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I’d like to share something very special with you guys. This is an Atari Strategy Guide I began writing in 6th Grade. It's all true. Atari I/O started on paper! I was 11 years old when I made this. If you flip through the pages of the Strategy Guide and squint hard enough, you’ll recognize similarities with our Atari I/O Blog posts, particularly the game reviews that I do with BTB. I thought you guys might think this is cool to see. I’ve been talking with @btbfilms76, @Atari Creep and @Gianna about my days collecting Atari games in the early '90s, how some of the most interesting stuff in my collection are documents from Atari, and what it was like trying to do all this before the internet. My conversations with them inspired me to share this as a PDF for all of you to enjoy. It’s more of a sentimental curiosity than anything really useful, but if you read closely you’ll find a helpful tip or two in there. It's also a bit of an artifact from a pre-internet Justin who way back then was just as fascinated and enthralled with the World of Atari as I am today. This little Strategy Guide was absolutely the beginning of what would become my Atari website and would evolve in time to become Atari I/O. It really did start on paper. I scanned the original documents and compiled them in a PDF file as a digital recreation of the real thing. I also added a Table of Contents to help you find your way around, and a Preface which you see above. I didn't get very far with the guide, but the games covered include these 7800 titles: FATAL RUN JINKS ACE OF ACES SCRAPYARD DOG CENTIPEDE The Strategy Guide also contains 2600/7800 cartridge price lists and customer service ordering forms from Atari Corp. from 1993. If you manage to make out my sloppy 6th Grade handwriting, you'll notice that I get some details wrong. I began writing this Strategy Guide before the internet was available to me. Digging up historical info on Atari, we had to get resourceful. Whatever I knew I learned from my own experience of piecing together historical details from Atari catalogs and game boxes, checking out books from the school library, talking with @Video 61 for hours at a time, or calling Atari directly and speaking with Geraldine at the front desk. "Hi, is Jack there?" In a way it’s sad that Jack Tramiel’s Atari didn’t give us nice things like expansive Strategy Guides, big beautiful fold-out maps, a magazine as cool as Nintendo Power, or the type of immersive games that would’ve created a huge demand for things like this. Little 6th Grade me took it upon myself to make this, because what else was I supposed to do? I was still excited about Atari, I wanted to share Atari with as many people as I could. I don’t know who I was writing this for at the time, friends I guess, but apparently I was writing it for you guys. It just had to sit in a time capsule first. ⬇️ The PDF is attached below. ⬇️ I hope you guys enjoy this glimpse into the beginning of Atari I/O! Atari 7800 6th Grade Strategy Guide.pdf

The Print Edition of CLUB VCS ISSUE 01 is here and available first to members of Club VCS and Atari I/O! Here are the details: Print Edition Features: Two additional content pages, including: a listing of all CLUB VCS Members that were active as of October 13, 2023 a credits and acknowledgements page A revised table of contents to reflect the above Minor corrections and revisions from the digital version Over 60 pages of content Print Edition physical details: Size: 8.5" x 11" Binding: Perfect Bound Full-color printing, 80lb (inside) Cover: Gloss Lamination (outside), 100lb Satin Cover Cost: U.S. Domestic: $15, shipped. These will be shipped via USPS in a Large Envelope/Flat in a rigid mailer to help mitigate bending while in transit. Note: Large Envelope/Flat does not include tracking. If you want tracking, let me know and I will calculate the revised cost. International: $11, plus actual shipping to your country. Availability: 40 copies are available from this initial run of 50. I held back 10 copies for co-conspirators and collaborators. These will be first come, first served; one copy per person. Club VCS and Atari I/O members get exclusive ordering until Friday, December 15, 2023. After that, I'll open it up. Co-conspirators and collaborators, yours went out early this week so keep an eye on your mailboxes! @RickR, @Podan, @Ballistik, @Justin, @Mockduck To get your copy, send me a PM here with your PayPal email and mailing address and I will send you a request for payment.

So a buddy of mine calls me up and asked me if I wanted his non working Ms Pac-Man cab. The deal was that if I fixed it, he could play it whenever he came down, which I had no problem with. This is what the cab looked like when I got it. The cab was pretty beat up. Just running my hand across the sides made the paint fall off of it. Someone had painted the entire cab black. As you can see the cab was in pretty bad shape. So even before I tried to make the thing actually work, I painted it black. I primered it first before doing so. At this point I actually tried to make it work. I found some wires that looked like they were spliced into. I figured these were the connections for power. There was no power plug when I got it. I got a PC power cable, cut the end off and spliced it into the existing cuts in the wiring. When I plugged it in, it powered on...however with some problems.. The screen was all distorted. I had found 10 different knobs in the back of the arcade. I turned all of them to see if it would fix it. Nothing did. I thought maybe they all have to be dialed in perfect. After 3 days of messing with these knobs, I was getting frustrated. I was staring at the back of the cab when I saw this metal bracket with a hole in it. I shined a flashlight through the hole and I saw a potentiometer with a screwdriver slot on it. I grabbed a screwdriver and turned it clockwise and it made it worse. So I went counterclockwise all the way and it made the screen totally clear! ...with some minor distorted on the right part of the screen . Just had to slightly turn it back clockwise to get rid of the distortion After that I spent a few minutes to dial in the colors properly. At this point, I got a proper power cable for the cab and installed it. The control panel overlay was pretty dirty and torn so that got replaced. Put some new buttons too. When I got done with that, I wanted to go all out. I ended up getting a repro glass bezel and installed it. The repro is very high quality. Very happy with it. My friend had got this thinking if he couldn't fix it, he was going to keep the Marquee and get rid of it. Knowing that I got this machine for free, I got a new Marquee and gave him the original. Got a high score save kit as well. Last thing I got was the panel art and new T molding. When I got the art in, I realized that if I were to install the front part as is, the coin door chop off the forehead of Ms. Pac-Man. So I had to raise the coin door 4.5 inches. I also was able to hide the bolts that hold the coin bucket in place below the surface of the wood so I didn't have to shove them to the front of the artwork. Once that was done I installed the art along with the new t molding. When I installed the cab was finally finished! I wish the color of the panel art was a closer match to the control panel overlay, but in the end, I think it came out pretty awesome. I'm forever grateful that my buddy gave me this arcade. It's definitely in my top 3 favorite arcade games of all time. It was a lot of work putting this thing together Here's a side by side of the before and after!

I got my 2600+ from FedEx yesterday. My initial impressions are that it does feel like it is built really well although I was a little surprised at how small the length of screws used were for holding it all together. For those that didn't know, all of the guts of the 2600+ are located in the switch panel section of the unit. It uses a couple of different PCBs sandwiched and connected together to do everything. Here are my Pros thus far: The cartridge slot is actually quite nice and seems to have a good connection with the games I've tested it with. But do make sure you clean any of your old cartridges you haven't used in a while to be sure that you are allowing as good a connection as possible and to prevent adding any crud from your old carts into the 2600+. The switches are kinda amazing on this thing?! They have a very satisfying click to the power and color/bw switch and the select and reset have a point where you can feel them engage and their spring back action is very nice. It makes me wonder if the switches can be adapted to OEM consoles... My 2600+ shipped set to 16:9 mode. This will result in that fully stretched image that some like and some do not. I prefer to NOT have that stretched look so I promptly set mine to 4:3 mode. The hot swap ability of games is quite nice and I advise using this method since you save a little bit of time loading up games this way. If you power cycle the 2600+ off/on each time, then you have to wait for the 2600+ to boot up internally first before it starts to load the game. The hot swap works exactly as it sounds too. The 2600+ detects when you have a game in the console. If you pull it out while powered on, it will blank out and then go to game load failed. Pop in a different game and a second or two later, it will show game loading and the game will appear on the screen. Seems to work with most of the original library of games for both 2600 and 7800 that I've tested so far. Quite a few older 2600 homebrews have also come up and worked for me. Some home brew games I tested last night that worked were: Berzerk: VE originally released during CGE 2010 I believe? K.O. Cruiser (Although I still can figure out the controls on this one) Go Fish! (Worked great!) Ninjish Guy (Most modern home brew I've tried so far and it worked great) Medieval Mahem (Seemed to work okay with joystick and...bonus! It was in stereo?!) Now for the cons and most of this is just stuff I've noticed and it mainly effects the 7800 side of things: First let me get this out there. NONE of the 7800 homebrews or graphic hacks I tested would load. As the 2600+ uses a lookup table based on the game rom checksum to know how to load up, this doesn't surprise me. Hopefully the lookup table and possibly the emulated being used can be updated to allow support for some 7800 home brews. But again, NONE would load up for me. The ONLY original released game for the 7800 that hasn't loaded up for me yet in my testing, was Rampage. It will start to load the game, but then just gives a black screen for me with my actual cartridge. Ballblazer was the first game I loaded up and it did load up and play great. But... the pokey emulation isn't quite there as the entire counter melody on the title tune is missing. So this tells me that the RNG from the pokey isn't being emulated as that counter melody uses that pokey feature specifically. Commando loaded up and played correctly. The ONLY issue is that there is some slight graphical corruption on the title screen where the difficulty selection is. But very minor and the game itself displays fine. Some games appear to have their button 1 and button 2 functions swapped? Although some of the games, I've not played for a bit so I might be wrong on this. But using a normal 2-button 7800 controller, the games did work and respond correctly. Now for some oddball miscellaneous stuff I've noticed or find interesting that can be taken as a pro or con... The 2600+ outputs a 720P signal. Although it seems this isn't quite a standard 720P signal as my TV takes a second or two to lock in and show the output. Also, my capture device in the game room usually has no issue with 480P, 720P, and 1080P sources. But it does NOT like the 720P from the 2600+ and stays in pass through mode. So I'm not currently able to get any direct captures from the 2600+ output. I've heard from others that some games don't work for them while others report they do. Both 7800 Ms. Pac-Man and Crossbow are reported as non-working for some and working for others. In my testing with my actual cartridges, both games loaded up and worked without issue for me. But it is possible there are two or more revisions of these games that were released over the years that could be the cause for this if they have slightly different checksums than what is being expected for those games in the 2600+. The power LED is stupid easy to replace as there is NO soldering involved. The LED is held in place with a 2 piece bracket using small phillips screws. A 2pin JST connector is plugged into the leads of the LED. So all that is needed to change the LED with a different color if you wanted, would be to remove the small screws and put in a different LED. Plug the jst connector onto the leads and that's it. I've not checked the value of the limiting resistor in the 2600+ for the LED as yet, but as they were using a warm white LED, an those are fairly modern, it is likely the value being used will be good for any LED out there that is 5mm in size to fit in the bracket holder. I've installed a slow changing RGB LED into mine as I felt that fit better than a static color. Flash carts: No surprise, but most of the flash carts out there are NOT going to work with the 2600+. That said, I can confirm that the Dragon Fly 7800 flash cartridge does work! As the DF cart loads the game up outside of the console, the 2600+ is able to read the DF like a normal game and just loads up the game that the DF has loaded into RAM at that time. Also, the hot swap ability of the 2600+ allows for easy game changes on the DF because you can have a game loaded on the DF and playing, then use the DF menu to back out. Choose another game and then press the Enter button on the DF to start loading the other game. The 2600+ will detect this, and blank out with the Game Load Failed message, but then a few seconds later it will show Game Loading... and the game you selected on the DF will now be playing on the 2600+. So it is interesting that the DF's ability to control the 7800 consoles power on/off function seems to also trigger the 2600+'s cartridge detection routine. All other flash carts I have failed to load up with the Game Load Failed message which, is to be expected since other flash carts rely on talking with the console hardware directly to load up and show their on screen menu of games. So my initial thoughts are that I think this is a great first step from this new Atari in trying to appeal to as many audiences as possible. There seems to be a lot more market hype on this 2600+ release than anything else Atari related I've seen in well over a decade and I do believe this will get non retro gamers back and into the hobby. With updates made to the console FW or outright hacking it in the future, I'm sure more games will be made to work and that will increase sales of the 2600+ and home brew along with games second hand. I see all of that as a good thing and it might signal a true actual rebirth for Atari and interest in the hobby.

Welcome to the Club VCS: The Atari VCS Fanzine Issue 01! The Club VCS Fanzine is an extension of the Club VCS subforum here at Atari I/O. The goal of the fanzine is to highlight some of the cool things going on in the world of the VCS and our little corner of the Atari fan community. In this zine, you'll find interviews, community member spotlights, reviews, previews, and more! So hit the flipbook link to view online or download the PDF here. A special thanks to @Justin for his encouragement, and @RickR and @Mockduck for their contributions. If you have an idea for an article or want to contribute to future issues, message me here or send an email to clubvcs@protonmail.com. Best, Sabertooth

Congratulations ZilchSr! A big congratulations and huge welcome to new Atari I/O Member @ZilchSr! ZilchSr takes the top spot in our Final Standings with a mind-blowing score of 10,111,115. Participation in this Squad Challenge was through the roof and we had a number of new Members join the forums to participate. Let's all give a GIANT Atari I/O Welcome to our new friends @ZilchSr @AtariSphinx and @Papa Pete who joined us in High Score Squad this week, it's great to have you guys here! @AtariSphinx showed up with his A-Game, posting a score of 1,734,308 to claim the 2nd Place on our Final Standings. The legend @RickR was hot on AtariSphinx's tail, taking the 3rd spot with a score of 1,455,582. New member @Papa Pete was right behind him with his score of 1,413,706 to take 4th. @Dinobot711 @nosweargamer @chas10e @RadioPoultry @James Campbell Jr. @HDN @Justin @socrates63 @Atari Creep @Marco1019 @Gianna and @LinkYoungPS all shared tremendous scores and gave it their all. Congratulations once again to @ZilchSr for the win, and as always I'd like to encourage ZilchSr to post his new high score on the Scoreboard, and let's make sure this Challenge continues on! And a big congratulations to our community for being such a great group, and for the biggest and best participation we've ever seen in a High Score Squad Challenge. I hope everybody had fun with this early 2600 game! NOTE: Our next High Score Squad Challenge is Q*bert for Atari 2600! Be there!

THE UNAUTHORIZED AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN ATARI DISTRIBUTOR Monday, September 18, 2023 Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the third entry of what will be my personal blog, sharing small slices of life with you from within my Lab. For those who are new to Atari I/O let me introduce myself. My name is Lance Ringquist, I’m from Minnesota, and I am the world's oldest surviving Atari dealer. You may have heard of me before as Video 61 Atari Sales which I have consistently operated since 1983 and I have been at it now for more than 40 years! I need to update my website about my longevity. I always have so much to do. Anyway, with everything going on in the Atari world right now, I had some thoughts from these 40 something years as an Atari dealer that I wanted to share with you. I have now survived at least FOUR incarnations of “Atari”. I started as an Atari dealer in 1983 under Atari, Inc. - “Warner’s Atari.” I really didn’t know anyone there. Steve Ross, CEO of Warner Communications in 1983. Steve Ross is not often spoken of within the Atari community, but it was Steve Ross who bought Atari from Nolan Bushnell, who both hired and fired Ray Kassar, who single handedly took control of Atari in 1983 often showing up in person to run the company, who ultimately sought out Jack Tramiel with a deal to take Atari off his hands, and who orchestrated the Time-Warner merger. WARNER'S ATARI Atari dealers at the time were contacted and supported by dealer representatives who were supported by Warner Communications and would occasionally stop by the stores. I had a good one that supplied me with lots of dealer cartridges, floppy disks, and promotional materials. This is essentially the same way PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo support their retailers today, with reps who go into the stores to update the demo games in kiosks and make sure there’s current promotional signage in the stores. They usually have goodies to give to the workers too. One day my Atari dealer rep came into my store and announced “This might be the last time I see you. A new owner is taking over… everything is up in the air, and the rumor is he does not support his operations in… let’s say… “a traditional way.” That was Jack Tramiel, later on affectionately known as “Jack". He was right. That was the last time I ever saw my friendly dealer rep, and I never heard another word from Atari until the Atari ST computer was released. Alan Alda from the popular TV show M*A*S*H* was a celebrity spokesperson for Atari Home Computers during the Warner Communications era of Atari. (1984) All high-paid celebrity endorsements were dropped when Jack Tramiel took over. One day out of the blue I received a packet along with an Atari ST with some software. Gone were the days of glossy print ads in National Geographic, and sophisticated TV commercials with Alan Alda, the popular actor who played “Hawkeye” on the top TV show M*A*S*H* and was Atari’s spokesperson. The Atari ST that I was sent came with the instructions that - as a dealer - it was up to ME to educate my customers about the new Atari ST computer line, and it was up to ME to support and sell the machine as support from Atari would be minimal. STUNNING, to say the least. This began the second incarnation of “Atari” - Atari Corporation, or Atari Corp., - “Jack’s Atari”. This was the incarnation of Atari that I was most involved in, and had a lot of day-to-day interaction with. That was sometime in 1985. JACK'S ATARI I did not hear from Atari again until 1986 or possibly 1987. It’s been so long that it’s difficult to remember the exact timeline, but around that time I received a letter from Atari Corporation with a hefty “release schedule” of games lined up for the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, and Atari XEGS. I was impressed! For nearly two years it was crickets out of Atari, and finally we were receiving real support and a commitment for new games. At the time, the only real major supporter of the Atari 2600 was Activision. It felt like they were the only kid on the block. Atari had been quiet, and most other third party publishers like Imagic, Coleco, M-Network and Parker Bros. hadn’t survived the crash. Activision was still with us though, and at Video 61 Kung-Fu Masters, Ghostbusters, and Pitfall II were serious strong sellers. Jack Tramiel with the Atari ST When I received the new release schedule from Atari, I thought “Hey, maybe the new owners figured it out!” There was still plenty of life left in Atari, even for the 2600, which I could see in my stores. To my dismay, many of Atari’s newly announced titles never came even close to being released on time, or worse - never came at all! This was very frustrating because I could see the demand for new Atari stuff and yet the Atari potential was being pissed away. There’s this common belief that “The Atari 7800 was released in 1986.” That’s not really true. I had received a few 7800s from Warner’s Atari Inc. in 1984, and they sold quickly. This was in Minnesota, not California or New York City. I never got a thing from Atari again until 1986. So as Nintendo took America by storm with Mario, Zelda and Metroid on the NES, and with Atari being run so poorly, I thought the jig was up. "When I received the new release schedule from Atari, I thought 'Hey, maybe the new owners figured it out!' There was still plenty of life left in Atari, even for the 2600 which I could see in my stores. To my dismay, many of Atari's newly announced titles never came even close to being released on time, or worse - never came at all." - Lance Then came the fury. After defaulting on their release schedule and missing any new releases at all one Christmas season in 1988, I was outraged. I picked up the phone and called Atari. I wasn’t just a customer, I was in business with Atari as a dealer responsible for a percentage of all Atari games sold that year. I was helping make them money. When I called Atari, I was given the run around about “how hard it was to keep these games in stock” and “how hard it was to bring out new games.” I interrupted the lady and told her what she was saying was word for word what Nintendo was saying to their distributors - she broke down and agreed that what she had been instructed to say was not really the case. Later on I came to find out about certain “business details” and “practices” that were happening under “Jack’s Atari” which made it clear to me HOW and WHY Atari had missed so many release dates, launch windows, and even lost new releases, but thats a whole other story that we will go into another time in an upcoming Blog entry. Jack's Atari: This was the incarnation of Atari that I had the most day-to-day involvement with I continued on the phone and was trying to be nice. It wasn’t this nice lady’s fault that she had been instructed to lie. So I asked what can be done. I was sent “upstairs" and told that Atari "had messed up and badly damaged the market" and had really had messed up in my region of the country, the upper midwest. Sales and support in our part of the country needed help, and I was asked by Atari Corp. to become a service department and distributor for Atari. I was stunned. I dealt with other Atari dealers, but it was mostly to buy or trade what was needed. I said yes. I was blown away later on when I found out how just badly Atari had shrunk. They had lost almost 90% of their workforce. Yet the "Atari" brand still commanded household name recognition and selling power, which they underutilized thanks to certain business ideologies and practices from the Tramiel family. Here is a link to my Atari distribution paperwork, which is hosted on my website: http://www.atarisales.com/dis.html I became really enmeshed in this as Atari sent me to deal directly with third parties, who I then bought from as what’s known as “direct". During this time I got to know many good people in third party companies like Activision, Avalon Hill, S.S.I., Datasoft, Eypx, Sierra Online, Microprose and more. As an Atari distributer I purchased immense amounts - truckloads - of games and software direct from Atari and all third parties at the time. When Atari pulled the plug, I had about 250,000 pieces of software in my warehouse. Today it’s dwindled to under 40,000 pieces left. Jack Tramiel's son Sam Tramiel took over leadership of Atari in the mid-'90s with Jack's continued close involvement. Was the Atari ST named after Sam Tramiel? Was TOS the "Tramiel Operating System?" Jack Tramiel and wife Helen in their retirement years Jack Tramiel traveling the world HASBRO'S ATARI After Jack Tramiel pulled the plug on Lynx, Jaguar and the Atari computers, I could see what he was doing. Sam wasn’t going to save the company, and J.T.S. Corporation - an Indian hard drive manufacturer founded after the Jaguar’s launch - acquired Atari though a “reverse merger”. (Was Atari, as an entire company, "laundered" through J.T.S. so it came out nice and clean to be able to sell to a potential buyer?) This lead to Atari, or what IPs and documentation was left of it, being sold to Hasbro. This became the third iteration of the of Atari that I dealt with, “Hasbro’s Atari.” When Atari was sold to Hasbro, Atari gave Hasbro a list of contacts. I was one of them. Not only for service, parts, and software, but I was also Atari Corporation’s person who interacted with movie studios and television networks. Atari no longer had the game systems, computers, many times the software and games, nor the man power to supply the entertainment industry with Atari “props” when filming a movie or tv show that was to feature Atari in it. Atari just sent them to me for systems, computers and games, and I supplied the movie studios and television networks with what was needed, under the license agreement from Atari. One day I got a call from Hasbro, and very arrogantly told me that they would do the supplying, and the legacy Atari market was really no interest of theirs. They were going to release new games for new platforms. I supplied Atari items to Columbia Pictures (now Sony) Warner’s of course, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and others. I almost got some footage into one of the Alien movies, but Fox still owed me money from Fox Sports, and they could not come to agreements with “Jack". Many TV shows had my Atari stuff in it, one name I remember was The King of Queens, there was an Atari 7800 and Video Olympics if I remember right. Atari 2600 and 5200 game cartridges on NBC's cult classic show Freaks and Geeks (2000) Later on, my contact at Paramount studios was dismayed they could no longer get legacy Atari hardware and software for their productions, and that Hasbro’s Atari would only supply them with the newest games, which in the case of the studios and networks, was not what they wanted. I apologized to her, and said my hands were tied, "I can’t do a thing." These people at Hasbro were clueless as to what they bought. They didn’t understand what Atari was, what they still had, or the potential even for legacy markets. Hasbro really messed up quickly, and quickly sold Atari off. Meanwhile - almost daily - ever since “Jack” sold off Atari, I would get calls from disgruntled stock holders, former suppliers, and people who were owed money by Atari. Some even made threats of suing me, because in their eyes, I was Atari. That lasted even into the early Infogrames days, which is what came next. FRENCH ATARI The French company Infogrames Entertainment SA acquired Atari in January, 2001 as the biggest part of their purchase of Hasbro’s software division “Hasbro Interactive”, which also included MicroProse, and Hasbro’s game.com monochrome handheld system which was a joke compared to what the Atari Lynx could do, even years later, and couldn’t compete contemporaneously against Game Boy Color. This began the fourth incarnation of Atari - “Infogrames Atari” or “French Atari” which now goes by Atari, SA. (Infogrames rebranded themselves as Atari in 2003 and began releasing games like Splashdown, Driver 2, The Matrix and Ghostbusters for modern game systems of the time.) Splashdown was one of the first new "Atari" games released by Infogrames in November, 2001 The cover art featured branding for both Atari and Infogrames Infogrames never contacted me period, until one day a fellow named “Wim” (not sure of the spelling…) gave me a call. I tried to enter him into my contacts database, he would not spell his name for me, and acted quite annoyed that he even had to speak with me. I found out that Infogrames had an operation that was local to me in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Minneapolis / St. Paul, in a suburb named Plymouth I think. “Wim” wanted to know who I was, and he was looking for certain items. He would discuss nothing, could care less about Atari’s legacy, knew that many, many people were looking for Atari service, parts, games etc., but "Wim" was only interested in my Atari 2600 power supplies, Atari 7800 power supplies, TV switch boxes and R.F. cables. He demanded to buy them all. I said no. “What about my customers?” I retorted … let alone the legacy Atari systems that found their way to me. "Wim" had no interest in the Atari legacy, nor the history I was privy to, and had lived through much of. "Wim" only wanted to get the people off his back who were looking for those particular legacy parts. Why? I found this simply amazing. Here I was, and of course the two other legacy dealers (we’ll get into that in a minute) who could step in and help Atari’s legacy customers, and help guide Infogrames in making decisions around the needs and potential of the legacy market. I thought to myself "Here we go again!” Never interacted with them directly again, only indirectly when I was contacted by a debt collector wanting to know “what happened to Atari" as they were owed money. Something I have heard about many times before before, and I thought “Man, will this ever end?” I told the collector Atari was now located in New York, last time I heard. As it turned out the collector ended up being an old friend from high school that I hadn’t seen in decades.. small world indeed! "'Wim' wanted to know who I was, and he was looking for certain items. He would discuss nothing, could care less about Atari's legacy, knew that many, many people were looking for Atari service, parts, games, etc. but Wim was only interested in my Atari power supplies, switch boxes and R.F. cables... Why?" - Lance Here we are, now well over 20 years since Infogrames acquired Atari and has become the longest owner of the name, with new products being developed - finally - around Atari’s greatest strengths - it’s legacy. So that's the history of my involvement with the many evolving incarnations of Atari. The history in my eyes that counts the most, was the "Jack" era. The stories, what happened within those walls, what they pulled off and what they got away with - it’s almost too amazing to be true. When "Jack" merged with J.T.S., the government would only allow the "reverse merger" to proceed if Atari kept the American market supported. That was ignored entirely, and Atari was sold to Hasbro. The other two legacy dealers are Bruce at B&C Computervisions who started in 1984, and Brad at Best Electronics who started in 1985. I was introduced to both of them by Atari Corp. Together, the three of us became heavily involved day to day under “Jack's" Atari. This is just a minor rundown in who I am in the Atari world, and I wanted to share my thoughts and experiences with you. Today, after over 40 years, I continue to march forward in the legacy Atari world, still providing sales and support, and developing new games which I hope will continue to entertain and dazzle Atari players for generations to come. What comes next? Thanks for reading, - Lance Please visit me online for more at www.atarisales.com

202! woo! made it over 200!

I made my Demon Attack video a little late for the contest, so I didn't post it here, but I've compared emulation to OG Hardware again for this Video Pinball challenge.....and let's just say, there is NO comparison between the two... 1,413,706

DISPATCHES FROM THE LAB - RAIDERS OF THE LOST EPROMS Monday, Feb 26, 2024 Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the fifth entry of what will be my personal Blog, sharing small slices of life with you from within my Lab. For those who are new to Atari I/O let me introduce myself. My name is Lance Ringquist, I’m from Minnesota, and I am the world's oldest surviving Atari dealer. You may have heard of me before as Video 61 Atari Sales which I have consistently operated since 1983 and I have been at it now for over 40 years! Quick update here from the Lab I wanted to share with all my friends on Atari I/O so you’d be the first to see. While I was working in my warehouse high atop the escarpments of the Twin Cities, cleaning up my office with my lab assistant on Saturday, we unearthed a trove of 7800 EPROMs I didn’t realize I had, and may have discovered Road Riot 4-Wheel Drive for Atari 7800 with a few other things. Like Rampart, Pit-Fighter, and Steel Talons, Road Riot 4-Wheel Drive was originally an arcade game from Atari Games that was released on Atari Lynx and believed to be in development for the Atari 7800 as late as 1993. I will try testing these EPROMs in some of my developer boards on the 7800 and see what we can get. It may take time to get this all sorted, but we will figure out what we have and I will report back here with more updates as we make progress. We were cleaning up my warehouse office on Saturday and I said “Well, I know I’ve got EPROMs here from Atari that we should go through and catalog, and I know that I have them in two different places in the warehouse and in my office.” I hadn’t looked at these, and they were sitting in a package from Atari collecting dust for decades. My warehouse assistant and I pulled them out, and of course like everything I got from Atari, there was no rhyme or reason to it, it just gets thrown. In those days, Atari would send me all sorts of things from EPROMs to joysticks, just thrown in a box and sent to me with hardly any documentation at all. One of the things we were looking for was Fatal Run documentation, which we found. Because I don’t have the strength to venture into the warehouse all the time to do this, I thought some of it could be in my office and we should spend some time looking in my office and cleaning up in there. We started cleaning up and sorting through packages, and of course there were tubes and tubes of this stuff from Atari that I got towards the end of the Jack Tramiel days. One of the packages I got from Atari were full of tubes of chips. If you don’t work with electronics you may not know, chips come in protective plastic tubes, usually five to ten or more at a time. And I’ve got rolls and rolls of this stuff, and you don’t know what they are - there’s just a kazillion part numbers and labels, or there’s nothing. Some of them are so old that the labels have fallen off to the bottom of the box and gotten all mixed up. And it’s hard to find out what they are, because it’s like trying to put a puzzle together. Not only are the labels missing, mixed up, or mysterious, but you have to figure out what the chips are and where they go, and on what board. For example, Midi Maze for the Atari XE was a 256K game, but they put it on a board that had 8 chips on it originally, so you’ve got 8 different chips that you have to sort through and figure out what goes where and get it to work. When I found the EPROMs, most of them had labels on them. I found Sentinel LO and HI chips, Xenophobe HI, and KLAX LO and HI chips which I believe is a different version of KLAX than the one I’ve published before which was also given to me by Atari. I found Barnyard Blaster and Food Fight, both of which are PAL and have dates from mid-late 1989. That 1989 date is a little later than NTSC Barnyard Blaster, and quite a bit later than NTSC Food Fight, which was completed and shipped to retailers by May, 1984. So what does it mean that PAL Barnyard Blaster and Food Fight were being worked on as late as the Summer and Fall of 1989? Well, it’s possible these games play no different than the originals - but it’s also possible these versions of Barnyard Blaster and Food Fight could be different in some other ways. You just never know what Atari would’ve done, sometimes PAL market games had different sprites, they may have played different, or had other changes to the game beyond just PAL and NTSC. Sometimes those things would happen. Save Mary surprised me - I said “Hey look, these are on 7800 chips!” That’s different than what I’ve seen before. In my trove of EPROMS we unearthed, we found Save Mary on two 64K chips (LO and HI), not on two 16K chips as you might expect to find. Like KLAX, this is NOT the same version of Save Mary that I published years ago. The Save Mary I got from Atari that I used to sell, that is on one 32K chip which is different from what I found. This is Save Mary on two 64K chips, which means this would be a 128K game, which is what a lot of the newer 7800 games were put on towards the end. It may well be the 7800 version of Save Mary, or it may be that they started to work on it for the 7800 and got the 2600 ordered on there to get it to work and go from there. Another chip I found only had half a label, with part of the EPROM window exposed. I don't know if this EPROM survived, but hopefully it will be okay. We will have to see. The half of the label that was still stuck on the chip has handwriting on it that I think says "Save" followed by the number 4800, which usually means it's 48K. I'm wondering if this is a 48K version of Save Mary? "The test cartridges used two chips, but the final production cartridge would only use one, so there’s a LO and a HI on the test cartridge. The test cartridges were set up for a 64K game or a 128K game, with two sockets. So that’s why there’s two Sentinel (LO and HI), two KLAX (LO and HI) and two Save Mary (LO and HI)." @Video 61 The weirdest, most curious EPROM has a handwritten label that looks to say “Riot”. Clearly this is an EPROM and not a RIOT chip for the Atari 2600. The EPROM is dated 1993, which is very late for 7800 development but not unheard of. We MAY have found Road Riot 4-Wheel Drive for the Atari 7800 - we’ll have to see. The label on the EPROM says “Riot” on it, it’s dated 7-20-93 and it has the number “2” circled, which means this could be one of two chips needed to test the game - a HI and a LO. This date I believe is two months newer than the last version of 7800 Toki that has been shown, so two months after Toki was nearly complete and ready to go, this game “Riot” was still being worked on for the Atari 7800. Even if this does turn out to be Road Riot 4WD, it’s possible we’re still missing one of the chips needed to get it working. I can imagine someone testing the game and on such a tiny label writing “Riot” instead of “Road Riot 4WD” almost as an abbreviation of the name, it was common for these guys to do that, just because the EPROM labels are just so tiny. Atari 7800 Games thought to have been in development during 1991-1993: Pit-Fighter ElectroCop Steel Talons Toki Rampart Road Riot 4WD More? From my knowledge there were at least five games in development under Atari Corporation for the Atari 7800 as late as 1993, probably more. In those days, the Atari Lynx still had life in it, and Atari Jaguar was coming up on the horizon. The story as I hear it was that Jack Tramiel took one look at 7800 Pit-Fighter and how bad it looked and put the kibosh on anything more for the 7800. He pulled the plug right then and there and that’s all she wrote. We know Pit-Fighter, Rampart and Toki have been found in different levels of completion, and the date on this “Riot” EPROM is newer than all of those. We will have to research to see if this chip dated 7-20-93 is the latest 7800 EPROM dev date known to exist. It may be, I don’t know for sure, but it’s got to be close. 7800 ElectroCop was shown at the 1991 CES and Juli Wade told me she had an EPROM of it on a cartridge in her desk but wouldn’t share it with me. I had hoped John Skruch would. I don’t know if ElectroCop was one of the batch of 7800 games still in development as late as 1993 or not, but the other ones definitely were. It would be cool if we could find those hidden away somewhere in my warehouse office too. It may take time to get this all sorted, but we will figure out what we have and I will report back here on my Blog with more updates as we make progress. Stay tuned! Thanks for reading, - Lance Please visit me online for more at www.atarisales.com

Not part of canon. Just for the fun of it. Here is the first episode...

I actually did it. I purchased this PAL game just because I really, really like the artwork.

Hey all! I know most of you are well steeped and established in the Atari 7800 and Atari communities as a whole, I just put out a buyers guide for people maybe looking to get into the console for the first time. It covers options for buying consoles and hooking them to different televisions, controllers to use, which games to start with and some homebrew recommendations including a game or two from atarisales.com and gooddealgames.com. It's meant to be an introduction and companion videos will be releasing for the life of the channel digging deeper into controllers etc. If you have any game collector friends who maybe ignored the 7800 in the past, share it with them and see if it peeks there interest. Oh and sorry if I've been posting this stuff excessively, I can cut back. But I truly value all of your opinions and hope to get feedback and ways I can improve. This community has been a big help in that and keeping me motivated. Ok guys let me know thanks.

Now that Atari has Accolade (who released the Bubsy series) totally BUBSY BOBCAT! 😄

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a new Atari community where we can freely share our love for all things Atari. I grew up with the 2600 of course and moved on to XE and ST computers. Plus any game for my PC that has the Atari label I also enjoy, especially the Recharged series. So I hope to be a part of some conversations here and have a good time with everyone here.

Hi and welcome to Lance’s Laboratory! This is the second entry of what will be my personal blog, sharing small slices of life with you from within my Lab. For those of you who are just getting to know me for the first time, my name is Lance Ringquist, I’m from Minnesota, and for nearly 40 years I’ve been in the Atari business operating Video 61, one of the last surviving original retail Atari distributors. We started in the video business as a local chain of video rental stores serving the Twin Cities area with locations along U.S. Highway 61, the road that musician Bob Dylan referred to in the album and song Highway 61 Revisited. I also love classic "Drive-In" movies and spending time with my family and friends at my cabin up north. For decades I’ve gotten to know you guys as my customers and friends, buying, selling and remanufacturing Atari systems, games, software, and computers, and developing my own line of Atari-compatible Video 61 games and controllers. I’m still in my Lab working away dreaming up new creations and shipping off new original Atari products, and I thought after all these years of being in the Atari community it was time to start sharing tidbits of Atari memories and Minnesota life with you here on my blog. To old friends and new, WELCOME! This is my first BIG Blog post, and I wanted to talk about an interesting bit of Atari history that still applies today and can be helpful to homebrewers and independent developers like me: To remain profitable if you don’t have the buying power that Atari did themselves you have to look at alternative ways of packing your products. Having been in the Atari business for decades and running Video 61 as an independent company for nearly 40 years, I began selling Atari products in my video store when Warner still ran Atari. Once Atari got back on their feet during the Tramiel era, I became an officially authorized Atari distributor and service provider. In that time I’ve seen things in the World of Atari that you couldn’t begin to imagine. I’ve had good conversations with Jack Tramiel, I’ve had inside information on the development of games and products which Atari never released, I’ve talked with other 3rd party publishers, I’ve seen absolutely insane things happen in the world of Atari - I’ve even received death threats over this stuff. I’ve survived it all and lived to tell the story. All through Atari’s history, smaller 3rd party game publishers came up with alternative methods for packing their products. Did you know it was common at the time for many 3rd Party Atari developers to release game cartridges, floppies, and other accessories in simple “budget” packaging such as clear inexpensive clamshell cases and plastic baggies? Some publishers even just shrink-wrapped the floppy disk and documents! (Examples are shown below, and in my Atari I/O photo gallery). Unique, alternative packaging kept costs low for the buyer, while keeping the games profitable enough for the small developers to stay in business and continue publishing Atari games and software. The way to get the costs down is to make things in quantity. It's the same idea as shopping at Sam's Club or Costco: the more you buy the less it cost per item. Retail boxes, glossy cartridge labels and colorful instruction manuals cost much less per game when you’re manufacturing 100,000 of them at a time, as Jack Tramiel's Atari did. BUT - when you’re making 10 to 20 games at a time as an independent developer, glossy packaging drives the price up significantly. The developer pays more and you pay more. This is one reason why you see the new Atari charging upwards of $99 per Atari XP 2600 cartridge, and why many new homebrew and independently released cartridges cost so much to buy while the developer makes such little profit on their work. When Atari was still in business, during the Tramiel era, Atari would regularly provide me with inside information and Atari’s sales history. Beginning in 1985, Atari would fax me their sales history numbers for video game hardware and software and continued to do so until around 1990. These faxes were HUGE. I still have them after all these years, although the faxes are now yellowed and almost impossible to read. "Like Jack Tramiel, independent Atari game developers and homebrewers have to weigh costs and pricing, and understand that some games sell well, some so so, and some hardly at all." - Lance The sales figures provided in the fax covered the product lines for Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari XEGS, and I think the Atari Lynx. For each Atari game, I was able to clearly see how many were manufactured and how many were sold. This gave me a big picture understanding of what things looked like at Atari, and just how big of a slice of the video game market Atari still had going into the 1990s. People have no idea just how big a piece of the video game industry Atari still had in the late 1980s, in the midst of Nintendo dominating the market and Sega making moves. It was still a big slice of the pie, and certainly enough to make money. Between the Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari XE and everything else, Atari often had a bigger chuck of the video game market than Sega did with the Sega Master System. Jack Tramiel discussing "Business is War" at Commodore and Atari What I learned from the insider info on Atari sales figures, and through my conversations with Jack Tramiel, was that Atari had a very lean business model that “spread risk” over many games, and to publish a game with a fancy box, slick labels and docs, Atari had to order 100,000 units of a game to get good enough pricing to make a profit on a title. But there was a problem. Not all titles sold well! Jack Tramiel wanted to get pricing down low enough for each game, so that in case one game did not sell very well, the risk would be spread around different games, so that the successful games would more than make up for any financial loss from games that did not sell. Like Jack Tramiel, independent Atari game developers and homebrewers (both then and now) have to weigh costs and pricing, and understand that some games sell well, some so so, and some hardly at all. So you need to spread the risks out to make a profit. Do you grasp that concept? Your winners cover your losses. So for Atari to be profitable with the XEGS, which used very good packaging in the iconic “blue tile” boxes, and to cover the cost of materials and the cartridge itself, Atari put out around 30-35 new titles for the XE. That meant to get good pricing, spread risk, and make a profit, Atari had to order over 3 million+ units of video game cartridges for the XEGS. Take for example Necromancer, a video game for the Atari XEGS. Atari manufactured a standard order of 100,000 units of Necromancer, and ended up with around 50,000 units left because the game didn’t sell very well. On the other hand, Atari XE games like Crystal Castles, Airball and others were almost completely sold out. The idea was to spread risk - to create different games for different genres. Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, instead spread them around! If you create too much of the same thing - the same world, the same ideas, the same game - it may sell out or it may flop. Infinite diversity in games leads to infinite success. This is one reason why you see some independent developers and homebrewers struggling. Some of them focus all of their time and attention, years even, developing a single game, a passion project. Often it will come in an expensive box with glossy label and colorful instructions, all put together by hand. Other developers work on multiple games at once, and work hard to keep manufacturing costs down, and passing those savings on to both the customer and to themselves. Say what you will about Jack Tramiel, but he understood this simple concept. Atari would release a few games at a time, each in a batch of 100,000, and the successful games would cover any shortfall of the less successful games. Atari would order 100,000 games at a time - enough to keep the manufacturing cost low on slick docs, a nice box with that beautiful Atari XE blue box artwork, and a glossy label, which was something the Atari 7800 didn’t always benefit from. If the game sold well, another order of 100,000 games could be manufactured, should Atari believe there was enough excitement about the game to sell out a second batch. A similar story was unfolding at Activision in the late 1980s. After the video game crash Activision was a much different company than it had been during the Atari 2600 boom, when Activision saw incredible success with games like Pitfall! and River Raid. Yet they survived the crash and lived to fight another day. Now Microsoft is buying them. By the time Jack Tramiel was running Atari, Activision (and their sister company Absolute) was a much leaner operation. I used to speak with the Activision guys often, and developed a pretty clear understanding of their sales history numbers for Atari systems, and how they ran their business. Activision was smaller, and did their ordering 10,000 games at a time. To make a good enough profit, Activision and Absolute needed to sell all 10,000 units to justify a reorder of the game. The first order of 10,000 games sold would break even, and Activision/Absolute would recoup all of their money put into the development and manufacturing of the game. Then, if the game was successful, Activision would order another 10,000 units and suddenly that game would become pretty profitable! However, they told me that only one of their Atari games was able to surpass 10,000 units, which was Title Match Pro Wrestling, and that was a reason why they pulled out of the Atari market. Yet Jack Tramiel was able to sell out quite a few of their video game titles at 100,000. Even with games at the end like Alien Brigade for the Atari 7800, they were able to sell all 100,000 out, and this was with Jack not only not supporting the system properly, but competing against himself with the Atari XE. There was a reason why so many 3rd party Atari developers released games in alternative “budget” packaging like clamshells, zip lock baggies, and even just shrink wrapped the disk and docs without a box. Because if you cannot attain the high number of sales per unit as Atari still could, you could not get the price per cartridge down low enough to be profitable. This meant finding creative ways to cut back on packaging, and just about every 3rd party company did just that. Broderbund, Adventure International, Epyx, Sierra Online, Datasoft, S.S.I., as well as many others sold games with limited “budget” packaging. Those 3rd parties made up sales volume with budget packaging, cartridge labels and instructions, because they did not have the customer base Atari still did at that point. The new Atari charges a lot for their line of limited run "Atari XP" games for the 2600, many of them are priced at $99. I’m betting its because they use fancy boxes, instructions and "labels". But they do not have the same Atari market that Jack had in the 1980s-1990s, thus much smaller sales volumes and the inability to order a large enough quantity to bring the price down. The Atari XP program harkens back to APX: The Atari Program Exchange and is meant as a gift to the Atari community, and not focused solely on being a profitable, but it's not likely that Atari wants to lose money either. So when it comes to passion projects like the “Atari XP” games, the new Atari has to cover their costs and hope for a profit. To do this they have to charge a lot more for their games due to much smaller sales volumes. That’s a pretty big risk for the new Atari, and a pretty big expense that gets passed onto you, the customer. In the 1990s, some classic video game collectors called me a liar for pointing this out, and insisted that game companies like S.S.I., Epyx, Sierra Online, Datasoft, and many other well known (and not so well known) companies never offered their games in clamshells, zip lock baggies, and other forms of budget packaging to be able to offer their software at prices people could afford. In this blog post you will see lots of pictures I recently took of my own inventory, showing just that: actual software releases from said companies and more, in alternative budget packaging. I’ve never received an apology from those who were so quick to berate me and call me a liar for being so kind as to explain the truth. Today is their chance. - Lance SEE MORE PHOTOS IN MY PHOTO ALBUM:

hi everyone, we have a new game to announce for the atari 7800, VENTURE. its a very fun and addicting game. VENTURE is now available. currently we are taking orders via e-mail only at, video61@atarisales.com, or video61atarisales@gmail.com when inquiring about VENTURE or any other item from video 61, please let us know if you live in the u.s.a., or another country due to shipping. at this time we are only accepting payment via paypal, or checks or money orders. to mail in a check or money order, please go here for instructions, http://www.atarisales.com/ordering.html price will be $39.95, shipping free if you live in the u.s.a. VENTURE is not listed on our web site yet. we are constantly busy and will get it listed A.S.A.P. thanks again everyone, without you, we would never be able to bring new stuff to the atari community, thanks, lance www.atarisales.com

What a great game! I had to get involved with Atari Bowling! No record scores here, but a lot of fun! (And DAMMIT, I missed Megamania!) 👍

232 - Game 1/a. I choked at the end. Dang it.

Have a 5200 game with no manual? Fear not! I have located a large collection of these manuals in PDF format from the Internet Archives, free. So if you are in need of a manual, click on the link. On the right, under DOWNLOAD OPTIONS, you will see a list of file types. Click on the PDF link and it will expand to show all the game manuals up for grabs on a per-game basis. To download the manuals simply click on the game title. https://archive.org/details/Atari5200Manuals_201812

Q*bert (A/A): 58,600 Improvement. Really good port but frustrating when coily reaches near the top of pyramid and when you jump on the disk he waits for you at the top cube to hit you.

I ROLLED THE SCORE! 1,332,964. Here's a video of the score rolling over (go all the way to the end). I had to stop recording when my wife was making a business call. Picture of final score at bottom of post.

Video Pinball 3A - 10,111,115 The first objective should always be to get the extra ball. Second, clear the diamonds to boost the bumper values to 900. Third, spam the bonus lane. Pardon the cat.

I usually always miss out on presales for popular items but I’m buying the lede. The most amazing thing about this is that I somehow managed to keep a $400 gift card balance on Amazon for over a year, specifically for this purpose. I still have time to increase that amount & have it fully paid for by shipping time. This will be my first launch console since the Dreamcast. I’m not overly excited for this as I was for the DC but I’m sure that will change as launch day approaches.

Lola the beagle. Adopted her ten months ago. She's four now.

One thing I loved about classic video is all the great advertising, you know wacky and weird stuff by Sega to hard edge "Exteeeeeme" type of advertising you got from Turbo graphics and Neo Geo and even the family-friendly Nintendo stuff or all the advertising Atari 2600 that helped you visualize all the fantastic adventures, characters and scenario's that maybe didn't translate completely with the stick figured pixels in the games, but we still loved them all. They were a work of art in themselves and you just don't see as much of that in modern-day coverage of Video games with most being on STEAM or DLC on consoles. But they always fired up my imagination or made me laugh but either way they enticed me and made me think of the possibilities seeing those print ads in Video games Magazines like Electronic gaming or even ads in my favourite comic books. Let's use this thread to share the memories of video games and Computer tech that grabbed our attention from the 70's through to the 2000's. I'll kick off with a few examples. PLEASE NO PARODY OF FAKE ADS, keep it real with Ads that actually appeared in publications (Magazines /Comics / Newspapers etc)

A little decor to the nerd cave... I've been wanting to get the Indy cartridge holder for a long time. I think I bought the loose cart last year. I finally pulled the trigger on the cartridge holder when Etsy recently offered a $5 coupon. I bought it from thetdshop. I'm a fan of the cartridge holders. A local gamer sells among other things dioramas. She 3D printed the cartridge shells and game elements.

BOOM! I got mine in the mail today. It looks so dang good! Professional. Really nice work, @Sabertooth. Thanks so much!!!

Atari 2600 Games That Never Get Old! Greg's Game Room

So I hinted about this in another thread elsewhere, but though it might be good to give it is own post. So a new challenger has emerged online under the website AtariRepairParts.com and as the name implies they provide replacement parts for Atari stuff. However, as they are very very new, the parts available is basically limited to just a few things. But, perhaps the most interesting is their replacement mylar and membrane buttons for the standard OEM 5200 controller (CX-52). Similar to another well known vendor, AtariRepairParts has created their own mylar and button replacements that are also gold plated. The main difference here is that they cost for a complete set is about 50% less of the other well known vendor. They also don't have any limits on the number of items you can order and have PayPal so payments are easy to make. I ordered two sets of these replacements for just under $50 shipped. That might seem like a lot for something so old, but again for the price of 2 sets to install into one controllers from AtariRepairParts compared to that same price for just a single controller from the other vendor, it is a good deal. I received them in yesterday and only ordered them a few days prior, so they arrived very quickly! Here is my initial impressions of these new replacement rebuild kits.. First lets talk about how everything arrived. It was delivered in a bubble mailer using a section of card stock and envelope to protect and prevent bending of the mylar flex. The membrane buttons were just loose in the padded envelope but as this is all very light weight and small, I don't have any issues with this packing. The first thing you notice is that the mylar is a very matte black finish in color overall. But you can still see the traces etc. Ever contact point on the flex is gold plated including the fingers that insert into the controller wire harness connector. Additionally, it could have been the way it looked, but I believe that section with the fingers is a tad longer than the stock mylar so they seat in further and more secure as a result. The mylar overall is also a little thicker than the stock mylar and more rigid as a result. But I don't find this to be a negative at all since it means it should be able to withstand the flexing and bending it has to go through much better over time. The mylar also has preaffixed adhesive pads so that it can attach to the keypad support plate, and each of the arms for the fire buttons on the mylar will attach to the vertical supports on the controller properly. In the past I've had to keep double sided tape on hand with replacements so this is a welcome thing to have! I do think another strip should be included for the top row buttons as it doesn't have one for that part. But if you consider the fact that the membrane buttons sit on top of that section, I guess it isn't as critical. The membrane buttons appear to be new and look and feel like the originals. This is good and bad because a lot of folks don't like the mushy feel of the original buttons and these will retain that original feel. However, similar to the mylar, each contact on the membrane has a gold plated disc that is secured to the buttons. So gold on gold contact will minimize any corrosion over the years from occurring. Installation is a breeze since everything is of the same size as original parts so it just all fits in place where it should. Even the small holes on the keypad to line it up on the support tray are present and in the correct location. So yeah provided you know how to take the original controller apart properly, installing a set of these should only take a few minutes time. I played a few games of The Last Starfighter to break it all in and I have to say that everything worked great! My only criticism is that the top row membrane buttons seem to sit a little lower than the originals and as a result I found them difficult to actually press and make contact. But they do work it just requires a little more direct pressing than I'm used to with my older buttons and foil taped contact pads hehe. Still, the quality of these replacement parts are very nice and I imagine the controller will not require much if any maintenance in the future since the only real failure point now would be the cabling or potentiometers inside the controller itself of which, there aren't any replacements for yet at this time. AtariRepairParts.com

Hi all. Sorry for my long absence. Short story, I got busy. Longer story, I was juggling a lot, and in many ways, still am. One thing I did a while back was basically stop using Facebook & AtariAge for the most part, just to help simplify life. Atari I/O was not the plan, is just sorta happened by accident, and that accident turned into a habit. I'm not saying you'll see me everyday, but I may drop by from time to time and I am still a fan of the I/O.

Berzerk (2600) for the modern VCS. This was made available today following the announcement of Atari's acquisition of 12 classic IPs from Stern, including Berzerk and Frenzy.

197 pb

208!

239 with Harmony. I'll try an actual cartridge next time.

Congratulations Marco1019! Congratulations to the incredible @Marco1019 on becoming our new Megamania Squad Champion! Marco hit a home run with his stellar score of 200,180 points! Absolutely killer score and a decisive win! And a big congratulations to everybody on all those incredible scores across the board! We're starting the new year with a HUGE turnout in High Score Squad! I hope Megamania was fun and you'll continue to join us for Squad Challenges throughout the year ahead. Great way to start the year! @Csolo was on fire in Megamania, securing the 2nd Place in our Final Standings with his burning hot score of 109,640 points. @chas10e takes 3rd with an impressive 104,560 points, and @RickR was hot on his tail, taking 4th with 104,100. @Atari 5200 Guy fought hard to break that ceiling and join the 100,000 point club, but takes 5th Place just shy of that with 99.740 points. @Dinobot711 @Sabertooth @greenween @Justin @RadioPoultry @nosweargamer @TrekMD @Gianna and @Atari Creep all joined us in our Megamania Activision Squad Challenge and shared terrific high scores. I hope everybody who joined us for this one had a blast! Also, this week we welcomed @Csolo to High Score Squad who joined us for this Challenge! Csolo knocked it out of the park, taking 2nd Place in our Final Standings in his first Squad Challenge! It's great to have you at Atari I/O participating in High Score Squad @Csolo !! Everybody's glad you're here! WELCOME!! Our new Achievement Badges have been a real hit in the forums. This week we introduced our first Activision Badge! For this Squad Challenge, we're awarding the Activision Megamaniacs Badge as an achievement for all players who achieved a "patch-worthy" score of 45,000+ Points in our Megamania Squad Challenge. Each of you who scored 45,000 points or more have now been awarded the Activision Megamaniacs Badge! For all Activision games played in High Score Squad moving forward, we will be recreating the classic Activision Patches as Badges and awarding them to all players who achieve a "patch-worthy" score as originally set forth by Activision. We think that will be a fun way to play Activision games in High Score Squad, and revive the spirit of the original Activision Patches. As always I'd like to encourage @Marco1019 to post his high score on the Scoreboard, and let's make sure this Challenge continues on! Congratulations to Marco, thanks again to @Sabertooth for nominating this game, and a big congratulations and Happy New Year to our wonderful little community for being such a great group to spend time with, I hope everybody had fun playing Megamania! NOTE: Our next High Score Squad Challenge is Bowling for the Atari 2600! Be there!

104,100 - I beat 100k! So happy.

New pb 109,640 I was in the ZONE!

38,180. Those space hamburgers aren't going to shoot themselves.

I've seen lots of newbie Atari 5200 owners complain about the spark from connecting the RF cable to the automatic Switch Box that comes with the 4-port 5200 model. Usually by that step most people have the power supply plugged in to the wall AND the RF Switch Box. So...for newcomers to the world of Atari 5200 gaming I thought I would write a post on how to properly connect the 5200 to the RF Switch Box and to the TV. If you get the spark then it's being hooked up wrong. That's why I keep these: The one on the left is for 4-port models and generally came with unmodified (for VCS adapter) 4-ports. The one on the right came with most other 5200 systems. We are going to use the one on the left. Ready? This is the first step. Simply attach the Atari 5200 4-port's RF Switch Box to the back of your TV. Simple enough, right? Wrong. Make sure you connect ONLY the Switch Box, do not have anything else connected to it and make sure the power supply is unplugged from the wall. We haven't made it that far yet and plugging everything in before you connect the Switch Box to the TV is jumping the gun. Slow and steady wins the race! See? Now we can connect the Atari 5200 to its Switch Box that should be connected to the back of the TV. Also, make sure the switch on the Switch Box is in the NORMAL position. We're almost finished...hang in there. This is why I say it was done wrong if you get the spark. See that WARNING section? It says "Verify that the Game Cable is plugged into the TV Switch Box before plugging the Power Adapter into the TV Switch Box." Yep...it's that way for a reason. Not only to avoid the spark but to also avoid a sudden jolt going to the system and/or the TV it's connected to which could lead to either one or the Switch Box failing. Remember, this system is almost 40 years old now. It was this way before and it has been this way for many years. It still works and is the best practice to keep in order to maintain a fully functioning Atari 5200 setup. So now connect the power supply to the Switch Box. After doing this step simply plug the power adapter into your wall outlet. You should hear the Switch Box make a click sound. That's normal. If it's making a constant clicking noise immediately unplug the system and check to make sure the right power adapter was used. The Atari 5200's power adapter looks just like the same power adapters used on most Atari 400/800 computers and accessories, and it's easy to get them mixed up. If the wrong adapter was used, or if for whatever reason the Switch Box made that constant clicking noise, I recommend replacing the Switch Box to be safe. And now on to something else. Most gamers know that the Atari 5200 has a controller storage area. For as long as I could remember I always thought those holes on the sides were for air, you know, to allow for things in there to "breathe." It took me until a few years ago to finally realize what those were for. To start this conversation off let's start with a page out of that same owner's manual I posted above. See that? Atari wanted you to wrap the controller cable around the joystick handles and then put them away. They couldn't think of anything else to do, right? I've flipped through this manual and the other manual and not a one of them mentions what I'm about to share with you. It's probably safe to say that most Atari 5200 owners do well to have one working controller. It's rare to have a 5200 with two working controllers and you might as well be looking for dragons in the wild if you expect to see a system with all four working controllers. So...why not leave the controllers connected? Yes, you can do that and you don't even have to wrap the cables around the handles. What you will do is place controller 1 on the right side of the Controller Storage area and controller 2 on the left side of the Controller Storage area, both face down like Atari says. Now, run the cords through those dips, or holes, I was talking about earlier. Now close the lid. Easy as pie! You can store your controllers AND keep them connected so they are ready to go, all you have to do is pick them up. I really recommend not wrapping the cables around the handles any more because these things are nearly 40 years old at least. The cables have very thin wire strands in them. Bending them over time can cause them to break which can result in controller failure and/or short circuits. And the less damage that can be done the better. It is only a recommendation to help prolong the life of the 5200 and its parts including the controllers. How you care for your 5200 is up to you. These are simply precautions to consider as an Atari 5200 owner. It's all about sharing the knowledge. ⬇️ 4-Port & 2-Port PDF Owner's Manuals Attached Below ⬇️ Atari 5200 2-Port Owner's Manual.pdf Atari 5200 4-Port Owner's Manual.pdf

47925

Only have 1 word for this challenge...... YES

CONGRATS SABERTOOTH! Congratulations @Sabertooth on your big win! We'll get your paddle controllers packaged up and sent out to you this week! Thank you everyone for playing!

33202 I didn't have any emulators set up on my computer, so I was going to pass on the challenges this month, but after seeing atarigames Instagram post about those paddle controllers I wanted to get an entry in (Hey BTB, enter me to win!). Was about to start figuring out an emulator and then remembered it was actually on my Arcade 1Up lol. It's definitely my least played game on here, so this is a cool reason to get into it!

48730. Sunday morning = a good time to focus.

Some improvement...

86,270.