Justin

@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.

Thanks for the info! 7800basic was a breakthrough achievement for Atari 7800 homebrew games. It seems like not that long ago 7800 homebrew development seemed almost impossible, and there were only two games being worked on, one was Senso DX. I used to talk with @Video 61 about this all the time. 25 years later now there is a new library of 7800 games to choose from. Were all of Bob's 7800 games done in assembly? I think he lives in my old neighborhood, I should reach out to him. It seems like the more 7800 development being done in assembly the better, the 7800 is tricky and sometimes you can feel a clear lag in games done in 7800basic simply due to the limitations. There have been some incredible games coming out for the 7800 and I hope to see that continue.

I get that all the time from people outside of our little "bubble" - people who know what Atari is, and instantly think of Pac-Man and Space Invaders. You can't really blame them - some may remember when both the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 came with Pac-Man as the pack-in title when you buy the system. It would've been advertised. And of course remember "Atari National Pac-Man Day". It seems like Pac-Man was synonymous with Atari for a while.

I haven't kept up with these enough lately to be well informed on what's going on. Are all of the new 7800 homebrews being done in 7800basic or are some of them not? Just curious. Wish everybody well

Hi Lance, I'm referring specifically to the outboard motor on the back of the boat that says "MERCURY" in big letters at the top. A different "Mercury" than the Ford division, but still mind boggling to see it on that crazy boat.

From the back of the boat you'd think it was a Mercury 😛

I haven't been able to find the 1984 instructions yet. They were produced and sold and they exist somewhere. (It always bugs me when the 7800 is listed as "1986-1992" when they were absolutely sold in retail stores in Spring of 1984. "Yes, but that retail availability was a test market" - so was NES in December, 1985.) Here is a common photo of artwork Curt Vendel had for the 1984 box. The text on the back differs completely (why?) and the paragraph on the right begins with "You hyperwarp but end up in a worse spot than before!" - but doesn't explain how that's done. If anyone finds the 1984 instruction manual for Asteroids please feel free to share it with us 😀