Justin

I wonder what the chances are that AA has stopped selling unlicensed games because Atari plans to release officially licensed games on cartridge 🙃

It's funny you say that. I mentioned the Toys R Us dream with the Lynx systems and games that had long ago been placed behind a retail display cabinet. When I was young I worked at two different Toys R Us locations in different states and ran "R-ZONE" which is the video games and electronics department. I was the guy in the cage. I still have dreams about that, and sometimes they intertwine with my Atari dreams. In real life - sometime around 2001 or 2002 - I moved some stuff around in the cage and found two boxes full of brand new Nintendo Virtual Boy games, and two small master cartons containing 6 brand new Neo-Geo Pocket Color systems, all silver. These were all relatively small boxes about the size of a few 2600 game boxes put together. They were shoved behind tons of DVDs and other stuff in a cage that should've been better organized by the person I took it over from. So having lived through that experience - and having this site newly launched at the time and constantly thinking "It's amazing to think that this room used to have piles of Atari games" - I've always had that wish that I could find one last box of new Lynx systems or Atari cartridges for all of the 8-bit systems. All these years later it finds a way to weave itself into my dreams.

YES! All of the packages eventually showed up, always right at 10:45 am and the driver was always very friendly.

Does anybody else ever have dreams about Atari or classic gaming? I dreamed last night that I was out of town, in an asian thrift store and found an Atari 2000 (a red one) new in an unreleased box, in addition to 3 new sealed unreleased games. They were asking $80 for the system and $30 for all three games. I saw it neatly organized in a very large cardboard box on the floor by some other used toys. They lady at the store thought it was intended for young children - and I remember thinking she wasn't wrong. I could not believe what I was seeing! I didn't even know they had designed a box for it, the way they had for the Atari 2700. The store was closing and I immediately took everything up to the register and bought it. In my dream, I thought of you guys and knew I'd have to get home and film an unboxing video and show the Atari 2000 getting hooked up to the tv and played for the first time. I was going to put it on YouTube and share it here in the forums. Then I woke up. And it wasn't real. Just a dream. It felt so real though. I wish it was! I've had other Atari dreams over the years - almost all of them seem to do with finding new old Atari merchandise in a store. A few years ago I had a dream that @btbfilms76 called me and told me to get down to the Toys R Us in my town because they were having their "going out of business" sale and they found a bunch of Lynx stuff lost behind a retail display. I had a dream in the 1990s about finding new Atari 7800s at Sears, but they were made in more of a grey color similar to the original Lynx I. Have you ever had dreams about Atari or classic gaming?

Haha I don't think you would've enjoyed the card and pack of stickers 😭 USPS has been pretty good to me too. Cards and letters mailed from South Florida to downtown Portland (large building adjacent to the Williamette river) takes 4-5 days. USPS Priority packages take 2 days, sometimes 3. It's worked out pretty well! I think so too! I'll tell you a real problem I ran into. I had four different items that I had purchased from a boutique shop in Naples, FL include "Free Shipping" which turned out to be FedEx Ground. Each of the four packages were processed by the store quickly and out of the state on the back of a FedEx truck within 24 hours. It would arrive in Oregon within 3 days - but every time it got hung up at the FedEx processing location in Troutdale, OR outside of Portland. The packages would spend another 3 days just sitting in Troutdale. I researched it a bit and it turns out FedEx has major issues in their Troutdale facility, including employment issues that are still not entirely resolved. From that point on I paid for USPS shipping and never had another issue.

From the Preface: @Boris I absolutely love that you come out and say that upfront. Thank you for all the hard work you put into this gem of a book.

@RickR @TrekMD Incidentally I've been sending letters from South Florida to Portland USPS 1st class mail and it's usually taking 4-5 days. I'd love for it to be overnight!

I love this take. ABSOLUTELY. I love to hear that. I hope Mr. Run and Jump is an absolute work of art.

Does Atari have Tim Lapetino involved at all with the cartridge label and box art design? If not I think that would benefit them. I view the Atari XP program as Atari's outreach and reward to our community and I want to see them successful with this. I think there are a few things they could be doing differently that would, in my mind, absolutely justify the price.

I'm really surprised to hear you say that 😱 It's hard to be inside The World of Atari for 30 years and not have heard of Crossbow. Give the 7800 version a play and let us know your thoughts on how they compare. Same here! I might be a bit partial to the Atari 7800 in general, but I always preferred that version. Then again I usually prefer most 7800 versions to the XE / 8-Bit with the exception of Karateka.

I hope!

This is a MONTH LONG Squad Challenge! You have through August 31st to post your High Score! Take the extra time to enjoy the game!

Thanks @Marco1019! I've corrected the Final Standings to make sure your correct score is included ☀️

There's literally documentation that Atari never looked at pertaining to developing for the 7800. Maybe they've gone into this more in threads on AA but I know it was brought up at the GCC reunion some time ago. I don't know if Tramiel's Atari was unaware or didn't care. For sure John Scrutch, who oversaw software development under Tramiel, would've wanted the best, but there was only so far you could push Jack or Sam Tramiel on these issues before they shut you down and gave you the lecture about how they didn't like video games. Again this part of the story is for @Video 61 to tell as he has first hand knowledge of this.

hahahah I 2nd that toast! 🍻 And massive thank you to @Sabertooth for the incredible work in Club VCS - especially hosting the VCS Recharged Recharged Challenges! 🥳

Congratulations Socrates63! Congratulations to @socrates63 his 2ND BIG WIN IN A ROW!! Socrates takes the top spot in our Final Standings with an outstanding score of 116,770 points. Awesome! @Atari 5200 Guy slogged it out all month and came in with a supreme score, taking 2nd Place in our Final Standings with 58,320 points! Squad Master @Marco1019 played his heat on camera and came in with the stellar score of 44,670 points landing him in 3rd Place! The newest member of the Squad, @Smell Dawg joined us for this friendly competition, posting a fantastic score of 38,820 points to take 4th Place! "The Don" @RickR takes 5th Place with a hard-fought 27,160 points, and @TrekMD beams up with 24,310 points in 6th Place. "The Mayor" @greenween takes 7th Place with 16,010, and Mr. VCS @Sabertooth sits nicely in 8th with an iconic score of 7,800. We had a great competition this month, I hope everybody had a great time! As always I'd like to encourage @socrates63 to post his high score on the Scoreboard, and let's make sure this Challenge continues on! Congratulations once again to Socrates63 for his BIG WIN, and I want to thank @Atari 5200 Guy 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 Venture Reloaded - a hack for the Atari 2600 nominated by TrekMD. Be there!

The more I think about it the more I think it has to do with GCC - the MIT guys that developed the 7800 to begin with. They were absolute geniuses. I had always been told that the 7800 had capabilities that the GCC guys knew like the back of their hand, that were more or less forgotten about after Tramiel bought Atari. Much of the delay in the Atari 7800's national launch had to do with Jack Tramiel saying GCC's deal was directly with Warner and not with Atari, so GCC wasn't being paid. Instead of continuing to work with GCC to develop incredible games for the 7800, they were essentially told to go away. I think this joystick issue is one of those things that we could've seen more of - but didn't - because it was a standard that GCC had developed that wasn't maintained by Tramiel's Atari. @Video 61 may have more info on this.

I find it amazing that the Atari 7800 can tell the difference between a 2600 joystick and a 7800 joystick - to the extent that "Down" on the 2600 joystick does what Button 2 does on the 7800 stick I'm trying to think of other examples of this.

So for example, today I was notified that E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in 4K is for sale on iTunes for $4.99 https://www.cheapcharts.info/us/itunes/movies/544128124/E.T.-The-Extra-Terrestrial So is the original Karate Kid and many others. It's a good time to pick some of these movies up for the price of a rental.

Venture Reloaded Atari 2600 Controller: JOYSTICK / KEYBOARD / PLAYER'S CHOICE Difficulty Level: DEFAULT Play on: Real Hardware / Dedicated Console / Emulation OK! ✔ Squad Challenge ends 11:59 pm PST August 31, 2023 Nominated by @TrekMD 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 August 1st through August 31st, 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 Standard Play, Default Difficulty. Note: If you are using Stella to play this game, you will want to enable Phosphor to eliminate flicker. This is found in the display tab of the game properties. You can also configure Stella to use a SaveKey to auto-save your highscore. In the controller settings, change the P1 controller to SaveKey. 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 148th Squad Challenge! This month we're playing Venture Reloaded, a hack of the Atari 2600 version of Venture by Omegamatrix on AtariAge! Special thanks to @TrekMD for nominating this game! ROM is attached below. Good luck! Venture Reloaded (RC3).bin

Yoooo boxed Spider Fighter! That was one of my first Activision games, I'm always up for some Spider Fighter! That 7800 Game Drive looks pretty awesome! I hope it's a good experience.

Yes, exactly. Nice tight programming in assembly language tends to be best in terms of performance, however programming for the MARIA chip hasn't been an easy task - almost a lost art form - and 7800basic has opened up Atari 7800 development to many more people which has been a good thing. @Video 61 and @RickR could probably speak to the lag issue better than I can, and if 7800basic correlates with lag in some of these games and meeting the Doherty Threshold. The Atari 7800 is plenty capable of running Robotron: 2084 flawlessly without slowdown, I believe this relates to how 7800basic works. I'm envious of what OpCode Games has been able to do with porting MSX games to the ColecoVision and wish there were more games of equal or better quality being released for the Atari 7800.