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I've been donated a nice device from 1983, which seems to be multi-ROMs device with switcher for demonstration in gaming shops ? Have you ever saw one of these ? I've been trying to make it work but didn't succeed for now ? So I need your help Do you think the empty chip slot on the cartridge board, which is actually empty, need to be populated? If so, with what ? The only trace connected to it seems to be the A12 rail which, if I understand well, is used to tell the VCS to use external ROMs... Thanks for any help !

I want to make a port of Grabber for the Atari VCS - for anyone who doesn't know what Grabber is: Grabber is an incredible game by Mike Huey that takes the PACMAN genre to the next level like Ed Averett did with KC Munchkin. Imagine a split screen pacman, one screen blue and one screen red, both mazes stacked on top of one other. Next imagine jumping back and forth between both to clear the mazes but the Monsters keep taking the dots and bringing them back to the center - oh year, you collect the dots and bring them to the boxes in the center of the mazes. Interesting note for programmers: This game was programmed like an Atari game with critical timing loops so the programmer could render the inspiring multi-voice music not otherwise possible simultaneously during gameplay on the Color Computer! Conversion notes: I want to make this Atari port scroll side to side with double wide mazes, two different ones. No scrolling up and down though because it would obfuscate Mike concept creation of the double playable maze. I plan to get rid of the rectangle placeholder, the game grids are small enough you can tell where you'll get transported to. Custom controller for Grabber: This custom controller will (obviously) be required for optimum Grabber gameplay: The Grabber controller was introduced when Grabber was released as a generic advertisment for Pacman as an add-on to existing Atari Joysticks with precision to handle mazes. This concept is based on the idea that a Joystick can control maze turning better than a gamepad; I agree and in the past I have disallowed Sega gamepads, but I will allow those to be used as well since some players, simply prefer the pads. Thoughts and ideas are welcome!

Hi. It's nice to be here again-not here in many years. Approximately how long would an Atari cartridge that was made in 1983 which will be played infrequently throughout the year? Any experts on silicone? Thanks so much.

Hi Everyone! This is my first post to this site, even though I've visited in the past. Thanks for all you do for the gaming community and the valuable information you all provide! I'm here because I recently found an interesting trio of items, and I'm hoping to learn more if anyone knows more. These are Atari employee pay stubs from '82-'83, which include a regular pay stub, severance package stub and a "sick bonus" stub which I'm assuming was a PTO payout of some kind. These are interesting enough on their own, but what makes them even more unusual is the fact that they came from right around the time of the crash. Even more unusual is that the "severance" stub was from '82 and the others from '83, possibly meaning that this employee was terminated in '82 and brought back to work in '83 only to be met again with termination most likely due to the crash. That's about as much as I know about these, hence my reason for starting this post. I can't find any information on the employee (name is in the photo). I don't know anything on the timeline of this person's employment besides the tale the stubs tell. Did/Do any of you possibly know her, or recognize these? Any information you all may know would be appreciated. I'd love to know more about this person's story if it's out there. Thanks in advance! OldStuffJunkie

Being too young to know what happened, what was it like? Were Intellivision or ColecoVision owners affected at all? I always had the cliched viewpoint of "New from All American Video Astrogames, a division of Joe's Plumbing Co, comes Space Revenge! The Blorgzom Blasters from Planet 24 are firing at earth! Help stop them! Available at MTF, your liquidation superstore." But is that true?

Hi, I got a TI-99/2 machine donated by Mike Wright. This is the Website Information I have setup so far Rom Dumping: http://www.ti99.eu/?page_id=3376&lang=en General Overview (see below for 99/2 subpages) http://www.ti99.eu/?page_id=3091&lang=en The Rom Dumping Page links to 3 youtube videos from yesterday/today. As soon as I get home again, I can transfer the disk over to my laptop to release the Rom. I would be happy on any 99/2 related talk

Bandai Vectrex Television Commercial from 1983 - 1983 年からバンダイ光速船のテレビコマーシャル https://www.youtube.com/embed/OuzZIRXfdkA #Vectrex #光速船

Is ET as bad as people claim. No third option this time, yes or no. Discuss...

Does anybody have an executable or disk version of 1983 Dig Dug (5200) that will run correctly on real XL/XE hardware using SIO2PC or SIDE I? I'm running a stock 800XL (have tried it on XE's too) and the only version I can find will either run with the sound/music being incorrect (one voice not playing) via SIO2PC, or with the graphics being incorrect (blue background at the top being black instead) via SIDE I. As far as I can tell there is only one XL/XE compatible version floating around out there on the major archives. With SIO2PC I've run it from MyPico DOS and the Homesoft disk, and then with the SIDE I've used the executable of course. The problem exhibits itself in Altirra too, at least with the disk version problem. I haven't tried emulating SIDE I to see if it shows up there too, but I'm assuming it will.

Dear friends, I'm the editor of a Brazilian electronic magazine, "Jogos 80", on Retrogaming. We've published 10 issues so far since 2004 and we're mostly focused on the classic consoles (Atari, Odyssey, Intellivision & ColecoVision) and classic microcomputers such as the Apple II, the Commodore 64 and the British computers (ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro etc). Here's the URL of our website: http://jogos80.com.br/ "Unfortunately", the magazine is in Portuguese. The current issue features one of the first Atari 2600 clones made in Brazil, the mega rare "Top Game". Also, recently I wrote two books on the history of the early video games in Brazil. They're called "1983: The Year of Video Games in Brazil" and "1984: The Video Games Fever Continues". They are focused on the early video game consoles such as the Atari 2600, the Odyssey^2, the Intellivision and the ColecoVision in either official or unofficial (clone systems) machines. Also they're highly illustrated. They're in Portuguese, but I'm seriously considering a translation into English to sell them abroad in digital form. Would you guys be willing to buy the books in digital form for, say, 5 to 10 dollars? Here's the official website: http://www.memoriadovideogame.com.br/ Here's an introduction to how the first video game systems did appear in Brazil: While the world was enraptured with the music of Michael Jackson and the Cold War was still a reality, Brazil was going through a period of extreme economic uncertainty in what would be the final phase of a military dictatorship. The increase in the budget deficit caused by rising international interest rates and the subsequent growth of external debt led to macroeconomic imbalances which made inflation unbearable. In the eighties, the Brazilian economy faced a downturn unparalleled in its history. In the context of the electronics business, already weakened because of the conditions in the country, there existed a policy known as “Reserva de Mercado” – Market Reserve. To "protect" the local market from foreign interference, the policy prohibited foreign companies from entering Brazil and disallowed the importation of any computer-related products. Concurrently, the government imposed a centralization of foreign exchange by the Central Bank, which meant that a company could only do business if the government authorized the transaction. The Market Reserve, which has changed in the seven years that it existed, eventually opened a loophole that Brazilian companies exploited. Companies would copy original, imported equipment by adapting it to the local market; they would change the products' names and then release them without paying royalties to the owners. The Market Reserve leveraged the release of the first video games in Brazil. In fact, the country began to see the first consoles in the second half of the 70s, which arrived through smuggling, international travel and localized sales at the so-called “Zona Franca de Manaus”, a famous free trade port. In 1977, Philco-Ford, a department of the Ford company that manufactured radios for cars alongside other electronics, launched the Telejogo, which was nothing more than a replica of the famous Home Pong and other similar Pong-like games that were already successful abroad. The Telejogo, though itself shy of success, paved the way for the arrival of video games on cartridges and the devices that would play them. The arrival of the first official, licensed videogame happened in May of 1983, when the Odyssey² was released by Philips just as the Odyssey. The company came up with an aggressive marketing campaign, including television, newspaper and magazine ads. Philips's bet was Odyssey's alphanumeric keypad; besides giving Odyssey a computer look, the Keypad added features that weren't present, for example, in the Atari 2600. The Odyssey boasted greater integration between the user and the game, allowing one to insert words and manipulate characters onscreen. The manufacture of cartridges nationwide, "protected" by the Market Reserve, also started; however, producing cartridges at the time was laborious and expensive. The companies needed to extract the game programs from the original ROMs (chips in which the games were recorded), store them elsewhere and then rewrite them in EPROMs, a slow process due to the limitations of EPROM recorders in use in Brazil. Some small companies disregarded U.S. copyrights and began to unofficially manufacture these clone cartridges for the Atari 2600 system. While this was happening, the Warner Communications conglomerate, owner of the Atari brand, signed an agreement with the “Grupo IGB” (IGB Group), led by Brazilian businessman Eugênio Staub, which in turn owned the Gradiente and Polyvox brands. Warner would have the chance to give an extended life to the 2600, a product that began to agonize in the United States, and Polyvox would have exclusivity on the Atari branded products in the country. The official Atari 2600 was released near the Children's Day holiday in October, also with a very aggressive marketing campaign, and was a complete success. Christmas sales were unbelievable too. Other Brazilian companies, also supported by the Market Reserve, launched many unauthorized Atari clone systems such as the Dactari, the Dynavision, the Onyx Junior and the Supergame. In Brazil, Mattel was also interested in what was happening in the novel market for consoles. After probing the country, the company signed an agreement with the Brazilian branch of Sharp in mid-1983. The subsidiary Digimed was created solely for the release of the official Intellivision system. The idea was not necessarily to compete directly with other manufacturers, but rather to tap a demographic dissatisfied with other brands, a more adult audience. As a result, the Intellivision was also released in 1983, but was less successful than the 2600. After the arrival of the consoles that excited the video game market in 1983, the country has seen many releases throughout the years, some official and some not, for various consoles, including the NES, the Master System, the Genesis/Mega Drive, and the Super NES. The truth is that the Brazilian people, besides their notorious passion for Football, ended up falling in love with video game consoles and the world of dreams in which they immerse the player. Thank you very much for your time! Marcus.