Scott Stilphen

List updated.

I came across a company called Bradbury Barrel (http://www.bradburybarrel.com/). In the 'displays' section, at the bottom of the page, is the 'space saver wine merchant' which has a notched barrel mounted on top of a small cabinet. So I emailed them for a quote. $379. Maybe if it was full of wine... which it isn't.

$25 shipped. PM if interested, thanks.

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Nice job with this, Brian. What software are you using to emulate Pong?

You won't find any nicer. They also include clear protective cases.

This was sold.

Mattel Electronics BASKETBALL - $10 shipped Cardinal ELECTRONIC FOOTBALL - $15 shipped PM me if interested, thanks.

This is sold.

AMOK! is a port of Stern's Berzerk that John Dondzila made back in 1998 and was the first homebrew game ever made for the Odyssey 2 system. This cartridge is a 'special edition' version of the original. I discovered a modification can be made to this game that allows you to select which level you want to start at! With a simple switch, the game will start automatically advancing through each level (i.e. commonly referred to as a rack advance feature in arcade games). When the level you want to play appears, simply move the switch back and start playing! Here's a video I did of it showing it cycling through all 100 levels: The Game: You’re alone in a maze filled with armed, hostile robots who only have one mission – to kill you. If you even so much as touch the walls, you’ll wind up dead. You’re a little bit faster than the robots, and you have human instinct on your side…but even that won’t help you when SmileyBot, a deceptively friendly and completely indestructible smiley face, appears to destroy you if you linger too long in any one part of the maze. The object of the game? Try to stay alive however long you can. (John Dondzila Classic Gaming Creations, 1998) Price $20 each (shipped). PM me if interested, thanks.

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-2600-vcs-arkyology_30287.html Thanks to programmer Paul Walters, who decided to release the binary of the game for free after plans to sell cartridges fell through. This is a 1-player 8K game based on events in the life of the biblical character Noah. Paul Walters announced in 2015 that he likely had the only existing copy of the game. From Walters: "Back in 1982 - 1984 I worked for Enter-Tech Ltd. We developed video games, coin-op, cartridge, and gambling as well. We developed a few games for the Atari 2600. We had the contract to develop Arkyology and David and Goliath for the 2600 back in 1983. I and my co-worker George Hefner were the programmers on the Arkyology project. My co-worker Rick Harris was the lead on the David and Goliath project, and Andy Teague helped. Barb Ultis did the graphics for both games. The games required a cartridge board that handled ROM banking. The final games fit inside 8K bytes. Arkyology was finished and ready for release; I don't think David and Goliath was ever finished. Arkyology was about Noah's ark. The player controlled 'Noah' and the goal was to feed the animals on the Ark. The game showed three floors separated by ladders that contained animal stalls. Each level had two parts. First was to run around and open all of the animal stalls, the second was to 'feed' each of the animals. Of course, there were obstacles. There were birds flying past, alligators running on the floors, and a couple others if I remember right. Each level sped up with more obstacles. We ended up having to edit out some of what we wanted to put into the game because we were running out of space... The cut scenes between days were shortened down to just Noah snoring.. we had bigger plans for it. I have a game ROM of Arkyology, probably the only one still in existence."

Sure he did. You are well known for programming/porting the legendary Donkey Kong on the Atari 2600. How did you get the opportunity to work on this iconic title? After I left Wickstead Design, after programming Space Jockey, I got a call from my brother Steven Kitchen, who had his own engineering company on the west coast. He had contacts at Coleco, who had just secured the rights to the home version of Donkey Kong. They were looking for someone to adapt the game to the Atari 2600. Conveniently, I happened to have Atari 2600 knowledge and expertise, so I did the game as a subcontractor to his company for Coleco.

Done in-house as a prank by David Crane, and was based on his original version of Activision's Freeway (which featured a chicken). Included on the 2003 Activision Anthology and Remix packages. The fire button resets the game. Appears to be only 1-player, even though there are 2 score counters. This is a fully playable prototype reproduction in an Activision cartridge shell with a custom label. Price is $25 each (shipped). PM me if interested, thanks.

Thanks to Jerry, I've compiled all the information he posted here and added it to my site. He was also kind enough to help answer a few questions to help round out his experience. http://www.ataricompendium.com/archives/interviews/jerry_donaldson/interview_jerry_donaldson.html

This is sold.

This is a fully-working GCE Vectrex Arcade System vector video game console, with original controller. It features the built-in game Mine Storm and includes the original controller. The system has been thoroughly cleaned and tested with the factory test program, and the monitor has been calibrated to its original specifications. The controller has been tested and is fully functional as well. Asking $375 shipped. PM me if interested, thanks.

Just to again refute one of Tod Frye's comments about Pac-Man not being very popular by the time he was assigned to do the VCS version. In Steve Golson's GDC talk in 2017 about Ms. Pac-Man and the history of GCC, he mentions why and when they decided to make an enhancement kit for Pac-Man, in June 1981: https://youtu.be/rhM8NAMW_VQ?t=18m00s He mentions 2 Pac-Man pattern books, one of which - Mastering Pac-Man - originally came out in 1981 (I don't know which month it was released, but a revised edition came out in January 1982).

That glitch came to light last December:

It wasn't programmed on purpose.

I'll post a link to my EG article here when it's done. As for Tod/Pac-Man, it would be easy to 'let it go', but he continues making ridiculous statements about it. And with that latest RetroGamer article, he now thinks of himself as being some sort of trailblazer with VCS Pac-Man? No, true pioneers don't develop something like a new variable flicker kernel.. and then refuse to use it out of spite because they were on probation (as if to say, "I could have done a much better job.. but decided not to...). Must be great to have that much of an ego about it after all this time, but the reality is, pretty much any programmer from Activision or Imagic were years beyond him in talent and success. The real pioneers went on to found their own companies, and became multi-millionaires as a result; they didn't become millionaires from a choice project falling in their lap (happening to be in the right place at the right time) and then end up losing all that money within a few years. Kunkel once made the comment that everyone who was talented left Atari, and all those left were basically "bums". I wouldn't go that far, but it was clear that Atari's VCS programmers weren't putting out nearly as many games as other companies. The royalty program Atari (finally) implemented seemed to have the result of making people less productive. Atari ended up using GCC for all their VCS arcade ports - most of which are quite excellent (but that was largely because Kassar owned most of GCC and funneled most of the choice conversions to them, the story of which is worthy of its own article). Warshaw is a perfect example. In his first 2 years, he made 3 games - all of which were million+ sellers. For the next 18 months, he released... nothing.

Exactly. Atari never even publicly announced it had licensed Star Castle AFAIK, so only his contact(s) within Atari would have told him that. Plus, if Atari was that concerned about not using it for a VCS version, they could have released one for the 400/800 computers, but they didn't. Apparently they didn't care about not having a direct port, since it led to Yars, and Yars was a major success for them. Another thing worth noting is that the Vectrex had a version of Star Castle for it, so either Atari's license for the game was only effective for a specific amount of time (possibly depending on whether or not they released a home version of it), or Atari worked a deal with GCE for them to have it (who released their version in 1983). I clearly remember seeing the ad in Atari Age for Yars and Defender, and immediately wanting Yars. It sounded amazing from the description, and the artistic rendering of the screen only fueled my interest in having a copy. As for Defender, I eventually got a copy, but the game had some of the worst flickering of any VCS game, and the fact the ship disappeared completely every time you fired made the game look cheap. And yet EG's review of the game was so over-the-top in its unbridled enthusiasm for it, I started to seriously question their judgement from that point on. I've been slowly going through all their VCS reviews in-depth and putting together an article about them, and it's truly astounding how downright awful some of them are. EG might have been the first US mag dedicated to video games, but it was hardly the best.

FYI I just asked Dennis Koble about whether or not there were any rules or guidelines against VCS games having black backgrounds, since he was the manager of the CES group circa 1981-82: So there you have it - Tod's manager at the time said there was no rule or guideline about games having black backgrounds. I don't know why Tod keeps perpetuating that myth other than to offer it as an excuse for his poor design choices. Just as I'm sure there was no rule or guideline stating games had to offer a 2-player option, or that nobody knew what was important when doing a coin-op conversion...

I'm still trying to find out what really happened (internally) with Yars' Revenge. The person who tried to kill it was Steve Wright. Warshaw has mentioned he knows it was purely company politics behind its delayed release. Yars was certainly popular enough among other programmers (Owen Rubin was one of the game's early play-testers, and Dave Theurer was contemplating doing a coin-op version of it). It's possible Howard knows more details about it and simply doesn't want to discuss it. I never had the chance to ask Wright his side of the story (well, actually I did several times, but never heard back from him). I know Wright was doing his best to climb up the corporate ladder at the time, but when Yars' came out and became Atari's best-selling original VCS game, that pretty much undercut Wright's credibility. It's also clear from reading old issues of Electronic Games magazine there was a real undercurrent of negativity regarding any of Warshaw's games. Although the original review they did of Yars' was generally favorable (Oct 1982), it wasn't long before random comments dropped in other reviews starting becoming more critical and negative of the game, starting with the next issue - a review for Defender mentioned Yars was simply a mediocre game. About a year after that, Yars was again mentioned in another review, for Phoenix (June 1983), this time describing it as a "video sleeping pill". Well, it did rather well for a mediocre game, selling over 3 million copies and ending up being Atari's best-selling original VCS game. Years ago, Bill Kunkel started posting on Digital Press' forum, and he and I (as "stonic") went back-and-forth over his apparently unfounded dislike for the game, and for Warshaw himself as well: http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=7418 Long after that, I started scanning in all the issues of EG and found the Yars' Revenge review, which wasn't nearly as negative as Kunkel remembered. Whether Kunkel was biased with Yars over the fact it wasn't the port of Star Castle (clearly a favorite of his), or whether he had contact with Howard at some point and personally disliked him, I don't know, but he certainly let his biased opinions affect his work. If I had to guess, it was Wright who was influencing Kunkel. EG's review of E.T. was all but buried in the April 1983 issue and is all of 12 sentences long - one of which describes the game as looking like it was programmed in 5 weeks (hmm, now how would someone outside of Atari know that?).

Except as far as anyone else from Atari is concerned, they didn't. Tod is the *only* person who continues to make that claim. To that I say, show me some official paperwork from Atari stating that was a rule, or someone else from Atari making that claim. Besides, it's not the lack of color that creates burn-in, it's the lack of color-cycling. Think about this for a moment. Space games were the most-popular genre of games back then. If a game like Space Invaders (which sold over 6 million copies) didn't cause any burn-in problems, nothing would have

No, the choice of what colors to use makes no difference as far as memory is concerned. With all the VCS programmers I've talked with over the years, I don't recall any of them ever stating that nonsense about only space games could have a black background (or apparently the option to have one, since Space War doesn't). Someone on Atarimania commented on what a good job Frye did with the b&w scheme, so I checked it out. At powerup, the date is in color, and then turns gray when the game starts its color-cycling routine. I start a game. Everything is in b&w, as it should be. The game ends, and... whadaya know, the score is in color now. The longer you leave it on, the more it changes color, as it goes through the color-cycling routine. After powering it up again and leaving it run, the date does the same thing. Frye couldn't even get the b&w scheme correct...