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Hey guys, I'm putting together a list of the best Atari 8-bit games for Retro Gamer magazine. It would be great if you could tell us your top 5 favourite games and why and we'll put some of the quotes in the mag. The machine largely passed me in the UK, so I though it would make more sense to come to a US-based forum. Darran

Glad you liked the article. I actually did play every single game and wrote pieces on all of them, but we had to cut 15 due to space

Apologies for this post, but it's quite a big deal and your memebers should find it of interest As it features a piece on the videogame crash by Marty Goldberg and David Crane has written an article about the technical tricks he used while working on the Atari 2600. Here's the content Developer Autographs Eastern Blocks: The Story Of Game Boy Tetris Baer's Odyssey (interview with Ralph Baer) The Making Of Grand Theft Auto John Romero Discusses Dangerous Dave Crash And Burn (The Videogame Crash) The Music Man (An Interview with Rob Hubbard) Inside The ZX Spectrum David Braben discusses Elite David Crane's Tricks Of The Trade (David discusses the many Atari 2600 techniques he created) The Making Of Sonic The Hedgehog with Yuji Naka A Moment With Mark Jones 100 Classic Gaming Moments In The Chair with Andrew Braybrook RG Rampage - A Commodore 64 Type In Game Eugene Jarvis discusses Robotron: 2084 Issue 1 Contents Sinclair Researched (the story of sinclair) Return Of The Rings (the videogames based on Lord Of The Rings) Hall Of The Miner King (Jet Set Willy Feature) Top 100 Retro Games Mastertronic A History Street Fighting Clan (story of Street Fighter) Licence To Kill (videogame nasties) 1983 Advertising Gallery Emulation Nation (the best emulators) If you don't want to miss this special issue you can buy it directly from www.imagineshop.co.uk

I'm glad you enjoyed the feature. I'm more than happy to put more Lynx coverage in the magazine, and have wanted to do a piece on homebrew projects for quite some time. Unfortunately barriers have been in the way in the past, but we might be able to get something sorted in the new year.

The article will be in our issue for 8th of December. I'm going to get it checked with Marty G, chase a few things with a couple of the developers and it's all good. There's also an insane amount of great content that I just couldn't fit in. I'll be posting this on the forums.

Well that's the list done. I'm not going to include Battlezone as it's not the original game. I'm doing the same for Super Asteroids and Super Missile Command, I'm not covering Pinball Jam in detail either. I'm also ignoring unreleased games (although all the above will be included within the feature). Thanks for the help I've received though, it's been really useful.

Shanghai was a Mahjong game [the first one I got addicted to as a matter of fact] and not based on any coin op as far as I know. Turbo Sub was definitely not an arcade port. Ed Schneider worked on that at Atari with Steve Ryno (designer) , Craig Ericson (producer) Bob Nagel (Artist), Rob Mariani(Aritist) while I was working on Toki. I don't recall if that was the EXACT team but they all were there and I *think* they worked on it. Thank you

Thanks for the info JohnBuell. I've added Elvira and I'll be adding Battlezone and Super Asteroids, due to them being enhanced. It's admittedly a grey area, but I'd rather include them than not bother. Interesting about Checkered Flag, I'll ask Jerome about that as you'd think they'd just make a port.

Is that official, or just not a good conversion? For example Buggy Boy on the C64 is a port of the arcade game, but not really anything like it.

We are still going, winning awards and selling very well thanks We're normally in Smiths

I'm aiming to individually highlight each released arcade conversion for the Lynx and want to make sure I haven't missed any out. A.P.B. Block Out Checkered Flag Double Dragon Hard Drivin’ Hydra Joust KLAX MS Pac-Man Ninja Gaiden Pac-Land Paperboy Pit-Fighter Qix Raiden Rampage Rampart Roadblasters Robotron 2084 Rygar S.T.U.N. Runner Steel Talons Super Off-Road Toki Tournament Cyberball Xenophobe Xybots I'm not sure if the following 2 sports games are actual ports. Hockey? NFL Football? Shanghai? Also I noticed that there is a Shanghai arcade game, but again, am not sure this is a port. Super Asteroids? Not including this as they are enhanced versions Turbo Sub Again there is a Turbo Sub arcade game, but it looks like a different game Any advice greatly appreciated

Hopefully you won't be disappointed. I've got some wonderful stuff from Jerome Strach explaining the general process of porting an arcade game to the Lynx, while Mr Williamson has given me some ridiculously comprehensive techy stuff about the Lynx's hardware capabilities and why it was so well suited to arcade ports. This has taken a very long time to put together and it's been a slow and laborious process (not helped by losing data) but it's finally coming together. Hopefully it will do the Lynx justice, I think it will.

A hard drive crash put me massively behind on this. Over a year in fact! I've managed to find most of the content (although I've lost Eric Ginner's details) but rest assured I'm back on course to make this the best damned feature on the arcade ports of the Atari Lynx that you ever did see.

Glad to hear people are enjoying the article and the magazine. Yes we will cover old ground, but this is more to do with us wanting to do our versions. I've been on the magazine since it's relaunch and I just like having the final say on stuff There was a subscription discount originally for US subs, but I think that may have finished. I'll look into it and see what's happening. Darran

Hi guys, I hope all is well Martin Goldberg is putting together a great article about the 5200 for us, but we're having problems locating a machine. I understand these are quite rare and precious to people, so I was wondering if anyone would be interested in taking some high quality photos for us to accompany the article. We would of course give you full credit and get an issue or two out to you. If you could pm me or contact me at [email protected] I'd greatly appreciate it. Darran Retro Gamer

Have you got proof of that? I've never known anyone with a Lynx, I know loads of UK gamers who had Game Gear. Not conclusive I know, but I find it hard to believe it was more popular. Would love to be proven wrong though as I love the Lynx

We interviewed the creators of the Lynx quite a few issues back and they explained their pitch to Nintendo in full. They were boasting about how it was going to be the greatest handheld console of all time (bearing in mind that this was while they were still getting funding for the project) and put forward this massive pitch to Yamuachi Nintendo's then president. He simply carried on listening to them and waited for them to finish. As soon as they had, he motioned for a member of staff who wheeled out a trolly. On it was an already completed Game Boy linked to another and playing Tetris. That was when the Epyx guys knew they never stood a chance. As nice an idea as the Lynx was, Nintendo would have nnever taking it on, because it represent everything they hate about console development (costly parts, unproven technology and so on). It's a nice dream, but that's all it ever will be.

More updates. I now have the coder for Stun runner (which will be revealed in the article) I'm in talk with the person in charge of Lynx developer support, who's revealing a lot of interesting stuff. I'll hopefully have access to the coder behind Hard Driving and Steel Talons Oh and potential news on a Sega port of Shinobi Needless to say, all this additional stuff I've been finding means the article may be pushed back a month, it depends on how quickly answers come back to me.

Well I've not taking my Lynx out recently, but when I first owned one I took it everywhere in one of the little Lynx bumbag things. I even took it to the cinema once and would hold it up so everyone could see what I was playing. Yes I'm an attention seeker. I also had that little plastic screen visor, although it wasn't really that good.

Where can I get it and how much does it usually go for? I fancy doing a piece on the Lynx's homebrew scene, but it's going to take a while to buy the relevant games. Definately want to start with this one though as it looks amazing.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

Okay I have Scott Williamson now So that's the programmers of Xenophobe Klax Toki and Road Blasters Ms Pac-Man, Rampart and Chequered Flag Not bad for a few nights of work

I've been putting quite a few up on my channel http://www.youtube.com/user/RetroGamerDaz if anyone's interest.

But I thought you hated Retro Gamer Seriously though that would be really handy. I was looking at just doing a straight, here's the conversions and this is why they're so good, but it sounds like you have some cool information that would add a bit more meat to it so to speak.