Justin

@Silver Back You're welcome to create a "7800 Pro Gamer" Thread dedicated to your YouTube channel, in our YouTube Community Forum. We created the "YouTube Community" Forum specifically to help Atari I/O members promote their YouTube channels, build their audience, and help do exactly what you are doing - bring positive awareness to Atari platforms and build our classic gaming communities. The idea is you have a Thread dedicated entirely to your YouTube channel where you can embed your latest videos, and post news and updates about your channel, and carve out a spot within our Forums. If you share your videos to your thread regularly we will keep it pinned toward the top of the page, and you are welcome to share your videos in other parts of the Forums and status updates as well https://forums.atari.io/forum/46-youtube-community/ Atari Age members are welcome here ☺️ You are more than welcome to post about Atari Age homebrews, share AA links, whatever you'd like. Most of our Atari I/O Members are on Atari Age as well. I TOTALLY AGREE!! For you to take the time to create YouTube videos that draws attention to the Atari 7800 era, and depicts Atari in a positive light is profoundly appreciated. The more of that, the better. I think we all have the same goals, and I hope we're able to reach new people in the process. Can't wait to see what you cook up next!

We're playing Centipede on EXPERT Mode for Atari 7800 in High Score Squad as part of a "Double Feature" in tandem with this Club VCS Recharged Squad Challenge! EVERYBODY'S INVITED to play in BOTH Squad Challenges! This means you Atari VCS Scions! Join us if you've got what it takes to blast those bugs!

This is a MONTH LONG Squad Challenge! You have through September 30th to post your High Score! Take the extra time to enjoy the game!

Let's get the word out about our Club VCS Recharged Squad Challenge! The more people participating the more fun the challenge! Spread the word and invite friends to play!

Centipede Atari 7800 Controller: JOYSTICK / TRAK-BALL / KEYBOARD / PLAYER'S CHOICE Difficulty Level: EXPERT Play on: Real Hardware / Dedicated Console / Emulation OK! ✔ Squad Challenge ends 11:59 pm PST September 30, 2023 Nominated by @Gianna 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 September 1st through September 30th, 2023. 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 / Mini console, officially released compilation, 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, updated and hacked versions of this game are not allowed. Difficulty Level EXPERT. We are playing Centipede on the EXPERT Difficulty Setting, which provides the most challenging level of gameplay for prodigious adult players of the highest skill levels. 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 dishonest 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 149th Squad Challenge! This month we're playing Centipede on its EXPERT Difficulty Setting for Atari 7800! This Centipede High Score Squad Challenge is a "Double Feature" that coincides with @Sabertooth's Centipede Recharged Squad Challenge in ClubVCS! We invite you to play in BOTH Squad Challenges, if you can! Special thanks to @Gianna for nominating this game! ROM is attached below. Good luck! Centipede.A78Centipede.pdf

LETTTSSS GOOOOO!!!! 🪱

Congratulations RickR! Congratulations to @RickR on another incredible victory! "The Don" RickR takes the top spot in our Final Standings with an outstanding score of 269,400 points. Awesome! @socrates63is back with us once again and fought a valiant fight, securing 2nd Place in our Final Standings with an incredible score of 240,200 points! We once again welcome back recent Squad Challenge newcomer @Smell Dawg who takes 3rd Place with a stellar score of 197,200 points. @TrekMD beams up with 154,400 points, taking 4th Place, and "The Mayor" @greenween fought a fierce battle, taking 5th Place with 136,400 points. We had a great competition this month for what is effectively a homebrew game, I hope everybody had a great time! As always I'd like to encourage "The Don" @RickR to post his high score on the Scoreboard, and let's make sure this Challenge continues on! Congratulations once again to RickR for his BIG WIN, and I want to thank @TrekMD for nominating this game! 👉 Also, Be sure to join Club VCS this month to participate in our Recharged Squad Challenges for the new Atari VCS! NOTE: Our next Squad Challenge will be announced shortly. Be there!

@Silver Back This is terrific content! You bring a lot to the Forums and we're thrilled to have you in our community! One of Atari I/O's biggest objectives is to be a beacon to new Atari players. We want to welcome new people to the World of Atari, people who went home to their parents house for Thanksgiving, found their old Atari 2600 in the basement and are rediscovering Atari for the first time in decades, people who bought a Flashback on sale at Costco and want to learn more, and young gamers who are just discovering Atari for the first time. It's very important that new Atari players - and don't feel like they've walked up to a closed inner-circle having a conversation that goes above most people's heads and isn't welcoming to newcomers. For every esoteric conversation we have here about the inner workings of "Jack Tramiel and Shiraz Shivj debating the AMY chip being worked into 68000 architecture as opposed to the YM2149F", we also need to also have more welcoming conversations such as "what makes Centipede so fun." This video fits that perfectly! A current-year Atari 7800 Buyer's Guide in video form is a fantastic tool! It helps to welcome new players and onboard more people into the 7800 and the World of Atari in general. Terrific work @Silver Back! 🏆 You have not been posting excessively. You are far from. hitting the guardrails. If you were monopolizing the conversation it would be obvious. You and your content are always welcome here It's so nice to hear that you feel that way. You're a big inspiration to us all!

@TrekMD At the moment I think it's the best Baseball game on the Atari 2600! I think Champ Sports Baseball is going to be the new GOAT when it's released ☺️ @TrekMD Definitely the best Atari 7800 baseball game! If you move the difficulty switch just the right way you can place sports bets with Pete Rose @TrekMD It's a 16k cart, I really would've enjoyed a 64k version of this game! I've gone in depth before about how I think a proper E.T. game should've looked ☺️

Interestingly enough, @nosweargamer reviewed Dark Chambers for Atari 2600, immediately after reviewing it for Atari 7800, and he found that he really loved the 2600 version and thought it was more enjoyable to play than 7800 Dark Chambers. He ranked 2600 Dark Chambers as #2 on his list of Atari 2600 games, compared it to Legend of Zelda, and appreciated the large scrolling maze and "zoomed-in" action. Watching his review let me wanting a large scrolling maze game for the Atari 7800, something like 2600 Dark Chambers but more complex. @Video 61 Maybe there's room for a really cool Atari 7800 "Secretum Labyrinth" game that gives us a scrolling maze / dungeon the way Dark Chambers did on the 2600?

@nosweargamer has a terrific review of Dark Chambers for Atari 7800 and discusses the Gauntlet vs. Dark Chambers vs. Dandy issue pretty early on:

There's definitely something in the zeitgeist about the Jaguar, and Atari in general. You never see clickbait videos and articles about "Why 3DO got COMPLETELY DESTROYED!" ... but you always do with Jaguar and certainly Atari. Makes you wonder why the haters can't help but hate. Some other examples: "Why Atari LYNX was SO FAT IT FAILED!" - but never TurboExpress (or early cell phones!) "Why Atari 7800 FAILED against NES!" - but never Sega Master System "Why Atari Jaguar was SO OVERPRICED people hardly bought it!" - But never Neo Geo It's okay to play a niche game system. As I've always said, it's okay to play different:

I also find it interesting that somewhere along the line in 1986 Jack Tramiel said "Yeah, go ahead and make more E.T.s"

@Smell Dawg Thank you! 🏆 I love to hear that @RickR!! The more I see what was available for Atari 8-Bit computers, let's say during the Atari XL period while the Atari 5200 was out, I really feel like the Atari 8-Bit Computers were the way to go for the greatest home gaming experience. With the understand I have now, I would certainly have chosen to go with an Atari XL computer in 1983 as opposed to spending money on an Atari 5200. Not only did the XL offer many of the same games, but a ton more. Plus it was a real computer. Definitely the way to go. I find it surprising - even confusing - that almost universally there's never a mention of "E.T. Phone Home" for the Atari 8-Bit when "Atari ET" is mentioned in the media. I think "Atari: Game Over" went through the entirety of that film without mentioning or showing Atari had another E.T. game out that was better done and provided a more fulfilling adventure. It's rarely mentioned in magazine articles, blog entires, general discussions about "E.T. and Atari." It's strange. Absolutely! I got into the habit early on, about 30 years ago right now. I checked out a book from the library that showed "a home video game collection" with a bunch of Activision games lined up in the box, displayed like books on a book shelf. And I thought that's a really great way of preserving and organizing your games. I was ordering directly from Atari and from @Video 61 very early on, so I was in the habit of having new games and keeping them nice once I had them. We're long past that being an easy thing to do, but I always make the attempt. I also realized a tremendous part of the classic gaming experience for me was looking at the box, reading the verbiage on the back and staring into the screenshots, opening the box up and pulling out the instruction manual and game catalog. At a young age I began preserving those too. The classic gaming experience extends beyond the games themselves, and I wanted to preserve all of that. Some classic gamers disagree, even get angry over people wanting the box. I understand that's their view, and different approaches work for different people. As far as Atari games go (2600-Jag) I always like to have the complete game. Thank you for looking!

I picked up three new games this week, all new in the box in good condition: Pete Rose Baseball (Atari 2600) Cookie Monster Munch (Atari 2600) E.T. Phone Home (Atari 8-Bit Computers) Let's take a look at the pickups! Pete Rose Baseball is a really nice looking (the best looking?) Baseball game for Atari 2600. It's an Absolute release and has a copyright date of 1988. It was programmed by Alex DeMeo who also did Title Match Pro Wrestling for Atari 2600. Cookie Monster Munch is one of the original Kids Controller games designed as a collaboration between Atari and Children's Television Workshop (Sesame Workshop). I have two brand new Kids Controllers put away, and I picked up this game not just because they are becoming harder to find - but because I had always wanted my future kids to be able to play the Kids Controller Sesame Street games as some of their very first video games. I think a 2 year old would still appreciate Cookie Monster even in 2600 mode 🙂 Cookie Monster Munch is an educational game designed for children Ages 3-7 to help learn numbers and how to count by helping Cookie Monster catch and eat cookies. Alternate artwork is shown in Tim Lapetino's book "Art of Atari" page 212 showing the names "Cookie Monster's Garden" and "Cookie Monster Maze". Another interesting note about the Sesame Street Kids Controller games packaging is that they have always been very difficult to find in "perfect" boxes. These were made at a time when most Atari 2600 video games were displayed in stores on open shelves, as opposed to behind a sliding glass door. Games sat on store shelves at K-Mart, Sears, Kay-Bee and elsewhere, and anyone could walk up, pick up the game and walk around with it before putting it back where they would all get crunched together. Sesame Street games with Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Ernie and others were prone to being handled by excited children and made crunchy before mom told them to "put it back", so to find any Kids Controller games in a decent box is a challenge. E.T. Phone Home is the often overlooked Atari 8-Bit Computer version of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600. It's a 16k cartridge originally released for the Atari XL line and works with all 16k Atari 8-Bit Computers. I think this version of the game should've also been released for the Atari 5200, but in the context of everything that happened I understand why it was not. I wonder if it was ever planned? The objective of E.T. Phone Home is the same as the Atari 2600 version: you play as Elliott searching for pieces to help E.T. assemble his interstellar telephone so he can "phone home" and call his spaceship. Other than that, this version of E.T. is much different from the Atari 2600 E.T., as E.T. Phone Home has much better graphics, controls and sound, and even has voice synthesis where you can hear E.T. call home. The game plays and looks much better and allows you to explore Elliott's neighborhood and feels like a much more "finished" game without constantly falling into pits. My game has a 1986 copyright from Atari Corp. and was a Tramiel release as a 2nd printing. The only downside to this was that I would have like to have had a color instruction manual, but otherwise it feels the same as the earlier 1983 Atari, Inc. version. From the back of the box: You remember that marvelous moment, when the moon sailed high before the stars, the crickets sang softly in the fields, and Elliott held his breath. Something was waiting in the shed, and neither vou nor he knew what would happen next — but somehow you both knew it would change vour lives. Would you have been as brave as he was, to face that moment and see what it would bring? If so, you would have entered into Elliott's magnificent adventure — and now, with your ATARI Home Computer and this game, you can! YOU ARE ELLIOTT, searching for the hidden pieces which will create E.T.'s “phone" and make him speak to you. It's not easy — the agents are on your trail, and there's very little time before your extra-terrestrial friend loses all his energy. But if you save him, you’ll see his spaceship take him away! Plav it and discover — THE MAGIC OF E.T. I got all of these games from @Video 61 and included free shipping on orders over $40 within the lower 48 states.

I went around for 3 years telling people "Atari Jaguar is going to beat Nintendo Ultra 64 to a pulp!" and Atari folded into a reverse merger with JTS before the Nintendo 64 ever launched. It was a pretty brutal time to be an Atari player, and heartbreaking as someone who loved classic Atari systems and saw the Jaguar as the rebirth of Atari. It's one reason why I have empathy for people who have so much passion for these newer systems coming out like the VCS, 2600+, and what could have been a new Intellivision system. People don't want to see the things they love die.

Wreck-It Ralph $9.99 on iTunes (Lowest price for Disney movies, Reg. $19.99) https://www.cheapcharts.info/us/itunes/movies/577679650/Wreck-It-Ralph

Star Trek: Voyager: The Complete Series $39.99 on iTunes (Reg. $79.99) https://www.cheapcharts.info/us/itunes/seasons/1439413673/Star-Trek-Voyager-The-Complete-Series

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Complete Series $39.99 on iTunes (Reg. $79.99) https://www.cheapcharts.info/us/itunes/seasons/1439412147/Star-Trek-Deep-Space-Nine-The-Complete-Series

Star Trek: The Next Generation (Remastered) Complete Series $49.99 on iTunes (Reg. $99.99) https://www.cheapcharts.info/us/itunes/seasons/1439415393/Star-Trek-The-Next-Generation-The-Complete-Series

Star Trek: The Original Series (Remastered) Complete Series $29.99 on iTunes (Reg. $59.99) https://www.cheapcharts.info/us/itunes/seasons/1439512970

What are your thoughts on these Computer related movies and television shows?

Heads up: I'll be splitting our conversations about Stargate vs. Defender II, and Gauntlet vs. Dark Chambers vs. Dandy into new topics. Not because any of those discussions are "off-topic" - they're fantastic and I want to encourage deep dive conversations to spawn from our recent pickups - that's the point, to show your latest pickups and have those branch into new conversations. Sometimes the conversations that stem from recent pickups are interesting enough to be their own thread. I want to foster those conversations here, and if occasionally we split them off into their own Topic, that's a big win for everybody.

I thought this was a great advertisement. Especially the Dog. It's very relatable and it was always fun to flip through old volumes of National Geographic to find vintage AMC ads. You're likely to find ads for Atari 400/800 computers quite often also.