I was a pre release tester for Parker Brothers atari games

[I was a pre release tester for Parker Brothers atari games]

19 hours ago, high voltage said:

Excellent great story. Thanks for sharing. It's not often you get an inside of the 'whats going on' within gaming companies.

Maybe because you and the old ladies tested the Parker games we have a great ratio of good games within the Parker range.

Did you know any programmers like Ed Temple or Mark Lesser or Laura Nikolich?

Parker Bros really did nothing more than slap labels on carts that arrived from where ever they made them, and my dad made the boxes. They really were more of a distributor than anything. Thats why when my dad told the front office about the popeye glitch they really had no idea what to do than grab the breakroom tv, an atari and whoever wasn't important to sit there is find it so they could report it to nintendo, or whomever was doing the actual creation of the game.

Sadly Parker Bros just boxed and labeled premade carts, all of their electronics where outsourced. I think at the time , Kenner and/or Tonka bought them as a parent company ( it was kenner/parker/tonka for a while , Coleco owned a piece of it at some point too ) , and the video games deal came with that.

[I was a pre release tester for Parker Brothers atari games]

5 hours ago, schuwalker said:

Pretty cool story...

 

Frogger II is one of my favorites that came from Parker Bros. Hearing that were able to play a prerelease of the Ewok game would be a priceless memory. Being a Star Wars nut... I used to salivate over that catalog showing that artwork - but it was never meant to be - least for a while.

 

Was hoping your dad would've brought that mysterious James Bond game home before we go that horrendous final version.

I forgot all about that awful bond game.   I got pretty good at it though. back then it didnt seem awful as much as it was hard. Now I got to crank up stella and give it a rip again lol . , I always loved Sky Skipper, Amadar, and Gyrus.   I liked the empire SW game and the Jedi one too.

[I was a pre release tester for Parker Brothers atari games]

13 hours ago, Sauron said:

Interesting story. Sounds like we had some of the same stomping grounds back in the early 80s. I was a born in Salem but lived in Peabody up until my family moved to Texas in '83, and I'm a year younger than you. I remember seeing the Salem, MA address on the box of my Frogger cart, and wondered what it would be like to see their headquarters. I think a lot of kids at that time would have killed to be in your position. Thanks for sharing your story.

Born in Salem, Moved to Danvers, then to Gloucester, I landed in Peabody in 89 , Higgins middle school for 7, 8 and Peabody Vets memorial HS for the rest of it   GO TANNERS!  lol

[I was a pre release tester for Parker Brothers atari games]

2 hours ago, zzip said:

That is...  odd.     I remember back then a lot of older people seemed dismissive or hostile towards video games,  so it's weird to think of them being hired as QA/playtesters for games

This was the early 80's I assure you they probably grabbed a cleaning lady or receptionist and said, here play this lol..  Context here is king...   in 1982 no one really had a VCR, or a cell phone to record footage....   it was on my little kid word that there was a glitch and Parker Bros was a very small, loose rules family run company for a long time.   It was the stone age for gaming back then for sure...     Much different times in general. Things were alot looser... and kinda halfassed...   I think thats what my dad found funny was to random out of touch old ladies trying to muddle through a " video game " ...   Video games were looked at like toys back then. 

[Wico controller for 5200]

I vaguely remember during my 5200 phase  like 10 years ago a guy on ebay was selling a home made adapter so you could use the 7800 gamepad instead of the wico, but still plug in the 5200 controller wico Y adapter style to get the keypad function .. if you could find one of those, THAT was the hands down best 5200 controller.

[I was a pre release tester for Parker Brothers atari games]

I just joined this forum to sort out some issues I was having with my flashback X but thought if any group of people would appreciate this life experience.. you all would.

 

I was born in 1975  My dad worked for Parker Brothers in Salem Ma from 1972 till the day they closed the factory and sent it all to china in 1993. He ran the bobst ( sp) machine.. basically 50% of every game box made from 1979 till the day they closed went through my dads machine while he was running it. He can open any parker brothers game box 79-93 and look at how the corners are seamed together and tell you if he or Barry the night guy did it.

 

somewhere in 82, 83 ish my dad started bringing home atari games. I never noticed it at first, I was like 8 or 9 but he would ask me questions about the games he would bring home....   My dad never cared for video games, so it always struck me a little odd... I had a really small black and white TV I won from cub scouts for selling candy.. EVERYONE loved my dad at Parker bros, so he took in the candy sales sheet and sold me enough in one day for the TV or the Bike prize lol ... I remember playing popeye on the B/W tv and finding a glitch in level 2 or 3 where the side shooting bullets couldnt be seen, or something like that and my dad told me that he told his boss, and they had 2 very old ladies in the office playing the game trying to get to the level to see the glitch....   I dont know why but that visual to this day still cracks me up.

one day he came home with 4 games. Montezuma's revenge,  and then these three has special instructions I could not 1. play them with friends, 2. trade them to my friends 3. Talk about them to my friends...   Frogger 2, Qberts cubes, and a labeless cart that had the ewok starwars game.    I had to give back the ewok cart almost right away.. but I held onto frogger 2 and qberts cube...   context is king here, at the time the game crash was starting but it wasnt a " game crash " back then, it was just atari wasnt selling anymore.   right around this time you could get an atari for about 50$ and raider or ET for 1$... my dad started coming home with huge boxes of new atari parker bros games he dumpster dove for. Atari800 computers, those nice Wico microswitch  red ball white button controllers. I had stacks of unopened games, I would trade with friends for non parker atari games, lol I had a nice racket going haha

 

Knowing then what I know now....   yikes, The stuff I should have kept that I lost or traded over the years.

 

I remember being 9 or 10 with that atari 800 keyboard thing and nothing else , no drives, nothing, not knowing basic, and thinking, this is junk and giving it away to a friend lol

 

.... and yes... we had every nerf thing you could think of ... i hate nerf ... those boomerangs never worked!!!   and every version of monopoly made lol

 

[Atari Flashback X is UI crashing / Corrupt game?]

7 hours ago, Draxxon said:

Is sounds like the kind of crash that happens when you have a rom in the /game folder with a bad file name.
like if the file name is just too damn long, it will crash the system like you described.

 

That was my thought, ive soft modded xbox's and done CFW for my nes and snes mini....   im new to the flashbacks, not sure how to get into it and change the file names.

[Atari Flashback X is UI crashing / Corrupt game?]

10 hours ago, MrFister said:

Updating over 0.1.2 with 0.1.5 should be ok.

If I were you , I would load up AndroidTools and in the advanced tab, I would select erase SN button, then the erase LBA button , once those are completed you should then select the 0.1.2.img you have, then hit erase flash.

Wait for that to finish, then back in the advanced tab, select the reset device button.  This will reboot back into AndroidTools.  Now flash the 0.1.2 fw, then reboot.  Then flash the 0.1.5 fw.

Then install Brads CFW.  If it still does that after that, you have a bad nand chip and there is nothing you could do about it.

 

 

Could you point me in the direction of " brads CFW " I want to give this a try , thanks so much!

 

Edit : im so stupid, its in the post right below this one lol ..   should I use the download in the first post, or was there updates to it in later posts?   thanks

[Atari Flashback X is UI crashing / Corrupt game?]

Update:   I found firmware  0.1.2 for the deluxe, I installed that and while I lost a handful of games ( I believe it was the 8 extra that came with the deluxe (S) model ( no biggie ... the system works...   What on earth could be causing the newer updates to crash page 2 in the game selection menus is beyond me...   id like to be able to install firmware that will allow me to add my own games on a flash drive, I dont have the dongle yet to test, so does anyone know if 0.1.2 for the X deluxe has usb games function?  Im happy with this FW if it does.   thanks!

[Atari Flashback X is UI crashing / Corrupt game?]

I have an Atari Flashback X deluxe, it had firmware 0.1.7  .. for some reason page 2, and selecting paddle games, freezes the UI .. I can still hear the music playing but I have to power cycle the system . I can got from page 1, 12, 11, 10 etc.. but once I hit page 2 in any direction, the UI freezes, same thing when I get to " paddle games " on the side menu.   Im thinking Breakout is the cause . page 2 is the B games, and breakout is the only paddle B game on the system .. I think?

 

I used the RKDevTool to erase the flash, and load FW 0.1.5  FW 0.1.18 ( for the non deluxe ) and someones custom FW I got from here....     Same issue no matter the FW im am using.

 

it has to be a bad rom or something...   Any ideas guys???  thanks!