed? (Not being sarcastic here. Genuinely want to learn where we fell short. I'm going to assume it's not just the lack of Activision etc. games which are missing for hopefully-obvious reasons.)

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.

March 2, 2020

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.

March 1, 2020

1 hour ago, Agillig said:

Well, everyone can relax. The reason those 35 year old games didn't run right is because the Atari VCS is no where close to being finished. Ummm...yay?

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...

March 1, 2020

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." :dunce: