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AtariAge News Archive
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 AtariAge is proud to present the third annual Stan's Atari Excellence Awards! These awards were created by AtariAge member Stan Jr., to recognize those who help keep the spirit of classic Atari systems alive and well in these modern times. Last year was a particularly robust year for classic gaming, with homebrewers creating new games for the 2600 and 5200, an explosion of new hacks, the unveiling of several eye opening prototypes, and a wide assortment of new hardware to enjoy classic games in ways you never could before! Awards were given in four categories this year:- Homebrew of the Year
- Hack of the Year
- Atari Achievement Award
- Player's Choice Award
To read about the awards and their recipients, please visit the 2004 Stan's Atari Excellence Awards page. Congratulations to everyone who's helped keep classic gaming alive!
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 Version 0.91 of MESS (the Multi Emulator Super System) is now available for Windows. This version addresses a problem with the 7800 POKEY sound system, courtesy of Ken Siders, who is currently porting his popular 5200 homebrew Beef Drop to the 7800. Several fixes and improvements have been made to other system drivers as well, and this version is based on the recent MAME 0.91 release. To download the latest binaries and source please visit the MESS Homepage
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 The Atari Times has announced that the 2005 Atari Times Compendium is now available for purchase. This book features 102 pages of articles covering the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, Jaguar, Lynx, Atari computers, and more, including 45 pages of never before released material. Inside you'll find several excusive articles, such as a chat with Jaguar playtester Lance Lewis, TAT's Top 10 Consoles of All-Time, Atari at the Ballpark, and many new reviews never before published. More information about The Atari Times 2004 Compendium and how to order your own copy can be found here.
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 Classic gaming enthusiast Joe Grand of Grand Idea Studio and Pixels Past is scheduled to appear on G4techTV's popular The Screen Savers television show on Wednesday, February 2, 2005. Joe has made several contributions to the classic gaming hobby over the years, including his Atari 2600 game SCSIcide, the Stelladaptor 2600 to USB Interface, Redemption 5200 Controller Adapters, the book Game Console Hacking, and more. Joe will demonstrate several of his inventions and discuss the societal importance and educational benefit of product modification and reverse engineering on the live segment that begins at 4pm PST. You can learn more about The Screen Savers here.
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 Organizers of the Oklahoma Video Game Exhibition have announced a date and location for their 2005 event. Previously known as the Oklahoma Gaming Expo, this year's event will take place June 18th at the Holiday Inn Tulsa-South. Held annually in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the OVGE is a gathering of classic gaming collectors and enthusiasts showing, playing, and trading. Tables are setup for exhibitors and vendors to show their collections and wares, and many game systems are on display for show and play. Gaming tournaments and drawings are also a staple of the event, taking place throughout the day. AtariAge was in attendance for the 2004 show, and you can view our photos and commentary of the event here. To learn more, please visit the official web site at www.ovge.com.
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 Issue #9 of the Retrogaming Times Monthly is now online. This is the largest issue to date, and this month's features include:- Retrogaming Commercial Vault
- Many Faces of "Defender"
- MAME Review Burgertime
- Dragon's Lair 20th Anniversary
- TI-99/4A Arcade
- Syntax Era - "Electronic Games" Magazine
- Tengen Titles - Ms. Pac-Man
- Apple Corps
- Computing History's Losers - part II
You can find all these and more inside the February, 2005 issue of Retrogaming Times Monthly.
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 Justin Scott, curator of the informative Atari7800.com web site, has completed work on a refit of his web site dedicated to the TurboGrafx-16 console. TurboGrafx-16.com caters to the American TurboGrafx fan base, which Justin believes has been under served in recent years. The new site features a comprehensive overview of all TurboGrafx systems developed for the American home consumer electronics market, extensive TurboGrafx history, a growing library of web resources including eBay auction tools, a small TurboGrafx web store featuring a few select items, general information regarding the Japanese PC Engine variant systems, multimedia downloads, TurboGrafx propaganda and documentation along with a growing list of over 300 pages of cheats and codes featured on the Tricknology 101 page. The web site first went live in 1997 as an enthusiast site known as "TurboXP" hosted on Yahoo. On July 4, 2002 the site was renamed TurboGrafx-16.com and has slowly evolved into what it is today.
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 Atari 2600 programmer Andrew Davie (author of Qb for the Atari 2600 and 8-bit computers) is hard at work developing a new, sophisticated graphics engine for the 2600 that he will incorporate into at least two new games. This new technology opens the doorway to many new games, as it gives the 2600 a color character-graphics mode similar to the much later consoles. The engine includes an API that can be used by other programmers for game development. Andrew has put together a demo using this new engine, showing movement around a playfield similar to Boulder Dash game for the Atari 8-bit (and other) computers. As a Boulder Dash-style game for the 2600 is a fairly big project to tackle, Andrew first plans on making a 2600 version of Sokoban. You can view a movie of Andrew's new engine here, and discuss Andrew's work and suggestions for games you'd like to see created with this engine in our Atari 2600 Forum.
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 The 2004 Holiday Qb Cart Contest is over and we've selected ten lucky winners to receive a free 2004 Holiday Qb Cartridge! Nearly 100 photos were sent in, and we've also put up the final batch of submissions which you can view here. The Holiday Qb Cart is a special version of Andrew Davie's popular Atari 2600 homebrew game Qb, given a special holiday theme and sporting an original label and manual created by Dave Exton. Since the original game is no longer available for purchase, this special, limited version of Qb may have been the last opportunity to obtain a new copy of this game in cartridge form. Congratulations to everyone who won, and thanks go out to everyone who took time to participate in the contest!
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 SCSIcide is an original, fast-paced homebrew game released back in 2001 by Joe Grand of Pixels Past. In SCSIcide you play the role of a hard drive read head. As the different colored bits scroll by on the hard drive platter, you need to quickly read them in the correct order before you suffer a buffer underflow. As you complete each level, the data scrolls by more and more quickly! How far can you go? If you're a fan of Activision's Kaboom!, then you'll love SCSIcide.
Joe Grand has spent some time recently updating SCSIcide and has released a new version of the game titled Ultra SCSIcide. This latest version of the game contains many improvements over the original, such as joystick support (the original version only supports paddles), gameplay improvements, a new PAL version, and more. To help commemorate this new version of the game, Joe Grand and AtariAge have teamed up to create a new label and manual for Ultra SCSIcide. To that end we are holding an Ultra SCSIcide Label Design Contest to create original label artwork that will grace all copies of Ultra SCSIcide that are sold through the AtariAge Store after the contest. This artwork will also be featured on the cover of the manual created for Ultra SCSIcide. The contest runs through February 6th, 2005 and the winner will receive a copy of Ultra SCSIcide, a Stelladaptor 2600 to USB Interface, and a $25 Gift Certificate in the AtariAge Store.
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 Atari 2600 author Manuel Rotschkar (whose previous games include Seawolf, Star Fire, and Gunfight) has been hard at work on his newest Atari 2600 creation, Crazy Balloon. Based on the 1980's arcade underdog from Taito, in Crazy Balloon you must carefully navigate your balloon through many varied levels full of different dangers. The final version, which Manuel plans to have completed in time for the 2005 Mini Game Competition, will contain most obstacles and levels of the original arcade game, as well as some new dangers created exclusively for the Atari 2600 version. You can view screenshots of the game here and follow development of Crazy Balloon along with the latest binary in our Homebrew Discussion Forum.
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Version 0.90 of MESS (the Multi Emulator Super System) is now available for Windows. This version includes updates to the Atari 7800 emulation courtesy of Ken Siders, who is currently porting Beef Drop to the 7800. There are many fixes and improvements to other system drivers as well, including new Amiga support. To download the latest binaries and source please visit the MESS Homepage.
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 To help kick off the new year, Matt Reichert of AtariProtos.com has posted a substantial update to his Atari 8-bit Section, including reviews for Commando, Crystal Castles, Deflecktor, Midi Maze, Mean 18, Superman III, and Tower Toppler. He's also posted updates for many 2600 prototype reviews, including Wings, Diagnostic Cartridge, Double Dunk, and Sprintmaster. Please visit AtariProtos.com to read these latest reviews and more!
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 The sixth issue of Armchair Arcade has been published, featuring a new cover by Seb Brassard and the following articles:- Atari Flashback versus Commodore 64 30-in-1 by Bill Loguidice
- Hackers, Slackers, and Shackles: The Future of Free Software Game Development by Matt Barton
- A Game of Concentration: Videogames and ADHD by Patty McCabe-Remmell
- Fish Him! Where have all the Fatalities Gone? Computer Camp Catastrophes by Mat Tschirgi
- Shutting Down Windows by David Torre
Please visit www.armchairarcade.com to read the latest issue, as well as archives of past issues.
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 Man Goes Down author Alex Herbert has chosen one of Nathan Strum's many submissions as the winning entry for the Man Goes Down Label Contest! Nathan's label design will grace copies of Man Goes Down when it goes on sale in the AtariAge Store, and will also be featured on the cover of the manual created for the game. Nathan will receive a copy of Man Goes Down as well as Richard Hutchinson's AtariVox Speech Module, which the game supports. If you're curious as to what the text on the label says, Nathan has provided a legible version here. You can view all the contest submissions here. Congratulations to Nathan Strum and to everyone who submitted the many wonderful entries that were received!
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Due to the fact that many people are busy before and during the holidays, we've extended the deadline for the 2004 AtariAge Holiday Qb Cart Contest! You now have until January 15th, 2005 to submit photos for the contest, and we're giving away 10 limited edition Holiday Qb Cartridges. The Holiday Qb Cart is a special version of Andrew Davie's popular Atari 2600 homebrew game Qb, given a special holiday theme and sporting an original label and manual created by Dave Exton. Since the original game is no longer available for purchase, this special, limited version of Qb may be your only opportunity to obtain a new copy of this game in cartridge form. You can learn more about the cart and complete details on how to enter here. Good luck!
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 Thanks to our friends at Activision, Thomas Jentzsch, and Matt Reichert, we are proud to make available the binaries for several unreleased Activision games and demos. The Venetian Blinds Demo is a graphics technology demo, Bloody Human Freeway is a version of Freeway that was never released, and then Unknown Game #1 and Unknown Game #2 are two original games that were never saw the light of day. We've put together a page detailing all the games here. Matt Reichert of AtariProtos.com has written up a brief description of each prototype, and links are provided to the full review of each game on his site. Thomas Jentzsch converted each of the NTSC prototypes to PAL, allowing everyone to enjoy these games. Enjoy and Happy New Year!
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 Andrew Davie, creator of the Interleaved ChronoColour technology used in the 2003 AtariAge GreetingCart, has developed a new technique similar to that used in the GreetingCart, but without flicker. This new technology uses less memory, eliminates the flicker employed by the previous ChronoColour technique, and can display up to 384 frames of animation at 48 x 128 resolution in 512K of memory. At present, the only way to view this animation technique on a real Atari 2600 is via the soon-to-ship Krokodile Cartridge, which has 512K of onboard flash memory. A demo of Andrew's new animation technology will be pre-loaded onto the Krokodile Cart when they ship. You can learn more and view movies of this animation in our Atari 2600 Forum.
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 Bryan Edewaard has released the Atari 8-bit computer binary for Castle Crisis, his excellent rendition of the classic Atari arcade game Warlords. Using your shield, you must capture and launch fireballs against an enemy's castle, while protecting your own castle from enemy fireball hits. Up to four human players can wage war on an Atari 8-bit computer, using readily available Atari 2600 paddle controllers. You can download Castle Crisis here, and you can find some excellent Atari 8-bit emulators here. If you're a 5200 fan, you can also download the 5200 version of the game here.
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 Issue #76 (Jan/Dec 2004) of the 2600 Connection newsletter is now shipping. This latest issue of 2600 Connection features:- PhillyClassic 5 Review by Al Backiel
- NWCGE 2004 Review by Brad Prillwitz
- CGE2K4 Review by James Peyton
- Pitfall: The Lost Expedition Review
- Letters from Readers
- News & Notes
- Classified Ads
Please visit the 2600 Connection site to learn how you can obtain a copy of Issue #76.
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