Raiu

This might be a good time to inform or remind people that all forms of adblocking will stop working in Chrome in less than two months, so you might want to switch to Firefox anyway instead of wasting time trying to get Chrome to download .bin files. (Yeah, ironic that Chrome blocks claims the things you want to download are spam and malware and forces you to go around it, but will soon refuse to let you block spam and malware as long as they're served in the form of ads)

They are by the same developers, Audacity Games: https://adgm.us/portal/index.html Other than that, all that's really known is that it was supposed to be released a couple of years ago.

Probably, but not for another half-century or so.

Apollo wasn't exactly a tiny fly-by-night company, but they also weren't very successful. I remember enjoying Lost Luggage as the joystick-based Kaboom/Avalanche clone that it was, but the company went out of business two months after Lost Luggage was released.

Makes me wonder whether Curt Vendel would have been on Atari's shortlist of people to hire. (Makes me wonder, and makes me sad)

https://tenor.com/view/mr-incredible-incredibles-i-cant-i-cant-lose-you-im-not-strong-gif-16437924

Not just Great Tiger, that's the "match start" theme from the original arcade Punch-Out!!, so it predates the NES as a whole, let alone Defender II for NES. https://youtu.be/1T8hoeVpdV0?t=41 Defender II's version segues into a riff on the Star Wars theme. But Defender II's "Stage Clear" theme is also the Punch-Out!! losing theme. Finally, the explosion noise when you destroy an enemy in Defender II is the same sound effect as a character hitting the canvas in Punch-Out!! (arcade and NES). I'm not sure which came first, but my hunch is that the arcade game from 1984 probably came before the game with a 1988 copyright on the 1985 console.

I think it could incorporate some ideas from Raiders of the Lost Ark (also one of my favorite "Adventure Territory" games for the 2600, and the only other one where you could attack enemies): multiple weapons, a small but limited inventory, multiple secret paths that only open if you have the right item, etc.

I think Bentley Bear would make a good mascot, both because he's a classic character, and because the character is gameplay-agnostic. You could transport Bentley and the other characters into different scenarios and different situations without too much difficulty: Berthilda The Witch and her magically-animated minions stir up trouble somewhere, and here comes Bentley Bear and his magic hat to save the day. (Like Mr. Do, if Universal still existed and needed a mascot) And even if he's not that well-known right now, that's no problem that a really good and popular game couldn't solve. (The trick is not to half-ass it, it has to be a genuinely good game)

Brutus was created because King Features Syndicate mistakenly thought that Bluto was created and owned by Famous Studios/Paramount Studios, when it turns out that Bluto had been created for the comic strip. They didn't figure it out for decades, but when they did, the name reverted back to Bluto. (And, later, Bluto and Brutus were established as separate characters, twin brothers)

More than that, for Fireworld, the only way to have won the contest is to have scoured the comic without playing the game, because they never put the clues into the game, only placeholders 00 through 09.

... Meh. Raising an unemployed person's hopes isn't fun. 😠

Dang, that was not there when I checked it yesterday. I've had quite a bit of forum moderator experience (Dofus!) ... hold on, it's *still* not there right now. I just see the first two, not the moderator position. What's going on?

Yeah, I was mostly kidding (mainly because I'd already checked that page). I am a programmer, not a sales or e-commerce manager.

.... this has nothing to do with Atari Age, this is just me wistfully sighing at people who work at video game companies getting to meet people who work at other video game companies. (My wife works at Bandai Namco EU. This week she's in Japan talking to people from the companies who develop the game that BN publishes. I keep sending out applications at game companies and never even getting interviews) .... is Atari hiring?

On the subject of the split, Atari Games was rather successful for a while the Atari consumer division was struggling. Marble Madness, Paperboy, Gauntlet/Gauntlet II, 720°, Blasteroids, Cyberball/Cyberball 2072, Klax, Tetris (!), and Rampart were always popular in the local arcades, and Primal Rage and even Pit Fighter grabbed attention even if they were ultimately panned. That's not a complete list. On the subject of the 7800, I honestly think it would have done better if it had been released in 1984, rather than held back until the NES was already dominating the market to try to compete with it. It didn't have a killer app like Nintendo did with Super Mario Bros, most of the first wave of games were the same old arcade ports that the 2600 and 5200 and most computer systems already had, and the tech was noticeably outdated in 1986 (with graphics that were still nowhere near arcade-perfect and sound effects that ... well, it used the 2600's sound chip, so nuff said there). (On the subject of Atari Age being bought by Atari, I still ain't made my mind up yet about Toledo whether it'll ultimately be a good thing. I'm going to just wait and see. I'm cautiously optimistic, even if I still don't exactly like it)

Ah, so it's basically the enshittification of technology. "Hey, guys, I know how we can make more money! Let's make something that's worse and charge more for it!" "Great plan! Also, you're fired so we don't have to pay you for your idea!" ... sometimes I hate the 2020s.

It's not fair to keep asking "What should Albert have done, if not this?" I can know I don't like something (and why) without necessarily being able to come up with alternatives. Even if the current version of Atari follows through on all of its promises, there's no telling how long this version of Atari will exist. The next CEO could just as easily decide to chuck classic games, chuck the Atari age website, chuck video games entirely, and become a Cryptocurrency and NFT-focused company. (That may sound ridiculous, but it's literally what a company called Enjin just did. For fourteen years, Enjin used to be about building websites and forums, and was used extensively by MMORPG guilds and Discord roleplaying groups, and then they shut the whole thing down to dive 100% into NFTs and the blockchain instead) So, yeah, I'm pessimistic. But any real downsides won't be apparent until months if not years down the line, when someone high up at Atari decides this site isn't pulling its weight and decides to enforce a drastic redesign. Or when the Atariage logo is suddenly replaced with a bored ape.

Especially since, like I said, the Flashback 2 had a 2600-on-a-chip technology two decades ago, and surely it could be made even smaller and cheaper now, 18 years later. The 7800 would still have to be emulated, but there's no reason to not work on a similar 7800-on-a-chip. Who has the rights to that technology?

Atari Inc and Atari Interactive are both subsidiaries of the parent company, Atari SA.

I would think it's a matter of distinguishing Atari, the parent company, from its two subsidiaries also named Atari. So they're Atari SA, Atari Interactive, and Atari Inc, rather than Atari, Atari, and Atari (plus Atari, the original configuration of the company from the 1970s, Atari, the company that split off from that company, and Atari the other company that split off from that company.... there's a lot of Ataris over the years, including right now, is what I'm saying here)

The funny part is that I doubt Warner even knows it.

I mean, not speaking for CapitanClassic here... but it's mainly there's still tons of other places to get those ROMs, but it was nice being able to grab them individually (most collections are a .zip file of every ROM ever found) without having to go to some sketchy warez site. (Do the kids still say "warez"?)

Okay, the other thing I want to know... TrogdarRobusto, is that supposed to be TrogdorRobusto? Do you have the skills of an artist?