Is Radar Lock the long-lost Foxbat?

[Scott Stilphen]

A few 1982 issues of EG mention Foxbat - an air combat/war strategy game Atari was developing (btw, "Foxbat" is the name for the Russian MIG-25 fighter plane"). One of the EG news bits also said Foxbat was replaced by Raiders on the release schedule. A letter in the Oct 82 issue (page 28 ) from Atari rep Karen Johnson stated it was Warshaw's game, although years later I found out (from him directly) it wasn't. It was later learned that Doug Neubauer was the Foxbat programmer. He was working on Solaris (then called The Last Starfighter) as early as 1984, and it's obvious that Solaris and Radar lock use most of the same display kernel code (and even Super Football to a lesser extent). So it seems very possible that Foxbat and Radar Lock are the same game, but only a Foxbat proto or Neubauer himself could prove my theory.....

[Tempest]

Hmm... That's a damn good point. I never thought of that. I'm going to have to make a rumor section on my proto page for stuff like this.

 

Tempest

[mos6507]

Doug did not work on anything for Atari other than Solaris pre-crash that I'm aware of, based on his interview.

 

Radar Lock was commissioned by the Tramiels after Solaris was released.

 

It was an attempt to make an Afterburner-type of game, a rather ambitious thing to do on the 2600.

[Scott Stilphen]

What interview? Can you post a link to it?

[DEBRO]

What interview?  Can you post a link to it?

 

I'm sure Glenn means his Stella at 20: Volume 1 which can be bought from Hozer Video for $5.

 

Doug is interviewed after the credits on this volume.

[Scott Stilphen]

He's listed in the credits on both volumes, but he's only in #1 - for about 3 seconds. Sounds like his interview got left on the cutting room floor.

[slapdash]

He's listed in the credits on both volumes, but he's only in #1 - for about 3 seconds.  Sounds like his interview got left on the cutting room floor.

 

IIRC (and it's been a while since I watched) it's in Vol. 2, at the end, as it didn't fit well with everything else, but Glenn didn't want to leave it out. But I also seem to recall that #2 is sold out. :-(

[mos6507]

BTW, this is changing the topic a little, but I've been recently thinking about remastering Stella at 20 on DVD, given the increasingly lower costs of DVD mastering.

 

I'm still on the fence because the VHS volumes didn't exactly fly off the shelves, so it might not be the best business decision, but I think it's definitely worth doing as having the DVD would allow for a lot more special features, not to mention a lot better audio/visual quality.

 

If there is interest, please email me and I'll measure the response.

[MegaManFan]

BTW, this is changing the topic a little, but I've been recently thinking about remastering Stella at 20 on DVD, given the increasingly lower costs of DVD mastering.

 

I'm still on the fence because the VHS volumes didn't exactly fly off the shelves, so it might not be the best business decision, but I think it's definitely worth doing as having the DVD would allow for a lot more special features, not to mention a lot better audio/visual quality.

 

If there is interest, please email me and I'll measure the response.

 

I'd much rather buy a DVD. I'm trying to get rid of a lot of my video tapes for movies and shows as it is, and as soon as I have a DVD burner I'll probably get rid of anything I taped off TV as well. And no it's not because I necessarily think DVD is such a huge leap forward; it's just that with so much stuff to store in my collection I'd rather have lighter and slimmer DVD's instead of bulky heavy tapes.

[Cupcakus]

I just use betamax :-) Smaller lighter tapes, and cheaper than DVD-R

 

 

Common!!!! We all still play 2600??? Why not retro video :-) lol

 

I vote remastered in betamax.

[Scott Stilphen]

Russ: There's no footage of Doug in Volume 2. The programmers that are featured are: Al Miller, David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Carol Shaw, Larry Wagner, Bob Smith, Dennis Koble, Tod Frye, Rick Maurer, Rob Fulop, and Steve DeFrisco.

 

If you're serious about making a DVD, considering that there was hours of footage shot for that gathering (the better part of a day, I'm guessing), why not fill it with some of that footage?

[Viso]

I never knew about these videos before. I would like to have a copy, especially on DVD, but right now I couldn't afford it. But I have been making DVD's, just not professionally.

 

Cupcakus, blank DVD-R's that can be played in DVD players cost under $2 each, minus a case. Not horribly pricey.

[mos6507]

I think one of the big problems with using DVD-Rs is that DVD-Rs are all single-sided single-layer and can therefore only store about an hour of video. Each volume of Stella at 20 is about 90 minutes.

 

If I were to make a DVD I'd probably go to a mastering house with a disk image on a hard drive and make a real DVD out of it, which can't be that expensive anymore. I haven't really looked into it seriously yet.

 

As for the extra footage, I don't think DVDs store that much more (timewise) of video than VHS is capable of storing, at least not without going double-sided.

 

There is probably about an hour or so of material I didn't include that might be worth putting in. A lot of stuff was too far removed from the main topic of the 2600 to put in, or had technical problems that I couldn't easily mask (swinging camera moves, bad lighting, bad audio, etc...)

 

But I'd be more interested in fleshing out the data portion.

[Viso]

Actually, there are double sided DVD-R's. They aren't as common, but Pioneer, among others, makes the media. All single layer, of course. But the higher cost of a double sided disk can make two single sided ones cheaper.

 

Getting two hours onto one side of a DVD-R isn't a problem with a small reduction in quality compared to a single hour. I've been putting 1.5 hour long MST3K episodes on DVD and they look great. There are various things that can be done, like using less than the maximum resolution, to help pack longer (>2hr) video in -- I've done close to four hours without really trying. But then the video isn't any sharper than VHS.

 

I don't mean to discourage using a professional DVD mastering service, but I figure options are good and more might increase the chance for the video to make its way to DVD. No doubt someone will want to research the origins of video games 50 years from now. DVD will help it last that long. So I hope it happens.

[Cupcakus]

Cupcakus, blank DVD-R's that can be played in DVD players cost under $2 each, minus a case. Not horribly pricey.

 

Yeah, but I was going after the DVD burner cost :-), and how much could a blank betamax tape really cost... I mean common :-) Less than $2 I would imagine. :-)

 

As for a professional DVD, remember you have to write the software for the flashy menus too :-)

[Scott Stilphen]

DVD FAQ

 

You can either use 2 single-layer DVDs, or 1 dual-layer DVD (which holds at least 4 hours of footage). Either way, there's plenty of space to add the extra footage....and the Doug Neubauer interview

[mos6507]

Cupcakus, blank DVD-R's that can be played in DVD players cost under $2 each, minus a case. Not horribly pricey.

 

Yeah, but I was going after the DVD burner cost :-), and how much could a blank betamax tape really cost... I mean common :-) Less than $2 I would imagine. :-)

 

As for a professional DVD, remember you have to write the software for the flashy menus too :-)

 

There are other factors too, like the time it would take to burn each DVD to order, and if each volume requires two DVD-Rs, that's going to take a long time to burn per order. It's not like CDRs that you can burn in less than 3 minutes these days.

 

It depends on how many people would want something like this... If enough people preordered I'd have to get it made professionally.

 

There is this grey area inbetween one-off and a production run where the one-offs will take too much time and the production run would cost too high (no economy of scale).

 

There are other possibilities, though.

 

A growing number of people are able to access SVCD and DivX CDs. So that might be one way to go. With DivX I could just offer it for download and not bother trying to sell it.