Shaggy the Atarian Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 1 minute ago, toiletunes said: Pity, I thought the prequel "asteroid" had promise. Don't give up hope! Perhaps Yar will finally get his revenge on it too 4 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColecoJoe Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 2 minutes ago, toiletunes said: Pity, I thought the prequel "asteroid" had promise. Unfortunately it lost its appeal when you hit the Asteroid and it broke up into many smaller Asteroids. The kids lost interest. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrBeefy Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 3 hours ago, LoonyLucas said: My dad bought an Intellivision when i was about 3. I love Intellivision! It was my intro to consoles and gaming in general. There's room for all consoles in my heart. You should go visit @ColecoJoe I mean Tommy's thread over in the Intellivision section. Might like what you see. Plus if you are interested in the Amico and you have questions, Tommy will answer them. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColecoJoe Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 3 minutes ago, MrBeefy said: You should go visit @ColecoJoe I mean Tommy's thread over in the Intellivision section. Might like what you see. Plus if you are interested in the Amico and you have questions, Tommy will answer them. Yes! I'll answer all your questions! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 1 hour ago, racerx said: This is how Atari raised 3 million bucks. People don't even understand what Atari is. They are so many things, to so many people ... A post office box in Paris A licensing agreement to allow you to make Flashback consoles and collections, or mini-arcade machines A plaintiff that will sue you if you make a t-shirt without cutting them in A sketchy blockchain investment scheme A penny stock whose best days are behind it A mobile game publisher that can't catch a break A guest that will always make time for Stuart Varney on Fox Business when he's in town A means to getting into the African casino scene A line of credit for its CEO and a few board members A creditor to the rights holder for Roller Coaster Tycoon A minor crowdfunding side story/internet gamer joke A spider lying in wait lest you put Foot Pong in a discount store, but Breakout on the web is OK A truly clueless social media presence that wants to know your high score in Pong or what you will play this weekend A fond memory for many Generation X people from Europe and North America Atari, so much more than video games. Atari VCS, game, stream, and connect, like never before. Atari SA, you get used to the smell after a while. 11 8 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mikebloke Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 Nothing can go wrong with the casino situation either! https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.casino.org/news/kenya-betting-industry-ordered-to-shut-down-by-government/amp/ 3 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+frankodragon Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 I can just see Chesnais dressed like a jerk driving an Omni/Horizon and some guy out of the blue yells... 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toiletunes Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 My biggest concern during this entire 'event' has been it feels like most questions can get more coherent answers from a string of taco sauce packets: 2 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 1 1 13 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LoonyLucas Posted January 15, 2020 Share Posted January 15, 2020 1 hour ago, MrBeefy said: You should go visit @ColecoJoe I mean Tommy's thread over in the Intellivision section. Might like what you see. Plus if you are interested in the Amico and you have questions, Tommy will answer them. Eh, I mean, I'm sure it will be a cool system, but between my PS4, Switch and eventually the VCS, I'm not really looking for an additional system right now. I've seen some stuff about it, but it's not something I'm interested in. But I hope anyone else who gets one likes it and enjoys it. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lodmot Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 1 hour ago, LoonyLucas said: Eh, I mean, I'm sure it will be a cool system, but between my PS4, Switch and eventually the VCS, I'm not really looking for an additional system right now. I've seen some stuff about it, but it's not something I'm interested in. But I hope anyone else who gets one likes it and enjoys it. I actually think having a console sized PC for your TV is a nifty idea. I already have a Sega-themed one that i built in my basement. Lol. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OCAT Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 (edited) Yup, I did not want to bring it up but Atari got into the gambling business, not that it has never been seen before in video games from the other big guys but this is direct. Atari is anything but a family company. I mean, it is normal for the lottery companies to use IP of others to make those scratch game cards and cloud tickets but the government is skeezy so I expect this but not from a Video game company. I am not going to lie, I buy lotto tickets (if I win enough I can buy everyone in this forum thread a VCS and tacos so we can all trash this thing and have a laugh and all that) But is seems that Atari has no directive, it is just "chase money" It is like watching the shopping network, you see that one guy or gal selling a Taco machine one day then the next selling that Ronco food dehydrator. Anyone old enough to remember that "Hair in a can" spray? Sorry, had to leave it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GeF7A05zQ8 GLH "hair in a can" Edited January 16, 2020 by OCAT 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ColecoJoe Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 In my continued series of "Poor Karl" ... Karl has a dream. Will it be realized, or will life with the Atari VCS continue to be a monthly disappointment? Please tune in June 11th to find out! 2 5 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DurradonXylles Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 On 1/14/2020 at 11:13 AM, Lodmot said: So I found what probably could be considered the least sketchy picture of the Atari VCS running. The image below is from Kingston's official Twitter (so finally, a different source besides Atari themselves :P). You can see the system running the Atari Vault, and there are only two cables in the shot-- one running out the back of the console up to the TV, and the other coming out the front for the game controller. I know it's just a photo, which can easily be tampered with, but this is the best we have to go by. Also, it's comforting that it's finally NOT from Atari... On 1/14/2020 at 12:07 PM, Paul Slocum said: I realized that probably the best way to fake it would just be to put a different board in the AtariVCS case, like an Udoo Bolt Ryzen board. Considering how ambiguous the wording of their CES Twitter posts CES Medium update is, and considering what they've done in the past like with Tempest 4000, it is completely plausible that they've put in another x86 board or crammed their Ryzen development board inside. You could also fake it with another computer and wireless HDMI extenders. Also, notice that when Atari is doing that demo video in the same room, there's a second cable going to the TV that's not in that photo. That Lunar Lander launch screen in the photo could be a JPEG shown off a USB stick plugged in the back of the TV for all we know ("Please Do Not Touch") Ultimately the best proof would have been to let journalists see it. They went to Vegas and set up a demo suite during an event that boasts 6000 members of the media, and only one journalist was interested in seeing and writing about a new Atari console!? Their NDA must be absurd and/or they're hiding so much that they literally just wanted one journalist to see it to minimize exposure. On Indiegogo and Reddit I asked Atari if it's the actual AtariVCS board driving these demos, and they've avoided answering. And while Atari is bad about answering questions, they usually do answer polite questions on their subreddit that look bad to not answer when they have an easy answer that looks good. Atari's answer should basically just be "yes" unless we've been misled. But yesterday Atari deleted an adjacent post on the subreddit and responded to question on Indiegogo without responding to mine. Maybe they're just being slow or unresponsive, but it doesn't look good to me. The last question on their subreddit they didn't directly answer was about whether they'd have an official booth on the CES floor. On 1/14/2020 at 1:05 PM, JBerel said: I'm not sure why you would think it's actually running Atari's board they intend to manufacture. They just said in their latest update that they were redesigning their board to remove resistors and some other nonsense. Why on Earth would they have a fully functional 1st version board if that's their story now? It's definitely another x86 board taped inside their shell at best. Probably why they have Windows running on it because it moved over with the board. Instant demo unit. Honestly, do you need to bother calling it a fake at this point. It's supposedly a garden variety PC running in their plastic box for illustration purposes only, so fake, real, doesn't matter what you call it. It's not looking any closer to being shipped. When I came back to find four plus pages to read through, I thought we had more exciting news to tear apart, and I wasn't wrong. It looks as though my prevailing theory about the CES outboard Atari hosted is proving more and more to be true, and it really was a complete and utter farce that had all smoke and mirrors. As for this display showing off Atari Vault: yeah this is nothing special, and any computer made in the last ten to twelve years running Windows 7 (rest in peace), Mac OS X 10.8, Ubuntu 12.04 (or Debian/Linux equivalent) or higher can run this device without issue. This means that most mini PCs and singleboard computers made in the last few years can run the Vault without issue. I can certainly see the possibility of another board being used "For illustration purposes only." 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Spriggy Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 6 hours ago, toiletunes said: My biggest concern during this entire 'event' has been it feels like most questions can get more coherent answers from a string of taco sauce packets: ... and then there's the aftermath to deal with! 1 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PlaysWithWolves Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 10 hours ago, Mikebloke said: Nothing can go wrong with the casino situation either! https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.casino.org/news/kenya-betting-industry-ordered-to-shut-down-by-government/amp/ That's from six months ago, so clearly they hadn't yet read Atari's report from Jan. 8th: If they haven't heard about Atari coming to Africa, they soon will. I mean, it's Atari! Atari is being smart here. Kenya is going through the gambling equivalent of our arcade era. What more appropriate company to exploit a country with a gambling addiction crisis and the 76% of Kenyan millennials who've gambled? Atari, that's what. So if you watch this HBO video and see kids playing arcade-style slot machines, just think how you used to play Arcade games and say, "Remember when?" Invest in Atari, SA stocks now and get in on some of that sweet, sweet Kenyan gambling money. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+frankodragon Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 5 hours ago, Spriggy said: ... and then there's the aftermath to deal with! It will be much worse if Atari decided to recycle those PC boards (hope people got their Asteroid cream handy): 11 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lodmot Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 6 hours ago, DurradonXylles said: When I came back to find four plus pages to read through, I thought we had more exciting news to tear apart, and I wasn't wrong. It looks as though my prevailing theory about the CES outboard Atari hosted is proving more and more to be true, and it really was a complete and utter farce that had all smoke and mirrors. As for this display showing off Atari Vault: yeah this is nothing special, and any computer made in the last ten to twelve years running Windows 7 (rest in peace), Mac OS X 10.8, Ubuntu 12.04 (or Debian/Linux equivalent) or higher can run this device without issue. This means that most mini PCs and singleboard computers made in the last few years can run the Vault without issue. I can certainly see the possibility of another board being used "For illustration purposes only." I'm almost 100% certain Atari was outboarding (by the way, we had easy access to an email address at the CES website for reporting that stuff..... Anyone here utilize it?) I can agree that its possible for Atari to fake the gameplay footage still, but I personally dont feel it's too likely at this point. Also, dont forget that a fake x86 board running inside the VCS casing is still a functional board nonetheless-- that means it's generating heat and needs a cooling system of some kind that happens to perfectly match with the casing's air vent placement. If anyone here has built a computer before, you'll know how important airflow is to keep things cool. A regular heatsink on a generic x86 board usually points upward, not sideways. Otherwise, Atari probably had demo units shutting down suddenly pretty often. Lol. As much as i am skeptical about Atari delivering anything to me, let alone delivering a GOOD console, my gut is telling me that their bootup/gameplay footage was more than likely authentic-- as rough and slapped together as it was. Going through the trouble to find another x86 board that happens to fit and function inside that extremely compact VCS case just seems impractical and unlikely to me (unless it was a raspberry pi, but that doesnt run windows or the Atari Vault). But that all being said, I'm leaving the door wide open for anyone to convince me otherwise and be like "ahh.......... gotcha.... sorry... o w o". 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oscar Manuel Rojas Maillo Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 29 minutes ago, Lodmot said: I'm almost 100% certain Atari was outboarding (by the way, we had easy access to an email address at the CES website for reporting that stuff..... Anyone here utilize it?) I did. I wrote that address asking them if they were officially part of CES since Atari claimed that through their social media but were nowhere to be found on the participants list. Never got an answer though 5 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Slocum Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 6 minutes ago, Lodmot said: I'm almost 100% certain Atari was outboarding They'd have surely posted the booth number and it would have been listed on the CES site if they really had a booth, although technically it's not outboarding if you literally just bring one journalist by your hotel room. 19 minutes ago, Lodmot said: Going through the trouble to find another x86 board that happens to fit and function inside that extremely compact VCS case just seems impractical and unlikely to me There are lots of really tiny x86 boards these days like Atomic Pi, Upboard, various Odroid boards. And all of Atari's videos are about a minute, which isn't long enough to know if thermal performance is okay. I'd be reasonably satisfied if they just explicitly said what it's running on, but they don't seem to be willing to do that. They continue to delete things in their subreddit and answer questions elsewhere while ignoring my question about what the demos were actually running on. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lodmot Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 8 minutes ago, Paul Slocum said: There are lots of really tiny x86 boards these days like Atomic Pi, Upboard, various Odroid boards. And all of Atari's videos are about a minute, which isn't long enough to know if thermal performance is okay. I'd be reasonably satisfied if they just explicitly said what it's running on, but they don't seem to be willing to do that. They continue to delete things in their subreddit and answer questions elsewhere while ignoring my question about what the demos were actually running on. Even though my gut instinct is telling me their footage is probably authentic and they weren't faking it, that act of giving you the cold shoulder is precisely why everyone is skeptical. Atari doesn't realize exactly how much they're just shooting themselves in the foot (actually, more like shooting themselves in the chest) by not answering the majority of the public's concerns. It's exactly why I stopped working on my VCS game for their platform. To be fair to Atari though, they aren't the only company coming out with a game console with literally zero exclusive games. Look at the Xbox Series X. I have a feeling Microsoft is going to fuck themselves over royally with that one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JBerel Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 "At CES 2020, Atari is hosting invite-only, hands-on demonstrations of the Atari VCS dashboard GUI (Graphical User Interface), Atari Vault, Antstream Arcade, and Sandbox PC Mode, which will include accessing everything from a Windows desktop to Steam games to streaming apps. Atari VCS appearance models will be on hand to show everyone how the finished Atari VCS hardware will look. The team took the transparent Atari VCS housing originally used for tolerance testing, and stripped out the dummy PCB board, replacing it with a fully operational one. But we didn’t stop there; instead, the team built a true “hot rod” Atari VCS by installing 32 GB of RAM and a 256 GB internal SSD. We have elected to place this special “Atari VCS 3200 Crystal Ghost” into the hands of one of our key strategic partners for display at the “Adventure” we know as CES." By their own blog post, I read that as, "we're showing simulations of what our dashboard and a few games might look like from a Windows machine for some reason, we'll have more of our plastic nightlight models, and we put together an operational mock-up unit, that you can't touch or get too close to, which is running Windows on specs we aren't offering." I don't know why anyone wants to contort that into, "they have working hardware." Atari isn't even trying to lie this go around. They have nothing. 7 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flojomojo Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 1 hour ago, Lodmot said: I'm almost 100% certain Atari was outboarding (by the way, we had easy access to an email address at the CES website for reporting that stuff..... Anyone here utilize it?) To what end? To get "Atari" banned from getting a booth at a conference they never intended to leverage anyway, because they've got nothing to show? I guess it would be amusing to have Fred on the "no tickets allowed" list, even if Just add "outboarding" to the list of their questionable behavior trademark trolling crowdfunding abuse lying to media social media incompetence not paying their partners financial exploitation via online casinos not knowing pong is not a high score game taking away SDcard from Flashback censorship of criticism abandoning paid apps blockchain shenanigans probably more... 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lodmot Posted January 16, 2020 Share Posted January 16, 2020 17 minutes ago, JBerel said: "At CES 2020, Atari is hosting invite-only, hands-on demonstrations of the Atari VCS dashboard GUI (Graphical User Interface), Atari Vault, Antstream Arcade, and Sandbox PC Mode, which will include accessing everything from a Windows desktop to Steam games to streaming apps. Atari VCS appearance models will be on hand to show everyone how the finished Atari VCS hardware will look. The team took the transparent Atari VCS housing originally used for tolerance testing, and stripped out the dummy PCB board, replacing it with a fully operational one. But we didn’t stop there; instead, the team built a true “hot rod” Atari VCS by installing 32 GB of RAM and a 256 GB internal SSD. We have elected to place this special “Atari VCS 3200 Crystal Ghost” into the hands of one of our key strategic partners for display at the “Adventure” we know as CES." By their own blog post, I read that as, "we're showing simulations of what our dashboard and a few games might look like from a Windows machine for some reason, we'll have more of our plastic nightlight models, and we put together an operational mock-up unit, that you can't touch or get too close to, which is running Windows on specs we aren't offering." I don't know why anyone wants to contort that into, "they have working hardware." Atari isn't even trying to lie this go around. They have nothing. I'm not contorting it into "they have working hardware". I'm trying to say it's a possibility that they have working hardware, and it would be highly impractical for them to "fake a console" by building an "alternate working" console. It doesn't make sense to me. Plus, what about my other point about keeping the system cool, because that WOULD be a necessity. If you're going to schlup another x86 board in that VCS casing (even a small Arduino x86 board), your heat sink is pointing upward, while the vents in the VCS casing are on the rear: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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