Video 61

got to level seven today, even made it to the bonus round. my hands are still to slow yet to beat the bonus round. i am using the euro 7800 pad.

you will cry over this one. atari had a 320k 130xe in the works, and a 512k 130xe. with a 40/80 column chip in it, that could be changed on the fly. the 512k one was supposed to be battery backed up. the xf-551, was supposed to be a 3.5 inch drive, i know the guy who talked atari out of releasing it, and they went back to a 5&1/4 inch floppy. so many authors of magazine articles, used the 130xe. they wanted more ram, and more storage on disk. by that time, the pc's were 3.5 inch disks. atari almost, and i say almost, for once, was going to support their market share, then backed out at the end, with some bad advise to boot. i was stunned, i asked them why, they told me if you want a business machine, buy a pc. no kidding, they were that bad at business.

we are looking into it.

we are looking into it.

it might make it out on the 5200 also. i am looking into it. although, not as full version, perhaps a 32k cart. its a future project, maybe:)

nope, just can't get this one going. it must be just a partial game. took your advise, still nothing. i am sure they would try to give it the same treatment as the 7800 version. look what they did for choplifter on the 7800 and the XEGS. sorry about the no response, its very hard for me right now. e-mail me at video61@tcq.net please.

its going to be a awesome game. artisan21 did the splash screen, i designed the game, peter and i designed the courses. we squeezed perhaps three courses into a 16k atari-bit cart. peters skills are amazing. i designed the game. so that perhaps in the future, it can be ported over to the atari 5200 and the atari 7800.

my friend found my ruff and ready cart. it looks bug free. we made a short youtube of it. as soon as its posted, i will post the link here. my friend is looking for the beer belly bert also.

Thanks for the kind words on the recovery. doctors tell me another year to a year in a half. Bummer. There were some 2600 games, like Save Mary and Shooting Gallery. I also have some boards with e-proms on them, and of course the e-proms are covered. I plugged them in years ago, some work, some do not. At that time I had no boards, so I stuck them away someplace. Who knows where now. The Atari 2600 was my first machine, but I always loved the 7800 and the 8-bit computers more. So that is what i have concentrated on. Someday if I get better, I will look for the 2600 stuff. Atari had two semi truck trailers loaded with XEGM Mario Bros. carts, brand new in the box. To make sure people did not sneak into the parking lot and make off with inventory they did not want to use labor to put back into their inventory (i know, so damn cheap), they parked the trailer doors ends to each other, so that the only way to open a door of a trailer was to get a semi truck to move the trailers away from each other. That way no sneaky stuff after dark. They refused to sell me the Mario Bros. carts, only if I paid the truck drivers rates. So the company that supplied the trucks, trailers, and drivers, wanted me to pay the freight of the carts that were hauled in from various stores around the country that returned the carts to Atari. Atari usually hated to take back returns, and always tried to cut deals with stores so that they could put Atari's name brand to hell, through a closeout bin in the stores. If you ever wondered why Atari always had a trash name, that was one way to keep the name in the garbage. I inquired about the freight, and found out I had to pay for months of rent for the trailers too, on top of paying to have the trailers pulled away from each other. I found the carts were way over priced by then, higher that what stores were selling them for, so I turned them down. Found out later they sold the carts to a scrapper for pennies each. They told me that there were 1,500 Mario Bros. games in one of the trailers. This happened all of the time with Tramiel's Atari. If they smelled money like with the selling us the unreleased games, they played hard ball. But if they came to find out they had no leverage, then at the right time, I could have gotten the games at a reasonable price. The day the scrapper came into Atari to see what they had, must have been a day that Atari got sick of paying the trailer rental bill, and he got them cheap. To this day i am still bummed out over that.

Yeah Atari did that here in America all of the time. It got so bad that hardly anyone would trust them on pricing. As far as Paperboy is concerned, so far i have not seen it. But i have not looked at anything in almost 4 years now. Julie Wade at Atari once told me she just got in a new game for the 7800, and Jack ordered it shelved immediately. It was in the early 1990's, perhaps 1991. I tried to buy it, but no deal. So it might have been destroyed. Or the only known copy is sitting quietly in an ex Atari employee's collection. Atari had not dumped the 7800 yet when that happened. Could've been Klax. In 1989 when Atari admitted to me under duress that they had informally dumped the XE line, they admitted they had finished games for the XE that were going to be left unreleased. They offered the games to the three dealers mentioned, Atari would have sold the games for $100,000 a piece. We turned them down, no way could we come up with that kind of money for at least 6-10 games. So in 1991-92, we ended up with them anyways. Speaking of games, you also mentioned Beer Belly Bert in a thread. I'm pretty sure i have that in a proto cart also. I just need a friend to help dig it out for me, like he did with Ruff and Ready.

Many times I'm asked about the unreleased Atari games we sell. "where did you get them" or "how did you get them" or "why is this dealer able to sell this stuff, when it's Atari's property?" There were, primarily, three authorized Atari dealers that were loyal to Atari right up to the end: B&C Computervisions, Best Electronics, and of course me, Video 61. When Atari pulled the plug on any of their systems, we were allowed directly into their warehouse and offices to buy whatever was left that they were offering. We made bids on tons of stuff. This included computers, hard drives, rolls of e-proms, disks full of images, prototype cartridges, etc. that contained data for unreleased games. I even have a pile of removable hard disks, plus lots of other stuff hardware related. Atari never wiped any thing clean. They knew full wellwhat we were going to do, and if they objected to it, they would have never sold them to us loaded with unreleased games, they would have wiped the data clean if they did not want us to produce the games. They sold them to us as is, which means we get to release the stuff, because we bought them outright.

i sent out yesterday for review from my team, all of the artwork and documentation for review. we made a film with commentary. and it shows us playing the game with a joystick, a 2600 driving controller, with paddle controllers, and a trak-ball. its been a long haul for the guys who made this possible, but it looks like we are about there.

i have ruff and ready on cart. i only played it once back in the 1990's, and it seemed to have some spelling problems, or missing letters. for me, sometimes its hard to tell so i just put it in my own collection, to see someday when i had more time if its ok. so when i saw this thread, i had my friend come over and dig out my collection, he found it, took it home and played it. he said its a hard game, but made it to level 2. so i might release it in the near future. i also have ghost chaser which i released. i saw beer belly bert, and i remember that i used to call atari all of the time in the late 80's and nineties, recommending games to them, because they had such a hard time understanding games. that was one i recommended. sometimes the only way i got them to believe the game existed, is to actually send them a physical copy. sometimes i did the leg work for them, and provided the contact person at the software house that owned the game. i used to be direct with almost all third party developers back in the day, so i knew people who worked in many of the software houses, if they still were there and existed as a company. later on i found out atari was picking up these games for peanuts, because atari themselves were not supporting the market in any meaningful way. they ported many games over to cartridge, then let them sit.

i played the 8-bit floppy version sometimes, but i always hated the load times on disc. once the 7800 version of super huey came out, that i played a lot, and forgot the commands. justin reminded me one day to read the doc's, oops, forgot that. i was hoping that the XE version would operate like the 7800 version, not to be. so steve and i went to the docs one day, read up on them, and tried a few things, no good. it might not be a finished product. its only 32k, its hard to believe its done. most XE carts depending on the banking, are 48k or more. its also something atari told me one day, that many of the remakes, they enhanced for XE versions, or included a little bit of better music and sound effects. no music at all on this one. it might not be done. once i get back on my feet, i hope to have time to delve into all of these games. its time to start to release of a few of them again.

i played the 8-bit floppy version sometimes, but i always hated the load times on disc. once the 7800 version of super huey came out, that i played a lot, and forgot the commands. justin reminded me one day to read the doc's, oops, forgot that. i was hoping that the XE version would operate like the 7800 version, not to be. so steve and i went to the docs one day, read up on them, and tried a few things, no good. it might not be a finished product. its only 32k, its hard to believe its done. most XE carts depending on the banking, are 48k or more. its also something atari told me one day, that many of the remakes, they enhanced for XE versions, or included a little bit of better music and sound effects. no music at all on this one. it might not be done. once i get back on my feet, i hope to have time to delve into all of these games. its time to start to release of a few of them again.

i am not sure how many games i have that atari never released for the 8-bit computers. there were three dealers left that atari considered rewarding their loyalty to atari, B&C computervisions, best electronics, and me, video 61. i have many, and perhaps more. i will get into this on the atari 101 history page.

Hi MalakZero, thanks for the nice compliment, i am the one who engineered the CX-30 Evolved paddle controllers. they are out right now, i need to get more built. they work well, and are a bit faster than the original paddle controller. i was almost out of the original paddle controllers, when i thought about all of the Atari 7800 controllers i had left, and what to do with them? then i got a idea to convert them into dual-button paddle controllers. it took a while to find the right pots to use, you cannot use the original ones very well, they work, but just barely, it's tough to get them just right. then there was the glue problem. but in the end, it all came together, and voila! i engineered them, patent pending and all. i bought 1000s of proline joysticks from Atari, that were customer returns from Atari. at one time i thought "what am i going to do with all these?" today with the original paddle controllers disappearing, the CX-30 evolved selling, best electronics gold upgrades, my 7800 grip stick upgrade which requires a proline joystick cable, and another project i am looking at that will require more proline parts, i can see the end coming much much sooner than i ever thought. thanks for your interests Lance

Here is another prototype cart for the Atari 8-Bit computer. This game is Super Huey UH-IX which was a cool helicopter game on Atari 7800 and was in development to be ported over to a grey cartridge release for the Atari XEGS. This particular prototype version was not done yet but it was a great looking game. Super Huey was released for the XL/XE on floppy but not on cartridge. If you've played Super Huey on the 7800 you'll remember how serious of a flight simulator it was. It wasn't a normal shooter game like Choplifter where you immediately start flying around and shooting. Since the time that we filmed this video I found original instructions for Super Huey on XL/XE. Once you get in the cockpit, you first press OPTION. Then you type POW to turn on the power to the helicopter. Then you press START to start the engine, and then you need to rev the engine up past 1600 rpm by pressing forward on the joystick. Then you press SELECT to clutch the rotor and being the throttle up to 3000 RPM. First off, I was wondering what was inside the prototype cartridge. So Steven took it apart for me, and low and behold, what appeared to be a stock Atari ROM, not an E-PROM. So far all of the proto carts I've received from Atari were E-PROMs. ROMs are for mass production. So I told Steven "bummer, most likely it cannot be copied" because it's a ROM chip, the legs do different things on a ROM, than an E-PROM does. But, some can be copied, if its a one time burn E-PROM, which has no window, so it looks like a ROM. There are other versions also that I am not familiar with. So I copied it, ROMs can be copied, but will not run as an E-PROM, and I do not have a ROM programmer. I was holding my breath as it copied. It should have been 64k. It turned out it was NOT 64k, and I was stunned, its 32k. On the floppy it was 48k. So I am assuming this is not a done version. I burned it onto a 32k E-PROM, plugged it into an E-PROM cart, and turned on the computer, it froze solid, blue screen saying ready. Tried it again, got the same thing. So I thought, I wonder if it will run on the Super Huey board, it should not, because of the differences in how the board is wired for roms. i plugged it into the board, put the board into my XE game machine, turned it on, got the same picture as the other one, but with one difference... When I pushed OPTION, we got more action, then I typed in pow, pushed start, and we got lots of action, but both sides of the screen show pixilation. It's not done. Steve and I got it to fly, but it freezes sometimes. We got no further than that. There might be more, but it freezes sometimes. So I looked at the board, I saw some differences compared to other Atari XE Super Cart boards, and of course an E-PROM board. It might be wired for use with an E-PROM, and or what ever type of one time E-PROM, or some sort of ROM chip that i was able to copy, all at the same time. Sometimes boards are wired differently, due to how it was programmed, and where in RAM the program resides. All i know so far is that it's not like other E-PROMboards, or ROM boards. So because of this, I was reading up on ROMs tonight. What i found out was there is a PROM chip. It's a one-time programable chip that is burned like an E-PROM. I bet that is what the Atari XE Super Huey chip is, and why I could copy it. It seems Atari was using three different technologies on their cart boards. This is the first one that I have ran into. Knowing Jack, it was for cheapness purposes. What ever was cheaper at the time, he used. I say this needs to be investigated and filmed. So, I am going to try to get the board replicated, and we will test the game further. It's possible the board may have to be wired further, to tie the programming into certain parts of the RAM. I will keep you informed as we discover more about this game. I filmed this video with the help of my good friend Steve who is an Atari.io member here under the name BlackCatz40. Here's a look at the Super Huey UH-IX prototype cart for the Atari XL/XE Series computers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UH_nrLeCkc

What they most likely are, are charactor generators. Atari sold quite a few, and there were companies that used charactor generating cart sand disks. They were, and in some cases, still are used in airports, apartments, hotels, convention centers, etc. If you see a monitor or t.v. when you come in the front door, that scrools anouncments, that is what they are for. I still get inquires from users, on getting them fixed, or the software fixed. but those systems are no longer supported by software companies that i know of. A prominent one was in Canada. Lance www.atarisales.com

here are some of the mock-up games shown when atari first showed the video system x. games included Football, Pac-Man, Galaxian, Asteroids, Adventure, Skiing, Soccer, Baseball, Tank Battle, and some others.

you did a nice job with this list

that's sweet nectar RickR

Great new article about Atari Lynx at Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/09/atari-lynx/

Into The Eagle's Nest is one of the best. It managed to get a lot of sprites on the screen at the same time, flicker free, and smooth movement. Sometimes when you're moving sprites on the screen there's jerkiness especially if there's a lot of stuff moving at once, and this one didn't. Atari could have easily put Into The Eagle's Nest onto the 7800 or Lynx, it was a very modern game. Why wasn't this on the Atari 7800?