A short summary of the 'Atari Invasion 2k17' event

[+SenorRossie]

All,

 

 

Posting this here mostly because we want to thank the Atari home brew scene that is doing a great job in keeping the Atari legacy alive. Having said that, it is also posted here as most of the people that were making the invasion possible are 8-bit fans.

 

Background

Every two months the dutch commodore club gathers in Maarssen to tinker and socialize. As the retro community in the Netherlands grew thinner over the last say ten years, they were joined by the dutch MSX and Sinclair clubs. Only a few years ago some die-hard Atari fans joined their ranks as well. It was last year, these die-hard Atari fanboys (and some friends) teamed up to do their first Atari Invasion of the commodore event, which was a great succes (even to the commodore club board), so it was agreed to do this again in 2017.

 

Preparations

Fast forward to september 2016 when we sent out a reminder email and to lay out the plans for this year's theme: 'Brew @ Home'. The theme was well received and although we don't have all the bases covered with regards to home brew, we figured we had enough to fill a display and a lot of table space. And some of us even started scouring the forums looking for new items to add to our collections. Others were busy preparing for the Silly Venture event or started creating lots of paperwork like folders, articles and the creative ones among us started preparing new projects (one of them is currently on sale in this forum). We were joined by a great guy and avid collector from Israel and things started taking shape by the end of December, when we gathered during the last commodore club meeting to finish some boards and looked over the folders that were created. At the last minute we were contacted by someone that was willing to bring a jaguar kiosk, so we really had all the bases covered.

The event

Saturday February 18th, 8.30 the first arrived at the meeting location and started unloading the cars. They were joined by the others a little later and the Invasion took shape. We had a rack which we planned to use as a museum and display for the things we brought (using an LCD, a Raspberry Pi with info-beamer software and a private WiFi network). The rack contained a light sixer, some boxed 8-bit hardware, a boxed 5200, a boxed jaguar console and an 1040STe. We had a display cabinet to hold our precious home brew hard- and software (and some more things). And we bluntly copied something we saw at the ABBUC JHV: binders with Atari related articles, corporate memos, manuals, schematics, etc. which we lovingly named our Library. One of us printed A0 sized posters and someone else printed the 7800, Lynx and Jaguar encyclopedia. And we should not forget about the paper foldables of E.T., Berzerk, Pitfall and a VCS/2600.

Besides stuff to look at, we also had a lot of stuff to play with: A VCS/2600 woody with AtariVox+ and Harmony cart, a 2600 Jr running 'Defend your castle' of another Harmony cart. A 7800 with the Mateos' multicart, that was mostly running Frenzy.

As I said before, most of us are 8-bit fans and we had plenty of 8-bit things to play with: An 800XL running 'Lost in Space', complete with custom controllers, An 800XL with Ultimate 1MB and a newly designed MultiJoy8, running Multijoy games of course, 3 64k modded 600XL's running Multidash with the Multilink hardware, yet another 800XL demoing the stereo mod, turbo freezer 2011 and Sio2SD. Almost forgot about the grandchildren, as we had a 600XL that was fitted with the Sophia, Antonia and Veronica!

To show off the 16-bit side of things, we had the CosmosEx in the display cabinet, but had a 4MB STe running software (mostly demos) of a GoTek USB floppy emulator with HxC firmware. And finally in our petting zoo we had the McWill modded Lynx, a falcon showing off its desktop and the Jaguar kiosk where people took a shot at Tempest.

For those that use facebook, there are some posts covering the event at the Atari 8-bit Computers facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/181644898539691/

A small impression...

An overview of the Invasion space...

Our display cabinet with home brew items and more.

Our museum

Some of the posters that we used (note the falcon that holds all paperwork)

Displays with information on the various Atari computers.

!!! Once again, we would like to thank everyone working on Atari home brew !!!

Be it by creating software/games or hardware. Be it by coming up with modifications to existing things. The artists (the posters were a huge (not just by size) success), but also those that wrote the encyclopedia, created the paper folds. The historians that keep archiving what they find, publishers that continue to publish games for a niche market. Without all of them we would not have been able to create such a successful event in the first place.

And let's not forget all those that continue to support them by buying (almost) everything that is completed and finds its way to our hands.

Thank you all... and maybe until our next Atari Invasion!

[+SenorRossie]

For those that prefer moving pictures... Here's a video made during the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1edcEPJu2S8

[Brentarian]

Looks like a lot of fun! I like the Pac Man, Popeye, and DK end labels.

[+SenorRossie]

Looks like a lot of fun!

We had lots of fun organizing it and we believe the people attending the event enjoyed our invasion as well

 

I like the Pac Man, Popeye, and DK end labels.

All three were taken from the Arcade marquee's, found through image search on google/bing. The images were printed on Avery labels and cut to the right size.