Justin

An all-time favorite:

@Marco1019 What systems do you have that you would like to see played

For my first game I bowled a 186

@nosweargamer has an excellent overview of Bowling for the Atari 2600. It's a great place to start if you're new to the game!

Let's get the word out about this High Score Squad Challenge! The more people participating the more fun the challenge! Spread the word and invite friends to play!

Bowling Atari 2600 Controller: JOYSTICK / KEYBOARD / PLAYER'S CHOICE Difficulty Level: Game 1, Difficulty A Play on: Real Hardware / Dedicated Console / Emulation OK! ✔ Squad Challenge ends 11:59 pm PST January 31, 2022 Nominated by: @RickR 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 January 15th through January 31st, 2022. 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, 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 We are playing Bowling on Game 1, Difficulty A which provides for Curve Ball and a Standard level of gameplay appropriate for adult players. 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 116th Squad Challenge!!! For this challenge we're playing Atari's BOWLING, released for the Atari 2600 in 1979 and designed by Larry Kaplan, who later went on to become a cofounder of Activision. Special thanks to @RickR for nominating this game for High Score Squad! Bowling is a basic but fun Atari 2600 sports game featuring some fun dynamics such as curveballs. Standard scoring rules for Bowling apply. NOTE: Before pressing the FIRE Button to release the ball, the Joystick controls the positioning of the Bowler. After pressing the FIRE button, the Joystick controls the direction of the ball as it moves down the Alley. ROM and PDF Instruction Manual are provided below. I hope you all have fun, and good luck to everybody participating. Will you score a SRIKE or SPARE?! 🎳 Bowling.pdf Bowling.bin

Congratulations Marco1019! Congratulations to the incredible @Marco1019 on becoming our new Megamania Squad Champion! Marco hit a home run with his stellar score of 200,180 points! Absolutely killer score and a decisive win! And a big congratulations to everybody on all those incredible scores across the board! We're starting the new year with a HUGE turnout in High Score Squad! I hope Megamania was fun and you'll continue to join us for Squad Challenges throughout the year ahead. Great way to start the year! @Csolo was on fire in Megamania, securing the 2nd Place in our Final Standings with his burning hot score of 109,640 points. @chas10e takes 3rd with an impressive 104,560 points, and @RickR was hot on his tail, taking 4th with 104,100. @Atari 5200 Guy fought hard to break that ceiling and join the 100,000 point club, but takes 5th Place just shy of that with 99.740 points. @Dinobot711 @Sabertooth @greenween @Justin @RadioPoultry @nosweargamer @TrekMD @Gianna and @Atari Creep all joined us in our Megamania Activision Squad Challenge and shared terrific high scores. I hope everybody who joined us for this one had a blast! Also, this week we welcomed @Csolo to High Score Squad who joined us for this Challenge! Csolo knocked it out of the park, taking 2nd Place in our Final Standings in his first Squad Challenge! It's great to have you at Atari I/O participating in High Score Squad @Csolo !! Everybody's glad you're here! WELCOME!! Our new Achievement Badges have been a real hit in the forums. This week we introduced our first Activision Badge! For this Squad Challenge, we're awarding the Activision Megamaniacs Badge as an achievement for all players who achieved a "patch-worthy" score of 45,000+ Points in our Megamania Squad Challenge. Each of you who scored 45,000 points or more have now been awarded the Activision Megamaniacs Badge! For all Activision games played in High Score Squad moving forward, we will be recreating the classic Activision Patches as Badges and awarding them to all players who achieve a "patch-worthy" score as originally set forth by Activision. We think that will be a fun way to play Activision games in High Score Squad, and revive the spirit of the original Activision Patches. As always I'd like to encourage @Marco1019 to post his high score on the Scoreboard, and let's make sure this Challenge continues on! Congratulations to Marco, thanks again to @Sabertooth for nominating this game, and a big congratulations and Happy New Year to our wonderful little community for being such a great group to spend time with, I hope everybody had fun playing Megamania! NOTE: Our next High Score Squad Challenge is Bowling for the Atari 2600! Be there!

Credit goes to @Sabertooth for nominating Megamania. Absolute perfect choice to start off the year, we had a great time! I kept playing this game right up until the very last moment and couldn't beat my previous score. It was a heck of a run. Final Standings and our next Squad Challenge coming shortly

When I was looking nothing had been found yet that had been shown publicly. This was in the 1990s. I had ROM images and other prototype stuff that had come out of Atari, both after the events of 1984 as well as 1996. I had always hoped to find something for Rescue on Fractalus, unfortunately I never did. I was happy when something was eventually found! At least we can see what it might have looked like. My understanding was a somewhat more complete version of Rescue on Fractalus was written for the Atari 7800, and although not complete it was more playable than what is available today.

This looks like it could be amazing. I loved Rescue on Fractalus on the Atari 8-Bit Computers and really felt like we were missing out on it by not having the completed 7800 version. I looked forever to try to find a lost Rom somewhere of a working Rescue on Fractalus for the 7800. I hope this project goes well.

@Sabertooth @RickR and @btbfilms76 all can do a superb job of pointing you in the right direction for getting started with Atari Jaguar

Hey everyone, Intellivision novice, checking in. Is the Intellivision II superior to the original Intellivision in any meaningful way? I'm asking you, George Plimpton! Intellivision II seems strictly like a cost-reducing measure, I don't see anything new, such as substantially revised controllers or integrated voice synthesis. All I see with the Intellivision II is the smaller size like the Atari 2600 Jr. or the smaller revisions of the NES and SNES. I'm iffy about those Intellivision II controllers, I get the impression they would feel cheap in your hand, not that the original Intellivision controller is anything to write home about. Curious what you guys think. I guess I could add lights to make it glow around the bottom.

I learned a little “domestic hack” tonight, thought I’d share this with the rest of you who fold your own shirts 😉

... KHAAAAAAANNNNNN ...

@Gianna I like the one with Yoshi and the Watermelon 🍉☺️ https://youtu.be/0LgCVo3n0tQ

I'm putting in overtime burning the midnight oil trying to top my score on this game. Absolutely unrelenting. Congrats to everyone with those massive massive scores!

@MaximumRD Try ProtonVPN, the basic version is free to use 🙂 https://protonvpn.com/about

I bet you didn’t know all of this! What a neat little gadget. I wish we would’ve had this when I was a kid, or even when I was working at Toys "R" Us selling LEGOs. Now if they can only solve the problem of stepping on them!

I love the patches. They're doing a decent job on this

All good game systems at some point have a killer app. Some, if fortunate, have a handful, but even just one is reason enough alone to buy the system. "Come for the Mario, stay for the Zelda". Some credit Space Invaders as "the first Killer App". It's a hard point to argue. Space Invaders was so incredibly successful that we How many Atari 2600 systems were sold because people wanted to play Space Invaders? The game was so successful that when examining the Atari 2600 game library we often divide it into "Before Space Invaders" and "After Space Invaders". But was Combat the first "Killer App"? Combat was fun for 2-Players and brought the "Tank" experience home to the masses. As far as the earliest 2600 games go, Combat was one of the best! It was such a common cartridge that even today they are seen as nearly worthless. If you're lucky you can still pick one up for a quarter somewhere. But put it in your 2600 sometime and play a few rounds with a friend, and come back and tell us if you had a good time or not. Lots of families who first brought the Atari 2600 home spent many Saturday nights sitting around the television set bouncing "missiles" around the screen banking shots off of little barriers trying to hit their brother's tank on the other side of the screen.