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AtariAge News Archive
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 Frequent visitors to AtariAge may know about our weekly gameplay tracker, started by AtariAge member cvga in 2008 and continued by thegoldenband since 2010. Participants in the tracker simply log the amount of time they spend playing games on pre-modern platforms (i.e. anything up to the Dreamcast), and the numbers are then totaled each week to see which games and consoles have gotten the most time.
One of our members, Atarian7, has been on a quest to reach the maximum possible score of 999,999 points in the game Kaboom!. He's come very close in the past, logging a score of 928,982 in April 2012, and his prowess has even earned praise from Larry Kaplan, the game's designer. As of this week, he reached a tremendous milestone, and has now logged over 100,000 minutes of Kaboom! since the tracker was founded. That's more than two months of continuous play! Will Atarian7 reach 999,999 points before he reaches 999,999 minutes? Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 We're a bit late with this news, but episode 6 of ANTIC, The Atari 8-bit Podcast is now available for your listening pleasure. In this latest episode:
Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 Everybody's favorite fabled frosty firefighter is back! But so are those pesky fireballs, and they're hotter than ever! This year they've kidnapped Santa and some of his helpers, so it's up to you to put out the fireballs and rescue your friends from their fiery fate.
Your first frosty adventure was just a warm-up - now there are all new levels to conquer and challenges to face! Fortunately, you've found some new magic in that old silk hat of yours. Can you stay frostier, fight your way to the fireballs' frigid fortress, and freeze those fiendish flames? AtariAge and the team behind the upcoming Atari 2600 homebrew Stay Frosty 2, lead by author Darrell Spice, Jr., have released a playable demo of this original, holiday-themed game! Stay Frosty 2 is a sequel to the original Stay Frosty, released as part of a collection of mini-games in Stella's Stocking several years ago. This special demo version of Stay Frosty 2 contains a selection of levels featured in the full game. Can you conquer them and rescue Mrs. Claus? The full version of Stay Frosty 2 features more characters to rescue, 32 unique levels which repeat at increasing difficulties for 128 total levels, and many more surprises! You can download the the demo version of Stay Frosty 2 in our Atari 2600 Forum. Included are NTSC and PAL versions of the game you can enjoy in the Stella emulator (be sure you're using the latest version) or on a real Atari 2600 system with a Harmony Cartridge. The full version of Stay Frosty 2 will be available soon in the AtariAge Store! Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
Left Turn Only Productions, publishers of the modern hit Intellivision game, Christmas Carol vs. The Ghost Of Christmas Presents, and the Intellivision High Score Club have announced their second annual Carol vs. The World! Championship. After the fantastic success of the high-score competition following the game's release in 2012, they have decided to turn it into an annual event. This year, the prizes include not only a specially designed custom edition of the game, but also commemorative merit badges and a first for any game competition: personalized mugs with hot-cocoa mix—a propos to a Christmas challenge during winter time.  Christmas Carol vs. The Ghost Of Christmas Presents is an original game concept, designed and programmed by James Pujals and published by Left Turn Only Productions 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 2012 Classic Gaming Expo, and went on to become a smash hit in the retro-gaming community, voted Game Of The Year by retro-gaming enthusiasts on AtariAge. For the Carol Vs. The World! Championship, the producers have released the game as a free download, playable on any PC. No purchase or registration is needed to participate; just a photo of the game score, which may be submitted either via e-mail or posted directly to the Intellivision High Score Forum . The high-score championship is open to all comers, and will last throughout the month of December. The competition closes on 31 December, 2013 at 12:00 Midnight, Central Standard Time. For more information, please visit the official Carol vs. The World! Championship site. Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 CollectorVision has announced they are accepting pre-orders for their upcoming release of a Pong and Computer Space Box Set. The box set include copies of Pong and Computer Space, each in their own box, including extras such as a history booklet, a postcard containing codes to download the ROM images for both games, and a serialized holographic sticker on the box. This release will be limited to 150 copies and has been authorized by Atari Interactive. Order by December 7th to receive a special price of $110. After that, the price increases to $150.
Computer Space is where it all began. Nolan Bushnell teamed up with with Ted Dabney in the beginning of the seventies to design one of the first arcade videogames. Unfortunately, the game was far from being a success but it helped them form Atari and thus kick-started the whole videogame industry. Bushnell hired a new engineer, Allan Alcorn, to develop Pong, which went on to become the first commercially successful video game. Atari then produced a home Pong unit which also did very well, leading to many sequels and imitators. Atari would later turn their efforts to another unit, the Atari VCS (later renamed the 2600), which was a huge success for Atari. With this Pong & Computer Space Box Set, CollectorVision's aim was to pay tribute to the fathers of the videogame industry. You can learn more about this box set and how to pre-order your copy over in our CollectorVision Forum. Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 Our Star Castle Arcade Label Contest is drawing to a close, ending this Sunday at 11:59pm! We've already received some great entries, and we look forward to receiving your submission! The winning label design will be featured on the Star Castle Arcade cartridge, manual and box. The winner of the contest will receive a $100 gift certificate in the AtariAge Store, as well as a copy of the game in physical form featuring their winning design.
Star Castle Arcade is a 32K game that pushes the boundary of what's possible on the Atari 2600. Star Castle is a 1980 vector arcade game produced by Cinematronics. The game involves obliterating a series of defenses orbiting a stationary turret in the center of the screen. Chris Walton and Thomas Jentzsch have created a fantastic port of Star Castle for the Atari 2600, one of two versions of Star Castle developed in parallel. This new version contains many improvements over the previously released version of Star Castle. The object of Star Castle is to destroy an enemy cannon which sits in the center of three concentric, rotating energy shield rings while avoiding or destroying 'mines' - enemies that spawn from the core, pass through the energy rings, and then home in on the player's ship. They can stick back to the shield if the player maneuvers in such a way that a ring is between the ship and the mines. The player-controlled spaceship can rotate, thrust forward, and fire small projectiles. The cannon's shields are composed of twelve sections each, and each section takes two hits to destroy. Once a section is breached, rings beneath it are exposed to fire. The Star Castle Arcade Label Contest will run until 11:59pm (CST), Sunday, November 24, 2013 and all submissions must be received by this time! For some inspiration for your own designs, please take a look at the submissions we've already received! Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
Episode 5 of ANTIC, The Atari 8-bit Podcast, is now available for your listening pleasure. This latest podcast covers:
Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
We've returned from the Portland Retro Gaming Expo, where we released four new homebrew games (three for the 2600 and one for the 7800). We've now added these new games to the AtariAge Store! Each game is complete with a high-quality box, manual and label. Details below: 
Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
AtariAge and homebrew authors Chris Walton and Thomas Jentzsch are proud to announce a label contest for the upcoming Atari 2600 game Star Castle Arcade! The winning label design will be featured on the Star Castle Arcade cartridge, manual and box. Star Castle Arcade is a 32K game that pushes the boundary of what's possible on the Atari 2600. Star Castle is a 1980 vector arcade game produced by Cinematronics. The game involves obliterating a series of defenses orbiting a stationary turret in the center of the screen. Chris Walton and Thomas Jentzsch have created a fantastic port of Star Castle for the Atari 2600, one of two versions of Star Castle developed in parallel. This new version contains many improvements over the previously released version of Star Castle. The object of Star Castle is to destroy an enemy cannon which sits in the center of three concentric, rotating energy shield rings while avoiding or destroying 'mines' - enemies that spawn from the core, pass through the energy rings, and then home in on the player's ship. They can stick back to the shield if the player maneuvers in such a way that a ring is between the ship and the mines. The player-controlled spaceship can rotate, thrust forward, and fire small projectiles. The cannon's shields are composed of twelve sections each, and each section takes two hits to destroy. Once a section is breached, rings beneath it are exposed to fire. The Star Castle Arcade Label Contest will run until 11:59pm (CST), Sunday, November 24, 2013 and all submissions must be received by this time! Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 Video game auction site GameGavel and the RetroGamingRoundup Podcast are teaming up with some of the most popular and influential gaming journalists and personalities from the past three decades and introducing a new high quality, feature rich, video gaming magazine that will harken back to the amazing magazines from the 80's, 90's and early 2000's. The magazine is titled RETRO, and they've launched a Kickstarter campaign to help make this magazine a reality.
RETRO will be offered in both digital and print editions and published bi-monthly starting January 2014. Backers of the Kickstarter campaign will receive the Premier issue this December. Each issue will be a minimum of 52 pages, utilize a maximum of four pages of ads, and will feature high quality gloss print and thick stock cover. All print subscriptions will also include the digital enhanced versions for free. To learn more about RETRO , please visit the RETRO Kickstarter page. Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 The 2013 Houston Area Arcade Expo is taking place November 8th and 9th at the Houston Northwest Crowne Plaza. Hosted by the Houston Area Arcade Group, this is an annual event celebrating the electronic games people love to play. Gamers buy, sell, and trade pinball, video game and game console items, and, best of all, pinballs, arcade cabinets and consoles are set up on free play for the duration of the show.
Highlights of this year's show include:
Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
ANTIC, The Atari 8-bit Podcast, is a new podcast covering Atari 8-bit computers (800, XL, XE), hosted by Randy Kindig, Kevin Savetz, Brad Arnold. Kevin Savetz is curator of the Classic Computer Magazine Archive and AtariArchives.org, both hosted by AtariAge. The fourth episode of ANTIC is now available and includes:
Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
If you're attending the show and would like an AtariAge name badge, please visit this thread in our forums for more details. Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 HighScore.com, a new high score registry based on peer review, is holding a contest where $500 in AtariAge Store gift certificates are up for grabs! Prizes are available for the best qualifying scores posted for Yars' Revenge, Lady Bug (2600), U.F.O. (Odyssey 2), and more. HighScore.com enables average players to see how they rank relative to their peers. The site can show users how they rank in their city, state, country, and the world, and awards trophy icons (a.k.a. badges) to users who hold the highest score in their region. Users can submit scores along with photos or videos to document their accomplishment, then other site users can vote on whether or not they believe the score is legitimate. After the voting is finished, the user will receive any trophies they qualify for, and they will then also receive a ranking.
The contest ends on October 31st. See the AtariAge Contests Forum for more details on how you can participate! Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 We've just added several new Atari 2600, 7800, and Jaguar homebrew games to our online store! Here's a list of what's new, and you can follow the links for more details about each game:
Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 AtariAge will be returning to Portland for this year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo, taking place on October 5th and 6th at the Oregon Convention Center. We like the show so much, this will be the third time we're making the trip to Portland for this event! If you can be in Portland that weekend, we strongly encourage you to attend!
The Portland Retro Gaming Expo has much to offer classic gaming fans, and is one of the largest such events in the country. You'll find a large number of vendors selling classic gaming consoles and games, a huge 200 game arcade organized by Portland's own Ground Kontrol, two separate auditoriums for speakers and panels, an after-hours party Saturday evening, a live auction, cosplay contest, video game tournaments, and much more! AtariAge has plans to release several new boxed homebrew games for the Atari 2600 and 7800 at the show! We'll also have demos of games currently in development, with a sneak peak of some homebrew games to be released during the holiday season. Our booth will be even larger than last year's, allowing us to setup more game systems for show attendees to enjoy! In addition to releasing several new games, we'll also have a large selection of other homebrew games from our online store, as well as other classic gaming merchandise. Please visit the official Portland Retro Gaming Expo website to learn more about the show. We've also setup a forum to discuss the event for those who are attending. If you're attending the show, please stop by our booth and say hello! Stay tuned for an upcoming announcement detailing all the games and demos that will be available from AtariAge! Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 You know a story about old Atari video games has hit the mainstream when friends and family who probably haven't touched an Atari 2600 in 30 years start forwarding you news stories! That's the case with recent news being reported by the Alamogordo Daily News . A Canadian-based multimedia entertainment company by the name of Fuel Industries plans on digging up the Alamogordo landfill in New Mexico, where Atari purportedly dumped truckloads of games decades ago. The Alamogordo City Commission has given its approval to Fuel Multimedia to excavate the landfill site over a six month period. Fuel plans on creating a documentary about the Alamogordo landfill legend.
The Alamogordo Daily News reported in September 1983 that between 10 and 20 semi-trailers from an Atari facility in El Paso, Texas were buried at the landfill. The story even appeared in The New York Times, and an Atari spokesman confirmed the report. To keep people from getting their hands on this merchandise, the games were supposedly crushed and buried under concrete. Although no specific Atari merchandise was mentioned as being dumped, many reports have (perhaps erroneously) stated that upwards of 3.5 million copies of the 2600 game E.T. The Extra Terrestrial may have found their way to the landfill. It's more likely that the Atari dump contains a wide variety of Atari game console and computer hardware, as well as unsold video game cartridges. If Fuel Industries is successful in their excavation, we may soon know for sure! Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 AtariAge has added two new Jaguar CD titles to our online store, Jagware Collection 1.0 and Kobayashi Maru: Final. Both game feature a glass-mastered, pressed, silkscreened CD in a shrinkwrapped DVD-style case with professionally printed insert. A Jaguar CD unit is required to play both titles. You can learn more and get your copies today in the AtariAge Store.
Jagware Collection 1.0 Jagware Collection 1.0 is a collection of games from four different groups, presented by Jagware. The games included in this collection are: Do The Same from Cerebral Vortex, Diamjag by Orion, Atomic Reloaded from The Removers, and Beebris by Reboot. All four games support online scoreboards. Also included is an exclusive early look at the alpha build of Project II, an upcoming scrolling shoot'em up from Reboot. With each team offering one of their titles, this collection is not only a great way to own some of the Jaguar's best visceral experiences, but also an opportunity to say thanks to Jaguar hardware developer SCPCD, creator of the JagCF and Jagtopus 4-cart programmer. Kobayashi Maru: Final Xu approached the balcony of his presidential suite in his usual calm and purposeful manner. This time was different, however. As he looked out to the stars for what was sure to be the last time, he knew he had only one card left to play and that it offered no realistic hope of success. The Ebil Alliance was determined to take the whole galaxy... their invading forces too great in number and their simultaneous attack on all four worlds impossible to defend. As he raised his finger and gestured towards the hangar below, signaling the launch of the Tetrad's prototype warp ship, he knew his coalition of the last four free worlds in the system could not hope to survive such an onslaught. Kobayashi Maru: Final is a 50/60 fps rotary action shooter for the Atari Jaguar games console and was written utilizing a version of the new Raptor Engine by Reboot. It can be played with either a rotary controller (such as Chaos Reins, Tyrant or Jonathan Ascough pad) or a regular Jaguar joypad. As with all our other games, it's freely available for download in a number for formats to suit your setup. Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 Tempest for the Atari 5200 is now available for purchase from the AtariAge Store! For 15 years, the existence of an Atari 5200 version of Tempest was thought to be only myth. No prototypes had ever surfaced. A crude 2600 version had come to light, along with a prototype box. Then, in 1999, an unfinished working 5200 prototype appeared on eBay. The game was eventually dumped and the binary freely distributed around the Internet. Another decade has gone by since the game's discovery, and the original Atari 5200 Tempest programmer, Keithen Hayenga, worked to complete Tempest so it could finally see the light of day in completed form! Tempest 5200 includes the game cartridge with glossy label, twelve page full-color, glossy manual, professionally offset printed box using chipboard paper stock, and cartridge insert to keep the cartridge in place. Only 250 boxed copies of Tempest will be produced! After that, the game will be sold without the box. If you want a boxed copy of the game, don't wait too long! Order Tempest for the Atari 5200 Today! Discuss in our Forum with other visitors...
 Team Pixelboy, maker of many fine ColecoVision homebrew games, is giving ColecoVision fans a chance to order past releases which are currently sold out, namely Pitfall II Arcade, Track & Field, Destructor SCE, Circus Charlie, Star Force, Golgo 13, Ninja Princess, Bank Panic and Konami's Ping-Pong. More copies of these games will be manufactured in February 2013, but only for those who will have placed a pre-order for these games before January 31st 2013. This is a limited-time offer, and after new supplies of these games have been manufactured and sold, they will all be permanently sold out. If you're a ColecoVision fan looking to expand your collection of games, don't miss this opportunity! Visit teampixelboy.com for more information, and contact Pixelboy himself by e-mail to place your pre-order. Note that you can also send him a private message on AtariAge, but Pixelboy prefers being contacted by e-mail for matters of orders and pre-orders.Discuss in our Forum with other visitors... Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ... 83 Next |
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