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AtariAge News Archive
AtGames has announced their fall lineup of Flashback consoles and portables, further expanding on their offerings for fans of the Atari 2600 and Sega Genesis. These new products include several Atari Flashback consoles, an updated Atari Flashback Portable, a new Genesis Flashback styled after the classic Sega Genesis console, and an updated Genesis portable. Here's a brief description of the AtGames Fall 2017 lineup:
Microsoft researchers in Canada have built an Artificial Intelligence program capable of reaching (and eclipsing) the maximum score of 999,990 in the Atari 2600 version of Ms. Pac-Man. According to Wired Magazine, "Ms. Pac-Man has been targeted by artificial intelligence researchers for years, but no player, human or otherwise, has ever scored so big." This milestone was accomplished by breaking the game down into smaller pieces utilizing more than 150 "bots" working in tandem to decide where best to move Ms. Pac-Man, similar to how the human brain works. The research is expected to translate into other AI fields such as natural language processing. The video below gives you a glimpse into the AI as it chews through the mazes.
Keith Robinson, the leader of the game development team at Mattel Electronics who purchased the rights to the Intellivision and resurrected the game console in the late 1980s, died from kidney failure Wednesday. Keith remained dedicated to the Intellivison brand throughout the 1990s and beyond, keeping the flame alive by releasing Intellivision Lives! for contemporary consoles and the Intellivision Flashback, a plug and play console featuring many of the original system's best games. Keith was also a prolific artist... his weekly comic strip Making It debuted in 1985, and continued publication for over thirty years. The series was adapted into a video game for the Sega Genesis, Normy's Beach Babe-O-Rama. Fittingly, it was designed by Realtime Associates, a team originally hired to make Intellivision software in the 1980s! Keith Robinson was a fixture at classic game conventions, fondly remembered for his larger than life personality and tireless enthusiasm for the Intellivision. He'll be deeply missed, not only as a founding father of the video game industry, but for his continued contributions to gaming long after the Intellivision faded into history. For those interested, Keith's life and accomplishments were examined in greater detail in an obituary on The Retroist. 
Engadget reports that Hyperkin, the designers of the Super NES-compatible Supaboy handheld and a variety of retro consoles, will soon be releasing its own clone of the Atari 2600. This system, fittingly titled the RetroN 77, uses actual 2600 cartridges and joysticks, but has the 21st century perk of an HDMI port, ensuring a sharp picture and full compatibility with modern television sets. And if you don't want to use original Atari joysticks, USB controllers are also an option. The RetroN 77 will retail for $80, and should be available by the end of 2017, just in time for the Atari 2600's 40th anniversary. Special thanks to Tiny Cartridge for the scoop. 
The Southern-Fried Gameroom Expo 2017 (SFGE) will be open for business at 4:00pm on Friday, June 9, and continues through Sunday, June 11, at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel! The Southern-Fried Gameroom Expo features more than 250 arcade, pinball and console machines, the fourth annual Southern-Fried Pinball Tournament, tabletop gaming, a vendor expo, exciting programs and guest speakers, movie screenings, and so much more. SFGE is a family-friendly event that will be fun for all ages. Guest speakers include Billy Mitchell, Roger Sharpe, Ben Heck, Walter Day, and David Crane, the man who wrote Pitfall for the 2600 and co-founded Activision, the world's first third party software publisher. Learn more by visiting the official Southern-Fried Gameroom Expo website! 
Here's a nifty deal, originally posted on Twitter by the professional penny pinchers at CheapAssGamer. For the next week, Bundle Stars is selling the Atari Vault collection for just $3.99, a steep discount from its usual ten dollar price tag. The collection includes nearly twenty of Atari's biggest arcade hits, along with dozens of Atari 2600 titles. Many of these games have found their way to past Atari collections, but this is a convenient way for newcomers to acquaint themselves with the company's massive library, and an inexpensive reintroduction for seasoned joystick jockeys. Note that you'll need a Steam account to take advantage of this offer.
Break Free is a new game for the TI-99/4A computer written by David Vella. The basic concept is similar to Breakout, but one can move the bat up and down as well as left and right. Your goal is not to break all the bricks, but to break enough of them to find a key which will open the gate so you can "break free" to the next level. Break Free was developed over the course of a year and is written in 100% GPL. Break Free even features an AtariAge-themed level. Features of Break Free include:
 Our friend Michael Thomasson has published a new book, Downright Bizarre Games: Video Games that Crossed the Line, poking fun at the video game industry, an entertainment business that often takes itself much too seriously. This is a hilarious look at the odd side of the industry, from games outside of the norm to bad art and outlandish dialogue. Also featured are unfortunate headlines, marketing fiascos and publicity stunts gone awry. All these eccentric and strange events are documented within this book which gaming professionals wish had never seen print.
Several games from classic Atari consoles are featured in the book, including Chase the Chuckwagon, Communist Mutants from Space, Porky's, Tax Avoiders, Journey Escape, and Kool-Aid Man for the Atari 2600, Ninja Golf for the Atari 7800, Gordo 106 and Kung Food for the Atari Lynx, and Kasumi Ninja for the Atari Jaguar. You can view an interadctive preview of this full color, coffee-table book at Blurb.com. Books can be purchased through Blurb, or via the GoodDealGames.com website if interested parties want an autographed or personalized copy.
Rebooteroids is a new take on an arcade classic for the Atari Jaguar. In development for over six years, Rebooteroids is now available for purchase! Rebooteroids features 100 unique levels, plus 10 'kombateroids' levels for multiplayer head to head. You can choose from five gameplay modes, including a 'skirmish mode' whereby randomly generated levels of increasing difficulty challenge the player. Enjoy the original soundtrack by 505 and MSG/reservoir gods while you fight your way through each wave.  Use your controller to rotate the EWS left and right, thrust to avoid colliding with objects, and most importantly, fire to blast everything in sight! Collect bonus power-ups to increase your odds of survival. Every five waves (in Arcade mode) you'll enter a bonus round, where you have the opportunity to earn an extra life. Your high scores are saved to the cart, and you can also share them online. Rebooteroids is packed into a 4MB cartridge and includes a high-quality box and 20-page manual. Please visit the AtariAge Store to purchase a copy today!
In the summer of 1997, AtariAge member Glenn Saunders gathered Atari veterans together to reminisce about the golden age of videogames and to celebrate the 20th birthday of the Atari 2600. Capturing the proceedings on video, he created the two-volume documentary: Stella at 20. Featuring interviews with Nolan Bushnell, Al Alcorn, Joe Decuir, David Crane, Al Miller, Tod Frye, Larry Kaplan, Carol Shaw and many others, the documentary was a treasure-trove of history, stories, anecdotes and insights into the golden age of Atari and the creation of the Atari 2600.  The Stella at 20 tapes are available to watch in their entirety at Archive.org. You can discuss the tapes with other AtariAge visitors in our Atari 2600 Forum.
Piko Interactive is taking pre-orders for their first Atari Jaguar release, Custodian! The game is an arcade shooter in which you have to protect energy bases from parasites that are trying to drain it dry! Custodian features three area levels, many weapons and power-ups, and a great chiptune soundtrack. Custodian was originally released on the Atari ST and Amiga computers. The Jaguar version is a port of the Atari ST game, and features music from the Amiga version. Custodian is being professionally published and will include a cardboard box, color instruction manual, poster, and game cartridge. If sales of Custodian do well, Piko Interactive plans on bringing more games to the Jaguar. Included in the box for the first 150 orders is a $10 coupon off a future purchase. Piko Interactive also publishes games for other systems, including the NES, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis and Gameboy. Pre-orders for Custodian are expected to ship starting in December. You can learn more by visiting the Piko Interactive website.
Please visit the official Portland Retro Gaming Expo website to learn more about the show. We've also created a Portland Retro Gaming Expo Forum to discuss the event. If you're attending the show, please stop by our booth, say hello, and play some new games!
 The 2016 Classic Game Fest is right around the corner, taking place in Austin, Texas on July 30th and 31st. Now in its ninth year, the Classic Game Fest is bigger than ever, expanding from 25,000 square feet in 2015 to a whopping 45,000 square feet this year! Organizers expect over 6,000 attendees at this event, making it one of the largest video game conventions in the country. The Classic Gaming Fest caters to fans of classic gaming systems, featuring retro gaming tournaments, live panels with video game celebrities, costume contests, and live video game music. Over 100 vendors and artists will be present, offering a plethora of consoles, games, accessories, video game art, clothing, and much more! Special guests at this year's show include Warren Spector (Ultima Underworld, System Shock, Deus Ex), Ernest Cline (Ready Player One, Armada), Keith Robinson (Intellivision Productions), and more! If you love video game music and chiptunes, fifteen different bands will be on-hand keeping you entertained all weekend long. Compete against other gaming fans in a variety of tournaments throughout the show. Dress up as your favorite video game character in the cosplay contests. There's so much to do, see, and hear at the show, this is a must visit event if you're in (or can get to) the Austin area for the weekend. The show schedule details all the events taking place both days. Please visit the Classic Gaming Fest website to learn more about the event!
8-bit Generation, the team that brought us the Growing The 8 Bit Generation – The Commodore Wars documentary are back, this time with a documentary focusing on Atari: Easy to Learn, Hard to Master - The Fate of Atari. This 100 minutes long documentary about the Atari story will be narrated by Bil Herd, former Commodore senior engineer and will feature a list of unreleased interviews with the key people of these events. These include a very rare interview with Warner VP Manny Gerard and a unique interview with Atari CEO Ray Kassar, the man held responsible for Atari's success and the video game industry crash at the same time. Ray Kassar has never appeared in a documentary before. From the Kickstarter page:
Before Google, Yahoo and even Apple, before the Silicon Valley cliché of informal dress code, skateboards running the corridors and wild creativity became commonplace, one company embodied the digital economy lifestyle and business style: the one firm coming out of the Age of Aquarius was Atari.
The story of Atari is two-thirds the story of Nolan Bushnell, founder and visionary, and one-third the first and probably biggest boom and bust of the new economy some 20 years before the new economy even existed.
Atari was showing that technology is cool, way before the personal computer revolution took place and they were reaching out to an ever-growing audience with something that is still cool today: video games. Atari literally introduced the digital world to the mass consciousness. Nolan Bushnell and Atari have a huge collection of firsts: the first successful video game company, the first coin-op video game ever, the first general purpose console to win the market, the first marriage between video games and movie industry in the history of entertainment, the fastest growing company in history, the biggest industry crash ever, the weirdest anecdotes in Silicon Valley, the coolest brand on the planet… Atari is a story to be told for two main reasons: it is pure fun and it is impressively educational. This project is already close to its goal, let's help push it over the top! Visit the Kickstarter page for more details.
Our friends at HighScore.com are holding a new high score competition for several classic gaming systems, with great prizes for the winners! Categories include Atari consoles, ColecoVision, MAME, classic Nintendo consoles, and PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16. 
High Score is a competitive gaming community, with multiple levels of competition. Gamers earn trophies for their accomplishments (including virtual patches for classic Activision games), which are displayed in a trophy case on their profile. The contest runs through August 28th, 2016. You can learn full details about the contest here. Good luck!
Conjoined: The Atari 2600 Game is a new homebrew game based on the surprise hit independent horror/comedy feature film of the same name. The game is programmed by Gemintronic's Jason Santuci (AtariAge member "theloon"), who has been involved with many homebrew projects in the past. Jason worked closely with the film's director Joe Grisaffi to design the game.  You play Stanley. You must catch the hearts Alina is throwing to you while avoiding the broken hearts and daggers Alisa is throwing at you. With a little skill, you might just make it to the operation! The game's creators are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to sell copies of the movie and game. You can choose from several different pledge levels, including $10 for the Conjoined DVD, $20 for a copy of the 2600 Conjoined game cartridge and manual, and $60 for a boxed, limited edition, numbered copy of the game. The Kickstarter ends on Thursday, June 30th at 10pm CST, so don't delay if you want to help support this original 2600 homebrew project!
Before game trailers and the internet age, even before magazines, our first contact with video games was the cover art on the front of the box. That's the image that "sold" the game. It was the promise of an experience, and an extrapolation of game play regardless of the game's actual graphical capability. Box Art - A Gaming Documentary will explore the history of video game box art and discover the unsung artists responsible for gaming's great images. Written and Directed by Rob McCallum (Nintendo Quest, Kittie: Origins/Evolutions, Power of Grayskull) the film will look at video game box art from all eras, for both consoles and PC, foreign and domestic releases and variations, and showcase both the famous and infamous stories that surround the gaming cover art we know and love. Rob McCallum says: "No one has told the story of the people who've created some of the most iconic images in video game history - but that's about to change. I'm excited to learn everything about box art from the people responsible. You can only research a subject so much before you start going in circles but hearing the history from those responsible will be an experience you can't replicate reading or by searching on Google. We have stretch goals that give us a lot of freedom to restructure the material and I hope we hit that level so we can share as much of this experience as possible." To learn more about the project, please visit Kickstarter, where the team is looking to reach a modest $30,000 goal in order to make this project a reality. There are stretch goals as well that will allow additional content to be produced for the documentary if reached. You can discuss the project in our forums with AtariAge member Tim Lapetino, who is serving as a producer on Box Art - A Gaming Documentary, and is also one of the authors of the upcoming book Art of Atari.
Our friends at Edladdin, who have been selling great arcade controllers for the Atari 2600/7800, have launched a Kickstarter to bring new arcade controllers and adapters for the ColecoVision to market! Edladdin has designed four new products for ColecoVision enthusiasts:
 The Edladdin Kickstarter campaign runs for 30 days and has a goal of $9,650, with two stretch goals of $13,295 and $16,995. If you're a ColecoVision fan, this Kickstarter is a great way to support a company that's already developed new hardware for classic consoles, and we'd love to see them continue doing so with more systems in the future. You can discuss this Kickstarter in our ColecoVision/Adam Forum.
 Thanks to the work of Kevin Savetz, the unreleased, almost-finished sequel to Star Raiders for the Atari 8-bit computers, written by Atari programmer Aric Wilmunder, has been released! Aric created and developed Star Raiders II while working in the R&D lab of Atari coin-op, and the game was only a few months from completion before work was stopped on it. Aric has written up an Authoritative Star Raiders II document describing his time at Atari and how this version of Star Raiders II came to be.
This is an incredible find for anyone who's enjoyed (or continues to enjoy!) Star Raiders, which originated on the Atari 8-bit computers, but was also released for the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200. This is a true sequel to Star Raiders, not to be confused with the version of Star Raiders II Atari did release, which was a rebranded version of a game based on The Last Starfighter movie. Aric's version expands upon the original Star Raiders in several ways, including the ability to fly down to planets. Kevin Savetz has published an interviewed with Aric Wilmunder, which you can listen to at ANTIC, The Atari Podcast. And here's a video showing the game in action: You can discuss this Atari 8-bit Christmas present in our Atari 8-bit Forum with other Atari 8-bit enthusiasts. You can also download the associated files attached to the first post at the above link. Please be sure to thank Kevin and Eric for working to make this treasure available to everyone!
It is Christmas time once again and the fourth annual Carol vs. The World! Championship is upon us! Throughout the entire month of December, all boys and girls--naughty or nice--will have the opportunity not only to earn bragging rights, but to win actual prizes! 
This year we've changed things a bit. At stake now is a custom-designed, one-of-a-kind Ultimate Video Arcade Marquee. Made with the same process and materials that classic arcade cabinets use, it will look just as great on your MAME cabinet or wall. Plus, the winner gets to help design his own Christmas Carol themed artwork!  That said, there are prizes for players of all skill levels, veterans and novices alike, and many surprises! We encourage everyone to participate, submit their score, and join in the fun! Christmas Carol vs. The Ghost Of Christmas Presents is an original game concept, designed and programmed by James Pujals for the 1980s Intellivision® game system. It follows the adventures of Carol Greenleaf, Santa's most resourceful elf, as she tries to recover the presents stolen by an Evil Snowman, and save Christmas for the children of the world. The game was originally released at the Classic Gaming Expo 2012, and went on to become a smash hit in the retro-gaming community, voted Game Of The Year and then Best Home-Brew Of All Time by Intellivision® enthusiasts of the site AtariAge.com. To enter the contest is very easy:
Good luck and MERRY CHRISTMAS! 1 2 3 4 5 6 ... 81 Next |
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