Justin

Alex Kidd in Miracle World Sega Master System Controller: JOYSTICK / KEYBOARD / PLAYER'S CHOICE Difficulty Level: Default Play on: Real Hardware / Dedicated Console / MAME / Emulation OK! ✔ Squad Challenge ends 11:59 pm PST July 14, 2020 Objective Play for the highest possible score using the difficulty settings defined in the challenge. Post a photo or YouTube video of your score in this thread. Scores must be achieved between July 1st through Juy 14th, 2020. Screen captures are not allowed as they are more easily manipulated for falsified scores. Multiple submissions are permitted. The player with the highest score at the end of the competition is the victor! Eligibility Anyone can join in. All players are welcome! Play Rules NO POINTS PRESSING. Games may be played on real hardware, Flashback, or emulation, using any controller or keyboard, following all rules and game settings defined in the challenge. Choosing between real hardware or emulation, and choosing which controller to play on is part of formulating your strategy. Enhancements, rewinds and hacked versions of this game are not allowed. Difficulty Level Default. Fair Play Your integrity is everything. 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 we will not allow cheats, hacks, cartridge frying, enhancements, rewinds, deceitful photo manipulation, subterfuge, or any other unfair advantage. Everybody hates a cheater. More To review detailed rules on how to play, please visit the High Score Squad page here: Message Welcome to our 82nd Squad Challenge! We're pulling out an overlooked classic for the Sega Master System and revisiting the World of Sega before Sonic. Alex Kidd in Miracle World was Sega's attempt to counter Nintendo's success with Super Mario Bros. We are playing to achieve a high score in this game. Your high score will be displayed at the end of your round or when you lose a life. This is NOT a 5-minute or single-life run. Play the game for as long as you'd like, but points pressing is not allowed in this Squad Challenge. Alex Kidd in Miracle World is an interesting and colorful little game on the SMS, I hope everyone enjoys checking it out! PDF Instructions are provided below. I hope you guys are ready for a new season of High Score Squad and good luck to everybody participating! NOTE: Another great Squad Challenge is coming up soon! Alex Kidd in Miracle World.pdf

Congratulations Atari Creep! Congratulations @Atari Creep on winning the top spot on the scoreboard! Great performance, and nice to see you win one of your first Squad Challenges! I hope everyone enjoyed our Double Feature and going between the two games. Astrosmash/Astroblast was a nice twist on Asteroids and is a fun play. @Atari Creep takes the 1st Place spot with an impressive score of 111,845. @btbfilms76 also showed up with his A-game in a near-win with a score of 104,730 to take 2nd Place on the board. @RickR takes 3rd Place in our Final Standings for this Squad Challenge with 51,345 points. @TrekMD @atarilbc and @kamakazi20012 all had great showings, and hopefully had a fun time playing in this challenge. Congratulations to everybody on an exciting run, and to everyone who joined in this Squad Challenge and shared a score! I'd like to encourage Atari Creep to post his new high score on the Scoreboard, and let's make sure this Challenge continues on! NOTE: Our next High Score Squad Challenge will be for the Sega Master System. Be there! I'm currently moving into a new house and don't have access to my computer, I will update Final Standings with a nice graphic when I'm able to return to my computer. FINAL STANDINGS ATARI CREEP 111,845 BTBFILMS76 104,730 RICKR 51,345 TREKMD 5,030 ATARILBC 4,415 KAMAKAZI20012 4,120

So @Video 61, what are the things that you think went RIGHT with the XE? Would you agree to the following: Crystal Castles Mario Bros. XE is everything the 5200 should have been What else? I also would've loved to have seen updated versions of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. around that time, since they had the license.

Jack had a good opportunity to beat Nintendo if he cared about GAMES. Atari sure as hell could've come in a solid 2nd at the end of the 8-bit era and be prepped to dominate the 16-bit generation. Stripping sound out of games and not encouraging third party development and not advertising surrendered the market yet again. This is the most pedantic frustrating thing ever.

This is an interesting one! Point-for-Point, Barnyard Blaster is a better game compared to Duck Hunt. Barnyard Blaster offers more screens, more scenes, a greater variety of things to shoot at. Duck Hunt just offers Ducks or Discs. Barnyard Blaster offers music, more detailed graphics, more detailed objects to target. And yet Duck Hunt looks and feels like the better game. It has that Nintendo high-polish shine. It feels like it exists in that Nintendo world. Sadly Atari just couldn't create a cohesive world in quite the same way. The moment you shot Gramps just to see what would happen has to be the greatest moment in BTB history.

I feel like the past few weeks just flew by. I barely got to participate in the Desert Falcon Squad Challenge myself. Good luck to everybody playing!

Astrosmash & Astroblast Double Feature! Mattel Intellivision & Atari 2600 Play on: Real Hardware / Dedicated Console / MAME / Emulation OK! ✔ Squad Challenge ends 11:59 pm PST June 30, 2020 Astrosmash Mattel Intellivision Controller: HAND CONTROLLER / KEYBOARD / PLAYER'S CHOICE Difficulty Level: Single-Shot Firing Mode Astroblast Atari 2600 Controller: JOYSTICK / PADDLE / KEYBOARD / PLAYER'S CHOICE Difficulty Level: Right AND Left Difficulty Switches set to "B" Objective Play for the highest possible score using the difficulty settings defined in the challenge. Post a photo or YouTube video of your score in this thread. Scores must be achieved between June 15th through June 30th, 2020. Screen captures are not allowed as they are more easily manipulated for falsified scores. Multiple submissions are permitted. The player with the highest score 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, Flashback, or emulation, using any controller or keyboard, following all rules and game settings defined in the challenge. Choosing between real hardware or emulation, and choosing which controller to play on is part of formulating your strategy. Enhancements, rewinds and hacked versions of this game are not allowed. Difficulty Level INTELLIVISION Single-Shot Firing Mode (#2 on Keypad). This mode gives player control over firing. ATARI 2600 Right AND Left Difficulty Switches set to "B". Right Difficulty Switch set to "B" for Regular Skill Level. Left Difficulty Switch set to "B" for manual firing mode. Fair Play Your integrity is everything. 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 we will not allow cheats, hacks, cartridge frying, enhancements, rewinds, deceitful photo manipulation, subterfuge, or any other unfair advantage. Everybody hates a cheater. More To review detailed rules on how to play, please visit the High Score Squad page here: Message Welcome to our 81st Squad Challenge, and our second DOUBLE FEATURE! This is going to be a fun one, guys. Astrosmash and Astroblast are essentially the same game published by Mattel for two of our favorite systems: Intellivision and Atari 2600. Yes, both games differ from each other slightly, with Astroblast playing slightly faster. Scoring, however, is the same. Both games share the same scoring formula, so hitting a big rock on the first level gets you 10 points in Astrosmash, the same way it gets you 10 points in Astroblast. Do you perform better in one game and not the other? Is the 2600 joystick what you score best at, but you fumble with the Intellivision controllers? You can play either or both games. Intellivision or 2600? Choose your weapon of choice! Scores from both systems will be combined into ONE Final Standings scoreboard. Playing across two systems will make this Squad Challenge more accessible to members who want to join in, and making this challenge a Double Feature adds an interesting twist. Let's make this a fun one! Astrosmash was originally conceived when an Intellivision game in development called Meteor!, an Asteroids clone, did not fill up the ROM space of an entire cartridge. The extra space was used to create a variation of the game called Avalanche! The Meteor! game was cancelled at the last minute, due to concerns that it was too similar to Asteroids. Programmer John Sohl programmed a "branch" around the opening-screen menu, leading directly to the Avalanche! variation, retitled Astrosmash. The games were compatible, since they were designed together, and used the same sprites and sound effects. In rare instances, if the console's reset button is pressed rapidly, an error can occur, resulting in the game starting in the original Meteor! format. Games and Instruction Booklets for both versions are provided below. I hope you guys are ready for a new season of High Score Squad and good luck to everybody participating! NOTE: Another great Squad Challenge is coming up soon! Thanks for playing, and enjoy! Astrosmash.pdf Astrosmash.int Astroblast.pdf Astroblast.bin

So you have to shoot the arrows in the bottom right corner for which direction the police car fires at the robbers' getaway car? You can't just shoot at the getaway car itself? If that's true, that seems pretty hokey to me in an otherwise excellent looking game.

Congratulations RadioPoultry! Congratulations @RadioPoultry! RadioPoultry's score ran away with the top spot on the scoreboard! I hope everyone enjoyed getting into Desert Falcon on Atari 7800. Desert Falcon is a unique 7800 game that adds Egyptian motifs and deeper strategy to Zaxxon-style gameplay. Some of the color choices throw me off or feel limited, but overall I think this game looks really good on the 7800 and is a fun play. RadioPoultry takes the 1st Place spot with a mind boggling score of 211,094. Incredible! RadioPoultry, you gotta tell us more about this "walking around" strategy! @atarilbc takes 2nd Place with a terrific score of 53,125, and @btbfilms76 came with his A-Game, claiming 3rd Place in our Final Standings for this Squad Challenge with 38,064 points. @RickR, @TrekMD, @Gianna, and @Atari Creep great showings, and hopefully had a fun time playing in this challenge. Congratulations to everybody on an exciting run, and to everyone who joined in this Squad Challenge and shared a score! I'd like to encourage RadioPoultry to post his new high score on the Scoreboard, and let's make sure this Challenge continues on! NOTE: Our next High Score Squad Challenge will be an Atari 2600 / Intellivision Double Feature! Be there!

Absolutely right. He came from a "computer mindset" not video games. Part of Atari's problem in 1984 is they didn't know if they wanted to be Nintendo or IBM. Atari had some great business machines in development and a lot of R&D skewed towards business productivity, while at times not seeing the opportunity for a playful video game company rooted in characters and toy-like gameplay the way Nintendo would end up being, which is a mind-blowing missed opportunity for a company owned by Warner Bros. Jack saw the world from the computer perspective and really did not like video games. It was Steve Ross, Chairman of Warner, who sought out Jack Tramiel and offered him the deal of a lifetime. Steve Ross just wanted Atari off the books so Warner didn't get swallowed up whole in a hostile takeover from News Corp, who ended up buying 20th Century Fox instead. In that sense, I think Jack may have been taken for a ride and made to be the greatest stooge of all, that's a way of viewing this story that you never really see. It's usually that "Jack was a good guy" because of the ST, Lynx and Jaguar, or "Jack was a bad guy" for his warlord business practices and having let Atari become a bargain bin brand. It's not often said that Jack was the one who got tricked in this whole deal. Computer hardware and cutting corners at every opportunity was Jack's approach. I agree wholeheartedly with what @RickR said, Jack saw a big respected brand name available for a dirt cheap price, plus the ability to keep his hands in Warner's pockets long after the purchase, and the ST computers were seriously good. I would also say that as far as hardware, the Lynx, Jag, Portfolio and others were incredible machines. Even the 7800 in 1984, which was more or less handed to him. But in every one of these instances Jack cut corners, had almost no advertising, made no real effort to drive 3rd party support (with minor exceptions) and time and again encountered stories of "bad timing" or "multi-month delays to save a few pennies". I'm grateful for what we got during the Tramiel era but the whole thing is sad.

I love these early dedicated consoles. Really underappreciated and really cool to see how these things evolved into the VCS.

Now that I think of it @Video 61 I think you also talked me out of the Atari Mega ST2 with Megafile 30. I thought that was a tidy looking ST unit, but realized after our call that day the only thing that would keep me entertained for the next 20 years was the 520 STFM. For playing games on TV there's nothing better.

Here I am the admin of the site and I'm not really keeping this thread on topic am I

I remember really wanting a TT030, I thought it looked killer in the '90s. I ended up with a NeXTstation. Even talked with you once later on about getting a TT030, but after our chat it sounded like the best thing for me at that time would've been an Atari 520 STFM for playing games, as I had moved on from the needs of workstations. Never ended up getting a TT030, or the other workstation I lusted over, a Silicon Graphics Indigo 2.

I think for the most part that was Jack's approach after taking over Atari with everything from the 2600 through the Jaguar. A lot of good hardware, not a lot of quality first-party support, and never got the third-party support that he received with C64. I don't think he got that.

BINGO

"Computers for the masses" unfortunately didn't include them caring about video games.

I first got Ballblazer in the Fall of 1995, well after its "sell by" date had expired 😉 This was Atari 7800 Ballblazer. In the Fall of 1995 I had just bought the first PlayStation which was brand new at the time. It was absolutely mind-blowing to me at the time that the Atari 7800 could play pseudo-polygon games that I thought at the time looked closer to a PlayStation game or a Jaguar game than an NES game. A better comparison would be to the Mode 7 graphics on the SNES. I was just blown away by what my little Atari could do, even a decade after that game was first designed.

For me it would have to be Rescue on Fractalus or Crystal Castles. Can you imagine if they had completed Crystal Castles on the 7800? It was one of their top games on XE.