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| "Have you played Atari today?" | April 25, 2002 |
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AtariAge News archive for December 2001:
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News AtariAge is proud to announce a label contest for Andrew Davie's upcoming Qb Special Edition. Originally written for the Atari 800 back in 1984, Andrew ported Qb to the Atari 2600 in 2001, selling a small batch of 50 games at the 2001 PhillyClassic. The winner of this label contest will receive a Qb Special Edition, of which only 100 will be made. The Special Edition will be encased in a wooden box with rare Tasmanian wood squares, a CD including the source code, a comprehensive manual detailing the history of the game, and a serialized Qb cartridge adorned with the winning label. For more details about the Qb Special Edition, as well as all the information needed in order to enter the contest, please visit the Qb Label Contest Page.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News Manuel Polik (Gunfight) and Thomas Jentzsch (Thrust) have teamed up to work on a 2600 port of the 1979 arcade game Star Fire. At present they have created a high-res (for the 2600), animated title screen and have included tunes from eight different 2600 games. Can you guess what they are? There's no game yet, but it will be a title to watch as development progresses. You can download the binary image here, and you will need to run this in z26, as it uses illegal opcodes not yet supported in other emulators. You can also discuss this title with other AtariAge visitors in our message boards.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News David Britten has created a 3D version of the popular 2600 pinball game Midnight Magic using Visual Pinball for Windows. David has tried to be as true to the original game as posssible, even using the same sound effects from the 2600 version. Take a look at this screenshot to get a feel for what you can expect. To play this version, you'll need to download Visual Pinball as well as this file containing the Midnight Magic table. You can discuss David's Midnight Magic (how fitting) with David and other AtariAge visitors here in our message boards.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News
Posted by: Alex | Message Boards | Submit News Eckhard Stolberg and John Saeger have released version 1.53 of the Atari 2600 emulator z26. This version now has native support for the recently released Lord of the Rings ROM, now you can just run z26 and click on the game. You can also discuss the latest version of z26 in our message boards here.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News For those of you who like to get down and dirty with Atari 2600 and 5200 hardware, we have a treat for you! We just finished scanning and putting schematics online for the Atari 2600 and 5200. These schematics include the main boards for each system, plus various accessories and controllers. You can find the 2600 schematics here and the 5200 schematics here. They are linked from our archive sections for the 2600 and 5200 if you'd like to find them later. Many thanks to Gary Regez for mailing these schematics to us so we could share them with everyone!
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News We've just finished revising our Activision Patches Gallery. This gallery includes images of all the patches you could win by meeting certain goals in Activision's 2600 games. Some games even had a tiered scoring system that would allow you to win more than one patch for those games. We've replaced just about all of the patch images with much nicer images kindly sent to us by Rick Weis. If you haven't ever taken a look at the Activision patches, you owe it to yourself to see what they're all about. Enjoy!
Posted by: Alex | Message Boards | Submit News Congratulations to Mike Choate of MikeoTV, who won our unannounced Lord of the Rings Contest. Mike wins a Sarumon action figure for correctly answering the question "Who founded Atari". Yes, the answer is easy, the hard part was figuring out the question. You may have noticed the strange script at the bottom of our Lord of the Rings page. When translated, this LotR script announced the contest and the question, and Mike was the first person to send in the answer.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News We've just added six Atari 2600 Hacks to our growing list of 2600 Hacks. Thanks go out to the creators of these hacks for bringing them to our attention: You can learn more about each hack as well as download the binary image by clicking on the links above. And don't forget to check out all the other hacks that have been created for the 2600. If you've like to share your creation with other AtariAge visitors, please drop us a line so we can add it!
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News It's been a long time, but the wait is finally over! AtariAge is proud to introduce another lost Atari 2600 game that until now had not been discovered: Lord of the Rings, Journey to Rivendell. We've put together screenshots, a scan of the prototype cartridge, a picture of the prototype box, historical information about the game, and most importantly the binary image so you can play the game yourself! We're glad to report that the game looks fairly far along in development, unlike some other prototypes that have been discovered recently. We fully expect everyone to discover the game's secrets in short order, and we encourage everyone to discuss Lord of the Rings with other AtariAge visitors in our message boards. Enjoy!
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News Since it's not always easy to keep track of all the various classic gaming events that occur throughout the year, we've created a page that lists all the ones we're aware of. The Classic Gaming Events page has an entry for upcoming events, as well as those that have recently passed but haven't yet been rescheduled. These events include regional clubs that periodically schedule gatherings, to large expositions like E3. We've added a link to this page in the Community navigation box to the left so it's always easily accessible. If you're aware of any events we missed, please let us know!
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News With only a few more days to go in the Mental Kombat Label Contest we figured it was time for an update! We just added another five labels to the growing list of submissions that talented AtariAge visitors have created. This brings the total number of entries to 24! The contest ends at Midnight, December 18th, 2001 and the winner will receive the first numbered and autographed cart produced by the game's author, Simon Quernhorst. You can discuss this contest in our Atari 2600 message board.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News With all the talk about creating portable Atari 2600 systems and using the Gameboy Advance as a platform to emulate the 2600, the Atari Historical Society decided it was time to create a page highlighting the Atari 2200 Portable VCS. That's right, Atari was considering at one time creating a portable version of its wildly popular 2600 console. Have a look at these sketches and be amazed that they were created twenty years ago by Atari Industrial Designer Regan Cheng.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News Ron Lloyd (aka Cafeman) has updated the Koffi: Yellow Kopter development page. Koffi: Yellow Kopter is a new homebrew game that Ron is developing for the Atari 5200. In it, you play Koffi, a little "kopter" that must save the forests from an evil stormcloud named Pyro. In addition to the main page be sure to also check out the development archives page. You can discuss Koffi: Yellow Kopter with author Ron Lloyd in our Atari 5200 message board.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News For those of you looking for yet another platform that the Sega Dreamcast can emulate, you can now add Atari 2600 emulation to the list. Schnapple brings us news that DCStella has just hit the scene. While it's in the early stages of development you can download an alpha version, burn a CD and start enjoying 2600 games on your Dreamcast. Please visit the DCStella homepage for more details and instructions on how to download and use this first release. If you'd like to discuss DCStella with other AtariAge visitors, please visit our Emulation message board.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News We've just added three Atari 2600 Hacks to our 2600 Hacks page. The hacks added are: You can learn more about each hack as well as download the binary image by clicking on the links above. And don't forget to check out all the other hacks that people have created over the years! If you've tortured an existing game and would like to share your creation with other AtariAge visitors, please drop us a line so we can add it!
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News Time to fire up your favorite drawing program again! Since it worked so well the first time around, we figured it was time for another label contest. The subject this time is Simon Quernhorst's Mental Kombat. Mental Kombat is a two player puzzle game based on a concept originally developed by Simon and a friend for the Commodore 64. As with our first label contest, the winner of this contest will receive the first copy of Mental Kombat, numbered #01 and signed by Simon. For more information about the contest and how to enter, please check out the Mental Kombat Label Contest Page. You can discuss the contest in our message boards here. Good luck!
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News For those of you who are disappointed at the dearth of card games for the 2600, we've got some good news for you! Brian Watson is developing a 2600 card game called Poker Squares. In Poker Squares the player places cards one at a time, in a 5x5 grid, with a goal of making the 10 best poker hands (5 horizontal, 5 vertical). Complete rules can be found here. Development is pretty far along and Brian expects to release the game in the first quarter of 2002. Additional information about Poker Squares can be found on our Titles in Development. You can discuss Poker Squares with other AtariAge visitors in our message boards here.
Posted by: Alex | Message Boards | Submit News - 365 pages - 8822 main item entries - 57 Systems such as 2600, Arcadia, Odyssey2, NES, etc. - Rarity and Price Guide We'll have more information about this guide after we receive ours. It's set to ship on December 7th at a price of $19.95. Check this press release for more details including ordering information and a special limited time offer.
Posted by: Alex | Message Boards | Submit News Issue #68 of the long-running 2600 Connection has just shipped. You can now visit 2600 Connection online at their new URL, http://2600connection.atari.org. In this edition:- Andy Floyd reviews the book Arcade Fever by John Sellers - Reviews of the 8 new Atari 2600 games from CGE 2001 - Letters from Readers - News and Notes - Classifieds and more...
Posted by: Alex | Message Boards | Submit News Intellivision Productions has issued this press release:Blue Sky Ranger Keith Robinson will appear on The Screen Savers this Wednesday, December 5, on the TechTV cable channel. Robinson will talk about all things Intellivision: working at Mattel Electronics in the early eighties, the battle with Atari, the industry crash and introducing Intellivision to a new generation. Robinson will also demo the new INTELLIVISION ROCKS collection for PC and Mac, and "Astrosmash" for wireless phones. The Screen Savers airs at 7pm, 10pm and 1am Eastern time; 4pm, 7pm and 10pm Pacific.
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News Songbird Productions has posted updates to their upcoming games: CyberVirus for the Lynx and Protector: Special Edition for the Jaguar. New screenshots have been added for both games, new features have been detailed, and the progress chart for Protector SE has been updated as well. Go check them out now!
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News Thanks go out to Digital Press, who've released the binary image for the unreleased Atari 2600 game Pompeii. There's not much in the way of gameplay as it looks to be in the early stages of development, but it's always interesting to see how far an unreleased game progressed. We've put up some screenshots and you can download the binary image here. If you need an Atari 2600 emulator to play it, you can grab one from our emulation page. Enjoy!
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News The fourth and final round of auctions for the September 11th Classic Gaming Relief Auction are now under way! There are sixteen auctions running with a wide variety of gaming hardware and software. These include a rare Creativision Console, 2600, 5200, and 7800 games, an autographed copy of Deus Ex, and more! The first three rounds of auctions raised $4038.32 for the relief efforts! We can't give enough praise to those of you who submitted items for this cause and everyone who's bid on the auctions thus far. If you didn't get a chance to bid in earlier auctions, have a look over on eBay to bid today!
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News
Posted by: Albert | Message Boards | Submit News Paul Slocum is developing a title for the Atari 2600 called the Synthcart. The Synthcart is a rather unique title for the 2600 that allows you to play music using a pair of keyboard controllers. Each keyboard controller controls one of two oscillators in the Atari 2600. The console switches can be used to adjust the quality of the sound on each keyboard. You can learn more about the Synthcart and download an MP3 demo of it in action on Paul Slocum's Synthcart web site. Paul Slocum currently has a Testcart available for the 2600. Paul is also developing a game titled Marble Craze, which he expects to be completed early in 2002.
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