The Night Phantom

quote: Originally posted by Atari-Jess: then why dont you go and make some more? I may be the answer man, but I'm not an Answer man.

It's been done: the Personal Game Programmer. Answer made this device, which is pretty rare; I think it was sold new only through mail.

quote: Originally posted by AtariDude: it is no wonder that E.T. was a bad game. I've always enjoyed E.T., from my childhood when it was new right on to today. For me the wonder is why nearly everyone who's played it not only insists that it is a bad game but seems to think it is intrinsically bad to the point of a contrary opinion being unthinkable. While we're on the subject: are those little “pills” E.T. keeps popping really Reese's Pieces?

You could also patronize one (or more) of the fine merchants listed on AtariAge's dealer links page (hey, how long have those “RATE THIS” mini-forms been there?). There are a lot of 2600-compatible joysticks to choose from out there, and these dealers will help you find the stick or sticks that are right for you. Good luck and have fun!

If ever you find the ultra-rare Michael Reeder edition, let us know!

quote: Originally posted by Heaven/TQA: in english you need less words My experience is that German often uses fewer words than English to express the same idea...at the price of being roughly 150% longer. It seems you guys like to take whole phrases or sentences and just remove the spaces.

quote: Originally posted by godsey1: What other label were made for this game? Many different labels, each featuring bold, stunning, even beautiful artwork...but all of them got torn up.

quote: Originally posted by Thomas Jentzsch: The problem is, that the whole filled areas had to flicker. And that is very annoying. Yes, you could try to reduce that with mixing playfield and player graphics, but that makes the kernel extremely complicated (or impossible) and requires some rather complicated setup code for the kernel too. In the end, I didn't find a solution to do it that way. As always, I'm glad Thomas is out there making this sort of effort. Thomas, can you compare/contrast this situation with the display of, say, the “dots” (frequently undotlike) in the Pac-Man games or the “mushrooms” in Centipede and Millipede? As a minimally informed 2600 programming layman, it seems to me that similar techniques could be used in a 2600 Qix as well.

From the Tunnel Runner entry in Digital Press' Collector's Guide (6th ed.): quote

quote: Originally posted by Markimus of K.: hey guys, could any of you that have this connector possible scan it? No need, a picture already appears on AtariAge's “How to Connect Your Old Videogame System” page. It's the one captioned “Coaxial (F-type) to Female RCA Adapter”.

Indeed, flickering Sparx would be rather appropriate, and I think a flickering Qix (or two ) wouldn't be so bad either.

quote: Originally posted by jahfish: i use the no. 1 product: For some reason, as the image loaded I expected it to turn out to be a bologna sandwich. quote: Originally posted by Set Abominae: You should sell it on eBay and tell everyone it's the ultra-rare "Michael Reeder" variation! The only one known to exist! Yeah, that's the ticket... Some fool'll pay you mega$$$ for it! Remember to say it was autographed by Michael Reeder.

quote: Originally posted by Matthew Vigor: You played video games on one of Jupiter's moons? I'm sure Z_a_n_z_a meant “in Europe”. Either that or “on Europa”.

quote: Originally posted by Eckhard Stolberg: The sad part about it is that German advertisers say that they are using English slogans or product names all the time because they think they can express themselves much better in that language. If their German really is worse than their English, I think they might have chosen the wrong profession. *LOL*!!! Vielen Dank for the explanation, Eckhard. This phenomenon is not unique to Germany. I've run into it in France as well (sorry, I don't remember any delicious examples off the top of my head). Indeed, the misuse of English as a marketing tool forms only one direction on a two-way street, as commercial interests in the English-speaking world are unafraid to misuse some “chic” foreign word to promote their products. In the US, at least, this doesn't happen too often to German—a mixed blessing in that it reflects an (ill-founded) attitude that the German language is not cool, with the possible exception of “Fahrvergnügen” (a word popularized by Volkswagen's advertising). Those of us who have come to know the German language of course know better: Deutsch ist sehr...Deutsch ist sehr...sehr... Hmm, what's the word I'm looking for? Oh, yes! Deutsch ist sehr cool. — Das Nachtphantom

Also, Nateo's friend might be confusing Sega with Midway, which did absorb (and recently evaporated) Atari Games, Inc.

quote: Originally posted by AtariDude: You can obtain the book at the following website: http://www.rolentpress.com The correct URL is http://www.rolentapress.com/

quote: Originally posted by Heaven/TQA: did i mentioned that i am carring a Atari body bag from infogrames? even young kids asked me where i get this... atari is alive... Um...body bag? That makes me question just how alive Atari is. Certainly Infogrames seems hell-bent on thrusting Atari into the grave... In any case, bitte schön, und viel Spaß! — Das Nachtphantom

quote: Originally posted by Clint Thompson: Ball Blazer was a blast! I remember it being a 2 player only game though, or can you play the computer? You can play against a computer opponent, termed a “droid”—remember, this is a Lucasfilm game! The droids come in nine selectable levels of difficulty. Interestingly, you can set the droid to be either player 2 or player 1. In fact, you can set up both players as droids and watch them combat each other! (Think Robot Wars in Rotofoils! )

quote: Originally posted by Mountain King: I remember this pretty vividly. Heavy Sixer -Combat Regular six switch -Combat Wood Grain 4 switch -Combat Sears Video Arcade -Target Fun Darth Vader -Combat Darth Vader Promotional -Combat and Pac-Man Atari 2600 Jr. -nothing but a joystick In the spirit of a recent topic: First cart was Combat Next, Pac-Man was pack-in (ugh) Jr. ain't got game

Based on the name of this topic, I thought you were going to talk about E.T. My heart goes out to you, Godsey1. Maybe it will help you to think of your cart as being a special edition “signed” by Leatherface himself...

face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote: Origi MoJoFLTR:It seems every time I find a neat game, it has "Michael Reeder" written all over it. Who is this kid anyways? I wanna slap him upside the head! Watch out. He may have been a kid in the '70s and '80s, but today he might be 250 lbs. of solid Marine-trained muscle who will teach you the true meaning of Combat.

I do have the Dual Control Module; unfortunately, I'm not in a position to provide images at this time. The pictures would be unlikely to wow you: the DCM is basically just a black piece of molded plastic: no decals, no Spy Hunter or Sega logo molded in, nothing but the stark simplicity of pure function...which I suppose is admirable in its own way.

quote: Originally posted by Smart Patrol: Controller Page That page is nowhere close to being a complete accounting, but it's a pretty darn good start, listing (I think) all the “primary” controllers. It's certainly been helpful to me several times; I'm glad it's there. There were so many third-party controllers (mostly joystick replacements) that a more or less complete listing poses quite the daunting challenge.

Maybe the switch from Combat to Pac-Man (in the US, at least) was occasioned by the negative word of mouth on Pac-Man that spread far and wide once the masses bought the game and found out what it was actually like. Unable to continue selling the cartridge like hotcakes on its own, perhaps Atari decided the best way to get rid of all those copies was to pack them in with the systems. The major problem for this theory is that Atari never packed in E.T.

Thanks for sharing your story, Adrian. I really liked it. quote: Originally posted by Adrian: All of my friends had an Atari (just "an Atari," none of this "VCS" or "2600" crap) back then, oh, around 1980 or so. Of course, in those days, the VCS/2600 was the only Atari system, excepting the home computers (considered an entirely different category by most) and the Pong units (already retired and also categorized differently because nonprogrammable). Today I sometimes find myself having to explain to laymen who ask me about “the Atari” that they could be referring to any of a number of different platforms (though usually it's the VCS that turns out to be foremost in their minds). Unfortunately, “Atari” is often the layman's shorthand for the entire video game industry of yore, the myriad different companies having been blended into a single entity by the melting pot of memory.