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How do/did you feel about "Atarisoft"?


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I have the Taxman for the Apple // (I can't recall whether it had any cracker scribbling or not but obviously it was p1r4t3d). Interesting story, and yes, it was done so well anyone who could claimjump it would have been wise to do so.

My understanding is that Taxman is rather hard to come by these days. I've only it seen it pop-up twice on eBay. The first time selling for like $30 or something, but the last time it was over $100. Super Taxman 2 sold for significantly more. I know AVGN owns a copy because he showed it in one of his videos before.

 

mGs2DmG.jpg

Edited by Tanrunomad
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I love.gifAtarisoft!

 

Back in the day they made some of the BEST ports ever for the TI-99/4A. They were better than the majority of the KerrAP TI was making.

 

gallery_35324_1072_1172206.gifgallery_35324_1072_2879123.gif

 

Edit: And then TI released their QI model in 1983 that PREVENTED the best games from running on their equipment in an attempt to control everything. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! No wonder they were forced to pull out of the market. What good is a computer for the 'home market' that will not play the stuff people 'at home' want to play?

Edited by --- Ω ---
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So is this the (almost) complete AtariSoft lineup? C64 Gremlins missing from this picture. Where there more? Or less? Any pictured weren't released?

 

C-64 and C-VIC-20 Joust didn't see releases, nor did Apple II and PC Pole Position. There was a list floating around where the writer claimed to own Apple II Pole Position, but to date it hasn't turned up anywhere else, not even in Apple II software archives. AtariSoft's development of PC Pole Position eventually did get a release, thanks to Thunder Mountain, who re-released a number of Namco arcade titles made by Atari and others for 8-bit computers.

 

I'm amused by the fine print that says Donkey Kong is "not available" on the Colecovision. :)

 

Atari worked on a second wave of AtariSoft titles, as noted in this poster:

 

post-6115-0-71107500-1420346711_thumb.jpg

 

Gremlins and Track and Field made it out, but the rest didn't. Fortunately for players, the crackers got a hold of Mario Bros. for the C-64, and both Mario Bros. and Crystal Castles for the Apple II, and another company later released the C-64 Crystal Castles port Atari devs had worked on.

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GB64 lists Mario Bros from Atari Inc, (1984) and Mario Bros from Ocean (1987). So the Atari Inc version was canned? But later the Ocean version was an official Nintendo release.

http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=4596&d=18&h=0

http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=4598&d=18&h=0

 

and Crystal Castles from US Gold (1986)

http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=1846&d=18&h=0

Edited by high voltage
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GB64 lists Mario Bros from Atari Inc, (1984) and Mario Bros from Ocean (1987). So the Atari Inc version was canned? But later the Ocean version was an official Nintendo release.

http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=4596&d=18&h=0

http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=4598&d=18&h=0

AtariSoft's C-64 Mario Bros. was officially canned, yes, but it slipped into the wild not long after it was coded. It's a touch incomplete, sadly, unlike the also-unreleased Apple II version that was finished before it was shelved. The Ocean release is a different effort.

 

and Crystal Castles from US Gold (1986)

http://www.gb64.com/game.php?id=1846&d=18&h=0

 

Yes, U.S. Gold was the company that took over Crystal Castles from AtariSoft. There is a second C-64 Crystal Castles by an outfit called Thundervision, not to be confused with Thunder Mountain. It seems nobody knows who or what Thundervision is, but I've read speculation an independent coder started the game then shopped it to companies, possibly including Atari, hoping to get a job, and when that didn't happen, the coder simply released the game into the public domain.

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Most of what I was going to write has been said on the C64 and Vic20 front. Joust wasn't released, and nothing about the game has ever surfaced. Mario Bros was completed, pretty much, and the programmer Greg Tavares told me he was paid for the game, but it was never officially released. Evidently it did slip out though. Crystal Castles made it to completion, but not released either. I own a prototype cartridge of it. US Gold picked up the rights and released it for Christmas 1986 in Europe.

 

As noted, Gremlins for C64 is not in the first advert, nor is Track & Field. Both of those were released on disk, not cartridge, which suggests they were the last two Atarisoft releases for the C64, as witnessed by being in the second advert. Track & Field, like other formats, was packaged with the special button controller. DK Jr was just released as a homebrew effort last month, and it's a very good game. No plans to make a proper limited CIB release of it for obvious reasons though. Typo Attack never got started I believe, speaking to someone else (I forget who) that was head of the third party programming team doing some of the Atarisoft C64 work.

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Atarisoft UK released the following games for ZX Spectrum, which is entirely absent from the advertisment:

Donkey Kong Jr, Galaxian, Moon Patrol, Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man, Pole Position, Robotron 2084

 

The following games for the BBC Micro are also credited to Atarisoft, although I'm not entirely sure those are genuine releases:

Asteroids Deluxe, Crystal Castles, Defender, Donkey Kong Jr, Joust, Pole Position, Robotron 2084, Sinistar

 

I didn't find a single Atari-related release for the Amstrad CPC series, neither did I find anything for the Oric computers, but perhaps it is not expected.

I don't know what the situation was with Tandy CoCo computers, if those ever had any Atari-related games

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Forgot to mention in my previous post... the first advert is a little incongruous to reality for C64 releases at least, as six of the games were in small boxes, and six of the games were in large boxes, they weren't all the same size! At least in the US...

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...

I didn't find a single Atari-related release for the Amstrad CPC series, neither did I find anything for the Oric computers, but perhaps it is not expected.

I don't know what the situation was with Tandy CoCo computers, if those ever had any Atari-related games

Atarisoft did not support the Amstrad, Oric or CoCo at all.

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Greg Tavares told me he was paid for the game, but it was never officially released. Evidently it did slip out though.

That's what he told me regarding the Apple // version (I believe it was on Usenet computer.vintage.apple2), no mention of any other. And yes, the Apple // version slipped out, I played the hell out of it. :)

Edited by themushroom
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That's what he told me regarding the Apple // version (I believe it was on Usenet computer.vintage.apple2), no mention of any other. And yes, the Apple // version slipped out, I played the hell out of it. :)

 

Guess Greg wrote both Apple and C64 versions then!

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Atarisoft did not support the...CoCo at all.

Oh, what might have been. :( Official versions of Defender, Robotron, Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong...and one would imagine Atarisoft would have had the good sense to make keyboard play an option so we wouldn't have had to wrestle with those squirrelly little analog joysticks (they're great for aiming cursors or moving paddles, but not much else).

 

At least the Color Computer had some good knockoffs.

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