Top 10 Atari Moments

[jacobus]

1. In 1981 walking into the local computer store and seeing Mike Potter's Protector (Crystalware version) running. My dream of owning a Commodore Pet died very abruptly.
   
2. Buying a 16K 400 the following year - Basic cartridge, cassette deck, 10 free programs! (turned out to be magazine type-ins on a cassette) $750.00! Exactly half of my entire summer earnings for my first job.
   
3. Upgrading said 400 first to 32K and then 48K - finally able to play Protector
   
4. Playing and beating Necromancer
   
5. Purchasing one of the first 1050 drives in Canada - saying goodbye and good riddance to cassette tapes
   
6. Running a BBS for almost 4 years on an Atari 800XL and two disk drives
   
7. Beating my first Infocom game - The Witness - I was totally stumped and frustrated so I just sat there typing "accuse Monica" over and over.
   
8. Finding Shadow World on eBay as a Buy-it-Now - for an incredibly low price - together with Quasimodo a few months later to complete my Synapse collection.
   
9. Learning to program in Quick and realizing I could finally write some of the programs that I never could with Basic. Sadly I have far less time nowadays.
   
10. Having my 7 year old come up to me and say "Hey Dad, let's play Atari!"
    

Edited June 7, 2013 by jacobus

[Fres]

Top 10: Not in any particular order...

 

800

Rally Speedway

1050

Print Shop

Cart Clone

XM301

130XE

Supra Modem 2400

PC-Xformer

Altirra

[pixelmischief]

C'Mon Fres! Savor those moments, man! Share the deeper experience! =)

[Fres]

Heheh. Yeah, I guess that was a little lazy, but do savor each of those moments.

[moggie007]

Don't forget that in this day of pixels a lot was down to you imagination, even though a group of pixels look something like a dragon your mind would transform the pixels in your mind and made them pixels a dragon and far more better than whats actually on the screen. today though pixles look like they are supposed to be in the programmers eye leaving nothing to the imagination which is a shame because the imagination can produce far better things than real life and what the programmer/graphics department has achived.

just my view of course thats why people say books are better than the film it reproduced!

[+wood_jl]

My Top-10:

 

 

Faking sick insted of going to Jr. High. Reason? Just got a 1050 disk drive, and copies of Archon, etc.

 

Faked like I didn't feel good, then played bootleg disk games all day long. Had to wind it down by the time the parents came home. Most of you would have done the same.

[creative]

Interesting topic, but 10 seems to be quite a big number to make a sort in head But I'll try to do it - by chronology.

 

1. Seeing first "living" Atari at my cousin's and playing "Boulder Dash"

 

2. Having own 8-bit Atari on Christmas

 

3. Playing great single and especially two-player games which are often difficult to find these days on present platforms

 

4. Learning Atari Basic

 

5. Creating music with great Chaos Music Composer

 

6. Trying to create a Prince of Persia on XL/XE which I saw on 16-bit computers... in Basic language (!) (but I was able to create only two levels, and then I unexpectedly run out of memory)

 

7. And learning assembler with also great Quick Assembler kit, compared to 16-bit software in those times

 

8. Creating a cople of (paricularly graphic and desing) tools and game inspired by Flashback

 

9. Watching excellent demos from demo-scene

 

10. And crushing my Atari (so later was, and surprisingly still is - in another incarnation - "IBM" PC)

 

Anyway, it brought a lot of unforgettable memories.

[high voltage]

I was late to computers, I was like....'I have a VCS it plays all the best games, don't need a computer'.

 

But one day, walking through town....

 

1: Seeing in 85 the incredible gorgeous 130XE in Horten, a north German department store, buying it on the spot (DM 499.00).

 

2: Playing around with it, finding out you can't really do anything with this, me thinking it's a computer, it's supposed to be able to do everything....compute, you bloody thing....!!!!

OK, typing in the sample programs from the included manual...over and over again. (I have to 'program' that thing???)

 

3: Going to a computer shop, buying a 1050, monitor, Seikosha printer GP 100VC (plugged straight into the XE), XC11, Writers Tool, and some other neat stuff. That's it, now I'm off into the world of real computing.

 

4: Searching all shops in town for great Atari software (on a daily/weekly basis).

 

5: Receiving an acoustic modem, phoning Atari USA Bulletin Board, my first taste of the internet (BBS), paying like $40 for 15 minutes. Still it was fun.

 

6: Writing cool job applications using Writer's Tool, and actually getting a job. I always believed it was down to the professional outlook of my CV

(Even though the Seikosha printed the g, q, p, y, j on the same line as the a, b, c, like the 1029, I thought it looked weird, you know the g, q, p, y, j were a bit 'up' )

 

7: Playing Wizard's Crown, and finishing it after 3 weeks or so, felt absolutely great

 

9: Using the XE/1050/monitor on stage with my band, it was running some graphics demo program, it looked great and even though people thought we're using an actual computer with our music, it was just show.

 

10: Joining an Atari computer club, starting up (with a friend) a newsletter, having the best of times....

 

.

Edited June 14, 2013 by high voltage

[pixelmischief]

Faking sick instead of going to Jr. High...Most of you would have done the same.

 

Are you kidding? I'm STILL doing it! I pre-plan excuses from work when I know I'm going to get a new Atari toy. I almost got fired in March for being crashed out asleep in my char at work because I pulled an all-nighter wrangling the MyIDE-II! =)

[Tempus]

1. Seeing "Star Raiders" for the first time (around 1980). From that time I dreamed about having an Atari Computer.

2. Getting my Atari 800 (without tape drive - with Basic Cartidge only) in Winter 1981/1982. It was sooo expensive for me.

3. Playing "Shamus" on Cassette for the first time in Winter 1982/1983. Unbelievable gfx!

4. Working all the summer holidays in 1983 in order to buy a Floppy drive.

5. Playing "Wayout" for the first time after generating a defect sector by floppy speed adjustment in order to bypass the copy protection.

6. Playing "Defender" when a friend came to me in order pick me up for going outside - I got my record - I played more than one hour - my friend was a little bit frustrated :-)

7. Playing "Archon", "M.U.L.E." "Necromancer", "Vanguard", "Ballblazer", "Pharaoh's Curse" and all the other fantastic games.

8. Reading about the new ST Computer line in spring 1985. Amazing gfx capabilities and the powerful 68000!!!

9. Getting my 520ST in summer 1985 and starting with "C" language.

10. Programming the 68000 in Assembler for several years.

 

Now I'm back to my Atari roots, but not at 16-bit

[adam242]

Just giving this thread a much-needed bump... Please, let's keep this one alive...

 

(This one really needs a pin.)

Edited December 22, 2014 by adam242

[+RetroElectroDad]

Well, seeing as it's bumped......

1. Opening up my unexpanded 600XL when I bought it after selling my TI-99/4a. The TI had to go even though I loved it mainly because it was a very closed system having no access to machine language. I was intrigued by the mysterious “peek” and “poke” commands I saw in listings for other platforms. The 600XL was upgraded by a 1064 a few short months later at Christmas - on my first trip to buy software for my Atari i bought Airstrike II by English Software at WH Smith in Newcastle Upon Tyne. I could only play the 16K version so couldn’t wait to get more memory and try the other side of the cassette.

2. Finding another Atari user at university and buying his 1050 disk drive with many disks of “backups”. My only brush with pirate copies from “the scene”. I went to his place to buy it carrying two boxes of blank disks and all were filled when I left.

3. Discovering RPGs with Alternate Reality - The Dungeon. I ended up playing this through three times. The packaging was beautiful and I’m so glad this is one that I bought and still have to this day. I was hooked on RPGs from that time and went on to finish Wizard’s Crown, Eternal Dagger, Ultimas III and IV before I moved on to the Amiga.

4. Many many hours spent with Synassembler and a black-and-white TV trying to be a games programmer. I was at one stage offered a conversion contract by Zeppelin (who were nearby) but I wasn’t allowed to enter into a subcontract agreement as a term of the government program I was on. That was disappointing!

5. Getting my Symbolism game onto a Page 6 special disk. I now know how much better it could have been but I was young and inexperienced!

6. Buying a Dixons 800XL plus 1050 drive package when they were really selling them off cheap. That 800XL became my main machine and it had a lovely keyboard, the 1050 meant that I now had two drives. What luxury! Shame that I binned the 800XL when it died as I haven’t found an 800XL with as good a keyboard since and if it happened now I’d hope to repair it.

7. Receiving the Mapping The Atari book for Christmas. How that book opened up the possibilities and answered all my questions. It was invaluable.

8. The intense shock the first time I encountered the Alien in RoF. It was around 2am, the house was quiet and my heart rate didn’t come back down for quite a while. From that moment the game was filled with a tension for me that had been absent up to that point.

9. Hiring games from a lending library and defeating the copy protection to create my own backups. Particularly copying Koronis Rift on disk and transferring Bounty Bob from cassette to disk (there were quite a few encrypted segments in that multi-load). I was pretty alone in my network as an Atarian so I had no access to pirated copies unlike my Commodore or Spectrum owning friends.

10. “The games are so much faster on the Atari” - a quote from my C64 owning best friend when he played Bruce Lee on my machine.

Edited December 22, 2014 by trev2005

[adam242]

Just bumping this one again... I'm sure there are new members here who haven't seen it.

 

Probably my favorite thread on AtariAge. Pure nostalgia. Thank you, pixelmischief.

[Gunstar]

Thanks adam242, I hadn't seen it, 2012-1015 was a time for me when my computer had broken and my life was in upheaval, so it was all put in storage for a few years, so I missed a lot in those 3 years. I'll have to think about my top 10 Atari moments though and get back to this thread later...

[Caterpiggle]

Hello to you all, I would not figured out how to beat in Necromancer ? I am still stuck in level 3 or 4 , that's it. And Miner's 2049 , too , still stuck in level 3 or 4.

[Gunstar]

1) Sometime in 1985 I had been saving up for an Apple IIc because Apple II's were what we used in school and what I learned on, so naturally I wanted one, then while reading a copy of either Creative Computing or Compute in my high school library, I came across an article for the "new" Atari, now under the reigns of Jack Tramiel, with new computers and the slogan "Power Without the Price" and I learned of the Atari 130XE, for less than $200 compared to the Apple IIc that was hundreds more, and it had a 6502 and 128K ram just like the Apple IIc! So I took the $250 I had saved already, went to Service Merchandise and bought the 130XE. I didn't have quite enough money for any of the Atari peripherals they sold, and it was all still XL line peripherals anyway, and I wanted XE peripherals that matched my computer, so for a few weeks all I had was the 130XE and typed in games out of magazines and left the computer on for days at a time so as not to lose the games right away.

 

2) a little while later, I went to a Toys R Us store to buy a cartridge game, and they had a off-brand tape recorder for the Atari (A very rare model these days, Taihaho or something like that), it was close in color to my XE and the style matched the XE a lot better than a 1010, and it was only $25 instead of the $75 or so a 1010 cost at the time. I also had money left to buy BC's Quest for tires on cartridge, and Temple of Aphsai on tape. My first experiences with commercial software. I actually found a Taihaho recorder for sale on eBay! This was my first ever peripheral for my Atari 130XE: https://www.ebay.com/itm/263793830238?rmvSB=true

 

3) I finally settled for a 1050 drive, even though it didn't match, a year later, since the XF551 was still not out yet. I hated the fact it didn't match though, so I attempted my first ever paint job on it's case, which turned out pretty horrible, so I had this FUGLY gray 1050 for many years after that. Live and learn.

 

4) My first ever upgrade, I got a US Doubler with SpartaDOS 3.2

 

5) The first time soon after getting my 1050, that I saw Alternate Reality being demoed at a computer software store called Software City. I was blown away by it, and AR is still my favorite RPG of all time to this day, even after experiencing everything from Ultima to Skyrim.

 

6) The first time I encountered the Lucasfilm games ROF and Ballblazer at that same Software City, once again, blown away by them.

 

7) The first time a Jaggie jumped up while playing ROF. Scared me shitless and I loved it!

 

8 ) My purchase of the Diamond GOS cartridge and software, I finally had an ST/Mac like operating system and loved it, I got Best Electronics ST mouse to use with it.

 

9) My first Mail-order purchase out of Antic's 'The Catalog.' It was Rambrandt art program and it blew me away with the DLI's for all those colors and all the different graphic modes it had, and it worked with my Koalapad, and was far better than the version of Micro Illustrator or whatever that came with the Koala pad.

 

10) while in college in the early 90's, I was walking by the window of my dorm room (on the first floor) and I over heard my roommate's friend notice my 130XE and sarcastically said "ATARI?!?" and my roommate, who had an Apple IIGS tell him not too laugh, it was a better computer than his IIGS; he love my Atari's graphics, after showing him some graphics in mixed-modes like APAC and 4096 color colorview program that interlaced red, blue and green separate images together to give 4096 color "RGB" images, plus all the great games like Lucasfilm one he didn't have on his Apple. He was also a pianist, and he LOVED my Midi-track 3 system and Yamaha keyboard I had hooked up to it, something he couldn't do with his IIGS or at least didn't know he could if they did have a MIDI product for it. That was a proud day for me that some one thought my 130XE was better than the IIGS and they stood up for my Atari!

 

One of the best decisions of my life was buying an Atari 8-bit instead of an Apple IIc, the best 8-bit computer ever, IMHO.

Edited July 11, 2018 by Gunstar