Futuremakers:This is Ground Control slide

[+Allan]

Here is a best-that-I-could-do scan of a slide of Futuremakers:This is Ground Control I picked up on eBay. It's one of those completed but never released and lost titles from Atari. It's the same screenshot you see in a couple of Atari catalogs from early 1984 before all hell broke loss at Warner Atari.

[www.atarimania.com]

Just found this:

 

 

I'm a bit dim as I found no easy way to do this... Could somebody make .gif files from the screenshots at 4:08 and 4:12? I know they're basically the same as the one from Allan and the two that appear in various catalogs but the resolution seems better. Plus we'd be able to have them on Atarimania.  

 

Thanks!

Edited December 28, 2020 by www.atarimania.com

[+Allan]

Here are two I just made from the video. Much better than the one I made from the slide. Just a note, the ones in the video are the exact same ones in the recent auctions.

 

 

[+Allan]

I do think these were either finished or almost finished products from an outside source. I don't think they were mock-ups. Most likely they never got released because of the sale of Atari to Jack.

[Mclaneinc]

Such a shame as that title just looks really interesting

[www.atarimania.com]

Many thanks 

 

You're right, pretty sure the programs exist in some form.

[abbotkinneydude]

I found another FutureMakers Series title in the 2013 Atari Interactive Inc. bankrupcy documentation.

 

54 Atari Future Makers Series: Atari Skywriter Game Title Unknown
55 Atari Future Makers Series: Mysteries of Wonderland Game Title Unknown
56 Atari Future Makers Series: Through the Starbridge Game Title Unknown

 

The presence of Skywriter as a Future Makers Series is a mistake obviously.

 

See attached PDF (page 58).

 

 

ATARI_INTERACTIVE_INC_sale.pdf

[www.atarimania.com]

Actually, The Mysteries of Wonderland doesn't make much sense either as it was to be part of the Disney line.

[abbotkinneydude]

2 minutes ago, www.atarimania.com said:

Actually, The Mysteries of Wonderland doesn't make much sense either as it was to be part of the Disney line.

 

Thank you for checking this out.

 

That 2013 bankrupcy documentation is not very precise to say the least so nothing surprising here.

 

Re: FutureMakers Series.

 

 

Compute! Issue #51 August 1984

Futuremakers Series For Older Children
Two computer software tours of space, This Is Ground Control and Through the Starbridge, were introduced as the first products in Atari's new Futuremakers series.

Featuring 3-D animated graphics of plan etary approaches and fly-bys, the programs are aimed at users ten years of age and older.

The Futuremakers series should be available on disk for Atari computers about the time you read this, for a suggested price of $39.95 each.

 

 

Infoworld's Essential Guide to ATARI

Atari showed a number of new software programs for its home computers at the Summer 1984 CES.

In Atari’s Futuremakers series, players are astronauts taken on simulated space flights through the solar system and the Milky Way.
This is Ground Control contains good sound and three-dimensional visual effects as you fly by the solar system’s planets.

Through the Starbridge brings players near simulated galactic wonders such as black holes and quasars.

 

[cyro]

A few quick notes:

• I bought my set of slides from Dan Kramer in 2002 or 2003, at that point he had two, three sets for sale and they were all the same (and all of them were missing the Atari 7800 Pro Controller slide)
• @www.atarimania.com send me a PM and I can send you some hi-res scans of the slides, they won't be much better than the 4K video though
• I think the FutureMakers screenshots are made up, notice how the boxes on the right are misaligned in Ground Control, that looks a bit off for a real program. Most of the details around these games are screenshots, including a few in the Atari XL Home Computer promo video. The very brief "action sequence" that is shown in that video looks fake as well.

[abbotkinneydude]

Thank you @cyro for all that information and pointing me out toward that promotional video which was originally posted by the highly esteemed (and irreplaceable in my eyes) Curt Vendel of the ATARI MUSEUM.

 

This plays as an extension to the May 25th, 1984 catalog and was probably used at length during the Summer CES of 1984 in Chicago (June 3rd - 6th of that year).

 

Here are the screen captures in question.

 

Through The Star Bridge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is Ground Control

 

 

 

Also, please note how, in its May 25th 1984 catalog, ATARI Inc. is using "Star Bridge" as two words when the introduction screen is merging both words into one ("Starbridge").

 

Edited December 30, 2020 by abbotkinneydude
Grammar

[cyro]

Here are the scans of the two press kit slides, directly of a Nikon LS-5000 slide scanner :)

[abbotkinneydude]

Thanks so much @cyro.

 

The super high res of those scans will go a long way in determining how they were created; especially if we're dealing with a proof of concept at this point.

 

I do wonder why the first one (Through The Star Bridge) didn't show up in the video.

 

Maybe they had enough 'slideshow assets' to get by for Through The Star Bridge and didn't need it unlike for This is Ground Control where all they had were those two screens of Jupiter and Saturn.

 

Comments

 

1) That NASA / 2001 / 2010 influence in Through The Star Bridge is enormous.

 

1a) Blue Marble shot.

1b) Saturn scrolling reminiscent of the opening of ALIEN (LV-426).

1c) 2001 (1968 film) opening

1d) 2001 Discovery arriving at Jupiter.

1e/1f) Exiting the Pod Bay

 

Also note the use of "suspended animation" (as in 2001) in the original Through The Star Bridge slide not featured in the CES promo film.

 

2) The Jupiter screen information is the same in both pieces of software; except more detailed in This is Ground Control.

 

At this rate, we might just code these two pieces of software ourselves...

[cyro]

All very good points @abbotkinneydude and spot on with the pop culture references!

 

I do think both of them were "concept ware", it certainly sounded exciting and it's too bad nothing ever came of it

 

Other items in the marketing slides are clearly being shown "in action" in the marketing video, like LETTER TUTOR (seen at 2:25). It was announced 1982 Summer CES in Chicago (June 6-9) and then again announced at the 1984 Summer CES in Chicago (June 3-6) but never released. However the video looks very convincing, the WORD TUTOR program right afterwards looks also pretty real.

[Gunstar]

I guess I'm one of these "older children" as I would have loved This is Ground Control and Through the Star Bridge when I had my first Atari at 17 as well as today. I doubt I'd actually learn anything I didn't already know, then or now, but I'd love to play with it and see the fly-by's, the graphics look phenomenal for the day and the Atari.

[abbotkinneydude]

On 12/30/2020 at 8:45 PM, cyro said:

Other items in the marketing slides are clearly being shown "in action" in the marketing video, like LETTER TUTOR (seen at 2:25). It was announced 1982 Summer CES in Chicago (June 6-9) and then again announced at the 1984 Summer CES in Chicago (June 3-6) but never released. However the video looks very convincing, the WORD TUTOR program right afterwards looks also pretty real.

Hi @cyro!

 

Letter Tutor (RX8071) actually leaked out in 1996 as an prototype shortly after ATARI Corps.'s reverse merger with JTS.

 

B&C Computervisions started selling repros of the prototype board starting the same year.

 

Superman III, Tower Toppler, Deflektor, Animated Puzzle were part of the same batch and were released around the same time.

 

ATARI PROTOS does have a write-up about this title and you can still buy it from Best Electronics.

 

Regarding Word Tutor (RX8072), maybe Stephen DeWitt (the author) still has the source code.

 

To get back to ATARI Futuremakers, I did find two more mentions of those two titles in another Compute! issue and in TV Gamer UK.

 

The Compute! blurb is just a mention BUT the the TV Gamer write-up is actually detailed and contains slightly more information about both pieces of software than any other medium to date (see underlined terms).

 

This leads me to believe that, on the floor of the SU 1984 CES, they were given access to more than the slideshow, the Alan Alda catalog (05251984) and the 'New Age of ATARI' brochure I'm showing an excerpt of at the end of this post.

 

 

Compute! Issue #52 September 1984 (p48)

ATARI's Futuremakers and Milestone

New programs from ATARI Inc., also reflect the trend toward greater sophistication.

The company's milestone series from Atari Learning Systems and its Futuremakers simulation programs are quite interactive and feature a hands-on approach to learning.

The AtariLab science packages, part of the Milestone Series, let youngsters simulate more than 100 different experiments using the computer and a laboratory kit.

 

 

TV Gamer (UK) August 1984 (p19)

ATARI's Futuremaker series offered 3D space tours. The first two titles are This is Ground Control and Through The Starbridge.

 

Your mission in This is Ground Control is to roam nature's last frontier to map it for future commercial use.

You will also use spacecraft design, course planning and flight operations.

Flight activity can be controlled with a joystick or the Atari touch tablet and light pen.

 

Through The Starbridge is both fact and fiction as you meet everything from black holes and quasars to alien beings.

 

In both titles, the elaborate shipboard displays vital data such as fuel, speed, gravity of nearby bodies, time dates for planteary encounters, and relative interplanetary distances.

 

Suggest cost is $39.95.

 

-----------------------------

 

In comparison, this is from The New Age of ATARI brochure distributed to resellers and present at the 1984 Summer CES.

 

 

[_The Doctor__]

Atari FutureMakers titles - ground control and star bridge are not made up... they were complete with the usual changes to be made as they go to production.

The picture is not faked, it looks miss-aligned because the display on the edge and the artifact doubled, the optical result appears to the eye as having shifted over more than it really is, You wouldn't see that on a modern display by the way. Yes, the titles were shown. Not all titles for the series were completed for but most were far enough along that you might consider them as such, a few fixes and additions and they'd have been done as well. Some others were just ideas and working titles and aren't even listed, this is all normal.

It was generally a crossover from the camps and the AIEAR to the HCD

Edited January 9, 2021 by _The Doctor__