Justin

HO! HO! HO! Atari I/O Secret Santa 2018! $30 Maximum spend on gifts, $20 min spend Please wrap your presents and make this fun! Gift items must pertain to classic video games or retro culture Package must arrive by Saturday, December 22, 2018 HO! HO! HO! It's time for our 4th Annual Atari I/O Secret Santa! If you'd like to be part of Secret Santa this year please respond below saying that you'd like to participate! Please include a link to your Want List in your post or a list of game systems you collect for along with any other wishes that your Santa can help make come true. ❄️ We're starting late this year due to the forums upgrade so time is short to sign up! The last day to sign up is Friday, November 30th, 2018. Names will be impartially selected and we will send you a PM with your Secret Santa information no later than Monday, December 3rd, 2018. ❄️ Have your wishlist ready to go. You might also want to include a list of general interests (Atari 2600, NES, Baseball Cards, Comics, Flashback consoles, a new watch). Time is tight and you might not get something super specific on your list if it's hard to find. Making broader suggestions may help give your Secret Santa a good idea. ❄️ We love classic video games and retro life, but that makes it nearly impossible to find vintage items in new condition. Your gift items can be purchased used or refurbished so long as they meet the criteria of costing you around $30. Your Secret Santa package can be comprised of more than one gift, so long as their total value is around $30 and so long as you've put together a gift package that you feel would be magical and special. (Please don't send a box of "junk") ❄️ The presents you send should be gift wrapped. We really want this to feel like something special! However, it would be okay to send an item without gift wrapping if you were ordering from an Atari vendor, Amazon or eBay and wanted to have it shipped directly to your person's house as opposed to paying twice for shipping. We encourage you to gift wrap your presents when possible. ❄️ We love creating magical holiday memories for our friends in the Forums. We're like a small town here, a warm community of friends with shared interests. For some of us who may have to sacrifice to make a special Christmas for our families, this may end up being the only presents we get to open. If you'd like to participate in Secret Santa this year but may not have the means, please send me a PM and we will try to find a way to help. ❄️ If you're unable to participate in Secret Santa this year, please think about donating to a deserving charity of your choice. One charity to consider is the Oregon Food Bank, which RickR brought to our attention during our inaugural year. You can visit them online at www.oregonfoodbank.org Sign up by Friday, November 30th, 2018! Happy Holidays to All!

F-ZERO Super Nintendo Entertainment System Controller: PLAYER'S CHOICE Difficulty Level: Grand Prix > King League > Standard Class > Mute City III Achieve best time to win challenge Play on: Real Hardware / Dedicated Console / MAME / Emulation OK! ✔ Squad Challenge ends 11:59 pm PST December 14th, 2018 Objective: Play for the best possible time using the difficulty settings defined in the challenge. Post a photo or video of your score in this thread. Scores must be achieved between December 1st through December 14th, 2018. Screen captures are not allowed as they are easily manipulated for falsified scores. Multiple submissions are permitted. The player with the best time at the end of the competition is the victor! Eligibility: Anyone can join in. All players are welcome! Play Rules: Games may be played on real hardware or emulation, using any controller or keyboard, following rules and game settings as delineated in the Squad Challenge. Enhancements and hacked versions of this game are not allowed. Difficulty Level: Grand Prix > King League > Standard Class > Mute City III. We are playing for the best overall time to complete the course at Mute City III. At the title screen select Grand Prix. Players may select any air car they wish. Next, select the League and Class in which you wish to race. Players will select King League, Standard Class. This will start you at Mute City III. You do not have to play the rest of the courses. We are only playing for the best overall time to complete the course at Mute City III. Fair Play: Players should play fairly, be honest, and have fun! Falsified scores will result in your immediate removal from the site. It goes without saying that no use of cheats, hacks, cartridge frying, enhancements, Photoshop, subterfuge, or any other unfair advantage is allowed. Everybody hates a cheater. More: To review detailed rules on how to play, please visit the High Score Squad page here: http://forums.atari.io/index.php/topic/1219-high-score-squad-how-to-play/ Message: Welcome to our 48th Squad Challenge! This time we're playing our first Super Nintendo Squad Challenge, a true SNES classic! F-ZERO is one of the iconic titles on Super Nintendo and was a good demonstration of the Super Nintendo's Mode 7 graphics. F-ZERO was a predecessor to anti-gravity racing league games such as Wipeout that would come in following generations. PDF F-ZERO Instruction Booklet is attached below. Good luck! Note: This is our first Super Nintendo Squad Challenge! F-ZERO.pdf

Matthias did an excellent job with this! This looks like a really nice port. Label and manual look superb. I always wanted Frogger for the 7800. This is one of those earlier arcade games that ports really well on the 7800, much like what Pac Man Plus has been doing. Thanks for the site shoutout Willie! I love what you did with the logo 🤖

BIG CHANGES COMING TO ATARI I/O FORUMS! Here's a SNEAK PEEK at What's Coming. Click Above Video To Watch! We're upgrading to a new version of the software that powers the forums. Atari I/O Forums will run on the latest incarnation of the industry-leading community forum software, powering thousands of message boards online. This is a complete redesign from the ground up, and will include new features not yet found in Atari forums online. This is a very big deal, this will affect everybody in the forums. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU: This is a GOOD thing. We're upgrading to the next level. More features, more opportunities to make the forums better. Best of all, we're bringing back Wednesday Night Atari Chat! That's right, the chat room will be back, new and improved. Things are going to look very different. Things will look and feel different in the forums. The forums will be "under construction" for a while, while we dial things in. Wednesday Night Atari Chat returns to the forums! Within a few weeks of our new chat room opening Wednesday Night Atari Chat will be back, hosted by Justin, btbfilms76, and The Professor. You might see DeLorean, Doctor Octagon, and Museum Matt pop in too! Expect NEW games, contests, events and trivia nights to be back later this summer or fall. We care very much about your experience in the Atari I/O Forums, and we’re looking at all options to make the new chat room bigger and better than ever before. You choose to spend time here and we want it to feel like home. A big part of what has made this community so special was the chat room and the events held there. We want to get it right. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU KNOW YOUR CURRENT LOGIN AND PASSWORD. Write it down somewhere and keep it safe. Captcha is offline until the upgrade. If you forgot your password and need to reset it, send me a PM and we will reset it for you. Also make sure to back up any important files, contacts or information you have stored in PMs, galleries or posted in the forums. NOW is the time to take care of this. Don’t wait! We may experience some interruptions during the upgrade. The forums may be inaccessible for short periods of time, member pips (rankings) may disappear briefly, and things could feel unfamiliar. Captcha is offline. Expect the unexpected. PHASE I: FORUMS UPGRADE (Over the coming weeks) Our forums upgrade will take place over the coming weeks. The big switchover will happen mostly at once, with fine tuning and new features coming online as we dial things in. PHASE II: NEW CHAT ROOM (In time for summer) A new chat room will open in the forums following completion of the upgrade. Within a few weeks of the new chat room opening, Wednesday Night Atari Chat will begin with weekly hosted events by Justin, btbfilms76, and The Professor. We’re lining up new trivia events, contests and prizes to follow shortly thereafter. PHASE III: CUSTOM DESIGN (TBA - After phase I & II are completed) Further customization (Time & $$$) of the forums may take place at some point following the completion of our forums upgrade and launch of the new chat room. This will depend on user feedback and our experience with the new forums going forward.

I love it! Looks great TrekMD

On there. 2' 16" 05

I was just talking about Oregon Trail yesterday and completely forgot about this little handheld. I've seen somebody post about this before and meant to pick one of these up but completely forgot about it. Might need to put this on my Christmas list ❄️

That's it! Thanks!

Maybe my crazy brain is going bananas but was there ever a Depthcharge-like game for Atari 2600? This seems like a pretty fun game for the time. I can see this being a fun Paddle game on 2600.

Don't get too used to it yet, I still have to customize it 😉

Oh man! I can't believe I missed out on that! I would've loved to have seen this live! Way to go

I can remember being a kid (like 5 or 6) growing up in Detroit seeing the Harlem Globetrotters play and thinking that 1.) Harlem was in Detroit, and 2.) The Harlem Globetrotters were an NBA team.

Makes me happy to see that you guys get this ☺️

I think the Video Touch Pad is one of the coolest things Atari released for the 2600. But it's also tremendously disappointing in that it never went anywhere. It should have been one, big, awesome Touch Pad controller used on multiple games. So much potential to do so many cool things, just gone. Why? Even an opportunity to repurpose the Touch Pad for use on the 7800. Nope. The VCS Keyboard Controller, Video Touch Pad, and Kids Controller were all essentially the same thing. Multiple releases of the same product driven by marketing. That's fine, I guess. I think the Kids Controller idea with the Kids Games was a nice idea. The VCS Keyboard Controllers were included with VCS systems early on and made a lot of sense. The Video Touch Pad seemed like 1980s Atari-brand Star Trek touch screens. Wii U or Switch controller for 1982. But what a waste. It seemed like Atari was all over the road. I rather would've seen one sleek controller to unify things moving forward. And make it amazing. Consider it a redesign of the Keyboard Controller. Something like a cross between the two, large in size like the Kids Controller, but with sleek, low-slung "Atari Wedge" looks closer to the Video Touch Pad, with a high-tech feel. Then create big beautiful overlays like the Kids Controller. The Star Raiders overlay was underwhelming, honestly. Get DC Comics involved! Can you imagine? Big vibrant graphics! New adventures! And still plenty of room for Kids overlays as well as more serious "programming" overlays for Keyboard Controller games. And make this the uniform approach for all "pad" games moving forward. The Video Touch Pad seems to have come out right at a time where Atari had made a decision to consciously move away from developing new games for the Paddle Controllers and Keyboard Controllers which had a real presence in the earlier years of the 2600, opting instead to focus almost exclusively on creating games for the Joystick. Seems like a Ray Kassar / Marketing decision. I remember discovering the Video Touch Pad when I first became really passionate about Atari and began retrocollecting. This was during a time when I was attempting to piece together bits of our video game past like an archeologist digging through magazines, old Atari catalogs, finding clearance games at Kay-Bee Toys and rummaging through boxes at flea markets. This was in an an age where Atari was all but forgotten but before we had the internet. I remembered what Star Raiders was, but I didn't remember the Video Touch Pad and it wasn't in any of the Atari Catalogs I had up to that point. I had no idea that it existed until I found a Touch Pad at the bottom of a nasty box of Atari stuff at a flea market. I pulled it out by its cord which, was all tangled in a nest of other cords, and instantly recognized it was Atari's answer to the touchpads on Intellivision and Coleco systems. "I wonder what other games use this?" Turns out none. What a shame.

I completely agree! I love what Holey Moley did with the overlay! True! Another good example where simplification could've won the day. Atari could've had one Touch Pad / Keypad controller, and one Paddle. I get that driving Paddles turned all the way around but did that really necessitate having to buy another controller? How about a single controller for Paddle/Driving games, maybe with the ability to toggle between the two. Keeping things simple seems to be the way to go in my opinion. Absolutely! Maybe what I've been overlooking is that Atari did move forward with the "Touch Pad" philosophy with the Atari 5200 which came out just after Star Raiders on the 2600. Possibly from that point forward an attitude developed within Atari that "5200 games use keypads and overlays, the 2600 doesn't need that". Or, worse, after the release of Star Raiders the marketing department realized that the 2600 Touch Pad was encroaching on the 5200's territory of what made it so "advanced". Hmm.. 🤔 If you look at the Star Raiders overlay it only uses a few of the buttons. Almost within the parameters of Start, Select, two buttons and a D-pad.

I'd like to have Atari. The company.

I know next to zero about emulation. I've always played on real hardware. My gut feeling though is someone out there makes a simple-stupid Raspberry Pi setup or interface that's ready to go with spinners / paddles / whatever.

That wasn't a good time for us in Detroit. BTB, when you made the decision to switch things up and move to Retro Pie did you see anything out there with spinner controllers already working? I see so many Raspberry Pi consoles out there but I'm not very familiar with them, I can't imagine you're the first person to use spinners on a Retro Pi. I wonder if the manufacturer of the spinners could give you any advice?

Does anyone have a similar controller they could loan Rick?

That's called the 1974 Ford Mustang II. Woof 🤮 Don't let your Beer Pong become the Mustang II.

Working on it! I'll shoot you a PM when we're good to go 🎅

Don't miss out on this one, I hope you can join in 😉

Does anybody have an F-ZERO cartridge and SNES controller that they can lend kamikaze for this Squad Challenge?